𐔌՞ ܸ.ˬ.ܸ՞𐦯

Fernando Mendoza had led game-winning drives in sold-out stadiums.

He'd stood in the pocket while three-hundred-pound defensive linemen chased him.

He'd played through injuries, pressure, and more cameras than he could count.

None of it compared to doing his two-year-old daughter's hair.

"...Baby," he said carefully, holding a tiny pink bow between his fingers like it was a complicated piece of football equipment. "Can you hold still for Daddy?"

"No."

She immediately turned around in her chair to look at him.

Fernando sighed dramatically.

"You know," he said, "your mom makes this look really easy."

His daughter grinned.

"Daddy silly."

"I am not silly."

She giggled so hard she nearly slid off the chair.

Fernando couldn't help smiling too.

Five more minutes passed before he finally managed two slightly uneven pigtails.

He leaned back to admire his work.

"...I think I crushed it."

She looked in the mirror.

One pigtail sat a little higher than the other.

She gasped happily anyway.

"Pretty!"

Fernando's heart melted on the spot.

"Yeah?"

She nodded enthusiastically.

"Pretty!"

"Then it's perfect."

Later that afternoon, Fernando arrived at the park carrying enough snacks for what looked like a week-long camping trip.

His wife laughed the second she saw the backpack.

"Fernando."

"What?"

"She's going to the playground."

"I know."

"You packed six juice boxes."

"What if she's thirsty?"

"And four sandwiches."

"What if she gets hungry?"

She smiled knowingly.

"Our daughter is two."

Fernando looked down at the little girl happily swinging their joined hands.

"...She's a growing girl."

His wife just shook her head.

He was impossible.

The playground lasted exactly twenty-three seconds before their daughter found another little girl about her age.

"Hi!"

"My name's Emma!"

"I'm Sofia!"

Within moments they were running around together like lifelong best friends.

Fernando watched from the bench, smiling.

Then another little girl tripped while climbing the play structure.

Before either parent could react, Fernando was already standing.

"You okay, sweetheart?" he asked gently, helping brush the wood chips off her knees.

The little girl nodded.

"Uh-huh."

"Good."

He smiled.

"You've got this."

The girl's mom walked over a second later.

"Thank you so much."

"Of course."

Fernando returned to the bench just in time to catch his wife watching him.

"What?"

She smiled softly.

"Nothing."

"No, what?"

"You've always wanted to be a dad."

Fernando looked back toward the playground where Camilawas now proudly showing another little kid a dandelion she'd found.

His expression softened immediately.

"Yeah."

Quietly.

"So much."

That night, after bath time and three bedtime stories that somehow turned into five...

Camilafinally yawned.

Fernando tucked the blanket around her carefully.

"One more kiss," she requested.

He smiled.

"I think that's your fourth 'one more kiss.'"

She held up four tiny fingers proudly.

Fernando laughed.

"You're keeping count?"

She nodded very seriously.

"Daddy kiss."

He leaned down and kissed her forehead.

"There."

She smiled sleepily.

"I love you, Daddy."

Fernando froze for half a second.

Not because it surprised him.

Because no matter how many times she said it...

It still felt unbelievable.

"I love you too, bug."

She closed her eyes almost immediately.

Within minutes, she was asleep.

Fernando stayed there a little longer anyway.

Just watching.

His wife found him ten minutes later still sitting on the edge of the tiny bed.

"You know she's asleep, right?"

"I know."

"You can leave."

"I know."

She smiled.

"You just don't want to."

Fernando looked back at his daughter one more time before standing.

"I spent my whole life thinking the best feeling in the world would be hearing my name called on draft night."

He slipped his hand into his wife's as they quietly walked out of the room.

"I was wrong."

She squeezed his hand.

"What is it, then?"

Fernando glanced back toward the nursery, where a tiny nightlight cast stars across the ceiling.

"It's hearing her call me 'Daddy.'"

Six weeks in, you're at dinner. Some place in Ballard he picked, bad lighting, forty minutes on the wait, and he's three minutes into a story about Kenneth Walker and a rental car in Arizona. Doing both voices. One hand flat on the table.

"—and Ken's telling me the GPS is wrong. The GPS. And I'm looking at him like, bro, the satellite does not have a personal issue with you—"

He stops. Pushes back from the table. "Hold on."

You assume it's a phone call. He's gone two minutes. Comes back with a hoodie, drops it in your lap, sits down and picks up the sentence where he left it. "—so we're forty minutes out from the hotel and he's still arguing with a machine—"

You hadn't said anything. You hadn't rubbed your arms or crossed them or done any of the things you do without noticing when a restaurant blasts the AC. You'd mentioned it once, weeks earlier, buried inside a story that was actually about something else — that you always get cold in restaurants and never remember to bring a jacket.

You figured he happened to have one in the car. It was a Michigan hoodie, enormous on you, sleeves past your hands, and it smelled like whatever detergent he buys in bulk.

