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I Want That

Summary - Alexia sorts Jay out when her meds run low.

Word count - 8.6k

The training ground cafeteria at lunchtime had its own specific energy that was completely different from every other room in the building. It was loud in a comfortable way. The kind of loud that came from people who’d just worked hard together and were now eating together and were genuinely glad to be doing both. Plates and cutlery. Overlapping conversations. The particular sound of a squad that actually liked each other.

The room itself was big and bright, all blue and red, floor to ceiling windows along the west wall letting in the kind of autumn sunlight that made everything look slightly golden. The food smelled good. Something with chicken. Fresh bread. Coffee from the machine in the corner that three people were always queuing for regardless of what time it was.

Players were scattered across tables in the groupings that had formed naturally over seasons together and barely needed thinking about anymore. Pina and Patri together, as always, currently in what looked like a deeply serious debate about something that probably wasn’t serious at all. Keira and Lucy side by side, both eating properly because they were both the type to really enjoy their meals. Irene telling something to Ingrid with considerable hand gestures.

At a table near the windows, catching the best of the afternoon light, four of the B team call ups were sitting together with their carefully portioned lunches. Clara Serrajordi, Clara Julià, Aicha Camara, and Sydney Schertenleib. They were teenagers who were still doing that thing where they were trying very hard to look like being here was completely normal and not at all the most surreal experience of their young lives.

Vicky had joined them. She’d pulled up a chair and settled in with her own tray, having taken on the unofficial role of making sure the younger players didn’t feel like they were eating lunch on a different planet. She’d been explaining the afternoon session to them, how recovery days worked, what to expect from the video analysis sessions, which members of staff to speak to about what.

Clara Julià was mid question about the tactical analysis software when the cafeteria doors opened.

Which would have been unremarkable, because people had been coming and going through those doors for the past forty minutes.

Except that these doors didn’t just open.

They exploded.

Both of them, banging back against the walls with a crack that cut through every conversation in the room simultaneously, turning heads from every table, and Jay walked in.

Or walked wasn’t quite the right word.

Jay arrived. Jay happened. Jay was a presence that the cafeteria had to accommodate rather than simply enter, the energy radiating off her hitting the room before she’d even fully cleared the doorway.

She was in her training kit, hair still slightly damp from the shower, moving with a speed and a quality of motion that was different from her usual physical ease. Her usual ease was controlled. Deliberate. The smooth economy of movement that came from being extremely physically capable and knowing it.

This was different.

This was too fast. Too much. Every movement slightly larger than it needed to be. Her hands were already going, gesturing at something, at the air, at Patri who was walking beside her and who had the expression of someone who had been trying to contribute to a conversation for about twenty minutes and had not yet succeeded.

Jay was talking.

She was talking at the volume and pace of someone whose brain had decided that normal conversation speed was for people with significantly less to say.

“And the thing that gets me, the thing that actually gets me about it,” Jay was saying, loud and clear and carrying across the entire cafeteria without any apparent awareness of this, “is that people share information without reading it first. They just see a headline, they see a graphic that looks official, and they share it. Without reading the actual content. Without checking the source. Without asking themselves literally any critical questions whatsoever about whether what they’re sharing is actually true.”

She grabbed a tray from the stack at the food service area, set it down with a clatter.

“And I get that there’s a time pressure thing, I get that no one has infinite time to fact check everything they encounter online, but surely there’s a minimum threshold, surely there’s a basic level of scrutiny that we can apply before we decide to spread something to our entire network, like just, does this seem real? Does this source exist? Is this person qualified to say this thing? That’s three questions. Three questions and they take like thirty seconds collectively.”

She was loading food onto her tray without really looking at what she was putting on it. A bread roll. Something with rice. A yogurt that she set down and then moved and then set down again in a slightly different position.

Mapi opened her mouth.

“Because here’s the thing about confirmation bias,” Jay continued, not noticing, “here’s the thing that people don’t acknowledge about why they share bad information, it’s not stupidity, most people aren’t stupid, it’s confirmation bias, it’s that when something confirms what you already believe you don’t scrutinise it, your brain just goes yes, that fits, I’ll share that, whereas if something challenges what you believe you suddenly become incredibly rigorous about the source quality, which is completely backwards, which means the information most likely to spread is the information that confirms existing beliefs rather than the information that’s actually true.”

Mapi tried again.

“Which creates these information bubbles,” Jay said, “these reinforcing loops where everyone in a particular community just keeps sharing things that confirm what they already think and nothing that challenges it and the bubble gets tighter and the beliefs get more extreme and the gap between that bubble and reality gets wider and wider and eventually you have people who are genuinely living in completely different factual universes and wondering why they can’t communicate with anyone outside their group.”

She picked up her tray. Turned. Scanned the cafeteria for somewhere to sit.

At the B team table, four teenagers had gone completely quiet.

They were staring.

“Is she always like this?” Clara Julià asked Vicky, her voice barely above a whisper, eyes wide.

“No,” Vicky said, and there was something in her tone. Not alarmed. Knowing. The tone of someone who recognised what they were looking at. “Not always. But sometimes.”

“What’s happening?” Sydney said. “She seems like a lot.”

“Her medication is wearing off,” Vicky said simply, watching Jay.

“Her medication?”

“For her ADHD,” Vicky said. “She takes it in the morning. Works for most of the day. But sometimes in the afternoon it starts wearing off before she’s had her next dose, or she’s forgotten her afternoon dose, and when that happens her brain just.” She gestured. “Goes. All the thoughts at once. All the energy at once. Everything turned up.”

“That’s what that is?” Aicha said.

