#mason mount

It started because of a microphone. Post-training press availability, a Tuesday in February. You were setting up in the media room, wrestling with a lapel mic that kept cutting out, when the door swung open twenty minutes too early.

“Sorry– thought this was–” He stopped.

You looked up, and immediately looked back down, because looking at Mason Mount directly felt a bit like looking at the sun if the sun had very nice eyes and also made you forget basic grammar.

“Press availability isn’t until three,” you said to the microphone.

“Right.” He didn’t leave.

You could feel him watching you fiddle with the cable, the silence stretching, your face doing something terrible that you could feel without being able to stop it.

“You’re the new press one, yeah?” he asked.

“I’ve been here eleven months.”

A beat. “The relatively new press one.”

Something about the way he said it gently, a little amused and not unkind really made you glance up despite yourself. He was leaning in the doorway, arms crossed, still in his training kit, with a small smile on his face.

“Y/N,” you said. “I’m Y/N.”

“I know,” he said simply, and then someone called his name from down the corridor and he was gone, leaving you sitting there with a broken microphone and the distinct feeling that something had just started that you were completely unprepared for.

You were desperately aware of the professional line. He was a player, you were staff, and your entire job depended on being neutral and unremarkable. Crushes were not in the press officer job description. He seemed to find your awkwardness genuinely interesting rather than off-putting, which was somehow so much worse, because you were used to people looking past you and you didn’t have a script for someone who looked at you. You filed it all away under inconvenient and got on with your job.

The second time, it was after a home win –2-0, he’d assisted both– and you were running the mixed zone, clipboard in hand, trying to direct traffic and make eye contact with precisely no one. He stopped in front of you instead of the cameras.

“You never watch the matches,” he said, not accusatory, just observational, like he’d been paying attention.

Your stomach did something inconvenient. “I watch the feed. In the media suite.”

“Not the same.”

“I know.”

He looked at you for a moment with that quiet, evaluating look you were already starting to recognise, then stepped toward the cameras. But right before he reached the journalists, he glanced back. “You should watch sometime. Proper watch.”

You wrote call about Thursday’s presser on your clipboard and absolutely did not think about it for the rest of the evening, which is to say you thought about it the entire evening.

-----

The away trip to Paris was not supposed to be a big deal, which is what your manager Diane had said when she handed you the travel itinerary –not a big deal, just a pre-season friendly, good experience for you– and you had nodded and smiled and then gone to the bathroom and stood very still for a moment, because it was in fact a very big deal to you specifically, given that you had never done an overnight trip with the squad before and were already mentally cataloguing every possible way you could embarrass yourself between London and France. The running total, so far: forgetting your press credentials, which you’d checked four times; saying something incoherent to a journalist, which felt probable; tripping in front of a camera, which was fifty-fifty; and doing something mortifying in front of Mason Mount, which was the new entry, recently added, and brought the total to four.

You boarded the coach to the airport with your head down, laptop bag clutched to your chest like a shield, and found a seat near the back next to Priya from social media, who was already on her phone and didn’t require conversation. You had your headphones in before the engine started and you did not look up when the players filed on, absolutely did not notice when someone sat down in the aisle seat two rows ahead and stretched his legs out and laughed at something Thomas Tuchel’s assistant said, and if you put your brightness down and stared at your spreadsheet with the focus of someone defusing a bomb, that was simply because you had a lot of work to do.

The flight was fine. The hotel check-in was fine. The pre-match media setup was genuinely fine, and for approximately three hours you felt like a competent adult professional person who had everything under control. And then you walked into a glass door.

Not through it –you didn’t break it, you weren’t injured, it was frankly the tamest possible version of this type of incident– but you had been speed-walking through the hotel lobby with your lanyard in one hand and a coffee in the other and the door had been more closed than anticipated and you’d walked face-first into it with a flat, resonant thunk that turned approximately six heads.

You stood there for a second. The door was fine. You were fine. Your coffee had survived. Your dignity had not. Okay, you thought, very calmly. Okay. That happened. That is something that just happened in the physical world and cannot be unhappened. Great. Wonderful. You pushed the door open correctly this time and walked through it with your chin up, because what else were you going to do, and you were almost in the clear when you heard it — a laugh, quick and surprised and genuine, not cruel, which somehow made it worse. You turned your head approximately three degrees, just enough to confirm what you already knew in your soul, and yes. Obviously. Of course. Mason Mount was standing by the lift with Ben Chilwell, hand over his mouth, shoulders shaking, and his eyes met yours and he held up both hands immediately –I’m sorry, I’m sorry– still laughing, mouthing something that looked like are you okay?

You gave him a thumbs up.

You turned and walked away at a pace that you hoped looked purposeful and not like the physical manifestation of wanting to be absorbed into the floor.

You avoided the lobby for the rest of the afternoon, which was professionally complicated given that your job required you to be in it at several points, but you managed through careful timing and a secondary route through the hotel restaurant that added four minutes to every journey and was absolutely worth it. By the time the pre-match dinner was underway in the hotel’s private function room you’d almost convinced yourself it wasn’t that bad. People walked into doors. It was a human thing. Probably he’d forgotten about it already.

“Seat taken?”

You looked up from your pasta.

Mason Mount was standing across the table from you, holding a plate, nodding at the empty chair directly opposite. The function room was busy –players, staff, coaching team, a few journalists from the approved pool– and there were other seats available. Several. Quite a few, actually.

“No,” you said, because what else were you going to say.

He sat down. You looked at your pasta. He ate in silence for a moment, and you thought — hoped — that maybe this was just a proximity thing, just a seat, no significance, absolutely —

“For the record,” he said, “the door was basically invisible. Very poor design.”

You looked up despite yourself. He had a completely straight face, but his eyes were doing the thing, the warm and slightly amused thing that you had already against your will catalogued and filed away and thought about more than once.

“I’ve seen it happen loads of times,” he continued, very seriously. “At least twice this year alone.”

“You’re being nice,” you said.

“I’m being honest.”

“They’re not mutually exclusive.”

Something shifted in his expression — small, quick, like you’d surprised him — and he tilted his head slightly. “Fair point,” he said.

Silence again, but different now, less like a gap and more like something taking up space on purpose. You ate a forkful of pasta. He poured water into his glass and then, without asking, into yours. You stared at your glass and told yourself: normal thank you, regular volume, like a person.

“Thanks,” you said. Normal. Fine. Good.

“So do you actually like this?” he asked. “The away trips.”

You considered lying — love them, great, brilliant — because that felt like the smooth and professional answer, and then you thought about how he’d said I know when you told him your name, like he’d been paying attention long before you’d noticed, and something about that made dishonesty feel like the wrong currency.

“I find them a bit overwhelming,” you said, to your pasta. “Lots of people. Lots of moving parts. I’m better when I know exactly what’s happening.” You added, quickly, in case it sounded like complaining, “But the work part I like. I’m good at the work part.”

“Yeah,” he said, like it wasn’t news to him. “You are.”

Your fork stopped moving. You didn’t look up, because you had a strong instinct that if you did your face was going to do something you couldn’t diplomatically explain, so you just sat there with it suspended over a piece of penne while Mason Mount ate his dinner across from you like he hadn’t just said something that was going to live in your head for no reasonable amount of time.

The thing was — the thing was that you were very used to being competent and overlooked. It was a comfortable arrangement. You did the work, the work got done, nobody particularly noticed. And he kept noticing, quietly and consistently, without fanfare, like it was just a thing he did, and you didn’t have a section in your mental filing system for that.

You ate your pasta. He said something to the physio on his left and laughed at the response, and you watched him for exactly one second — the way he laughed with his whole face, the easy way he had with people — and then looked firmly back at your food. Your phone buzzed, Diane asking for tomorrow’s schedule confirmation, and you answered immediately, grateful for the task, and spent the rest of dinner looking at your screen. But when you left, he said night, Y/N — just that, quiet, like it was easy — and you made it all the way to the lift before you let yourself close your eyes for a second. It had been a seat, probably. Nothing more than a seat. You took the stairs back to your floor and told yourself that twice.

The match was at nine PM and you knew this. You had written this, it was on the schedule you’d drafted and printed and laminated and distributed in three different formats, and yet somehow at 8:47 PM you were in the wrong corridor — not slightly wrong, comprehensively and architecturally wrong, the kind of wrong that suggested you had taken a turn approximately four decisions ago that had nothing to do with the media pen and everything to do with the fact that you’d been following the sound of crowd noise like a confused pigeon and had ended up somehow outside the away dressing room. The door was open. You spun around so fast your lanyard smacked you in the face.

“SORRY —” you said, to nobody, to the wall, to God, to whatever cosmic force had decided this trip was your villain origin story, and then you walked very quickly in the opposite direction and didn’t stop until you found a stairwell where you stood alone and pressed your back against the cold concrete and did a brief silent scream into your own scarf.

Your radio crackled. Diane’s voice. “Y/N, we need you in the media pen, kick off in ten.”

“Yep,” you said, into the radio, with incredible calm. “On my way.”

The match, at least, was good. Chelsea won 3-1 and Mason got the third — a low, precise drive from the edge of the box that made the journalists around you actually react, which journalists almost never did because they considered visible emotion unprofessional. You considered visible emotion unprofessional too, which was why you wrote goal, 79’, Mount very neatly in your notes and did not do anything embarrassing with your face.

Post-match mixed zone, and this was your territory. You moved through it with purpose — directing, coordinating, stepping in when someone asked a question heading somewhere diplomatically unfortunate, steering it away with the practiced efficiency of someone who’d learned very quickly that footballers and microphones were a combination that required management. You were good at this. You were calm at this, right up until Mason finished his camera interview, turned around, and walked directly into you. His shoulder caught yours, your clipboard went one way, your pen went another, and you made a sound — a genuinely involuntary sound, a sort of startled oh! — and grabbed the nearest stable thing, which was his arm, and let go immediately, record timing.

“Sorry — sorry, that was me, I was in the —” you started.

“No, that was me, I wasn’t looking —” he said at the same time.

A beat. He looked at you. You looked at him. He was still in his kit, slightly sweaty from the match, close enough that you had to make a conscious decision about where exactly to look, which your brain handled by suggesting perhaps the middle distance, which meant you were basically staring at his collarbone, which was not better.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Completely fine,” you said, to his collarbone.

He bent down, picked up your clipboard, and handed it back, your fingers touching briefly when you took it. You wrote nothing in your mental filing system about that because there was nothing to write.

