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Deep in the bowels of the Hard Rock Stadium, where the air conditioning fought a losing battle against the Florida summer, the Miami heat seeped through concrete and steel, carrying with it the mingled scents of sweat, drenched polyester, cut grass, and something far more dangerous: the lingering traces of a thousand alphas and omegas who had passed through these corridors.
Jude Bellingham pressed his palm flat against the cool wall, steadying himself as the adrenaline of victory still thrummed through his veins. He’d scored twice, the difference between quarterfinal heartbreak and a semifinal berth. A man-of-the-match performance. England was through to the semifinals, and Norway sent home with their heads held high after a valiant fight.
The world was a blur of champagne and cheering and Jude’s own heartbeat beating in his ears, a frantic, victorious drum. The air itself felt thick, a wet blanket of July heat that carried every scent with punishing clarity, including his own.
The suppressants had worn off somewhat somewhere around the seventy-third minute. He’d felt it happen. A subtle shift in his body chemistry, the way the Norwegian defenders suddenly seemed to track him a half-second longer than necessary. His teammates had noticed too. Kane had shot him a look during the water break, eyebrows raised, a question Jude dismissed with a shake of his head.
He'd slipped away from the celebrations the moment he could, ignoring the knowing looks from the lads who had long since stopped teasing him about the suppressants.
They didn't understand. How could they?
To them, Jude’s omega nature was a weapon. Something to be deployed strategically against the world's most formidable alpha strikers. A biological advantage to be leveraged on the pitch.
To him, suppressants were never about tactics or the lack thereof. They were about respect. About honoring what he had by refusing to turn it into a competitive advantage. About proving to himself that he could win on his own terms.
Jude pushed off from the wall and began walking, his steps echoing in the empty corridor. He moved like a man swimming through the waterlogged air, his England kit plastered to his skin, the roar of eighty thousand voices a distant, muffled din through the concrete. The service passages that wound through the stadium's underbelly were dimly lit, utilitarian spaces where staff hurried with equipment and players occasionally sought refuge from the press of cameras and microphones.
His senses, heightened even through the suppressants, picked up the scent before he saw the source.
Blue cypress. Vetiver. Coastal air and sea salt, as if the cold Norwegian shores themselves had somehow followed their striker to this sweltering American city. Jude had spent two years learning every layer of this scent profile. Two years in Dortmund, sharing training grounds and hotel rooms and eventually, inevitably, everything else.
Jude's steps faltered, his heart stumbling in his chest. Four years of suppressants, four years removed from their last kiss, and still that scent made his knees weak.
Jude found him in an alcove off the main corridor, a small utility space partially concealed by an unlocked door. A vending machine hummed weakly by the side and a single fluorescent light flickered overhead. It was cooler here, the noise subdued to a murmur.
Erling Haaland sat on a low equipment crate, leaning against a painted cinderblock wall, head back, eyes closed. His kit was still damp with sweat, his massive chest rising and falling in a slow, controlled rhythm. The picture of stoic grace in defeat. He took losses with characteristic composure, and it was one of the things Jude had always admired about him. But Jude, who had known the landscape of that body for years, saw the tension in the corded neck, the slight tremor in the hands that were clenched loosely in his lap.
“Got lost looking for the exit, big guy?”
Jude’s voice echoed in the narrow space as he stepped into the alcove. The door clicked shut behind him, sealing them in a pocket of near-total privacy.
“You're lurking,” Erling said without opening his eyes.
“I'm assessing.” Jude stepped closer, crossing his arms.
“Assessing what?”
“Whether you're about to put your fist through a wall or not.”
Erling’s eyes opened, slightly offended. They were the pale, clear blue of a winter fjord, and just as deep. “I don't do that.”
“I know.” Jude stopped about three feet away. Close enough to talk quietly, far enough to maintain something resembling professionalism. “That's what I was assessing. You take losses like a Viking funeral. All quiet dignity. It's infuriating.”
A ghost of a smile crossed Erling's face. “You prefer I throw a tantrum?”
“I'd prefer you give me something to work with here.” Jude leaned a shoulder against the opposite wall.