“That’s what that is,” Vicky said. “And if no one helps her regulate, she’ll keep going until the energy runs out and then she’ll crash completely. Feel awful. Headache. Tired in a way that sleep doesn’t fix. Really low.”

Clara Serrajordi was watching Jay, who had found a spot at Patri’s table and was putting her tray down while still talking, her free hand making a shape in the air that was apparently meant to illustrate something about information networks.

“Poor thing,” Clara said quietly.

She doesn’t always know it’s happening,” Vicky said. “Her brain is moving so fast she’s inside it, she can’t see it from outside. Someone else has to clock it.”

“Someone like Alexia,” Sydney said.

Alexia had been having a perfectly good lunch.

She was sitting with Irene and Ona and Ingrid, halfway through something with chicken that was genuinely decent today, in the middle of a conversation about the upcoming fixture that was interesting without being stressful, the good kind of football conversation.

She’d been aware of the cafeteria doors opening. Had registered the sound of them. Had registered Jay’s voice because she always registered Jay’s voice, it was just something her brain did automatically at this point regardless of what else she was doing.

And then something in the register of Jay’s voice made her actually look up.

She looked at Jay.

Took in the tray being set down with too much force. The hands moving constantly. The talking that had apparently not stopped since before the doors opened. The slight quality of too much, too fast, too bright around the edges.

Alexia set down her fork.

“Mierda,” she said, very quietly, to herself.

Ona looked up. “Estas bien?”

“Sí, sí,” Alexia said, already pushing her chair back. “One second.”

She stood up, left her half finished lunch without a second thought, and started across the cafeteria.

She moved with purpose but not panic. The walk of someone who knew exactly what they were going to do and knew it wasn’t an emergency but also knew that the window for preventing something worse was not unlimited.

Around the room, a few heads turned to watch her. Mapi, who had been half listening to Jay’s ongoing monologue about misinformation with the expression of someone trapped on a long haul flight, looked up and saw Alexia coming and her expression shifted into something relieved.

Jay was in the middle of explaining the psychology of viral content when Alexia reached her.

“And the really interesting part,” Jay was saying, leaning forward slightly over the table, hands moving, “is that emotionally charged content spreads faster than neutral content regardless of accuracy, so there’s this perverse incentive structure where the most emotionally provocative information is the most likely to be shared which means that platforms are essentially optimised for emotional manipulation even without anyone explicitly designing them to be optimised for emotional manipulation, it’s emergent, it’s a product of the incentive structure, it’s actually a really elegant example of how systems can produce outcomes that none of the individual actors intended or wanted.”

“Guapa,” Alexia said.

She said it quietly. Right beside Jay. Her hand came to rest on Jay’s forearm, warm and grounding, and she felt Jay’s skin under her palm.

Jay turned.

“Oh hi babe!” Jay said, and she was smiling, big and bright and slightly too much of both. Her eyes were moving fast, taking in Alexia’s face but then moving off it, then back. “I was just telling Mapi about emergent properties in information networks, have you ever thought about how social media platforms are basically unintentional psychological manipulation machines, not because anyone designed them that way, not maliciously, just because the incentive structures reward engagement and emotionally charged content drives engagement more than accurate content so you end up with this system that is structurally optimised for spreading misinformation regardless of anyone’s intentions and I think that’s actually more frightening than if it was deliberate because at least if it was deliberate there’d be someone to hold accountable but if it’s emergent who do you even…”

“Amor,” Alexia said.

Not interrupting exactly. Just placing the word in the space, firm and gentle at the same time.

Jay stopped.

Just for a second.

“Yeah?” Jay said.

“Ven aqui,” Alexia said. “Come with me for a minute. Leave the tray. Come on.”

“I was just…”

“I know,” Alexia said. Her hand slid down Jay’s forearm to her hand, threading their fingers together. “Come. One minute. You can finish telling Mapi about the information networks after. She will still be here.”

Mapi, to her credit, nodded with enormous seriousness. “I will be here. I am very invested in what happens next with the emergent misinformation systems.”

“See,” Alexia said, and she was already gently pulling Jay up from the chair. “She’s invested. She’s not going anywhere. Come with me.”

Jay came.

Which was its own thing, Vicky thought, watching from the B team table. That Jay, in this state, with this much energy and noise happening inside her head, just. Came. Just followed Alexia without argument. Because she trusted her that completely.

“Why did she just do that?” Aicha said. “Why did she just go? She was mid sentence.”

“Because even when Jay’s brain is running that fast,” Vicky said, “even when she can’t regulate herself, some part of her recognises Alexia. Responds to Alexia. Trusts Alexia. So Alexia says come and Jay comes, even if Jay doesn’t fully know why yet.”

There was a corner of the cafeteria near the back, partly hidden by one of the large support columns, where a couple of chairs sat slightly apart from the main tables. Nobody had specifically decided this was a quiet corner. It had just become one over time.

Alexia guided Jay toward it with her hand in Jay’s hand and Jay’s tray in her other hand, which she set down on the nearest surface without looking at it.

She positioned Jay with her back to the room, her back to the cafeteria, so all Jay could see was Alexia and the wall and the column. She took away the visual noise of the room. Created a smaller world.

Then she stepped close.

Both hands came up to cup Jay’s face.

Her palms were warm against Jay’s cheeks. Her fingers curved gently around Jay’s jaw. Her thumbs rested lightly near Jay’s cheekbones.

Jay’s eyes were still moving. Still darting. Taking in Alexia’s face, then moving to something over Alexia’s shoulder, then back, then off again.

“Guapa,” Alexia said. Just that. Just the word, low and unhurried.