“Good match,” you managed.

“Yeah?” He was doing the thing again, the looking thing. “You watched?”

“I was literally standing ten metres away.”

“You had your head down for most of it.”

You opened your mouth, then closed it. He was right, you had been looking at your notes, it was your job to look at your notes — but the fact that he’d clocked it, that he’d been aware of where your eyes were from the pitch while playing a professional football match, made your brain make a noise like a dial-up connection.

“I multitask,” you said finally.

He smiled — slow, a little devastating — and someone called his name from across the zone. He held your gaze for just a beat longer than necessary before he turned away, and you looked down at your clipboard to find you had written absolutely nothing useful for the last four minutes.

The coach back to the hotel left at midnight. You got on early, window seat, third row, headphones in, a buffer seat between you and the aisle filled with your bag, because you had learned from this morning. The players filed on gradually, loud and happy with the particular looseness of a team after a win, and you watched your phone screen with great concentration until the seat next to your bag dipped.

You looked up. Mason raised his eyebrows at your bag.

“Sorry —” you grabbed it immediately, shoving it onto your lap, and sat there with it pressed against your chest like a very awkward carry-on while he settled into the seat beside you, and internally you were asking why — there are so many seats, Ben Chilwell is right there, you are friends with Ben Chilwell, you chose this one specifically, why did you choose this one —

“You don’t have to hold your bag like that,” he said. “You can just put it in your lap normally.”

“This is normally.”

He looked at the bag, at your hands gripping the strap like it might escape. “Right,” he said, and looked out the window, and you could see the reflection of him almost-smiling in the glass. You let go of the strap, slowly, casually, like you had meant to do that all along.

The coach pulled out of the stadium and outside was Paris at midnight, lit up and thoughtless and beautiful in the way cities are beautiful when you’re tired and slightly off-balance and sitting next to someone whose arm is almost touching yours. Almost. You were acutely and embarrassingly aware of the almost.

“Can I ask you something?” he said.

No, said your entire nervous system. “Sure,” said your mouth.

“Why do you always look like you’re waiting for something to go wrong?”

You turned to look at him properly for the first time all night. He was watching you with that same evaluating calm, and the question wasn’t mean or pointed — it was just honest, the way he kept being honest in this inconvenient and disarming way that you had no defensive strategy for.

“Statistically,” you said instead of deflecting, “something usually does.”

“Like today.”

“I walked into a door and then a person in the same twelve-hour period.”

“The door was badly designed.”

“You said that already.”

“Still true.”

The streetlights were sliding past the window in long orange stripes and somewhere behind you Reece James was telling a story that was making half the coach laugh. The seat was warm and his shoulder was an inch from yours.

“Does it help?” he asked. “Waiting for it.”

You considered the question genuinely, which you hadn’t expected to do. “No,” you admitted. “But it means I’m not surprised when it happens.”

He was quiet for a moment. “That sounds exhausting,” he said, not with pity but like he was saying something true.

Your throat did something you refused to acknowledge. “It’s fine,” you said. “I’m used to it.”

“Being exhausted?”

“Being —” you paused. Careful. “Prepared.”

He turned his head to look at you then, and you were looking at him, and the coach hit a bump in the road that knocked your shoulder directly into his and neither of you moved away after. The almost became something else. You both looked forward, out at the Paris night, and said nothing, and the silence had that quality again, the kind that wasn’t empty but full and pressing and patient. Your heart did something it would file a complaint about later.

This is fine, you thought. This is completely fine. You are a professional. You are invisible. You are —

His little finger brushed yours on the armrest. Barely. Could’ve been accidental, probably was accidental, and he didn’t move it, and you didn’t move yours, and you stared out the window at Paris and breathed very carefully and thought about absolutely nothing at all for the rest of the journey.

Three weeks passed. You didn’t speak about the coach and neither did he, and somehow that felt less like avoidance and more like an agreement — a thing held carefully between you, too new to name. You worked. You were professional. You were, as always, fine. And then it was a Friday morning.

-----

The story broke on a Friday, and not a rumour this time, not a blurry photo with a question mark caption — a proper, sourced, photographed story, Mason Mount Confirms Romance with Model Isla Reeves, with a red carpet photo from some charity event the night before, her hand on his chest, both of them smiling, and a quote from his representative that said Mason and Isla have been seeing each other for a few weeks and are very happy.

Very happy.

You read it at 7:51 AM on your phone in your car in the Cobham car park, engine still running, and you sat with it for a moment the way you sometimes sat with a work email that required a careful response — reading it twice, making sure you’d understood correctly, giving it the appropriate weight — and then you turned your engine off, put your phone in your bag, and went to work.

You were, professionally, the first person in the building who needed to have a position on this, and that was the thing about your job that you had always found clarifying: when something happened, you didn’t get to feel it first. You got to respond to it first, and feeling it came later, quietly, in your own time, in your own space, in a way that affected nobody and changed nothing about the quality of your work. By 9 AM you had drafted a brief internal note — player’s personal life, not club business, no comment required — and sent it to Diane, who replied with a single agreed, good and that was that. By 10 AM three journalists had called and you handled them pleasantly and said nothing useful to any of them. By 11 am Priya had appeared in your doorway with two coffees and an expression that was trying very hard to be neutral.

“I saw,” you said, before she could speak. “It’s not a club matter. We’re not commenting.”

“Y/N.” Her voice was gentle in a way you didn’t particularly want it to be right now. “I’m not here about the press line.”

You looked at her. She looked at you.

“I’m fine,” you said.

Priya had known you for eleven months. She had watched you walk into a glass door in Paris and give a thumbs up and compose yourself in under thirty seconds. She knew exactly what your fine meant. She picked up her coffee, said “Okay,” and left, and you turned back to your screen and said fine to yourself, and meant it more aggressively than usual.

You didn’t see him until the afternoon, having been half-braced for it all day in the way you were braced for things; not obviously, not in a way anyone would notice, just a low-level readiness in your shoulders that had been there since 7:51 AM. When it happened it was exactly as undramatic as it should have been: you were crossing the main corridor outside the training analysis suite, he was coming the other way with Jorginho, and you met in the middle.

“Afternoon,” you said, pleasantly, the same way you said it to everyone.

“Hey.” Something moved across his face, brief and searching. “You alright?”

“Great, thanks. Good session?”

“Yeah —”

“Good. Enjoy your evening.”

And you were gone. Forty-two steps to the media suite. You counted. You sat down at your desk, opened your laptop, and stared at the screen for a moment, then started typing with fingers that were completely steady, because you were fine.

That night, alone in your flat, you allowed yourself exactly one hour, which was a system you’d developed in your early twenties for things you couldn’t afford to carry around — grief, disappointment, embarrassment, the specific sadness of something that hadn’t even been a thing, technically, and therefore had no real right to feel like a loss. You made pasta. You put a film on that you didn’t watch. You sat on your sofa with your knees to your chest and let yourself feel the full, quiet weight of it, and you were honest with yourself during the hour, because there was no point otherwise.

The thing was that nothing had happened. You knew that. There had been a coach in Paris and some lingering looks and a water glass refilled without asking and a finger that had maybe, possibly, brushed yours in the dark. That was the complete inventory. That was the whole of it. It was nothing. It had felt like something, but it was nothing, and he was now very happy with a woman who had 800,000 followers and a face that photographers loved, and that was how it was, and you were going to be fine because you were always fine.

The hour ended. You washed your bowl, turned off the film, went to bed. In the morning you were going to be completely okay. You had decided.

-----

The decision held, and the thing about when you made a decision was that you committed, because the same rigidity that made social situations feel like a practical exam meant that once you’d set a course, you stayed on it. No wobbling. No revisiting. Forward.

So: forward. You bought a new work blazer, which was perhaps not a necessary step but felt symbolically appropriate. You accepted an invitation to Priya’s friend’s birthday drinks, which you normally would have declined. You were present. You were socially available. Three weeks after the story broke, you met Daniel at a media industry event — a sports journalist, easy smile, the kind of person who was comfortable at events like this in a way you’d never fully understood — and he found you by the drinks table and said you looked like someone assessing threat levels, which was accurate, and he asked for your number at the end of the night with the straightforward confidence of someone who didn’t make it complicated. On the train home you thought: good. This is good. This is exactly right. You almost believed it.

The problem was that Daniel was… obviously a journalist but also a sports one… meant you had to disclose it to Diane, and you did it that same afternoon, clean and professional. She said: “As long as there’s no conflict of interest on club matters, it’s your business. Just be sensible.” “Always,” you said, and left her office feeling organised and sensible and forward.

You turned the corner and nearly walked into Mason.

His hand caught your elbow for barely a second and you both stepped back, the corridor suddenly too narrow, a small collision of sorry and no, I before a beat of quiet stretched between you. He’d come from training, hair still a bit damp, and there was a tiredness around his eyes that hadn’t been there before Paris — or maybe it had been, and you’d only learned to read him well enough to see it now, which was its own problem.

“You’re in a rush,” he said.

“Always.” Your standard line. Safe.

He nodded slowly, his eyes moving over your face in that way, reading the page, and you held yourself very still because you’d gotten good at still.

“You look well,” he said, careful, like he was testing the temperature of something.

“Thank you.” Perfectly pleasant. Perfectly level. Something shifted in his expression –brief, complicated, gone– and he stepped aside to let you pass. You walked away. Thirty-eight steps this time. You’d gotten faster.

-----

It was a Tuesday in April when you had three deadlines and a 4 pm call with a journalist who always ran over and a sad desk sandwich that had gone slightly warm.

You were eating the sandwich when he knocked.

The media suite was empty, as it usually was by 6 pm, everyone having the reasonable instinct to go home, and you had stayed because you had the call and then the deadlines and absolutely no other reason. Mason knocked on the open door, and you looked up to find him still in his training gear, jacket half-zipped, with the expression of someone who had decided something and was committed to it, which immediately made you feel like you needed to be somewhere else.

“I’m on a deadline,” you said.

“I know.” He came in anyway.

You watched him pull out the chair across from your desk — Priya’s chair, the one nobody sat in unless invited — and sit down in it with the particular calm of someone who had specifically decided not to be moved.

“Mason.” His name, again. Still a mistake. “I have a call in–”

“Twenty minutes,” he said. “Priya’s schedule is on the board outside.”

You stared at him. The sandwich sat on your desk between you like a small and unhelpful witness.

“I just need twenty minutes,” he said.

“For what?”

“To talk to you.”

“We’re talking now.”

