Jude / Michael: You Gotta Warn A Man
Jude Bellingham and Michael Olise couldn’t have been more different if they’d tried.
Jude’s face was an open book, written in bold, oversized font. Michael’s was a blank page. Jude could talk the ears off a statue; Michael spoke in sparse fragments, even in interviews, as though words were a currency too valuable to spend carelessly. Jude chased the spotlight and thrived in it, filling rooms with his voice and presence, charming strangers and opponents alike with effortless charisma. Michael was content in his own quiet corner, letting people earn their way in at his own glacial pace.
And yet.
Jude still marvelled that he’d managed to reach past those icy walls at all. Enough to get Michael exactly where he’d been fantasising about for months—spread out and breathless beneath him, that reserved man wasting his precious words on broken moans of Jude’s name. It had taken longer still for something like friendship to form between them.
Friendship. Jude nearly laughed at the word now. He’d grown to hate it. He didn’t want to be Michael’s friend. He wanted more. His mother hadn’t raised an ungrateful son, but she had raised a greedy one—and nothing made Jude greedier than Michael Olise. His time. His attention. His rare, shy smiles. The taste of his skin. The tight heat of him.
Michael, Michael, Michael—Jude wanted everything.
Later.
He’d deal with that later—when he stopped being such a coward.
The point remained: they couldn’t have been more opposite in the way they interacted with people. Jude threw himself into every conversation, leaning in, gesturing wildly, reacting with his whole body. Michael often wouldn’t even look at the person speaking, as though eye contact required energy he’d rather spend elsewhere.
Jude used to complain loudly about it. Michael scrolling through his phone while Jude animatedly recounted his day felt downright insulting.
Then he’d learned Michael wasn’t tuning him out at all. In fact, he was the one person who remembered every little detail Jude mentioned, filing it away behind that unreadable expression and bringing it up weeks later like it had always mattered.
That was how it usually went. Jude had grown used to the sideways attention, the distant gaze, the answers that arrived a beat too late because Michael’s mind was somewhere else.
Which was exactly why he was currently struggling to string together a coherent sentence.
For some unfathomable reason, Michael had decided to give Jude his full, undivided attention as he rambled about—
—what the fuck was he talking about again?
Those deep brown eyes were fixed on him with unnerving focus, patient and unexpectedly tender.
Heat crawled up Jude’s neck. He’d lost his train of thought again.
For fuck’s sake. Get a grip.
It wasn’t as if this was new territory. He’d had those same eyes blown wide and glassy with pleasure, gazing up at him helplessly while Jude moved deep and slow inside him. He’d watched those lips part on soft, breathless sounds of his name, bruised from kissing. Every time felt even more intimate than the last.
Still, he’d never made a fool of himself then.
“—so, yeah. That’s… that’s basically it,” Jude trailed off, hands gesturing uselessly.
So why now?
Michael tilted his head, his smile deepening with quiet encouragement. The corners of his eyes crinkled softly, and his lashes lowered, casting delicate shadows across his cheekbones.
Fucking Christ.
Jude cursed under his breath, grabbed Michael’s face with both hands, and yanked him into a crushing kiss.
Michael tensed for half a second before melting into it, lips parting easily. Jude slipped his tongue inside that warm mouth, greedily swallowing the soft, needy sounds Michael made as their tongues slid together. Michael’s hand came up, hesitated against Jude’s shoulder, then curled around the back of his neck, pulling him closer as he rose onto his toes and kissed back with quiet hunger.
When they finally broke apart, both were panting, foreheads pressed together.
“What’s gotten into you, hmm?” Jude rasped.
Michael blinked up at him, slow and confused, eyes wide and unfairly pretty. “You’re the one who kissed me out of nowhere.”
Jude let out a strangled noise somewhere between a laugh and a groan.
He really had no idea.
This beautiful, infuriating, impossibly adorable man had absolutely no clue he’d been driving Jude insane for months—that simply existing near him had become its own brand of slow, sweet torture.
He leaned in again, stealing another kiss, then another—growing more aggravated and fond with every press of lips.
“You gotta warn a man,” he muttered between kisses, nipping at Michael’s bottom lip. “Trying to kill me?”
Michael didn’t answer with words. Instead, that slow, private smile curved his lips—the one Jude had come to treasure like gold. He simply tilted his head and let Jude take whatever he wanted, soft and pliant and trusting in that silent way of his.
In the older’s quiet language, it said more than any confession ever could.
And Jude could already feel it happening—the inevitable shattering of his carefully guarded heart. He’d caught feelings for his fuckbuddy, and it was headed straight for disaster.
Still, he couldn’t bring himself to stop.
Not when Michael was looking at him like that.
Not when those pretty lips curved into that secret smile just for him.
Not when Michael’s hands fisted in his shirt like he, too, never wanted to let go.