Jay’s eyes came back to her.

“Just me,” Alexia said. “Si? Just look at me. Nothing else. Just my face.”

“I’m looking,” Jay said, but her eyes slipped sideways for a second.

“No,” Alexia said, gently, her thumbs moving in a slow stroke across Jay’s cheekbones. “Me. Stay here. Right here.”

Jay’s eyes came back.

And this time they stayed.

Something in her expression shifted. The slightly unfocused quality in her eyes, the too bright look that came with too much internal noise, started to quiet. Having somewhere specific to look. Having Alexia’s face as the only thing in front of her. It was a focal point and Jay’s brain, which had been trying to process everything simultaneously, started to narrow down toward it.

“There you are,” Alexia said softly, and the relief in her voice was real. “There you are, guapa. Stay with me. Just here. Just us.”

“Yeah,” Jay said. Her voice was quieter already.

“Your meds,” Alexia said. “Did you take your afternoon dose?”

Jay thought about this. Which itself was telling because the answer should have been immediate.

“I don’t think so,” Jay said. “I don’t. I can’t remember. I had them with me at training and then I put my bag down and I think I forgot to come back to it.”

“Okay,” Alexia said. Not making it a thing. Just gathering information. “Okay, that’s fine. We’ll sort that in a minute. But first we’re going to breathe, yes? Like we practiced. Do you remember?”

“I remember,” Jay said.

“Show me then,” Alexia said. “In through your nose. Slowly. Count with me. One.”

Jay breathed in.

“Two,” Alexia said.

Jay breathed in further.

“Three. Four. And hold. One. Two. Good. And out through your mouth. Slowly. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six.”

Jay breathed out.

The slow deliberate exhale. The kind that you couldn’t rush even if you wanted to because the counting kept you honest. Alexia watched Jay’s chest rise and fall, watched her shoulders drop slightly on the exhale, watched the physical tension that had been running through Jay’s whole body start to ease.

“Again,” Alexia said. “With me this time. Ready? In. Two. Three. Four.”

They breathed together. Alexia making hers visible, deliberate, her chest rising clearly so Jay could see and match it. The rhythm of two people breathing in sync, the most basic kind of co regulation, and it worked the way it always worked, which was quietly and without drama, Jay’s body slowly coming down from the high just by having somewhere to anchor.

Her thumbs kept moving. Those slow strokes across Jay’s cheekbones. That specific sensory input that was calm rather than stimulating, rhythmic rather than surprising. Something for Jay’s nervous system to hold onto.

“Better?” Alexia asked, after maybe two minutes, maybe three.

Jay took a breath.

“Yeah,” she said. And she sounded like herself. The normal cadence of her voice, not the too fast slightly too loud version. “Yeah, that’s. Yeah. Sorry, was I being a lot?”

“You were being you,” Alexia said.

“I was being a lot,” Jay said.

“You were being Jay with her afternoon medication not in her system,” Alexia said. “Which is a specific version of you. Not a bad version. Just a version that needs a bit of help.”

“I basically lectured Mapi about information theory for about fifteen minutes,” Jay said.

“She seemed interested,” Alexia said, the corner of her mouth moving.

“She was trapped,” Jay said. “She was being polite. Her eyes had that thing.”

“What thing?”

“The thing where the rest of her face is listening but her eyes have started planning an exit strategy,” Jay said.

Alexia did laugh then. Properly, briefly, the genuine one. Her hands were still on Jay’s face and she leaned in and kissed Jay softly, once, warm and deliberate.

Jay kissed her back.

When Alexia pulled back she was still close, still holding Jay’s face.

“How are you feeling?” she said.

“Less like my brain is a browser with forty seven tabs open,” Jay said. “More like. Twenty. Manageable twenty.”

“Twenty is much better,” Alexia said.

“Twenty I can work with,” Jay said.

“Good,” Alexia said. She pressed one more kiss to Jay’s mouth, unhurried. Then she stepped back slightly, her hands moving from Jay’s face to her shoulders, then dropping to take both of Jay’s hands in hers. “Right. Medication is in your bag. You’re going to take your afternoon dose with your lunch. Actual lunch, not just the bread roll. Proper food. Your blood sugar is low which makes all of this worse and you know this.”

“I know this,” Jay agreed.

“Do you know this or do you forget it every time?” Alexia said.

“I know it and then I forget it every time,” Jay said.

“Honest at least amor,” Alexia said. She squeezed Jay’s hands. “Come on. I’ll sit with you while you eat. Mapi can hear the rest of the information theory lecture. She will survive.”

“I should apologise to her,” Jay said. “For the monologue.”

“Mapi loves your monologues,” Alexia said, which was partially true. “She was genuinely listening.”

“She was not genuinely listening,” Jay said.

“She was listening to about forty percent of it,” Alexia said. “Which for Mapi is basically academic focus.”

Clara Serrajordi had not touched her lunch in approximately four minutes.

None of them had. All four of them had been watching the corner of the cafeteria where Alexia and Jay were standing, where Alexia had Jay’s face in her hands and was doing something quiet and purposeful that from this distance looked almost like magic.

Because what they were watching was the total transformation of a person.

Jay had walked in like a lit firework. Had filled the room with noise and energy and that crackling quality that made everyone look. And now, in the space of a few minutes, in the corner behind the column, with Alexia’s hands on her face and Alexia’s voice and what looked like some kind of breathing thing, she was. Different. Still.

“They’re kissing,” Sydney said, in a tone of pure wonder.