“No,” he said, patiently, “we’re not. You’re managing me. There’s a difference.”

The sandwich sat on your desk between you like a small, unhelpful witness. You looked at your screen, then back at him, and he hadn’t moved and showed no signs of moving. “I’m busy.”

“I know.”

“I’m not– this isn’t a good time.”

“When is?”

“I’ll–” you reached for your notebook, reflexively, because holding something helped. “I can check the–”

“Y/N.” Quiet. Firm. “Stop.”

You stopped. The room was very still.

“I just want to know how you are,” he said. “That’s all. Not work. Not the schedule. You.”

And there it was — the question, the real one, the one he kept finding new ways to ask — and you felt the familiar tightening in your chest that meant you were approximately ten seconds from saying fine and redirecting and closing the whole thing down, because you were good at that, you had built your entire professional life on being good at that —

“I’m fine,” you said.

He nodded slowly, like he’d expected it, like he’d prepared for it, and then he picked up your sad, slightly warm desk sandwich, looked at it for a moment, and took a bite.

You stared at him. He chewed. Set it back down. Looked at you completely normally, like he hadn’t just eaten your dinner without asking, like this was a thing that people did.

“What,” you said.

“You weren’t eating it.”

“I was about to–”

“You’ve been staring at your screen for ten minutes, you hadn’t touched it.”

“You don’t– that’s my–” you picked up the sandwich, put it back down, because now it felt weird to eat it, which was somehow the most annoying thing. “You can’t just– that’s mine–”

“I know, I’m sorry–”

“Are you?” Your voice came out sharper than intended, something loosening at the hinge. “Are you actually sorry, or is that just… something you say?”

He went still. You heard what you’d just said and felt the shape of it, and that wasn’t about the sandwich and you both knew it and the knowing sat in the room between you like a third presence, warm and uninvited.

Walk it back, said the professional part of your brain. Redirect. You’re tired, you’re stressed, it’s a long week–

“What does that mean?” he asked, carefully, not defensive, just honest.

“Nothing. Forget it. It means nothing, it was about the sandwich, I’m tired, I have a–”

“It wasn’t about the sandwich.”

“Was it about Isla?”

The name landed in the room like something dropped. You didn’t answer, which was itself an answer, and you watched him watch you understand that, and there was nowhere to go suddenly; no redirect, no clipboard to pick up, no corridor to walk away down at pace.

“There’s nothing there,” he said. “It was– it’s done. It wasn’t serious.”

“You don’t have to explain your personal life to me.” Your voice was impressively level. You were quite proud of it. “Genuinely. It’s none of my–”

“I know it’s not. I’m telling you anyway.”

“Why?”

The word came out louder than you meant, raw at the edges, and you felt it leave you and couldn’t take it back and the room absorbed it and went very quiet.

“Because you went away,” he said simply. “After Paris. You just… went. And I didn’t know what I’d done, and then the Isla thing, and you got even further, and I just watched you go and I didn’t…” he stopped, reset, “I didn’t like it.”

Your chest hurt. Not metaphorically– actually hurt, the specific ache of something that had been compressed for a long time being asked to expand.

“You don’t–” your voice had lost some of its level, which you hated, “you barely know me.”

“I know you take different routes to avoid the main corridor some days. I know you eat lunch at your desk when something’s bothering you. I know you give thumbs up when you’re mortified and you say fine when you’re the opposite and you’re the best person in this building at your job and you carry your bag like it might escape.” He said it all quietly and evenly, like a list of facts. “I know you find it overwhelming when there are too many people and you told me that in Paris and I don’t think you tell people things like that easily.”

You stared at him. Your eyes were doing something you were furious about.

“That's...” your voice came out smaller than you intended. The wall was there, you could feel it, but your hands were tired. You’d been holding it up for a long time. “That’s not— you were with someone else. You were photographed. And I know— I know nothing happened between us, I know that, it was a coach and a dinner and I’m not— I’m not naïve enough to think—”

“Hey.” He’d leaned forward, elbows on the desk, close enough that you could see the tiredness in his eyes. “What did you think I thought it was?”

You shook your head.

“Tell me.”

“I don’t know.” Your voice cracked slightly on the last word and you pressed your mouth together and looked at the ceiling for a second. “I don’t know what I thought. I never— I don’t do this. I don’t read situations and I don’t make things out of nothing, I’m really careful, I’m always careful, and somehow I still—” you stopped. He waited, infuriatingly and tenderly patient. “And then you were with someone else,” you said, quietly. “And I was fine. I am fine.”

“You’re crying a little bit.”

“I’m aware,” you said, with some dignity.

There was a pause and outside the window the Cobham car park was going dark. “I ended it with Daniel,” you said, very quietly, and you weren’t sure why you were telling him except that you’d run out of things to protect. “Two weeks ago. I drove home feeling nothing and I think that was the answer.” He didn’t say anything for a moment and he didn’t look pleased about it, which you appreciated.

He didn’t say anything, didn’t make a speech, didn’t explain himself further. He just reached across your desk and put his hand over yours — still, warm, staying.

You looked at it. Looked at him.

“I ended it,” he said. “Weeks ago. Because it wasn’t — it wasn’t what I was thinking about.” He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t need to. “I’m not asking you for anything right now. I just needed you to know that. And I needed to know you were actually okay.”

Your hand didn’t move. Neither did his. Outside the media suite the building was quiet, the particular emptiness of Cobham at evening, faint hum of the lights, distant sound of rain on the roof.

“I’m not okay,” you said, very quietly. The truest thing you’d said in months.

“I know,” he said, and he didn’t let go of your hand, and you didn’t let go either, and for a moment— just a moment— you let it be enough.

***

He noticed her because she was the only person in the room not looking at him, which could sound like ego, and he’d be the first to admit it. But it wasn’t — it was just that he’d been doing this long enough to know what a room felt like when he walked into it, the subtle shift, the awareness, and he’d gotten so used to it that the absence of it was actually the thing that stood out.

The media room, a Tuesday in February. He’d come in twenty minutes early by accident and she was crouched on the floor wrestling with a microphone cable, completely absorbed, talking to it under her breath — not to him, to the cable — like he wasn’t worth the interruption. When he said sorry, thought this was — she looked up for exactly one second and then looked back down and said press availability isn’t until three like he was a scheduling inconvenience. He’d stood in the doorway longer than he needed to. He found out her name that day by asking Priya from social, casually, like it was an admin question.

Y/N. She’s been here nearly a year.

Nearly a year, and he’d been in the same building the whole time and somehow she’d moved through it like weather: present, functional, completely unregistered until suddenly she was the only thing he noticed. He thought about that for a while.

What he noticed first, properly noticed, the inventory he built without meaning to, was how careful she was, not in a cold way but in a way that looked like someone who had learned that the world required navigation. She moved through Cobham with a kind of deliberate efficiency, always slightly purposeful and never lingering, like she’d mapped every room and knew exactly how long she needed to be in each one before the odds of something going wrong increased. He recognised it, vaguely, as something he’d felt at seventeen when he first came into the first team setup at Chelsea: that hyperawareness, that sense of needing to be useful enough that your presence was justified. The difference was that he’d grown out of it, more or less, and she seemed to have just refined it, made it a permanent operating mode, built a whole professional identity around being competent and contained and fine. He found it interesting the way you found a locked door interesting, not because you wanted to force it, just because you found yourself wondering what was on the other side.

The Paris trip changed something. He’d sat next to her on the coach back from the match because he’d wanted to, which was simple and true and he didn’t overcomplicate it. She’d held her bag like a shield and made him almost-smile in the dark for twenty solid minutes and then said something so quietly honest — it means I’m not surprised when it happens — that he’d had to look out the window for a moment because the directness of it had caught him off guard. She talked to him like he was a person, not a footballer, not a name, not someone to be managed or impressed, and then she remembered to guard it and shut it back down and went back to her screen. But he’d heard it. On the armrest in the dark he’d let his finger brush hers and not moved it because he wanted to see what she’d do, and what she’d done was go very still and stare out the window and breathe carefully, like she was handling something fragile. He drove home from the hotel that night thinking about the careful breathing.

When she went cold after Paris he went over it methodically, replaying the conversations with the analytical part of his brain he usually reserved for match footage and coming up with nothing concrete — just the gradual withdrawal, the different routes, the lunch at her desk, the responses that were perfectly professional and perfectly empty. The Isla thing was — he’d been honest with himself about the Isla thing. She was fine, they’d had a few good evenings, and the whole time there had been a low-frequency awareness that he was doing something for the wrong reasons, or not quite the right ones. He ended it after three weeks, quietly, kindly, without drama, and he didn’t announce it because it hadn’t felt like something that required an announcement. In retrospect he understood why that had been a mistake.

What he saw in her — if anyone had asked him to put it into words, which nobody did, which was perhaps why he ended up sitting uninvited in Priya’s chair on a Tuesday with someone else’s sandwich — was this: she was sharp, not in an aggressive way but in a precise way, choosing her words carefully, and when she said something real it landed exactly right and he could always tell the difference between her professional voice and the one underneath it, the quieter one that came out sideways when she forgot to guard it. She was honest, and even when she was deflecting, the honesty was in there somewhere — she just mostly kept it inside. And there was something exhausting and sad and quietly admirable about the way she carried herself through every situation with that careful composure, like she’d decided a long time ago that the safest version of herself was the useful one, the competent one, the one who didn’t need anything.

He didn’t want that version. He wanted the one that talked to microphone cables and gave thumbs up when mortified and said that’s mine with genuine outrage over a sandwich. He wanted the one that cried a little bit and said I’m aware with her chin up. He wanted — and this was the thing he’d been sitting with for weeks, the thing that had been building since February in a room with a broken microphone — he wanted her to know that being seen didn’t have to be the most dangerous thing in the world. He just had to wait for her to let him tell her that, and he was, if nothing else, patient.

-----

Nothing changed overnight, and that felt important to say — the hand on yours and the quiet room and the I’m not okay did not constitute a transformation. You did not float home on a cloud of emotional resolution. You drove home in the rain, ate cereal for dinner because you’d missed the sandwich window, and lay in bed for forty minutes thinking about the fact that you had cried, slightly, in front of Mason Mount over a desk sandwich. A desk sandwich, you thought, at the ceiling. That’s what broke me. Eleven months of composure and it was the sandwich. You fell asleep before you could finish being embarrassed about it.