Erling pushed off the crate, his towering stature suddenly dominating the narrow alcove as he stood. The full scale of him became apparent in a way it never quite did on television. Six-foot-four of hardened muscle, power coiled in shoulders broad enough to block out the flickering overhead light.
“Congratulations, Jude,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “You were brilliant.”
“Brilliant?” Jude scoffed. “That’s generous. Reckon you’re the only one who sees it that way.”
“Since when does Jude Bellingham care what anyone else thinks?” He reached out and gave Jude's shoulder a light shove, playful but lingering. “Let them talk. I saw you today.”
Jude let out a breathy laugh, shoving him back. “Took two special ones to get past you guys.”
“Two special ones,” he repeated, a wry smile touching his lips. “You made them look easy.”
“Nothing about you is easy,” Jude said, and took a step closer.
Erling didn’t move away, but his smile flickered and died. “You're not wearing your patches.”
It wasn't a question. Jude's stomach tightened.
“Ran out.” The lie sat between them, obvious and unacknowledged. “Suppressants wore off around seventy minutes. I figured it didn't matter by then.”
“It mattered.” Erling's voice dropped, rougher now. “What if the others could smell you on the pitch? Maybe I wasn’t just imagining it after all.”
The room suddenly felt tighter, the humid air pressing in from all sides. Jude’s scent, warm butterscotch, caramelized sugar, the thing his Dortmund teammates used to joke about in the canteen, was undoubtedly flooding the space between them now. No suppressants to mute it. No patches to filter it.
“You could have said something then,” Jude shot back.
“And what? Called a timeout?” Erling's jaw worked, the muscles tensing and releasing in a rhythm Jude recognized from countless halftime locker rooms. “Told the referee an omega in heat was dismantling my defense?”
“I'm not fucking in heat.” The words came out sharper than Jude intended. “I'm just not chemically neutered for the first time in six months. That’s far from the same thing, and you know that.”
Something shifted in Erling's posture. His hands curled into loose fists at his sides.
“Why are you here, Jude?”
It was the question Jude had been avoiding since the final whistle. He could give the tactical answer. Checking on an old friend, being a good sportsman, the narrative the cameras would eat up if anyone found them. But Erling had never accepted the tactical answer from him. Not in Dortmund, not during their two years of whatever they'd been, not now.
“Because you looked,” Jude started, then stopped. Swallowed. “During the free kick. When I came over to nudge you. You looked at me like—”
“Like what?”
“Like nothing had changed. Like we were still us.” Jude let out a weary laugh. “And I couldn’t tell if that was a good thing or not.”
The silence stretched. Erling exhaled through his nose and took half a step forward before catching himself.
“You kicked me,” Erling said finally. “In the tunnel. Right before we walked out.”
Jude’s mouth tugged into a guilty smile at the memory of his playful kick to the back of Erling’s calf, the big alpha barely flinching. An old habit, an inside joke. A language only they spoke.
“I was being a brat. You’ve always hated that.”
“I’ve always—” Erling stopped himself. A slow breath expanded his chest. “You know what it does to me. You knew then, and you know now.”
“Guess some habits die hard.”
Jude waited for the eye roll, the dry comment, the little shake of his head that always followed, but it never came.
His expression softened. “…You okay?”
“It is football. Someone wins. I am fine, Jude.”
But the emotional and physical drop after a World Cup quarterfinal was a cliff, and Erling was at the edge. Jude could see the adrenaline leaching out of him, leaving behind the hollow fatigue, the bruising disappointment. The alpha’s formidable control was a dam holding back a tide.
Jude closed the distance.
It wasn't a conscious decision so much as a gravitational inevitability. One moment he was three feet away, maintaining plausible deniability, and the next his palm was flat against Erling's sternum, feeling his strong, steady heartbeat through compression fabric.
“Liar.”
Erling’s breath hitched. “Jude…”
“I scored on you twice, Erling,” Jude murmured, his voice dropping into a sly, intimate register. “Least I can do is help you take the edge off.”
Erling's pale blue eyes widened slightly. It was a line drawn in sand, an offering and a provocation.