Not scandalised. Just observing it, this small tender kiss in the corner of a cafeteria full of their teammates, like it was the most normal thing, like Alexia had simply determined that Jay needed kissing as part of the process of coming back to herself and so she had kissed her.

“She does that a lot,” Vicky said, watching them. “Not randomly. But when Jay needs grounding, one of the things Alexia does is bring her physically into the present. Into her body. Into the contact between them. The kiss is part of that.”

“That’s not something you read in a book,” Clara Julià said.

“No,” Vicky agreed.

“She figured all of that out herself,” Aicha said slowly. “The breathing thing and the face thing and the kissing thing. She learned all of that from knowing Jay.”

“From loving Jay,” Vicky said. “There’s a difference.”

Clara Serrajordi watched Alexia take Jay’s hands, watched them stand together for a moment in the corner, watched Alexia say something that made Jay laugh, and felt something she couldn’t quite name.

“I thought Alexia was sort of.” She paused, trying to find the right words. “Cold. Not cold. Professional. Very professional. Very captain. Not warm. Like she was nice but also always a bit. A bit untouchable.”

“She is,” Vicky said. “She can be. She’s the captain. She maintains that. She knows how to maintain that. But she’s only like that when she needs to be. With Jay she’s.” She watched Alexia lead Jay back toward the main tables with her hand in Jay’s hand, that constant contact. “She’s everything else.”

“Everything else,” Clara Serrajordi repeated.

“The warm part,” Vicky said. “The soft part. The part that worries and notices and takes care of things. Jay gets all of that. All the time. Because that’s what Jay needs and Alexia knows what Jay needs.”

“And Jay,” Sydney said, watching as they settled back at the table, watching as Alexia immediately reached across and slid Jay’s tray closer to her and said something in a low voice that was clearly something like eat your actual lunch. “Jay needs a lot.”

“Jay needs specific things,” Vicky said. “Not a lot. Specific. She needs someone who notices. Who doesn’t make a thing of it. Who doesn’t make her feel embarrassed about how her brain works. Who just. Sees it happening and goes over and helps without drama.”

“Without drama,” Aicha echoed. “Alexia didn’t make any drama about it. She just went over.”

“Because it’s not dramatic,” Vicky said. “To Alexia it’s just. Part of the day. Part of loving Jay. Jay’s medication wore off. Alexia noticed. Alexia went to help. That’s it. No big thing. No fuss.”

Back at the main table, Jay was eating her lunch.

Actually eating it. Alexia had moved Jay’s tray so it was directly in front of her and had then retrieved her own tray from her previous table and brought it over, so now they were sitting side by side, both eating, both talking, except the talking was different now. The normal version. The back and forth version where both people got to contribute.

Mapi was across from them and she was visibly relieved, not in an obvious way but in the way of someone whose shoulders had come down about two centimeters from where they’d been for the last fifteen minutes.

“Right,” Jay said, around a mouthful of the chicken thing, “so where was I.”

“Information bubbles,” Mapi offered helpfully.

“Right, yes,” Jay said, “the confirmation bias loop, the reinforcing…”

“Bebe,” Alexia said pleasantly, without looking up from her own food.

“Yeah?” Jay said.

“Eat first,” Alexia said. “Information bubbles second.”

Jay looked at her.

Alexia was eating her lunch with total serenity, not making eye contact, as though she hadn’t just said anything.

“Okay but I was mid thought,” Jay said.

“The thought will still be there when you’ve eaten,” Alexia said. “Thoughts are like that. They wait.”

“Some thoughts don’t wait,” Jay said. “Some thoughts are time sensitive.”

“Is the confirmation bias one time sensitive?” Alexia said.

Jay considered this.

“No,” Jay admitted.

“Then eat,” Alexia said. She reached across and tucked a strand of Jay’s hair back without really thinking about it, the gesture purely automatic, like something her hand knew how to do without instructions. “And take your afternoon dose. Where is your bag?”

“Under the table,” Jay said.

Alexia reached under the table, found Jay’s bag by feel, pulled it up, found the medication in the side pocket where Jay always kept it because Alexia had suggested the side pocket six months ago and Jay had never moved it, and set the tablet on the table next to Jay’s water glass.

“Thank you,” Jay said quietly.

“De nada,” Alexia said.

Jay looked at her for a moment.

“You always do that,” Jay said.

“Do what?” Alexia said.

“Know where things are,” Jay said. “In my bag. In the flat. Everywhere. You always know where things are. How do you know where everything is all the time?”

“Because I put them there,” Alexia said simply. “I put things in the same place so when you need them, they’re there.”

Jay blinked.

“You organise my stuff so I can find it,” Jay said.

“I organise some of your stuff,” Alexia said. “The important things. Your medication. Your keys. Your match day bag. The things that matter.”

“Since when?” Jay said.

“Since always,” Alexia said. She glanced at Jay sideways with those hazel eyes. “Did you think you were just finding things more easily lately?”

Jay opened her mouth.

Closed it.

“I thought I was getting better at organisation,” Jay said.

Mapi made a sound into her water glass.

Patri, who had now come back to the table, looked up from her food. “You’re not getting better at organisation,” Patri said helpfully.

“I thought I was,” Jay said.

“You are not,” Patri confirmed. “You put your match boots in the recycling last week.”

“I thought that was a bag,” Jay said.

“It was a green bin,” Patri said. “A clearly labelled green bin.”

“I’m not great with green,” Jay said.

“Jay,” Alexia said, in the patient tone of someone who found this both exasperating and deeply endearing. “Eat your lunch. Take your medication. Then you can tell Mapi about confirmation bias for as long as you like.”

“Can I do it for like forty five minutes?” Jay said.