The next morning you arrived at Cobham at your usual time and took your usual route and made your usual coffee and sat at your usual desk and were, externally, completely normal. Internally you were doing something that resembled a browser with forty-seven tabs open, several of which were frozen and one of which was playing music you couldn’t identify or stop.

Priya came in at nine, looked at you, looked at her chair — back in its normal position, no evidence of last night, everything tidy — and said nothing. “Morning,” you said. “Morning,” she said. She made her tea. You answered your emails. The world continued rotating.

At 9:47 your phone lit up with an unknown number, and then a text.

it’s mason. priya gave me your number. hope that’s okay.

You stared at it. Priya, you thought, with great feeling.

You typed That’s fine, deleted it, typed Okay, deleted it, typed Sure, no problem, this is Y/N by the way in case you weren’t sure, stared at that for a long moment, deleted it, and sent: That’s fine.

Three seconds.

how are you

You looked at that for a moment, at the intimacy of the lowercase, the lack of punctuation, the fact that it was a question he’d asked you many times in many corridors and this was the first time it felt like it was actually asking.

You typed: Honestly. Still processing the sandwich incident. Otherwise intact.

don’t be

the sandwich thing was my fault

I’ve been told I have boundary issues around other people’s food

Who told you that, you typed.

my mum

she’s right

You pressed your lips together against something that was almost a smile. I appreciate the honesty, you sent.

anytime

are you around later

The forty-seven tabs all tried to load at once. Around where, you typed, because you needed the specificity, because your brain required logistics when everything else felt uncertain.

cobham. after the afternoon session. just to talk. no sandwiches involved

You looked at your screen, then out the window, then back at your screen.

I finish at six, you sent.

I’ll find you

You put your phone down and picked it up again and put it down, and Priya said, without looking up from her computer, “You’re doing the thing.”

“What thing.”

“Where you pick your phone up and put it down repeatedly.”

“I don’t do a thing.”

“You have several things.” You put your phone in your drawer. “I’m working,” you said, and Priya turned back to her screen with the expression of someone who had said everything she needed to.

He found you at six-thirteen, slightly later than six and slightly earlier than you’d spent the intervening hours catastrophizing about, and you were in the small corridor outside the analysis suite with your coat on and your bag on and ready to leave, which you’d timed deliberately, because being in motion was easier than being stationary when you were nervous.

“Hey.” He fell into step beside you, naturally, like it was easy.

“Hi.” You kept walking. He kept up.

“You were going to leave,” he said.

“I was going to coincidentally be leaving at this time, yes.”

“Right.”

“I had somewhere to be.”

“Where?” A pause.

“Home.”

“I’ll walk you to your car.”

You glanced at him sideways. He had his hands in his jacket pockets and the expression of someone who had absolutely clocked what you were doing and found it more endearing than annoying, which was honestly a little disarming. The evening was cool with that particular April coolness that couldn’t decide if it was still winter, and the car park was quiet, and he walked beside you with an easy unhurriedness that you found simultaneously calming and destabilizing.

“I wanted to say—” he started.

“You don’t have to—”

“I know I don’t have to.” Patient. Still. “I wanted to.” You closed your mouth.

“Last night wasn’t— I didn’t come in there to make things weird or to make you feel like you had to—” he paused, finding the words. “I just missed talking to you. The actual you. Not the press officer you.”

Something warm moved through your chest and you immediately distrusted it on instinct. “They’re the same person,” you said.

“They’re really not.”

“The press officer me is very competent.”

“She is,” he agreed. “She’s also a bit terrifying.”

You blinked. “I’m terrifying?”

“Not— no, not like—” he looked at you, caught something in your expression, and laughed, properly, that full-face laugh that you’d been cataloguing without permission since February. “You’re not scary terrifying, you’re just very— composed. You walk into a room and you know exactly what every person in it should be doing and you just sort of quietly arrange that without anyone realising and it’s—”

“Terrifying,” you finished.

“Impressive,” he corrected. “I was going to say impressive.”

“You said terrifying first.”

“As a compliment.”

“That’s a strange compliment.”

“You’re a strange person.”

The words landed and you looked at him, ready to feel the sting, and found him already looking at you with something so far from unkind that the sting never arrived. “Okay,” you said, quietly.

“In a good way,” he said, equally quiet.

You reached your car and stopped, and he stopped too, and the car park was empty and still and the sky above Cobham was doing that thing where it couldn’t decide between blue and grey. Somewhere across the car park a door opened and closed and you both glanced over instinctively, two people with the same instinct for discretion, and when you looked back at each other you were both almost-smiling at having done it simultaneously.

“I’m still—” you started. “I’m not very good at this. Any of this. I should probably tell you that upfront so you’re not surprised later when I say something weird.”

“You’ve already said several weird things.”

“That was a warm-up.”

He smiled, full and warm and aimed entirely at you, and your heart did the medically inadvisable thing.

“I think,” he said, “that we just— see how it goes. Quietly. No pressure.”

“Quietly,” you repeated, and something about the word settled something in you; the absence of performance, the permission to just be uncertain without an audience.

“Just us,” he said.

You nodded, slowly and carefully, like you were agreeing to something that mattered. “Okay,” you said. He reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind your ear— just that, light and quick, like it was the most natural thing— and you stood very still and your brain went completely blank in a way that was actually quite restful.

“Goodnight, Y/N,” he said.

“I have forty-seven browser tabs open in my head right now,” you said.

He stared at you. “Sorry,” you said. “That was one of the weird things. You’ve been warned.”

He was laughing as he walked away and you got in your car and sat for a moment and smiled at your steering wheel like an absolute idiot. Forward, you thought, but different this time, lighter. You drove home.

-----

The text came on a Thursday at 4:52 pm, not unusual in itself; you’d been texting for three weeks now, the kind of texting that had started as occasional and quietly become daily without either of you formally acknowledging that it had become daily. Short things mostly, observations, him sending something about training and you replying with something dry about the press implications and him sending back a single laughing emoji that you had, embarrassingly and privately, started to consider a form of affection. This text was different.

where do you live

You stared at it. Why, you sent back, because you were a person who required context.

just tell me the area

that’s not an answer to my question

Y/N

Mason— a pause, and you could almost feel him laughing at his phone—

i want to show you something. tonight if you’re free. what area

You looked at the text for a long moment. The sensible part of your brain —which had been gradually losing authority over the last three weeks but still showed up daily like a disciplined employee— said: ask more questions, get specifics, do not just give a man your postcode because he asked nicely.

Peckham, you sent.

perfect. I’ll send you an address. 7:30

That’s still not an answer

wear something nice

You stared at that for a genuinely unreasonable amount of time.

You almost talked yourself out of it twice— once at 5:30, standing in front of your wardrobe thinking this is insane, you don’t know where you’re going, and once at 6:45 when you were ready, navy dress and hair down, and you caught yourself in the mirror and your brain said this looks like effort and effort felt dangerous, effort felt like a declaration— so you grabbed your coat and left before the thought finished.

The address was a fifteen-minute drive, a street in Peckham you half-knew, quiet and residential, and when you pulled up you sat in your car looking at a small restaurant with its lights low and no sign outside, the kind of place that either didn’t need one or had decided signage was too much commitment. Through the window: candles, dark wood, small tables, the warm amber of a room specifically designed to make people feel like the rest of the world had gone quiet.

You looked at it. Looked at your dress. Looked back at the restaurant. Oh, said something in your chest. Oh, he absolutely did.

He was already inside and you saw him before he saw you —standing to greet you, dark jacket— and for a brief and unguarded second before he knew you were looking, he had an expression on his face that you didn’t have a word for yet. Anticipatory. Almost nervous. Mason Mount, nervous. You filed that away somewhere very safe.

Then he saw you and the expression shifted into something warmer and he said “you came” like he’d actually been unsure, which—

“You gave me forty minutes notice,” you said, sliding into the chair across from him. “I didn’t have time to talk myself out of it.”

“That was intentional.”

“That was manipulative.”

“Strategically timed.”

“Those are the same thing.”

“Are they?”

“I took a module on this—” you stopped. “You know what, never mind. Why is there no sign outside?”

“It’s a private dining room. Friend of a friend runs it, closes the main restaurant on Thursdays, does private bookings.”

You looked around at the low candles on every surface, at something that smelled extraordinary coming from somewhere, at a single table, yours, set properly with actual glassware and soft music from nowhere specific, the kind that existed to fill silence without demanding attention.

“So,” you said, carefully. “There’s no one else here.”

“No.”

“It’s just us.”

“Yes.”

“In a candlelit room.”

“Correct.”

“Mason.” You looked at him with great composure “Is this a date…”

He held your gaze, completely unbothered. “What do you think?”

“I think you should have said that in the text.” “Would you have come?”

A pause.

“…Strategically timed,” you said quietly.

He smiled.

The food arrived in small courses, unhurried, and somewhere in the middle of the second one you forgot to be nervous; not dramatically, just gradually, the nervousness losing its grip like a hand slowly unclenching, and what was underneath it turned out to be something that felt a lot like ease.

You talked, actually talked, not about work or schedules or anything that required a professional filter. He asked about your family and you told him about your mum who sent voice notes that were never under four minutes and your younger brother who you’d taught to cook badly and who had now surpassed you, which was both proud-making and annoying. He told you about growing up in Portsmouth, about being sixteen and terrified and certain he was one bad training session from being sent home, about the version of himself from that era that he wouldn’t fully recognise now.

“You seem very–” you searched for the word. “Settled. In yourself.”

“Now,” he said. “I wasn’t always.”

“What changed?”

He considered it. “Stopped waiting for permission to just be how I am, I think.”

You turned that over quietly. “I’m still waiting,” you said, before you’d decided to say it. “For permission. Or — I don’t know. For it to feel safe enough, maybe. To just —” you moved your hand vaguely, which was not a sentence but communicated something.

“I know,” he said, gently.

“It’s annoying,” you said. “About myself.”

“It’s not.”

“It takes me a long time to–”

“I know.” His voice was patient in that specific way that never felt like tolerance, just actual patience with no timer on it. “I’m not going anywhere.”

The candle between you flickered and your stomach did something long and slow and warm that had nothing to do with the food. He looked at you differently in candlelight, or maybe not differently — maybe just more visible, the way candlelight stripped out all the ambient noise of a space and left only what it chose to illuminate. He looked at you the way you’d been quietly terrified of being looked at, and the difference — the thing that was different from every other time someone had looked at you and made you want to disappear — was that it didn’t feel like an assessment. It felt like recognition. Like someone looking at something they’d been looking for.