“Here?” His own hand came up, covering Jude’s, his fingers engulfing the midfielder’s. Not pulling him closer. Not pushing him away. “Now? There are staff everywhere.”
“Staff who are busy. Staff who don't come down this corridor.” Jude tilted his head up, his dark brown eyes gleaming with a challenge, a teasing confidence that had always been his to wield. “Staff who definitely don't know what you smell like when you're this wound up.”
Because Erling did smell wound up. The blue cypress had gone sharper, the vetiver darker, the salt-spray undertone cutting through everything else like cold steel. It was the scent of an alpha who’d just been handed back a piece of a life he’d convinced himself he’d outgrown.
“Tell me you don't want this.” Jude pressed closer, letting his butterscotch scent roll off him in waves. “Tell me you don't miss it. Tell me to walk away, and I will.”
Erling's nostrils flared. The dam of his self-control broke.
His free hand came up and fisted in the fabric of Jude's top, right at the small of his back, and Jude felt himself being maneuvered backward until his shoulder blades met cinderblock. The wall was cool against the sweat still drying on his skin.
And then he was kissing him.
Erling’s hand slid from Jude’s to cup the back of his neck, pulling him in, and their mouths met in a collision that was all pent-up frustration. It wasn't a gentle kiss, not the kind of kiss you gave someone you were reconnecting with after years apart. It was a contest of teeth and tongue and the faint scrape of stubble.
Jude moaned into his mouth and met it with equal fervor, pushing back, his teeth nipping at Erling’s lower lip, his own hands fisting in the jersey material. He found the hem of Erling's shirt, rucking it up over the ridges of his abdomen. His body slotting against the larger man’s and his thigh pressing insistently between Erling’s, he claimed the alpha's mouth like he was claiming victory all over again.
The warm, rich, decadent scent of butterscotch, sweet, caramel-like, bloomed into the air. It was a famous scent in certain circles, whispered about, delectable. Erling groaned, a raw, visceral sound. “Fåen, Jude… your scent…”
Jude broke the kiss to trail his mouth along the strong jaw, down the sweaty column of Erling’s throat, inhaling the alpha scent that was now spiking with desire, a storm rolling in from the sea.
“Missed this,” Jude breathed against his skin, his voice husky. “Missed you smelling like this.”
“You planned this,” Erling growled.
“I hoped for it.” Jude corrected. His shorts were already being worked down over his hips, the humid air hitting his skin. “There's a difference.”
Jude’s shirt was pulled over his head and his shorts hit the concrete with a slap, and then Erling’s hands were everywhere. Spanning Jude’s ribs, gripping his lithe waist, hoisting him against the wall as though he weighed nothing. The cinderblock scraped through Jude’s back, a rough point of friction he barely registered because Erling’s mouth had found the soft hollow behind his ear and was working downward, tongue and teeth tracing the tendon to his scenting gland.
“You’re still wearing too much,” Jude managed, fisting the hem of Erling’s compression shirt and yanking. The fabric resisted, caught on the sheer breadth of his shoulders, and Erling had to lower him briefly to strip it off. The momentary loss of contact made Jude’s skin prickle with impatience.
Then Erling was back, bare-chested now. Carved from granite and gleaming with the faint sheen of sweat, chest heaving, the fine blond hair trailing down from his navel disappearing into the waistband of his shorts.
Jude reached for that waistband, got his fingers around the elastic, and pulled.
“So impatient,” Erling rumbled, but he wasn’t stopping him. He didn’t stop the way Jude shoved the shorts down over the jut of his hipbones, freeing a cock that made Jude’s breath catch in his throat. His memory of it was a pale thing compared to the reality of Erling Haaland fully hard and already slick at the tip, the shaft thick enough that Jude’s fingers couldn’t close around it completely.
Jude didn’t wait. He sank to his knees on the hard concrete floor and looked up the long, formidable line of Erling’s body, meeting those pale blue eyes, before leaning forward.
Jude nuzzled the thick, heavy length of him, feeling it jump against his cheek. He heard the sharp intake of breath above him, the whispered curse in Norwegian. Then he took him into his mouth.