“You can do it for as long as you want,” Alexia said.

“Mapi might lose the will to live after about thirty,” Mapi said.

“I’ll take my chances,” Jay said. She picked up the tablet and her water glass. Looked at Alexia. “You sorted my bag so I could find my medication.”

“Sí,” Alexia said.

“Every day,” Jay said.

“Every day,” Alexia confirmed.

Jay looked at her for another moment with an expression that was doing something quiet and warm and slightly undone around the edges.

“I love you,” Jay said.

“I know,” Alexia said.

“Like a lot,” Jay said. “A stupid amount.”

“I know, guapa,” Alexia said, and she leaned over and kissed Jay properly, not quickly, not a peck, a proper kiss, right there at the lunch table with Mapi and Patri sitting directly across from them, because Alexia had decided Jay needed kissing and when Alexia decided something, that was generally what happened.

When she pulled back, Jay looked slightly dazed.

“Eat your lunch,” Alexia said.

“Right,” Jay said. “Yes. Eating.”

She ate her lunch.

Mapi and Patri exchanged a look across the table that communicated several things efficiently.

The B team had started eating again, but the conversation had not moved on from what they’d just witnessed. They were still processing it, still turning it over, the way you turned over something that had surprised you in a way you hadn’t expected to be surprised.

“She kissed her,” Clara Julià said. “Right there. At the table. In front of everyone.”

“In front of everyone,” Sydney confirmed. “Just decided to kiss her.”

“Alexia never does that around us,” Aicha said. “She’s always very. Professional. She’d never just kiss someone at lunch. She’s always so composed.”

“She is composed,” Vicky said. “She’s composed with Jay too. She just expresses it differently. The composure is still there. It’s just that her version of composed with Jay includes kissing her at lunch because she decided Jay needed it. Alexia being composed doesn’t mean Alexia being cold. It just means Alexia being in control. And right now what she decided was in control was going over and helping Jay and coming back and feeding her lunch and kissing her. That’s her being in control.”

“That’s a nice kind of in control,” Clara Serrajordi said.

“The best kind,” Vicky said.

Clara Serrajordi looked across the cafeteria at Alexia and Jay, who were now both eating properly, shoulder to shoulder, Jay saying something with her fork halfway to her mouth and Alexia half listening while she checked something on her phone and then responding without looking up and Jay arguing back with the same half distracted energy and both of them completely at home in the middle of it.

“You can tell they live together,” Clara said.

“How?” Sydney asked.

“They way they argue while they’re doing other things,” Clara said. “Like they’re having three conversations at once and they’re both keeping up with all three. That’s what people who’ve been in the same space for a long time do.”

“That’s very observant,” Vicky said, looking at Clara with mild surprise.

Clara shrugged. “I have older siblings.”

“They do live together,” Vicky said. “Have done for a while. You can see it in training too if you know what to look for. The way Alexia always knows where Jay is on the pitch without looking. The way Jay always does the same warm up because Alexia made her start doing it for her knee. They’ve integrated. They’re in each other’s systems.”

“That’s lovely,” Aicha said.

“It’s a lot,” Sydney said. “In the best way. That’s a lot of love.”

Across the cafeteria, Jay had apparently finished her point about whatever she’d been saying and Alexia had responded and now Jay was staring at her with an expression of theatrical outrage and Alexia was eating her lunch with total serenity and clearly enjoying Jay’s outrage significantly.

Then Jay said something else and Alexia did laugh, properly, and Jay’s whole face changed the way faces change when you’ve made the person you love laugh.

“A lot,” Vicky agreed, watching them. “Yeah.”

The medication took about twenty minutes to start working.

Jay knew this. Alexia knew this. It was just a fact of their life together, like knowing that the coffee machine took four minutes or that the lift in their building was always slower going up than coming down. Twenty minutes from tablet to system, give or take, and in that twenty minutes Jay was essentially running on whatever was left of the morning dose plus forward momentum.

Which meant she talked about confirmation bias for approximately twelve more minutes.

Mapi, to her enormous credit, listened to all twelve of them. Or listened to most of them. Her eyes glazed slightly around the ten minute mark but she kept nodding, which was a respectable effort.

Patri had heard parts of this before and was managing by eating her lunch with deep focus and making small sounds of agreement at intervals that seemed appropriate without requiring her to track the content too closely.

Alexia sat beside Jay with her shoulder touching Jay’s shoulder and ate her lunch.

She wasn’t ignoring Jay. She was listening in the way you listen to something you’ve heard variations of many times before and find genuinely interesting even still, the way you listen to music you know well. Not tracking every word. Just present. Comfortable. Her hand was on Jay’s knee under the table, that easy contact that Jay didn’t even seem consciously aware of anymore but that Alexia could feel the effect of, the slight settling of Jay’s body when the touch was there versus when it wasn’t.

She was also watching Jay’s energy.

Not obviously. Not in a way Jay could see and feel self conscious about. Just peripherally, the way you watch something you’re responsible for, that specific vigilance that had become second nature somewhere in the past year and a half.

“And the really fascinating implication of all of this,” Jay was saying, still going, fork in one hand, gesturing with it slightly, “is that the solution isn’t more information. More information doesn’t help. Giving people correct information doesn’t correct misbelief because the belief isn’t based on information in the first place, it’s based on identity, it’s based on group belonging, it’s based on emotional need, so if you want to change what someone believes you have to work on the emotional and social layer, not the factual layer, which is genuinely one of the most complicated problems in…”

She stopped.

Just stopped.

Mid sentence.

Mapi looked up from her lunch.