A month later it's Canlis — some milestone of his he'd decided to make a thing of — and you're in a sleeveless dress because you never learn. Halfway through the entrées it happens again. He stops mid-story. "Hold on." Gone two minutes.

He comes back with a blazer. Navy, absurd on you, sleeves you have to shove up twice to find your hands. And he doesn't drop it in your lap this time. He settles it over your shoulders on his way past, because a hoodie at Canlis would have looked like exactly what it was.

Nobody keeps a blazer in a car. He'd taken it out of his closet before he picked you up — looked at where you were going, thought about what you'd probably be wearing, picked accordingly. He'd been doing some version of that for a month and you'd thought he was lucky.

"You gotta stop being cold," he said, cutting back into his steak. "It's, like, your whole thing."

___

He doesn't collect information about someone casually. When he decides to pay attention to you, he pays attention — the focus his coaches describe in press conferences, turned on you across a dinner table. You didn't feel it at first because he made it look like nothing. Like he was a guy who happened to notice things. Everything you said went somewhere he could find it again, and he never let on that he was keeping any of it.

___

His mom knew your name before your third date.

You found that out much later, when Reva mentioned something on FaceTime she could only have known if AJ told her, and the timeline didn't add up. He'd been talking to his mother about you while you were still calling this hanging out. While you were still being careful about how often you texted him. While you were still in the stage where most people are hedging, playing it cool, leaving room to walk it back if it doesn't work out.

AJ was calling his mom after your second date to tell her about the girl who made him laugh so hard he choked on his drink. Who argued with him about Drake being overrated and held her ground when he got loud about it. Who said something about her family that made him go quiet in a way he couldn't explain to Reva and didn't try to. He was going to text you back. He was always going to.

The certainty is the part that's hard to explain to people afterward. There was no declaration, no stated intent, nothing you could point to and say there, that's when. Something clicked into place in him before you were ready for it and then held. The same instinct that made him quit every other sport at fourteen and put it all on football, that made him walk into Michigan's program for one year and decide he belonged there before he'd unpacked the car. He reads a situation and then he's in. Chips on the table.

___

It showed up in how he talked about you to other people.

"My girl likes that place." Said to a teammate at lunch, three weeks in, about a restaurant you'd mentioned once. My girl.Like it was settled. Like the label had existed in his head long before either of you said it out loud.

Kenneth gave him grief about it for ten solid minutes. "Four dates, bro. Four. That's four dates. You met her in April."

AJ shrugged. "When you know, you know."

___

You caught up eventually. He's not subtle.

It was the morning you woke up in his apartment after he'd already left for the facility. Glass of water on the nightstand. Your phone charger — yours, the one you'd left there last time, not a spare — plugged in on your side of the bed. Your side. And next to it, a drawer standing open and empty. He'd cleared it out. Never mentioned it, never made it a moment, just emptied a drawer and left it open where you'd see it.

You stood there a while. His room was a disaster. Cleats by the door, two open tubs of protein powder on the dresser, a Bible on the floor by the bed with a hotel notepad shoved in it as a bookmark. And one clean empty drawer in the middle of all of it.

He'd decided. Built the place, cleared the space, told his mother, picked the word, all of it while you were still doing the math on a timeline you thought you were both on. Being loved by someone that certain is generous and it is enormous. It also means he stopped checking. He'd handed you something heavy and walked off before you could say whether you could carry it.

You closed the drawer. Then you opened it again. Then you went home and got a few things.

You weren't catching up to where he was. You were arriving at a place he'd already built for you.

___

He said it on a Tuesday.

You were on his couch with your legs across his lap and he was relitigating Captain Hook, which had come back up in the group chat for the fourth time that season.

"—and nobody's asking the real question, which is why is there a hook in there. In a bathroom stall. At that height. For who. For what purpose. I'm six-six, I'm walking in there minding my own business, and this thing is sitting at exactly—"

He stopped mid-sentence, the way you stop when you've lost your place. He hadn't lost anything. He'd run into something bigger and the story couldn't hold it.

"I love you."

Full voice, no hedge, hand still warm on your ankle. He looked at you and waited and didn't take it back and didn't ask if it was too soon, because it had never occurred to him that it might be.

You said it back.

He smiled — the big one, the one that changes his whole face — and picked the story right back up. "Anyway. A hook. At forehead height."

Like it was a fact he'd been carrying around and finally put down.

___

⬆️ i followed the seahawks account in 2019

⬆️ screenshots i took from our nfc west champs run in december 2020 (i can't remember for the life of me what i did with them once i took them but they were in my gallery lol)

⬆️ a couple of photos of me wearing seahawks jerseys (my face/identifying details hidden for privacy) - one in 2023 and the other in 2019

⬆️ a photo i took in seattle, with the timestamp of january 2017

so, dear anon, next time you wanna call me a bandwagon, remember you're talking to a lifelong 12! my dad passed away in 2010 so he didn't get to see his hawks win either of their championships. i've been riding for them for as long as i can remember, before i even knew what a quarterback did. i love the bengals, but the seahawks are my family. seattle is my city.

so, as aj barner said...