He used his tongue, the flat of it lapping the prominent vein, the tip circling the weeping head. He hollowed his cheeks, taking him deep, until his throat relaxed and accepted the impressive girth. His hands braced on Erling’s trembling thighs, feeling the rock-hard muscle quiver under his palms. Erling's hips bucked involuntarily, his massive hands combing through Jude's hair, and the sound he made was broken and beautiful.
“Jude—fuck—I can't—”
Jude could feel the tension coiling tighter and tighter in the alpha’s gut, the telltale throbbing against his tongue, the sac drawing up. Just as Erling’s hips began to stutter, a helpless thrust into the wet heat, Jude pulled off with a soft, wet pop, looking up at him through his lashes. He rested his forehead against Erling’s taut abdomen, catching his breath, his own arousal a painful, throbbing ache.
“Don’t you dare,” Jude said as he rose to his feet, pressing his body against Erling's, letting the alpha feel exactly how hard he was. “I'm not going to let you come like this.”
Erling made a sound of pure, agonized frustration. “What… why?”
“I want you inside me. I want to feel you. All of you.” Jude reached into the pocket of his own discarded shorts, his fingers closing around a small, foil square. He held it up. The condom wrapper shined dully in the low light.
“You’re going to let me,” Jude continued, and it was more of an order than a statement. He tore the wrapper with his teeth, his hands surprisingly steady. He sheathed Erling himself, his fingers stroking the latex-covered length, feeling the fierce, urgent heat beneath. “You’re going to let me take what I want, and then—”
“And then what?”
He stroked once, twice, watched Erling’s jaw go tight. “And then you’re going to give me what I need.”
The look on Erling’s face was one of shattered awe. He nodded, wordless, his chest heaving.
A door slammed somewhere down the corridor, and they both froze. Far-off voices. Indistinct laughter. The Norwegian kit man, maybe, or one of the stadium crew. The sounds faded, moving away, and Jude exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
“We should be quick,” Erling said.
Hands under Jude’s thighs, with that terrifying, effortless strength, Erling lifted and placed him atop the heavy-duty crate. Jude’s back found the concrete wall for support, his legs dangling for a moment before Erling stepped between them, pushing them wide.
“We should be quiet,” Jude countered. “Quick is negotiable.”
He hooked one leg around Erling’s waist, then the other, locking his ankles at the small of Erling’s back. Wrapped around him like this, the contrast was impossible to ignore. Erling Haaland was a monument of muscle and power, his frame broad and looming, every cut and plane a testament to explosive force. Jude Bellingham was compact, athletic perfection. Leaner, but coiled with resilient strength. Against Erling, he looked beautifully, devastatingly slight.
The position pressed them together in a long, hot line of skin, and Jude could feel Erling’s cock nudging against him, smearing pre-come across his hip. Every breath tasted of salt and cypress and butterscotch, their scents interlacing until it made the back of Jude’s throat ache.
“I don’t have anything,” Erling said suddenly as he eased back, searching Jude’s face. His brow was furrowed. “Lube. I don’t—”
“I know.” Jude reached between them, guiding Erling’s hand to where he was already wet, the evidence of his body’s preparation slick against Erling’s fingers. “I’m literally built for this. You think I’d come find you without being ready?”
Erling’s breath left him in a rush. Two fingers slid inside. No resistance, just a silken welcome, and Jude watched the control fracture across Erling’s features, as the exhaustion and the defeat and the frustration all give way to something primal.
“Jude.”
“I told you. I’ve been hoping.”
Erling’s fingers curled, finding the spot that made Jude’s vision blur at the edges, and Jude bit down on his own forearm to keep from crying out. The taste of his own skin and sweat flooded his mouth. His body rocked forward without thinking, and Erling snorted softly.
“Not fucking funny,” Jude gasped. “Now, Erling. I don’t need—I’m ready, I’m—”
He didn’t get to finish. Erling’s hands slid to his hips, positioning him, and then the blunt pressure of his cock was pushing inward and Jude’s eyes rolled back because even prepared, even slick, the stretch was overwhelming.
An inch. Two. Erling paused, trembling, his forehead dropping to Jude’s shoulder.