Jay was sitting very still. Her fork had come to rest on her tray. Her mouth had closed. She was looking at the middle distance with an expression that was difficult to categorise, somewhere between thoughtful and slightly vacant, like someone whose internal television had just changed channel.

“Jay?” Patri said.

“Yeah,” Jay said. Quietly. The word came out at maybe half the volume everything had been operating at for the past forty minutes.

“You alright?” Patri said.

“Yeah,” Jay said again. She blinked. “I think.” A pause. “That’s the meds starting.”

“Oh,” Mapi said. “Yeah?”

“You can feel it?” Patri asked.

“Sort of,” Jay said. She was speaking slowly now, the words coming with more space between them, finding their natural pace again. “It’s like. You know when you’ve had too much caffeine and then it wears off and everything just. Slows down. Like the volume gets turned down. It’s like that but from inside.”

She picked up her fork again. Put a bit of food in her mouth. Chewed.

Alexia glanced at her sideways.

Jay caught the glance.

“I’m good,” Jay said.

“I know bebe,” Alexia said.

“I was doing the thing again,” Jay said.

“A bit guapa,” Alexia said.

“The information theory thing.”

“The information theory thing,” Alexia confirmed.

“Mapi was trapped,” Jay said.

“I was not trapped,” Mapi said, with dignity.

“Your eyes were doing the exit strategy thing,” Jay said.

Mapi opened her mouth.

“Around the ten minute mark,” Jay said.

“Eight,” Mapi said, and then looked like she regretted that immediately.

Jay laughed. It was quieter than her usual laugh, a bit lower, a bit slower, the energy behind it gentler. “Honest at least.”

“I was still listening,” Mapi said. “I was listening to the important parts.”

“Which parts were the important parts?” Jay asked.

A pause.

“The ones,” Mapi said, “about the thing. With the information.”

“Solid,” Jay said. “Really solid engagement, Mapi. Excellent.”

Alexia pressed her lips together.

Jay’s hand came to rest on the table beside her tray and Alexia moved her own hand from Jay’s knee and put it on top of Jay’s hand instead, without looking at her, without making anything of it, just her hand over Jay’s hand, warm and present.

Jay turned her hand over underneath Alexia’s so their palms were together.

Their fingers linked.

And then Jay went quiet.

Not suddenly. Not all at once. Like a tide going out, the energy just gradually receding, the restless quality draining away, leaving something stiller in its place. She was still eating, slowly, and she was still at the table, still present, but the constant motion had stopped. Her free hand wasn’t moving. She wasn’t leaning forward. She wasn’t generating anything extra.

She just sat there, eating her lunch, holding Alexia’s hand.

Alexia ate her lunch, holding Jay’s hand.

The B team table had been watching.

They’d watched Jay stop mid sentence. Watched the quality of her change. Watched her become smaller and quieter and more still, like something had been gently turned down. And now they were watching Alexia and Jay sit side by side in silence, both eating, hands linked on the table between their trays, and neither of them seeming to need anything to be said.

“What just happened?” Clara Julià asked Vicky, very quietly.

“The medication kicked in,” Vicky said.

“That fast?” Sydney said.

“It’s the afternoon dose working with the morning dose wearing off,” Vicky said. “Sometimes when the level’s been low for a bit and the new dose comes in, it’s quite noticeable. Doesn’t always happen that way. But sometimes.”

“She just stopped,” Aicha said. “She was talking about epistemology and then she just.”

“Stopped,” Vicky said. “Yeah. The medication for ADHD, the kind Jay takes, it basically helps the brain regulate itself. Helps with the part that controls impulse and focus and how fast everything moves. When it’s working properly Jay is still Jay, still funny, still chaotic, but it’s managed chaos. When it wears off the volume goes up on everything. When a new dose comes in after a gap it can hit quite noticeably.”

“She called it powering down once,” said a voice.

They looked up.

Aitana had appeared, sliding into a seat at the end of their table with her own tray, having apparently been close enough to hear the tail end of the conversation.

“Jay calls it powering down,” Aitana said. She was watching Alexia and Jay across the room with a fond expression. “When the meds kick in after a gap. She says it feels like being a laptop that’s been running too many programmes and then some of them close. Less noise. Less tabs. She says it’s actually nice. Once it happens. It doesn’t feel nice in the moment because in the moment she usually realises she’s been a lot and feels a bit embarrassed.”

“She seemed a bit embarrassed,” Clara Serrajordi said. “When she realised.”

“She always does,” Aitana said. “Even though no one minds. Even though we’re all just. Used to it. She still feels bad about it. Except Alexia never lets her feel bad for long.”

They all looked at Alexia and Jay.

Alexia was eating her lunch with complete serenity. She was in the middle of saying something to Irene who had come back to the table, one hand gesturing, making some point about the upcoming fixtures, fully present in that conversation.

And all the while, under the table, on the table between their trays, her hand was holding Jay’s hand.

Not looking at it. Not making it a thing. Just holding it, the way you hold something that belongs to you and that you want to keep close, automatic and constant.

And Jay was very quiet. Very still. Eating her food slowly, not contributing much to the conversation around her, not needing to. Her eyes were softer now, less fast. She looked a bit tired, the way you look tired when you’ve been running at high capacity and the running has stopped. But not bad tired. Just. Down from it.

Every now and then Alexia would glance at her sideways. Just a quick look. Checking. And Jay would look back and give her the smallest nod that said I’m okay and Alexia would go back to her conversation.

“She checks,” Clara Julià observed.

“All the time,” Aitana said. “She thinks she’s subtle about it. She’s not that subtle. But Jay appreciates it.”

