BUSY WOMAN !
PART ONE... Jude Bellingham x F1 Driver
!!! Part One !!! Part Two !!! Part Three !!! Part Four !!!
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in which... madrid's up and coming football star crosses paths with the ferrari driver academy's youngest prodigy, natalia colombo. the tabloids insist they're in love. jude wishes they were right.
warnings: extremely inadequate f1 AND football knowledge (guys im sorry), this is basically just jude in love from day one, yearning, misogyny, natalia 'nat' colombo is natalie cohen's real name, my oc! (she's italian)
notes: you guys asked for more, so here's a damn series! this is how they meet..
wc: 1.9k
The flashes began before the car had even come to a stop.
Natalie watched them bloom against the heavily tinted window in frantic bursts of white, each one bleeding into the next until the glass looked like it was cracking beneath the light. Outside, photographers had already begun shouting names she couldn't quite make out over the hum of the engine. Somewhere beyond them waited another red carpet, another room full of people she'd never remember meeting, another night spent smiling for strangers who would spend tomorrow morning dissecting every inch of her existence.
Her phone buzzed, again. She let it ring.
It lit up once more, two texts.
"Turn the car around."
"This is a terrible goddamn idea! You're practically ruining your reputation."
She smiled despite herself.
It wasn't the first terrible idea she'd had.
If only she knew it certainly wouldn't be the last.
Natalia Colombo had learned very early on in her life that there was a difference between being accepted and being tolerated. Motorsport loved the idea of a woman until she proved she could beat the men. Then every victory came with an asterisk someone else had written for her. She was too emotional when she celebrated, too 'bitchy' when she didn't. Too pretty to be taken seriously, too ambitious to be likable.
She began feeling as though each interview was becoming less and less about how good she was.
Because God, she was good.
And more about the pressures put on her, the expectations. Every podium was followed by thousands of strangers explaining why she hadn't deserved it in the first place.
Everything became a debate. An argument.
It was remarkable, really, how many people could watch nineteen year old Natalia Colombo throw a two ton car into a corner at two hundred miles an hour and still convince themselves the most extraordinary thing about her was that she was a woman.
At sixteen, Natalie stopped giving them the satisfaction of knowing she cared. By then, she learned that men twice her age hated losing to teenage girls. Fathers accused her of dangerous driving after she'd beaten their sons, coaches shook her hand while silently debating if she had what it took to survive Formula 1.
Yet, under all her thick skin, the girl knew there was a truth in their words. She was fearless to the point of stupidity, reckless, stubborn. All in all, she practically had a death wish. But the more Motorsport demanded she make herself smaller, the more she insisted on taking up space.
Which was precisely why she found herself stepping out of a black Ferrari courtesy car and onto the red carpet of the Laureus World Sports Awards.
This was despite the three phone calls, two emails, and many nasty texts advising her against it.
Three cars behind her, Jude Bellingham wished he'd stayed home.
A hand adjusted the lapel of his tuxedo before nudging him toward another wall of cameras.
"Bellingham!" He smiled automatically, and by the fifth photograph, his cheeks already ached.
Jude Bellingham had become frighteningly good at being whoever people needed him to be. The humble wonder kid. The mature twenty year old who always knew the right thing to say, never lost his temper, was chivalrous and proper and perfect.
Somewhere between Birmingham, Dortmund, and now Madrid, he had realized the version of himself the world knew was carefully edited. Posed like a doll, stitched and sewed up without a single mistake the cameras could catch.
Greatness was a beautiful thing to chase until people expected it from you every day. The constant need to keep up the image settled over every ordinary moment until nothing felt entirely his anymore.
And by the time he stepped onto the red carpet that evening, he was already counting down the hours until he could leave.
...
The flashes arrived in relentless bursts, blinding enough that the world beyond them became nothing more than shifting silhouettes. Jude long since memorized the routine: smile, pause, turn your chin, smile again. Thank the interviewer. Shake the sponsor's hand. Pretend not to notice the lenses following him even after he'd walked away.
As he entered the ballroom, the noise swallowed him hole.
Crystal glasses clinked somewhere to his left. Reporters floated from Olympians to actors to footballers with practiced ease.
Jude exhaled quietly and quietly took a few steps back. Hiding in the shadows never worked for too long, but he always liked trying.
Two hours. Maybe three.
Then he could go home.
His own inner monologue clouded his senses for a few minutes, drowning out the polished conversations and laughter that surrounded him. He decided to place his focus on anything that would keep him from thinking too much.
Until he realized the loud and bubbly conversations that once filled the room, were replaced by murmurs.
Jude looked up.
And in a second, he understood why.
...
Natalie Cohen entered the room with anything and everything but grace.
Although if you asked Jude Bellingham, he'd disagree.
Because grace, he'd decided, had never actually been about perfection. Although he would agree that she was perfect.
But I digress, Natalie had never been particularly good at being what people wanted her to be.
It was, admittedly, a terrible quality to have when her entire career depended on convincing people to trust her with millions of dollars worth of machinery and millions of eyes watching her every mistake.
She was supposed to be grateful. Humble and approachable.