“Keep going,” Jude whispered, even though he was the one who couldn’t seem to get enough air. His fingers dug into Erling’s shoulders, nails leaving crescents in the sweat-damp skin. “Don’t stop.”
“You’re tight.”
“It’s been four years. What did you fucking expect?”
He was quicker to snap than he’d meant to be, his voice coated with the bitterness he’d been swallowing since Erling left for Manchester and Jude went to Madrid and their carefully constructed friendship became texts and calls and nothing else.
But Erling didn’t flinch. He just lifted his head and met Jude’s eyes with an intensity that stole the retort right off Jude’s tongue.
“I expected,” Erling said, pressing deeper, making Jude feel every inch, “to never have this again.”
And then he was fully seated, sheathed to the hilt, and for a long suspended instant neither of them moved. The fluorescent light flickered overhead. Somewhere beyond the corridor, the stadium continued its post-match machinery. Announcements echoing, equipment rolling, the slow exodus of a World Cup quarterfinal, but in here, in this dim stretch of cinderblock and humid air, time had stopped.
Erling felt Jude’s shoulders tense beneath his hands and hesitated, waiting instead of rushing him. The playful dominance in Jude melted into a shivering, eager submission. This was the familiar dance they knew.
“Are you good?”
“Just—give me a second.” Jude breathed through it, letting his body adjust. “You're still bloody huge.”
Jude felt tears prick at the corners of his eyes but blinked them back. He would not cry, not now. Not when Erling was inside him and looking at him like that.
“Move,” he commanded, and his voice only cracked a little. “I didn’t wait years for you to just—”
Erling moved.
The first thrust drove Jude up the wall, the cinderblock grazing his back, and he wrapped his arms around Erling’s neck to anchor himself. Erling’s hands repositioned, one supporting Jude’s weight from below, the other braced against the wall beside Jude’s head. And then he was fucking into him with a rhythm that was punishing and precise and everything Jude had been craving since the last time they’d done this.
“That’s it,” Jude said, his voice going high and ragged. His hips rolled to meet each thrust, his body remembering the pattern even if his mind had tried so hard to forget. “Yes, yes. Like that.”
Sweat slicked their skin until they slid together with obscene ease, the wet sounds of their fucking echoing in the small space. Each thrust pushed Jude harder against the wall, the cool concrete a shocking contrast to the heat of their bodies. Erling’s eyes had gone dark, pupils blown wide, and every exhale carried a rumble that Jude felt in his own chest.
“Faster,” Jude demanded, his bratty edge returning despite the pleasure that was already building in his core. “Is that all you've got, Haaland? I've seen you run faster than this.”
This was how it had always started with them. Jude leading, Jude demanding, Jude taking what he wanted from an alpha who could snap him in half but never would.
Erling’s rhythm stuttered. His hand left the wall and cupped Jude’s jaw instead, tilting his face up until their eyes locked.
“You think you’re in charge, yeah?” Erling asked, and his voice had changed. Deeper. Lower. The alpha’s voice, the one Jude had only ever heard in their most unguarded moments.
“Well, someone has to—”
Erling’s hips snapped forward, cutting off Jude’s words. Once. Again. Then a third time that made an embarrassing yelp escape Jude’s mouth.
“I can't be gentle any longer,” Erling warned as his thumb traced Jude’s lower lip, tugging it down. “I've got nothing left. No control. No patience.”
“Good.” Jude’s fingers curled against the back of Erling’s neck, drawing him closer. “I don't want gentle. I want you to stop holding back.”
One moment Jude was urging him on, the next, Erling had taken over completely. Erling’s arms circled him, lifting him away from the wall and carrying him, still impaled, still trembling, to the opposite side of the room where a stack of equipment mats had been shoved against the wall.
Erling lowered him onto the mats, and the vinyl was smooth against Jude’s overheated skin. He didn’t let go, didn’t pull out. Just followed Jude down, covering his body with his own, the sheer mass of him pressing Jude into the padding as the new position left him helpless to do anything but take it. Then he started fucking him again while maintaining that devastating pace, the mats creaking under them.
“Is this what you wanted?” Erling’s mouth was at Jude’s ear, breath scorching. “To push me until I couldn’t hold back anymore?”