“Does Jay know how much Alexia watches out for her?” Sydney asked.

Aitana considered this.

“Yes and no,” she said. “Jay knows Alexia takes care of her. Jay is extremely aware of that and extremely grateful for it, she says it all the time. But I don’t think Jay always clocks how constant it is. How much of Alexia’s attention is quietly on Jay even when Alexia’s doing something else. Like right now Alexia’s talking to Irene about the Atletico match but part of her is still on Jay. Part of her is always on Jay.”

“That must take a lot of energy,” Aicha said. “Being that present for someone. Being that attentive.”

“It doesn’t seem to cost Alexia anything,” Aitana said. “That’s the thing. For some people that kind of attention is an effort. Something they have to remind themselves to do. But Alexia just. It’s just how she is with Jay. It’s built in.”

They watched as Alexia finished whatever she was saying to Irene and turned back to her own food. She glanced at Jay again. Jay was pushing the last of her lunch around her tray with a slightly unfocused expression, not eating it anymore, not quite anywhere.

Alexia reached over with her free hand and moved Jay’s water glass slightly closer to her.

Just that. Just the glass, two centimetres closer.

And without looking down, without breaking whatever she was quietly thinking about, Jay picked it up and drank some.

The B team table was silent for a moment.

“She moved the glass,” Clara Serrajordi said, very softly. “She saw that Jay needed water and she just moved the glass.”

“Without saying anything,” Sydney said. “Without making Jay ask.”

“Without making Jay feel like she needed to ask,” Vicky said. “There’s a difference.”

Clara Serrajordi was quiet for a moment.

“My mama does that,” she said eventually. “That exact thing. Moving things closer. Making sure I have what I need without making me ask.” She paused. “That’s a specific kind of love. That’s.”

She didn’t finish the sentence.

She didn’t need to.

It was Mapi who eventually pushed her chair back and announced she needed coffee, which was the signal for the loose gathering at the table to start dispersing. Patri went with her. Irene went to find Ona. The table emptied gradually, the lunch rush beginning to wind down, players drifting back toward the rest of their afternoon.

And then it was just Alexia and Jay.

Jay had her elbow on the table and her chin in her free hand, looking at nothing in particular with the soft unfocused look of someone whose brain had finally stopped sprinting and was now doing a gentle walk. Her tray was mostly cleared. She’d eaten properly. Alexia had made sure of it without making it a thing, had just been there, had just quietly managed it.

Their hands were still linked between the trays.

“Hey,” Jay said, after a while.

“Hey,” Alexia said.

“Thank you,” Jay said. “For earlier. For coming over.”

“You don’t have to thank me bebe,” Alexia said.

“I know I don’t have to,” Jay said. “I want to.” She turned her head to look at Alexia. “I know I’m a lot. I know that was. A lot.”

“Amor,” Alexia said.

“I just…”

“Jay,” Alexia said again, more firmly, turning to look at her properly. “You are not a lot. Your ADHD is something that sometimes needs help. That is not the same thing as being a lot. You know this. We’ve talked about this no?”

“I know,” Jay said.

“Do you know or do you think you know and then forget it when it happens?” Alexia said.

Jay almost smiled. “That second one.”

“Right,” Alexia said. She squeezed Jay’s hand. “So let me tell you again. You are not too much. You do not need to thank me for noticing when you need help. You do not need to apologise for how your brain works. It works differently. Sometimes it needs support. I am here. That is just how it is.”

Jay looked at her.

“You moved my water glass,” Jay said.

“What?” Alexia said.

“When I was sitting there,” Jay said. “You moved my water glass closer so I’d drink some. Without saying anything. Without making me ask.”

Alexia looked at her for a moment.

“You noticed that?” she said.

“After the fact,” Jay said. “I noticed after I’d already drunk it. That you’d done that. That you knew I needed it.”

Alexia shrugged slightly. “Your lips were dry. I could see you weren’t going to pick it up yourself because you were somewhere else in your head. So I moved it.”

“You’re always doing that,” Jay said quietly. “Things like that. Small things. All the time. I don’t always notice in the moment but then I’ll see them after and I’ll think. She did that for me. She was thinking about me even when I didn’t know she was thinking about me.”

“I’m always thinking about you,” Alexia said simply. Like it wasn’t even complicated. Like it was just a fact of geography. “You’re just usually thinking about too many other things to notice.”

Jay laughed softly.

“That’s fair,” she said.

Alexia picked up her coffee cup with her free hand, found it empty, set it back down. Jay watched her.

“Can I get you another coffee?” Jay said.

“You don’t need to,” Alexia said.

“I want to,” Jay said. “Let me do something. I’ve been sitting here being a burden for twenty minutes, let me at least get you a coffee.”

“You have not been a burden,” Alexia said.

“Let me get you a coffee, Ale,” Jay said.

Alexia looked at her.

“Fine,” she said. “But then you are sitting back down. You are not fully regulated yet and I don’t want you wandering around the cafeteria getting into conversations.”

“I got into one conversation,” Jay said, standing up, detaching their hands gently.

“You got into one very long conversation,” Alexia said, “with the concept of media literacy, and you took Patri and Mapi and parts of the B team with you whether they wanted to come or not.”

“Mapi was interested,” Jay said, picking up Alexia’s cup.

“Mapi was polite,” Alexia said.

“She was interested in the interesting parts,” Jay said.

“She was interested in about eight minutes of it,” Alexia said.

“Eight’s not nothing,” Jay said, and went to get the coffee.

Alexia watched her go with the expression she used when she was trying not to smile and not entirely succeeding. She turned back to the table, straightened her tray slightly, looked out the window at the autumn afternoon outside, the Barcelona sky very blue, the training pitches visible and empty now that the morning session was done.