You picked up your glass to give your hands something to do. “Stop,” you said.

“Stop what.”

“Looking at me like that.”

“Like what.”

“You know like what.”

He didn’t stop. He leaned back in his chair with the particular ease of someone completely comfortable in their own decisions and looked at you across the candlelight and said: “No.”

“No?”

“No. You’re going to have to get used to it.”

“That’s very presumptuous.”

“Probably.”

“I could leave.”

“Your coat’s on my side of the table.”

You looked. It was. You’d put it there yourself when you sat down. “I did that.”

“You did.”

“That was an accident.”

“Sure.”

You looked at him for a long moment — this person who had walked into a media room twenty minutes early and noticed you talking to a microphone cable and had apparently decided, quietly and without fanfare, to keep noticing — and felt something shift in you that was past the forty-seven tabs and past the wall and past the careful practiced fine, something that felt, cautiously, like being glad.

“This is a very good restaurant,” you said, because you needed to say something that wasn’t the thing you were actually thinking.

“I’ll tell him you said so.”

“The food is genuinely excellent.”

“Y/N.”

“The ambiance is also —”

“Y/N.”

“What.”

He was smiling. Soft, private, just for this room. “You’re doing the thing.”

“I have several things apparently.”

“The deflecting with commentary thing.”

“I don’t —” you stopped. “Okay I do that.”

“I know.”

Silence. The good kind. Full kind.

“I’m glad I came,” you said quietly. The truest available sentence.

His smile changed slightly. Warmer. Something in it that made you look at the candle for a moment because looking at him directly felt like a lot.

“Yeah?” he said.

“Don’t make it weird,” you said.

“I’m not making it weird.”

“You’re doing the face.”

“What face.”

“The — looking face. The one that makes my —” you stopped abruptly.

He waited. Very deliberately waited.

“Finish that sentence,” he said.

“Absolutely not.”

“Y/N —”

“The food is excellent,” you said firmly. “I’d like dessert.”

He laughed, full and delighted, the kind that meant you’d given him something he was going to keep, and you pressed your lips together against your own smile and looked at the menu with great concentration and felt, in the warm candlelit quiet of a room that was just yours, something bloom open in your chest that you didn’t have the words for yet, but you thought, maybe, you had time to find them.

Time did a thing at the restaurant, moving too fast in the parts where he was saying something that made you forget to monitor your own expression and too slow in the parts where he looked at you across the candle and you needed somewhere else to put your eyes, and by the time you both registered that the restaurant had gone completely quiet and the friend-of-a-friend had very politely stopped coming out of the kitchen, it was eleven seventeen.

“Eleven seventeen,” you said, looking at your phone with the specific horror of a person who had a 7 am press briefing.

“Eleven seventeen,” he confirmed, with considerably less horror.

“I have a 7 am .”

“I have a 6 am.” You stared at him. “And you’re not–”

“I’ve been here the whole time too,” he pointed out.

“Yes but you —” you gestured at him vaguely. “You seem unbothered.”

“I’m very bothered,” he said. “I’m just quiet about it.”

You stood up and reached for your coat –on his side of the table still, where you had put it accidentally on purpose three hours ago and neither of you had mentioned again– and he stood at the same time and reached it first and just held it open for you, naturally, like it was nothing, and you stood for a moment looking at it and then turned around and put it on and your brain said he’s right there and your body said yes I know and you said nothing and walked toward the door.

Outside: rain. Not light rain, not the fine invisible Parisian rain from the coach — proper, committed April rain, coming down in sheets across the empty Peckham street, turning the pavement to mirror, bouncing off the roofs of parked cars with a sound like applause. You stood in the doorway looking at it.

“Your car’s round the corner,” he said, from behind you.

“I know where my car is.”

“You’ll be soaked in about four seconds.”

“I have a coat.”

“It’s not a waterproof coat.”

You looked at your coat. He was correct; it was an aesthetic coat, a coat for looking put-together in mild weather, not a coat for this. “I’ll be fine.”

“I’ll drive you.”

“You don’t have to —”

“My car’s right there.” He nodded at a black car parked directly outside. “Yours is round the corner in this.”

Logic. Infuriating logic. “Fine,” you said.

The six steps to his car still got your shoulders wet, and he knew the way without being told, which you registered and chose not to examine. The city at nearly half eleven was a different thing: quieter, amber-lit, rain making everything soft and blurred at the edges, and you sat in the passenger seat watching London slide past and felt the pleasant and dangerous warmth of someone who had eaten well and talked for hours and was now in a small enclosed space with a person they were — you looked at your hands.

Careful, said the sensible part of your brain, which had made a full comeback. Oh shut up, said the rest of you, which was new.

“Left here.” He turned left. “And then the next right. The building with the blue door.” He pulled up.

It was a converted Victorian townhouse split into three flats, yours on the top floor with big windows and high ceilings and the kind of bones that people used words like character to describe, and you were quietly proud of it in a way you rarely told anyone.

“This is yours?” he said.

“Top floor.”

He looked at the building, then back at you. “This suits you.”

“It does?”

“Big windows,” he said simply, and you didn’t know what that meant and also understood it exactly and decided not to pursue it.

“Well,” you said. “Thank you for dinner. And the drive. You should get home, you’ve got the six–”

“It’s still raining,” he said.

“I’ll go quickly.”

“Or I could come up.”

The words landed in the car. You looked at him. He looked at you, his expression even and open, nothing in it that was pushing, just offering — like he’d put something on the table and was waiting to see what you did with it. Every sensible instinct you had lined up and said: say goodnight, go inside, this is the right place to stop.

“It’s quite messy,” you said.

“Is it?” “Not… not chaotically messy. Organised messy. There’s a system.”

“I believe you.”

“I’m also out of decent tea. I have one kind and it’s not very good.”

“That’s fine.”

“And there’s a plant in the hallway that looks dead but isn’t, before you say anything.”

“I wasn’t going to say anything about your plant.”

You looked at him for a moment longer. Then you got out of the car.

The flat was warm and smelled like the candle you’d left burning low on the kitchen counter, which you were privately grateful for because it meant the space had atmosphere you hadn’t had to engineer in the last thirty seconds. He came in behind you and stopped in the hallway and you watched him take it in: the high ceilings, the big windows running with rain, the warm lamplight, the bookshelves covering most of one wall in the living room, organised by colour because you’d gone through a phase and then committed to it. The plant in the hallway, which was fine and thriving and he glanced at but honourably said nothing about.

And the photos. The wall beside the kitchen was a gallery of frames, different sizes, no particular grid system, just things you’d loved enough to print and put up: your mum at the beach, your brother at graduation, a print of a painting you’d bought at a market in Lisbon on your first solo holiday aged twenty-four, terrified and proud of yourself, and a strip of photo booth pictures from a work Christmas party two years ago where Priya had dragged you in and you were laughing in every frame, genuinely laughing, the kind you couldn’t perform.

He drifted toward them and you filled the kettle because you needed something to do with your hands, watching him from the kitchen as he took his time, looking at each one with that same quiet attention he gave everything, and he stopped at the photo booth strip.

“This is you,” he said.

“Astute.”

“You’re actually laughing.”

“I do laugh.”

“I know. I just haven’t —” he paused. “I’ve heard you almost laugh. Where you stop it.”

You looked at the kettle. “Priya pushed me into a photo booth. I didn’t have time to stop it.”

“I like it.”

“The photo or the laughing.”

“Both.”

He turned from the photos and looked at you across the kitchen and the flat was small enough that across the kitchen wasn’t very far, and the rain was loud on the windows and the candle was still going and the kettle hadn’t boiled yet and —

“The tea really is not good,” you said. “I should warn you again. It’s some kind of —”

“Y/N.”

“— herbal thing that Priya left, I don’t actually know what’s in it —”

“Y/N.”

“— could be anything really, might be mostly —”

“Hey.” He’d moved, not a lot but enough that he was in the kitchen now, close enough that the forty-seven tabs all crashed simultaneously. “Look at me.”

You looked at him, which was a bad idea and an immediate regret, because he was looking at you the way he’d been looking at you all evening in the candlelight, the way that felt like recognition, and he was close and the rain was loud and you had genuinely just talked about herbal tea for thirty seconds to avoid this exact moment —

“I’m going to kiss you,” he said, quiet and straightforward, like he was simply providing information.

“Okay,” you said, very calmly. He leaned in. “Wait —” you said, and he stopped. “Sorry, I just —” you pressed your lips together and your heart was absolutely rioting, “I just want to say, for the record, that I’m normally a lot more composed than I’ve been the last few months, and this whole situation has genuinely been —”

“Y/N.”

“— a lot for me specifically and I don’t want you to think that I’m always —”

“Y/N.”

“— like this because I’m actually quite —”

You grabbed the front of his jacket. And kissed him.

It was not graceful, the first half-second, your timing slightly off and both of you adjusting, and then it was — warm and unhurried and tasting of the dessert wine from the restaurant, his hand coming up to your jaw like he’d thought about where to put it, the rain coming down outside and the candle burning low on the counter and the kettle boiling and clicking off and neither of you noticing.

When you pulled back you kept your eyes closed for a moment, and then opened them, and he was right there looking at you with that look, worse now somehow, more of it.

“For the record,” he said, quiet and a little rough at the edges, “you’re always composed.”

“I just talked about herbal tea for thirty seconds to avoid kissing you.”

“Composed and thorough.”

“That’s not what thorough means.”

“No?”

“No, thorough means —” you stopped. “I’m doing it again.”

“I know.” He was smiling, soft and private and just for this kitchen. “I don’t mind.”

His thumb moved, just slightly, against your jaw, and you were still holding his jacket, and outside the rain kept going, loud and committed and completely indifferent to the two of you standing in your kitchen at eleven fifty-three, figuring out something that had been waiting since February in a media room with a broken microphone.

“The tea really is terrible,” you said, very quietly.

“I’ll bring some tomorrow,” he said, equally quiet, and something in his eyes was warm and certain and patient, like someone who had decided and wasn’t revisiting it.

You nodded, once, small. “Okay,” you said.

And you smiled — not the almost-smile, not the stopped one, the real one, the Priya-photo-booth one — and he saw it and kept it like it was something worth keeping.

The candle burned. The rain came down.

