dria

Joe Burrow doesn’t let the media get to him.

That’s been the rule—his anchor—since he was twenty years old and learned the hard way that if you let people who’ve never stepped on a field define you, you’ll drown in a version of yourself that isn’t even yours. He’s built an entire career on tuning them out, on keeping his head down, on refusing to give anyone—good or bad—the satisfaction of knowing they got under his skin.

But that was before your article.

Before you wrote it.

Before a stranger with a notepad and an annoyingly sharp understanding of human behavior managed to slice right through the version of him he reminds himself to be and pin him down with words that felt too close, too honest, too much like someone had reached into his chest and taken an inventory of things he doesn’t say out loud.

Restrained.

Difficult to read.

Obsessed with perfection.

He’d read worse. God knows the league had said worse after that Week 2 loss. But something about the phrasing stuck—not because it was wrong, but because it wasn’t. He didn’t like how it lingered in the back of his mind when he watched film, how he found himself sitting up later than usual, replaying throws and situations like he had something to prove.

To you. To a journalist he had never met.

It irritated him.

More than irritated—needled.

And that irritation simmered all week, quiet but relentless, until he found himself walking into the facility at an hour even the trainers didn’t bother showing up for. He told himself it was just to get extra work in, to reset his mind, to treat the season like a problem he could solve if he just tried harder.

But when he stepped into the hallway outside the media wing, rubbing the last of the sleep from his eyes, he saw you.

Leaning against the wall like you owned the place, thumb scrolling lazily over your phone, earbuds in, completely unaware that the man you’d dissected on paper was standing twenty feet away. You didn’t look dangerous. You didn’t look smug or triumphant or like someone who’d crawled inside his head without permission.

You just looked… calm. Settled. Focused.

Professional.

Which somehow made it worse.

Joe slowed his pace because a part of him needed a second—just one—to decide what the hell he was supposed to do with the fact that the woman who’d gotten under his skin was right there, physically close enough to touch if he reached out.

He’d seen your press photo attached to the article—dark background, soft light, your expression steady in that way reporters use when they’re trying to prove they can’t be intimidated.

He recognized you instantly.

Same posture. Same set to your jaw. Same eyes that looked at the world like you were storing everything and judging half of it.

He exhaled through his nose, long and slow, trying to level the spike of something he refused to call nerves.

He didn’t get nervous. Not for media. Not for people. Not for someone who probably didn’t even think about him outside of a word count. But as he stepped closer—quiet sneakers on polished concrete, hands shoved into his pockets—you straightened.

Just a little.

Enough for him to know you recognised him. Enough for him to know you were too composed, too ready, too unaffected. And that—more than the article, more than the words you’d written—was what made his chest tighten.

Because he could feel it already.

The pull. The spark. The beginning of something neither of you had asked for but both were about to fall into anyway.

He stopped a few feet in front of you, blocking the soft glow of the overhead lights, and watched you pull your earbuds out with a smooth flick, your expression unreadable.

Joe didn’t let the media get to him. He didn’t.

But as he looked at you—the calm face of the woman who had cracked something open in him without even realising it—he knew this wasn’t going to be as simple as ignoring a headline.

This was going to be the start of something he couldn’t control.