She heard Jay behind her, heard the coffee machine, heard Jay say something to whoever was in the queue that made them laugh, because Jay made people laugh, that was just what happened.

She heard Jay come back.

Jay set the coffee down in front of her and slid back into the chair and reached across the table and took Alexia’s hand again, threading their fingers back together like they’d never been apart.

“Thank you,” Alexia said, about the coffee.

“De nada,” Jay said, very deliberately, in a terrible Spanish accent.

Alexia gave her a look.

“That was good,” Jay said.

“It was not good,” Alexia said.

“It was in the right ballpark,” Jay said.

“It was in the car park outside the ballpark,” Alexia said. “Very far from the ballpark. Not even able to see the ballpark guapa.”

“I’ve been working on it,” Jay said.

“You’ve been working on one phrase for six months,” Alexia said.

“Languages are hard,” Jay said.

“You live in Spain,” Alexia said.

“I live with you,” Jay said. “You’re my translator. I outsource the language.”

“You cannot outsource the language,” Alexia said.

“I’ve been outsourcing it successfully for over a year,” Jay said.

Alexia opened her mouth.

Closed it.

“Drink your coffee,” Jay said.

“Don’t tell me to drink my coffee,” Alexia said, but she picked it up and drank it.

Jay watched her, warm and easy, her thumb moving slowly against the back of Alexia’s hand. Outside the cafeteria windows the Barcelona afternoon was doing what Barcelona afternoons in autumn did, which was be beautiful without making a fuss about it. The cafeteria had thinned out now, most of the squad having drifted off, just a few players still lingering over coffee and phones.

It was quiet.

A nice quiet.

“How are you feeling?” Alexia said, after a while.

“Better,” Jay said. “Properly better. Like myself. The noisy version is gone.”

“Good,” Alexia said.

“Head’s a bit heavy,” Jay said. “After the crash. Always is.”

“I know,” Alexia said. “We’ll go home after the afternoon session. You can rest.”

“I’m fine,” Jay said.

“I know you’re fine,” Alexia said. “I didn’t say you weren’t fine. I said we’d go home so you can rest. Those are not the same thing.”

Jay looked at her sideways.

“Are you bossing me?” Jay said.

“Sí,” Alexia said.

“Okay,” Jay said. “Fair.”

Alexia squeezed her hand.

Jay squeezed back.

At the B team table, which had gained Aitana and lost Vicky momentarily while Vicky got more food, the four teenagers were still quietly processing the afternoon.

Vicky came back with a yogurt and sat down.

“They’re still there,” Sydney said, nodding toward Alexia and Jay, who were still at the table, still hand in hand, talking about something now, quiet back and forth, normal volume, just two people having lunch together.

“They will be for a bit,” Vicky said. “Jay needs the time to fully come down. Alexia won’t leave until she’s sure Jay is regulated.”

“She won’t even notice Alexia’s staying for her,” Aicha said. “Jay. She thinks they’re just having lunch.”

“Maybe,” Vicky said. “Or maybe she knows and doesn’t need it to be said. That’s also possible.”

“What happens to Jay without the medication?” Clara Julià asked. “Like if she didn’t take it at all. What would that be like?”

“Hard,” Vicky said. “I don’t think any of us here have seen it because she’s always been medicated since she’s been at Barcelona. But from what I understand, without it she really can’t regulate at all. Everything turned up all the time. Can’t focus. Can’t sit still. Can’t stop the noise in her head. Gets overwhelmed very easily. Very fast and very high and then very low. And the low is hard. The crash after is really hard.”

“That sounds exhausting,” Clara Serrajordi said. “To live like that.”

“It is,” Vicky said. “ADHD is exhausting. People think it’s just being distracted or fidgety. It’s not. It’s your brain not being able to regulate itself on its own. It’s working twice as hard as everyone else just to do the same thing. Jay works incredibly hard to manage it. The medication. The exercise, she exercises a lot and that’s not just fitness, that’s regulation, that’s her managing her brain chemistry deliberately. The routines Alexia keeps for her.”

“The routines Alexia keeps for her,” Clara Julià repeated.

“The medication in the side pocket,” Sydney said quietly. “The things in the same place.”

“All of it,” Vicky said. “Alexia builds the scaffolding. The structure Jay’s brain needs but can’t always build for itself. And she does it without making Jay feel like she can’t cope. Without making Jay feel dependent or incapable. She just. Puts the scaffolding up quietly and lets Jay stand in it.”

The B team were quiet.

“She’s remarkable,” Aicha said. Not gushing. Just stating it, plainly, because it was plain.

“She is,” Vicky said. “And so is Jay. Jay is so aware of what she struggles with and so honest about it and so genuinely trying all the time. Some people with ADHD spend years not knowing that’s what it is, not understanding why their brain works like that, feeling like something’s wrong with them. Jay’s been medicated and supported and she knows herself really well now. Knows her patterns. Knows her signals. Knows when to ask for help even if she doesn’t always catch it in time.”

“She didn’t catch it today,” Sydney said.

“No,” Vicky said. “But Alexia did. That’s the partnership. Jay can’t always see herself from outside. Alexia can. So between them they don’t miss much.”

Across the cafeteria, Jay said something and Alexia laughed, properly, and then said something back that made Jay point at her with an expression of theatrical offence, and Alexia laughed again.

Their hands never came apart.

“I want that,” Clara Serrajordi said, very quietly, to no one in particular.

Nobody asked what she meant because it was obvious what she meant.

It was obvious to all of them.