It was never his intention for things to turn out that way. She was Licha’s friend. Licha's partner's home-town friend. He didn't want to be the guy who joined the team and started sleeping with someone's friend. Licha invited him to a lunch he had organized because of his Latin American generosity, and there she was, waving at him, knocking the wind out of his lungs. It wasn't his intention to become that man, but it happened. He didn’t want to be like that, but she was mesmerizing. He couldn't keep his eyes off her from the moment they met. He kept looking at her switch from impeccable English to too-fast Spanish and Mason had no idea what she was saying to Muri and Licha, but he loved it. It fascinated him so much that he couldn't stop wondering how complicated it would be to learn Spanish just because.

She was a bilingual goddess who, for some reason, ended up in Manchester. Almost two years older than him. A smile that could kill you. A laugh that could melt your heart. A face worthy of painting, framing, and hanging in museums. You could tell from her way of carrying herself that she had lived too many lives in one. Temptation in the form of a woman without even trying. Chilly once asked if he could get her number if Mason wasn’t making a move. It was right after Mason showed him a photo of her for the first time. Although it was a joke, Mason's gaze told Ben what he was thinking. That and a very calm "You want a second busted ACL, mate? Just tell me which one of your knees you value most". There were no more jokes after that.

Their relationship started by accident. He had no idea he was going to see her again, but it was like the universe laughed in his face. It was another lunch at Licha's. It wasn't going to be a big deal, just lunch and movies with friends so Mason could meet some people in the city. Mason thought he would have a normal day, but she was there, opening the door and welcoming him to hell. She gave him a friendly hug and it felt like a death sentence to smell her perfume. He had no idea which one it was, but it smelled of sin, flowers, and glory. Like a warm, sunny spring afternoon with nothing to do. Within two minutes, Mason had to breathe deeply and pretend he wasn't dying inside.

It started normal. They chatted like old friends making small talk, and then she joked that he could stay by her side to have a friendly face around. Mason knew it was a joke, but he followed her like a lost puppy seeking love and affection. At lunch, he sat by her side, listening to stories about the girls from back home. Another seven people were there talking too, but Mason had no idea what they were saying. No when she existed.

Later in the afternoon, the only free spot for movie time was by her side. Mason sat there, smiling like a happy boy when she insisted the seat wasn't saved for anyone. It would have been better for him to pretend and sit somewhere else, maybe even by Licha's side. It would have been a wise move, but his brain wasn't working at full capacity. He was still thinking about her accent, her jokes, and the smell of her perfume. He was still thinking how her hug felt.

For two hours, he had no idea how he coped with it. It wasn't just the jokes in the movie that made him laugh, it was the way she murmured she didn't like comedy movies, but she kept making silly whispering comments about it. He smiled not because of what Will Ferrell was doing, but because their hands were constantly touching inside a bowl full of sweet popcorn which she hugged like her life depended on it, but she insisted she was only sharing it with him. For two hours their arms and legs kept brushing, and she didn't seem to care, so Mason kept grinning while everyone kept thinking it was about the movie.

After that, Mason didn't see her for a month. He focused on work, training, and organizing his life. Football was the priority, but she somehow slipped his mind. He would drive around Manchester unconsciously searching for her familiar face. He would be at home and hear something on the TV that made him think of her. It reminded him of the smell of her perfume. Of the wrinkles in her nose when she laughed. Of the way her voice sounded when she whispered things to him. Of the way she would slap his arm playfully when he said something ridiculous.

It was only when he and some of the boys went to Licha's for a match that he saw her again. He didn't expect to see her, but there she was, drinking a glass of wine while seated at the kitchen counter. Suddenly, she was knocking the air out of his lungs again, and it felt like her superpower and the most horrifying curse he had ever known.

The girls promised they wouldn't interrupt while the boys were doing their thing, but all Mason wanted was to be bothered by her. He wasn’t sure he could focus on the match when she was in the house looking like a dream.

He made an effort to focus. He was able to do it for most of the first half. Kind of. Sort of. He tried not to let her gorgeous smile haunt him. He tried not to let her laughter bother him. It was disturbing when he could hear her somewhere in the house. Unless he was slowly losing his mind and imagining things. At that point, he wouldn't be surprised.

After surviving the first half of the match, he thought he had made it, but a trip to the kitchen ruined everything.

Mason felt it before he even saw her. He smelled her. He felt it in his bones, and then there she was, trying to open a bottle of wine without dying in the attempt. He didn't even ask if she needed help. In a gentle but swift move, Mason gently took the corkscrew and the bottle in her hands and opened it. A bit of a show off? Maybe. He didn't care, though.

There were many ways in which she could have thanked him. The simplest thing to do would have been to say 'Thank you' and walk away. He would have accepted anything she offered. Anything at all. Then again, she caught him off guard. She caught him by surprise. Mason didn't know what had happened, but suddenly her mouth was in his. Wine was the only explanation he could think of for how she kissed him, but he didn't care. There was nothing slow or hesitant about it. It was fast, rushed, and desperate. It was all tongues and teeth biting his lower lip. She smelled like sin once again. She tasted like trouble and glory. She acted as if she didn't need permission to claim him, and she was right. She didn’t. She marked him with the taste of sweet red wine and lip gloss and the feeling of her hands against him. Rings against his cheeks. Fingers running down his scalp and tugging at his hair just enough to make him groan. When she smiled, it made things worse. It made Mason grasp her hips and push their bodies together as if it was his last chance to survive. Like she was oxygen. Like she was the one thing keeping him standing.

Just as if she hadn't just turned everything upside down, as if she hadn't just struck him out of nowhere, she gave him the sweetest kiss. Like she was a completely different person than the one who made out with him for two minutes at a friend's house full of people. She left him confused, breathless, and dying for her after giving him a tiny, delicate kiss followed by a whispered 'Thank you for the wine, Masey'.

After that night, he sometimes saw her at Old Trafford. She was always there with Muri, tucked away in their box, looking like a goddess without even trying. The more Mason convinced himself he shouldn't try to run into her, the more he found excuses for doing so. That was his first mistake. It was the first of many mistakes.

On one particular Sunday, she looked dreamier than ever. There she was, wearing a red summer dress and a black jean jacket as if she wasn't ready to ruin his life. He saw her from the pitch when they stepped out to warm up, because how could you not see her when she was the definition of perfection? And he knew she was looking. His heart pounded inside his chest as she waved slightly, trying not to attract anyone's attention.

They ran into each other after the match as they waited for Licha to come out, Mason looking for an opportunity to talk to her. It was impossible to comprehend how she was even more stunning than before, but there she was. Maybe it was because he couldn’t do anything. Maybe it was because he knew how good strawberry lipstick tasted right off her lips. The only thing he wanted to say was hello, but while Muri and Licha hugged, she kissed Mason's cheek. Like it was normal. Like it was nothing. Like she wasn’t ruining him. Like his body didn’t shiver when he heard ‘Well played, Masey’ coming from her lips. She said it like it was a secret. A simple whisper he heard when everyone was distracted. 

The second mistake he made was looking for her on Instagram. It is said that curiosity killed the cat, and it was slowly killing Mason too. He wanted to know why she kissed him even when they could have been caught. He wanted to know if there was more to it than just flirting. He found her checking Licha's followers in no time. He probably shouldn't have sent her a DM from his personal account, but he did it anyway. He laughed too damn loud when she replied with a phone number and the words ‘I hate Instagram chat’. He didn't know whether it was an excuse or not, but he saved her number and texted her anyway.

What came after was almost inevitable. A week of texting back and forth, a lost match, and them pretending to catch up and say hi at Old Trafford. But her way of asking if he was okay cracked something open inside his chest. He couldn't recall the last time someone outside his family held his arm and asked. Because she stopped in the middle of the chaos to do it. She really wanted to know. But he couldn't do it. Not there. Not then. The best he could do was a sad smile and a 'I’ll tell you later' that wasn't very convincing. They weren’t having that conversation there, so Mason just pretended everything was fine.

He should have gone home that day. He should have gone home and stop thinking about her hand on his arm and their kiss weeks ago, but he couldn't. He texted her right after he got into his car. When she texted him back, he could still see her sitting in her car, just a short walk away from him. Mistake number three? Asking if she had any plans for that day. Mason shouldn't have asked and, for the same reason, wished she hadn't responded.

There were three dots. They disappeared. She then started writing again. Then she stopped. Suddenly there was an address. Another text followed. 'Gimme two hours’. Two long hours. 

Mason arrived one hour and forty-five minutes later after changing clothes at home and pacing the living room like a crazy man. He had no idea why he was so nervous when he got out of his car and walked to the red door. They already kissed, so that should have calmed the nerves for the uncertainty. He still had no idea why he was panicking, but he took a deep breath, pushed the doorbell button right by her flat number, and then took a deep breath again. Red door. Ten steps. First floor. The paper bag in his hand felt too heavy. Mason didn't want to go empty handed, so he got what he remembered she liked. A nice red wine. A bag of chips she snuck the first day they met. A bag of sweet popcorn. A box of Cadbury chocolates because he overheard her saying something about loving them. A bag with cookies from what internet said was the best place in Manchester. Random, but he hoped it was fine. He knew she had a sweet tooth, so he hoped it was fine.

He didn't have to knock on her door since as soon as he was in front of it, she opened it automatically. She didn't even give him a chance to think. As soon as he walked in, her arms were around him, giving him a hug. He didn't even realize he needed it. He refused to think he needed it after the game. But suddenly he was in her arms, automatically feeling lighter. Suddenly the air felt warmer and softer. Suddenly her perfume didn't smell like sin, it smelled like release.

They only talked for the first couple of hours. About their families, about her ending up in Manchester of all places, about work, movies and everything in between. They ordered takeout, talked more, and Mason finally brought up United. How he thought everything would be easier. How he thought things would be better. How it was more complicated than he expected. He finally admitted he missed London and Chelsea, his friends, and his life there. She didn't make a big deal out of it. Didn't try to give Mason advice he didn't ask for. Looking at him, she squeezed his arm and murmured, ‘It's normal and perfectly fine to feel homesick. It would be weird if you weren't’. Normal. That meant more than she would ever know.

His next mistake was accepting that glass of wine. He shouldn't have said yes, but it was the night after a match, the next day there was no training, so he could indulge. After all, he was the one who brought the bottle. It was just supposed to be a glass of wine for dinner. Then it turned into another one while watching a movie. That led them to sit closer and closer together. That led to her resting her head on his shoulder and his arm around her waist.