“Yes.” The word came out unsteady, gasped. Jude’s legs had fallen open wider, his knees bracketing Erling’s ribs. “Yes. This is what I—”
“You’ve been doing it on purpose,” Erling growled, hips snapping forward in a deep, punishing thrust. “Teasing me all night, getting under my skin like only you know how. Acting like you don’t still smell like mine when you get close. Acting like you don’t still remember exactly how my cock feels inside you.”
“I do, I wanted to feel it again,” Jude admitted, his hands roamed Erling’s back, tracing the ridges of muscle, the sculpted lines of a body he’d memorized years ago and still dreamed about. “I wanted to feel you inside me like this. I missed you so fucking much.”
Erling’s voice dropped even deeper, rough with longing. “Fuck… I should’ve put a baby in you when I had the chance. Should’ve kept you full and marked so no one else could ever touch you.”
The words struck somewhere deep inside Jude. Even knowing it was filthy heat-of-the-moment talk, his body betrayed him. A violent shudder, a needy whimper, slick gushing around Erling’s cock as his stomach tightened with forbidden heat. The fantasy of Erling breeding him, marking him permanently, made his head spin.
Erling felt it and groaned, fucking him harder, folding him even more tightly beneath him. Jude’s own cock was caught between their pressed bodies, throbbing and leaking as the relentless motion rubbed it against Erling’s abdomen, dragging him closer and closer to the brink.
“Oh—fuck—yes—” The angle pushed Erling impossibly deeper, and Jude could feel the beginnings of the alpha's knot stirring at his entrance. His instincts surged, the need to be claimed and possessed overwhelming his carefully maintained control.
Jude felt the wet drag of Erling's tongue against his neck, slow and deliberate, savoring the curve of his mating gland as if it was something to be consumed. Jude made a sound low in his chest and his hips tipped forward as much as they could where they were pinned, desperate for more. Erling’s tongue circled the gland, pressing, tasting, and Jude could feel the ghost of his teeth behind it.
And Jude pictured it.
The sudden clamp of Erling's jaw, the sharp shock of pain that would melt away into heat, the possessive lock of teeth sinking into the gland. He imagined the bruises that would flower there, purple and green, and the way Erling's tongue would soothe it after, lapping at the broken skin like an apology and a claim all at once.
He nearly came on the spot from that vivid fantasy.
He wanted it. God, he wanted it. The sting of the bite, the mark, the proof that Erling couldn't help himself.
But he also trusted Erling completely. Trusted that Erling wouldn’t. Not when he’d had a hundred chances before. Not because he didn’t want to, but because he'd never take something Jude hadn’t explicitly given.
Erling pulled back just far enough to look at him. The pace slowed, deepened, and as their eyes met, and Jude felt something in his chest unravel.
“I’m close,” Erling gritted out. “Jude, I’m—my knot is starting to—we should stop. We should—”
“No.” Jude’s legs tightened around Erling’s waist, holding him in place. “I told you. I want it.”
“Here? Like this? If someone—”
“I don’t care.” And Jude didn’t. Not about where they were, not about the possibility of discovery, not about anything except the swelling pressure at the base of Erling’s cock that was beginning to catch with every thrust.
“Fuck, Jude—”
“Knot me.” The words left Jude's mouth before his brain could stop them, and once they were out, he couldn't take them back, nor did he want to. “I miss it. I miss your knot. I've been on suppressants for months so I wouldn't use this against you on the pitch, and I'm tired, Erling. I'm so fucking tired of pretending I don't—”
Erling kissed him.
Jude saw the last thread of Erling’s restraint snap, and then Erling was driving into him with a final, deep thrust and the knot was swelling and catching and locking them together and Jude was coming apart. It stretched him, completed him, a feeling so profoundly right it bordered on painful. A shaky, keening whine tore from Jude’s lips through the searing kiss.
Erland buried his face in the junction of Jude’s neck and shoulder as he came, inhaling the intoxicating butterscotch scent deeply, like a man dying of thirst drinking water after a long drought. A sweeping shudder wracked the alpha as his body pulsed and released, filling the condom in deep, claiming spurts.