A good representation of women in motorsport.
She was everything but.
And she showed it the moment she walked through the glass doors.
Silver pooled around her like a heap of water, the satin of her dress catching every bit of light that touched it. It moved with her rather than around her, flowing behind her like a fallen piece of the night sky.
She was beautiful. Anyone with eyes could see it.
But beauty was the easiest thing to notice about Natalie.
It was the thing everyone noticed first. And it was what she hated most.
The magazines would talk about the dress later in the night, how Ferrari's youngest prodigy arrived at one of the biggest sporting events in the world dripping in silver. How the nineteen-year-old girl had somehow managed to make an entire industry argue about her existence. They would find a hundred different ways to describe her without ever really seeing her.
Jude found himself wondering if she knew that.
If she knew how many people were looking at her but so few were actually paying attention.
Because from across the room, beneath the chandeliers and the flashing cameras and the endless conversations that blurred together into one constant noise, Natalie Cohen truly did not look like someone who belonged there.
She looked like someone convincing herself she did.
It was almost impossible to notice.
Almost.
The way her fingers tightened around the fabric of her satin dress when the first wave of photographers called her name. The way her shoulders stiffened for a fraction of a second before she turned toward them. The way her smile arrived perfectly on time, like she had forced it onto her face before anyone could catch her without it.
Jude knew that look.
He had practiced it thousands of times.
The reporters surrounded her quickly once more, questions pouring out, streams of incoherent words, and Natalie suddenly began feeling like a lamb to the slaughter.
A woman could be talented, but never allowed to make people uncomfortable with just how talented she was.
A distinct question pulled her out of her trance.
"Natalia, there's still a lot of debate surrounding your victory in Monza. Many fans argue the safety car ultimately handed you that win. Looking back, do you think you deserved the victory?"
"I won because I'm fast."
The reporter egged on,
"Anything else?"
A beat of silence passed before she shrugged, knowing she'd regret the words that were already tumbling out of her mouth,
"Losing must suck."
The next question came before the first had even settled.
Then another.
And another.
Voices began overlapping until she could no longer tell who had asked what. Camera shutters erupted in relentless bursts, flashes burning against her vision until the faces in front of her blurred into one indistinguishable mass.
She felt... caged.
The feeling never changed, no matter how many times they poked and prodded at her.
Her throat tightened, her eyes flickered away from the lights, and her hands began shaking.
Like always.
So she did what she always did, and vanished.
There was an unspoken understanding amongst those who knew and interacted with her. Natalie Cohen could withstand almost anything for exactly half an hour, after that.. she was a goner.
And tonight, it was to the balcony.
Cold air rushed against her skin the moment she pushed open the glass doors.
The city stretched beneath her in a blur of amber lights, humming quietly beneath the November sky. Somewhere inside, the orchestra carried on as though nothing had happened, glasses clinked, people talked.
Jude had watched her disappear.
He hadn't meant to.
Truthfully, he'd spent the better part of twenty minutes trying very hard not to.
Every time she drifted into his line of sight, he looked away a heartbeat too late. Every time another reporter stopped her, some embarrassingly hopeful part of him thought she'd finally come up to him.
Strike up a conversation, share a laugh, pretend not to know his name.
He told himself he wasn't waiting.
Every time she drifted toward his side of the ballroom, his attention sharpened without him even meaning for it to.
Every time someone else intercepted her, he looked away before he could convince himself he'd been watching in the first place.
Ridiculous.
He was twenty years old. He'd played Champions League football. Walked into stadiums holding eighty thousand people.
Why, then, did introducing himself to one nineteen year old girl seem strangely daunting?
For one second before she disappeared, their eyes had met.
Nothing remarkable, probably accidental.
But it lingered, long enough for Jude to think, 'This is it'.
His stomach betrayed him before his brain had the chance to intervene as she began walking in his direction.
Or... somewhere near him?
He couldn't quite tell.
Still, some embarrassingly hopeful part of him had already decided where she was going.
He set his glass down on the nearest table, subtly enough that nobody would notice. His hand smoothed over the front of his jacket, fingers catching briefly on the lapel before he dropped them to his sides.
"Congratulations on the championship."
No.
Too formal.
"I'm Jude."
Idiot.
Of course she knows who you are.
She was closer now.
Five steps.
Four.
Three.
Her eyes found his again.
She offered the smallest smile. Polite and almost absentminded.
His own answered before he'd even realized he was smiling.
Before he could realize what was happening— she drifted past him. Close enough that he caught the faint scent of jasmine tangled with something crisp and expensive, close enough that the silver satin brushed softly against the leg of his trousers as she slipped by without slowing.
Toward the glass doors leading out onto the balcony.
The smile he'd been wearing lingered for a second too long before quietly fading.
"...Right," he murmured to nobody in particular.
He watched the doors swing shut behind her.
Outside, beyond the glass, a silver silhouette leaned against the balcony railing.
Jude looked away. Sucked in a harsh breath, mind rattling with absentminded noise. Then regrettably looked back.
Fresh air suddenly sounded like a brilliant idea.