It wasn’t his plan when he got there. He was not thinking about it, but the moment their lips touched, everything else disappeared. The whole world faded away. That kiss had nothing to do with the first one. It was full of passion, but it wasn’t rushed like the first time. It was needy but slow. It was desperate and deep. It was relentless and soft at the same time. Like they had nowhere else to be. Like there was no rush in the world. 

There was something addictive about her. From the way she moaned his name to the way she touched him, she was everything he had wished for and more. Nobody ever felt as good as she did. Nobody ever made him feel as wanted. Her body felt like oxygen. Like water after a long match. Like a warm sunny day after months of cold. Like being home after a long trip. Mason was sure he would never forget the way she sounded, like his name was the only thing she knew. He would do anything to hear it again, to hear her again, that’s why he spent a good part of his night between her legs, forgetting the rest of the world outside the walls of her room. 

It felt different with her. Sex felt different. There was a connection between them that he hadn't experienced with anyone else. There was nothing there but them, the scratches and crescent marks left on his back, and the hickeys he should not have left on her necks and shoulders. She kissed him like she wanted to leave a permanent mark on his soul. She touched him like she owned him. She rode him as if she were trying to prove a point. She had nothing to prove, but Mason never complained. He let her do whatever she wanted with him. Let her take whatever she wanted from him. In exchange, she left him breathless. Boneless. At a level of high that nobody could ever put him in. 

He stayed there after the first time they slept together. It was too late, too cold, and the rain beat against the windows, so she asked him to stay. "I won't kick you out like some random lad I met at a party. No need to cuddle if you don't want to," she insisted, placing her hand on his chest as they lay beside each other. Any other night, with any other girl, he would have left. Normally, he would have been out the door inventing some excuse, but not with her. Not when she was warm and soft, falling asleep by his side. Not when she looked like a dream right there in his reach. Mason would have left any other night, but that night he stayed. Although she said there was no need to cuddle, he moved closer, placed his arms delicately around her body, watching her relax, hug his waist, and mold to his body like they'd been doing it for a hundred years. He didn't say anything, but it had been a long time since he had slept so well.

From then on, that was how their nights went. Clothes forgotten somewhere on the floor, hands all over each other, lips covering every inch of skin they could reach. Her bed was his personal paradise, and her hands were his salvation. Everything felt lighter when he was buried deep inside her, no matter how horrible the week had been. There was a feeling that everything would be fixed somehow. It only took a few moans to silence all the noise in his head, and kisses to heal the scratches from tackles, and Mason was perfectly content with that.

He made the mistake of thinking he could keep her at arm's length. He said friends because he didn't want to deal with anything else in his life, and she agreed, saying it was totally understandable after such a big change. They kept on being friends, chatting, texting, and running into each other at matches. She waved at him every single time she was in the box. He felt the same flip in his stomach every time. 

Eventually, it became an almost weekly thing when he wasn't away. They followed the same pattern every time. Dinner at his or her home, a drink, a movie, and one of them would be all over the other. The problem was how Mason noticed himself hugging her tighter every night they spent together. He kissed her a little longer. He smiled like a fool whenever she fell asleep on his chest. His body relaxed instantly as he lay against her.

Even then, he kept running away. He always found an excuse to stay at a certain distance when he had too many days off. Visiting friends in London. Seeing his family at home. A golf trip. A training camp. He knew it, but he didn't want to admit it. Deep down, he knew he was running away from her. From everything she made him feel. From the way he knew he would end up knocking on her door looking for love and shelter like a strangled puppy.

It started as a way to not think whenever he was stressed, but then he couldn't stop thinking about her. Suddenly everything became an excuse to run to her because he missed her. Lost a game? Red door. Win? Red door. Bad day? Red door. Missing home? Red door. Something good has happened? Red door. Every single time he was with her, he was terrified at how amazing everything was, but when he was away, he missed it more than anything. She was Mason's only constant in Manchester. That red door. Those ten steps. Her hug. That smile on her face every time she opened the door. The sweet ‘Hey Masey’ that welcomed him. The red berries scent in the air. The smell of her perfume. The brown English roll arm sofa she hated. Her kisses. The cuddles. Their dinners. Those nights in her bed. Her ability to just let him be and take a breath. No expectations. No explanations. With her, he wasn't just a name and a number. She was just Masey. Clear and simple.

She was full of calm and magic, because there was no other way to describe how she could make the tension in his shoulders drain slowly but surely with her hands on his back. Everything seemed to disappear when she was around. Stress, worry, physical and mental pain. She didn't ask any questions. Nothing about work, nothing about what happened, nothing about how everything felt apart. She knew he didn’t want any questions. He had been avoiding them. Ignoring the fire until it burned out. Meanwhile she just waited for him to talk. She let him take all the frustration out of her, then looked after him like the most precious thing in the world. With her there were no training sessions, no bad matches, no weird pitch positions, no strategies, no expectations, no football, no United mess, and no journalists wanting a piece of him after tearing him apart every week. There was no Chelsea and no shattered dreams. It was just them. Her. Her bed. Her smell. Her bedroom and the warm pink light and colorful sheets on her bed. That was his personal heaven, but Mason wouldn’t admit it, not even to himself.

Mason tried to keep a certain distance, but he couldn’t. It didn't matter how hard he tried not to think about it, everything reminded him of her. A glass of red wine, chocolate bars at the grocery store, random songs, and even watching a Disney movie with Summer. She was everywhere and Mason had no idea what to do. The real problem started after Licha got injured and she stopped attending matches. It was as if she had been ripped from a part of his life. He still saw her, had dinner and ended up in her arms, but Mason missed her. He missed her presence there. Missed seeing her in the hallways and getting a smile from her. There was something out of place when he looked up while he was in the pitch and didn't see her there. Though he would never do it, he missed the feeling of dreaming of scoring a goal for her.

Slowly but surely, his decisions began to take a toll. He was beginning to feel more at peace with everything. Manchester, the club, and being away from home. And once things began to feel like they were finally falling into place, Mason began to regret his decision to only be friends. After a while, he started hating the word. He didn't like the way it sounded when it was about her. It didn't sit well with him when it was about them. When his family asked him why he was grinning at his phone, he couldn't say ‘Just a friend’. It didn't feel right. He didn’t like the fact that she couldn’t attend to important matches just because. After a while, Mason started to hate the fact that he couldn't invite her to random places just because. He could, but everyone would know if someone saw them, and that wasn't what was supposed to happen. Her life was normal. She was Licha's friend. They weren't supposed to be together.

There was also the little detail that no one knew about them. At least nobody in Manchester knew. Only his best mates and her sister back home. They were always lying. More than once Mason saw her lying on the phone saying she couldn't go out because she had things to do. The only thing she was doing was him. She talked on the phone like it was nothing, but meanwhile she used her mouth to leave kisses on his thighs before she took him to the hilt, sucking him like a starving woman. On days like those, when Mason had to bite his cheek to keep himself from laughing or moaning, that's when he knew they could work it out. They could be good together because they already had a good relationship. It was amazing in its own way. It wasn’t forced. It was easy. It flowed. There was a magical comfort that came naturally and without effort. But the big question burning in his head day and night was how to say it. It was agreed from the beginning that they would be friends who had sex. She never mentioned wanting something different. She never gave him a hint.

As weeks passed, Mason didn't know what to do. He stopped spending international breaks away from Manchester. He kept going back to her instead of escaping. He kept knocking on the red door, and she kept opening it with a smile on her face. A kiss on the cheek was always waiting for him. There was always a hug. It was anchoring. It was grounding. It was familiar.

There have been months since then. Mason moved to a new house, Ace became part of his visits to her place. Licha returned back to the pitch. She was back at Old Trafford and took the space she would always occupy right next to Muri and the new Martinez family member. Mason kept looking up, she kept waving at him knowing how things would end. 

The holidays came and Mason hadn't seen her for a month. She travelled home to see her family, putting her an ocean away. Her Christmas present was hidden in his closet, away from his family and from any questions. He got texts from her promising to bring cool stuff for him to try. As soon as he was alone in his room on Christmas Eve, he called her, hearing her voice saying something about the crazy time difference. ‘We're living in different days!’ she giggled, making Mason wish he could be right by her side, kissing her wrinkled nose. He opened the box with her present too many times, still overthinking it. He didn't want to go too crazy with it. He wanted to keep it simple but meaningful. He found those earrings somewhere online by coincidence. It was a pair of rose-gold hoops, but the dangling charm attached was the important part. It was Scarlet Witch's crown with a heart-shaped red stone attached under it. Marvel movies were their thing. That was the first thing they discovered they had in common. That was her favorite character in the whole world. When Mason saw them, he didn't even think twice, but he couldn't help but wonder if it was too much.

Somewhere deep down, he knew that things weren't going to be easy in the New Year. It wasn't that he was pessimistic. He wasn't that kind of guy, but saying Happy New Year to her through a screen was somewhat upsetting to him. The fact that he couldn't kiss her at midnight somehow hit him harder than he expected. The fact that she was away didn't really contribute to a year that didn't start well. Ruben was sacked. Two managers. He was benched, then injured. Every single dream about going to the World Cup was slowly banishing from his hands, completely disappearing in front of his eyes. The first part of January felt like a nightmare, at least until she returned.

When they saw each other she didn’t kiss his cheek, she just went straight to his lips. She kissed him like she needed it, not caring if they were at her door. If any neighbor saw them then it was their problem for walking in. She was back, tanned, beautiful and Mason couldn’t be happier about it. She was back soft, warm, solid, grounding. The same red door. A soft smile, a tender kiss, a warm hug. For her, it wasn’t the number of matches he missed or the amount of injuries he had. He was still Masey. She still held him like he mattered above everything else. Like he was worth beyond football. 

That's how the afternoon found him. The rain was hitting the window of the tiny living room, the air smelled of red berries, the TV played softly, but neither of them paid attention to it. Ace was sleeping in her bed, offended because the sofa wasn't spacious enough for the three of them. Mason tried to complain about it, saying she was spoiling the dog, but then she would smile at him, insisting that she was treating Ace like the fluffy king he was. There was not much he could say after that.

He didn't want to fall asleep, but it was impossible to resist. Part of his body rested on top of her, his leg lazily crossed over tights, and his arms encircled around her waist like he didn't want to let go. And he didn’t want to. Not really. Especially when his face was buried in her chest, feeling her warm skin against his cheek while she wore that ridiculously tiny tank top with thin straps. She had a cardigan on, but thankfully it wasn't doing much to cover her.