One of Erling's hands slid down between them, wrapping around Jude’s aching cock in a firm, slick grip. He stroked him with purpose, in fast, tight pulls timed to the pulsing throb of the knot swelling within him.
Jude’s own release hit a heartbeat later, triggered by the pressure of the knot stretching him wide and the feeling of Erling’s groan vibrating against his throat. His back arched off the mats. His fingers twisted in Erling’s golden hair. A wave of pure, submissive bliss crashed over Jude, melting his bones. Erling, in turn, seemed to collapse into the feeling, his fierce control dissolving.
Through the dizzying, feverish waves of his own climax, Jude felt Erling’s arms tighten around him, holding him securely, taking his weight entirely. His alpha scent all around Jude, the strength in that embrace was absolute, a safety net. Erling’s lips moved against his flushed skin, words mumbled between breaths. “So good… you were so… fåen good today, Jude…”
They stayed like that, locked together. The world narrowed to the pulse of the knot, their mingled scents of butterscotch and sea salt, the hum of the vending machine, and the sound of their breathing slowly synchronizing.
When he came back to himself, Jude found himself stroking Erling’s hair without conscious thought.
It was in the warm, hazy afterglow, with Jude still full and held close, that the wistfulness seeped in. Erling’s head was heavy on his shoulder. He felt the alpha’s lips form the words against his skin before he heard them, the voice thick with longing and spent passion.
“I miss you.”
Jude’s throat tightened. “Don’t.”
Erling lifted his head, and his eyes were glassy now. Exhaustion, emotion, Jude couldn’t tell which. “I miss playing with you. I miss this. I wish you’d come to City. I wish we still—”
“Shhh.” Jude silenced him with a kiss before he pressed two fingers to Erling’s lips, stopping any more words from leaving them. His heart was hammering. “We’ve said enough. Don’t say anything else you’ll regret. Not here. Not now.”
For a lingering moment, Erling stared down at him, the conflict plain in his gaze. Then he closed his eyes and just nodded against Jude’s fingers.
Jude’s heart twisted. Their history bled between them like an old wound. Not raw, but never quite healed. Shared shirts, shared nights, shared bodies back when club loyalties hadn’t pulled them apart. The easy, powerful synergy of an alpha and his omega who were also the best midfield and strike force in Europe.
Those days were over. They weren’t teammates anymore, hadn’t been for a long time. They'd been so young then, so certain that what they had would last forever. But forever was a luxury neither of them could afford.
“We have right now,” Jude continued, softer. “We have this moment. Let’s just—let’s just have this.”
The knot was already beginning to ease. Not fully deflated, but not as rigid, so Erling shifted his weight carefully, drawing Jude with him until they lay on their sides on the vinyl mats, still joined, still breathing the same humid air. Jude tucked his head under Erling’s chin and felt the alpha’s arms wrap around him, massive and warm and safe.
“You really were brilliant tonight,” Erling said. His voice was hoarse, almost reverent. “I watched it and I couldn’t even be angry.”
“Thanks.” Jude let his head tip back until it brushed lightly against Erling’s. “I’ll pretend I didn’t need to hear that.”
“Maybe... maybe next time we play though, don't look at me like that,” Erling said. “It makes it hard to concentrate.”
“I can't promise that.” Jude smile was touched with a soft sadness. “I don't know how to not look at you.”
Neither of them spoke after. The fluorescent light flickered again, casting strange shadows on the cinderblock walls. Erling’s hand traced lazy circles down Jude’s side. Jude’s scent had softened now, the sharp caramel edge mellowing into something warm and content. The blue cypress and vetiver enveloped him like sunlight after rain.
“We should go soon,” Jude whispered, making no move to leave.
“I know.” Erling’s arms tightened fractionally. “I know.”
The distant sounds of the stadium had faded to near-silence now. Most of the crews were gone, most of the teams on their buses. Soon someone would come looking. Soon they would have to separate, clean up, return to their respective worlds.
For now, though, it could wait.
For a few more minutes, just a few more, they could stay like this. No promises. No illusions. Just the quiet ache of what was and what couldn’t be again.