It was even more difficult to stay awake when her face was buried in his hair. One hand scratched his scalp and played with his hair, the other wandered aimlessly over his back and shoulders. Whenever her fingers pressed harder against his skin, he kissed her chest, tightening his arms around her. Every time that happened, he felt her smile against his hair, kissing whatever part of him she could reach.

Those were the days Mason dreamed of. He dreamed of lazy afternoons with her without letting go. He wanted to see her every day without having to make ridiculous excuses. He wanted that without needing any reason to spend time with her. He wanted her, and it was awful. It was scary. It was all-consuming. It was full of yearning and need. There was a paralyzing feeling, and Mason was angry with himself for getting into such a mess. Maybe things would have turned out differently if he hadn't said anything about being friends back then. It wouldn't be a cat-and-mouse game. He wouldn't be praying that no other man would appear in her life and take her away from him.

He tightened his arms around her at the mere thought of it. He closed his eyes again, trying to erase the thought from his mind as he buried his face further into her neck. 

“Are you alright there?” she asked out of the blue. Mason nodded, unsure what he would say if he spoke. “You sure?”

As her lips touched his forehead, Mason nodded again. He made a path of kisses around her skin. From her neck to her collarbone, from his jaw to her chest. He even kissed the lobe of her ear and the earring she never took off after Mason gave them to her. Then he realized he had to do it. He needed to talk to her. Ask her out. Anything. Living in the weird limbo of pretending to be something they weren't was the only thing he didn't want to do. Either way, it could lead to something much better or break his heart completely, but he needed to be out of it.

"Are you going to stay there the rest of the weekend?" After two years, he knew her voice tones well enough to recognize them. He didn't need to see her face to know that she had that easy smile, the one that came out only when she was comfortable and somewhere familiar. It was the one she always gave him when they spent a lazy day in comfy clothes or half naked knowing there was nowhere to go. “You know I gotta make dinner at some point, right?” 

"Takeout exists," Mason murmured, finally speaking after what felt like a lifetime without doing it. “Whatever you want just name it. I know it’ll be Italian, though." 

“You know me too well, don’t you?” she asked sweetly, kissing his forehead again. And again, Mason kissed her on the jaw and nodded. He hated how easy everything felt. How good it felt. How at home he always felt with her. He hated how he couldn’t have that every day of his life. “We can order something else if you don’t feel like Italian. I don’t mind."

"I know I'm in for an Italian ride when I come here, so I'm fine. I was mentally prepared for it.” The sound of her giggle made his heart leap and flip. It made him wonder how he could have been so stupid from the very beginning. “We can order from that place with nice ravioli? That one you like.”

Mason didn't care where they ordered dinner. He couldn't care less about whether they ordered Italian or Mexican food. All he wanted was for her to be happy. If a plate of ravioli from a posh restaurant could make her smile, he was more than willing to do it. Especially when he knew she never ordered from that place because of its price.

“But I’m paying. I’m tired of you paying for dinner." 

“You know there’s no way that’s happening, Bear.” 

And there was his favorite smile, the one she saved for him. The one that came out when he used the nickname he gave her after one Halloween party and she loved it because nobody ever gave her a special nickname. When she smiled like that, no matter how bad or how hard his day was, everything became brighter. 

"Then I'll cook." 

"No, no, no!” Mason exclaimed, tightening his grip on her. "You'll pay next time." 

“Pinky promise?” she asked, offering her little finger. He didn't doubt it. Looking up at her eyes, he untangled one of his arms from around her and laced their fingers. Then, once their hands were finally together, he took his time to kiss her knuckles, making it his own way to seal the deal. “You better remember it next time. You don't want me to cut off your finger." 

A chuckle escaped Mason's lips as he rested his head against her chest once more. However, he didn't let go of her. Half-laced hands rest against her chest right by his face, within easy reach of another part of her body for him to kiss.

Ten minutes passed without anyone saying anything. Mason knew there was a true crime documentary on TV, but he didn't pay attention. His eyes were closed, focused on the sensation of her fingertips and lips against his skin. She still kissed every inch of him that she could reach. Her hand still stroked his head. There was nothing more natural than her thumb running against his knuckles. She was tenderness personified. She was a balm for his heart. She was the calm in the storm. She was his home away from home.

Mason was so completely in love with her that he had no idea what to do anymore. 

“You still miss the longish hair?" Mason broke the silence.

“I do miss Hair Prince Masey. But I told you, I still can work with this. You still look handsome and I can still grab it, so we are good. As long as it isn't too short, I'm good. And as long as this stays,” she smiled, stroking his jaw while brushing her fingers through his beard. 

“What? You didn’t like me shaving?”

"You know it's not that I didn't like it. But I do prefer it like this. I like how it feels. But if you want a change, you can always go back to blonde hair. It was sexy as fuck," she giggled, ruffling his hair. Sometimes he wasn't sure why she gave him the time of day when he had that blonde-in-the-middle-of-a-crisis hair. Mason didn't understand why she liked it, but he didn't complain. "But it doesn't matter what you do, you're cute no matter what." 

It didn't take Mason long for his cheeks to turn red. In two years, she told him uncountable times that he was handsome, but each time he blushed uncontrollably. It wasn't the first time a girl told him something like that, but it was different with her. It hit him differently when the woman of his dreams said those words. It always left him hanging and looking at her like she hung the whole galaxy for him.

"Shut up."

"You're even cuter when you're blushing. However, I must get up, good sir," she told him, kissing his forehead again as she untangled herself from his body.

“Oi! What? Why? It’s not fair!" he complained as he looked up at her, doing grabby hands and pouting to make her stay. “I was comfy!”

"Me too, but some things can only be done in the bathroom. I’ll be back in a second and then we can check out dinner?"

Mason nodded, still pouting at her. At least he got a long, slow kiss that left him smiling as he watched her walk away. He knew he was going to ask her out that night. He was going to ask her while they were having dinner. With the excuse of Italian food, he planned to ask her out to dinner at the same restaurant they were going to order from. It was Valentine’s Day, so he could use it as an excuse. A date. An actual date. A real thing. Picking her up, opening the door, and pulling her chair. He wanted to make sure he was doing it right. He wanted to tell her the truth. Only he hoped that he wouldn't end up going home alone instead of going to bed with her. 

Minutes later, she left the bathroom, but she didn't immediately go to the couch. As she passed by, she ruffled his hair, then walked to the kitchen. “Want some water?” 

“Nah, thanks, babe. You're ordering the same thing as last time?" Mason asked, grabbing his phone off the coffee table where it had been forgotten all day. 

"Maybe? Gimme a second and I’ll tell you.” 

As Mason hummed in agreement, he opened the app to find the restaurant. Whatever they ordered didn't really matter, but one thing was certain: the focaccia with tomatoes. Even if she didn't mention it, Mason always included it, seeing her face light up every time because he remembered how much she loved it. He had no idea what he was going to order, but as soon as he secured her focaccia in the cart, he began looking at the menu.

It was then that he heard it. 

'B, you know I can't make it on Saturday. Got a date with a cute guy named Charlie.'

Listening to other people's conversations was not in his nature. Even though he wasn't that kind of guy, he heard it loud and clear. Just like he heard her from the kitchen, he was surprised that she didn't hear his heart breaking.

It wasn't a date with him. He didn't know she went on dates. Mason understood that it wasn't his concern. He knew there was no exclusivity agreement. They had a deal. If they slept with anyone else, there would be a heads up. Health safety measures. That was it. In the past two years, there have been no mentions of it. She didn't mention anything. He didn't either because he didn't want to sleep with anyone else. He wanted her and for a second he thought she wanted him too. He let himself dream and believed she wanted him, but perhaps he was just a fool. He might have been too late after all.  

“Okay, now tell me, what are we having? I mean, besides the wine," she joked, walking into the living room as if nothing was wrong. Like she didn't tell her friend about her date when she never said anything about them. “Masey?” 

“You have a date? Since when?”

He didn’t mean it to sound as harsh as it did. He didn't intend it to sound as accusatory as it did. Neither of them owned anything to the other, but it just slipped from his lips. He couldn’t help it when his heart bounced into his chest. He could feel a knot forming in his stomach. The lump in his throat. The pain in his chest. There was a voice in his head yelling him he'd lost her, that he'd lost his chance. He sat there paralyzed, staring at her like it was the biggest betrayal of his life. 

“Perdón?” 

Mason might not have had a lot of Spanish knowledge. He learned some words and managed to pronounce them in a messy English accent. His two years in Manchester with an Argentinian and an Uruguayan had given him enough exposure to the language, but she taught him the basics. They spent so many nights lying in bed together, her fingers tracing lazy lines over his chest, laughing like idiots while she taught him insults he could use in a match. He knew some words she used to talk to him and melted every time she called him 'amor' instead of 'love' out of the blue. He was familiar with the basics, which is how he knew she dropped an annoyed 'Excuse me?'.

He looked at the floor completely ashamed, not even daring to look into her eyes. Week in and week out, he faced players that were much larger than him, ready to break his bones in order to win, but no defender was as frightening as her. The fact that she said it in Spanish made it even more scary because Mason knew how her brain worked. Her mother tongue was only used when she was surrounded by friends who spoke it or when she was angry. He never imagined he could screw up so badly that it happened, but there he was, not knowing what to do.

“Bear, listen-“ Mason tried to explain. He wanted to say something, fix it, get back to their normal evening, and leave everything behind. When he opened his mouth, he instantly regretted it. It would have been easier for him if he had never heard a word, so he could live in utter ignorance. He just wanted to order food, have dinner, kiss her, and go to bed by her side. He tried to explain that he didn't mean it that way, but she interrupted him.

“You were listening to my conversation? Since when?” she asked completely in disbelief. He couldn't blame her for looking hurt. They were not like that. That was never them. 

“I just- You always talk on the phone in front of me and-“

“That’s not what I asked you!” she exclaimed, crossing her arms against her chest like a shield between them. "Since when do you care whether I have a date or not? Because last time I checked, you made it clear that you were my friend. It was your idea to start with.” 

"I thought it was the right thing to do and you agreed!" Mason knew that his words weren't making things better. Even though he knew things would get worse, he wanted to remind her how she agreed with him at the beginning. They agreed on everything. They were on the same page. “But I thought there was something good between us. I thought we were onto something good. I didn't think you would date anyone."

"You didn't think, and now that you believe someone stole your toy, you're jealous? Jesus, Mason.” 

She paced the floor while he was still there, frozen in place. He wanted to hold her hand. He wanted to ask her to stop, but he didn’t think he had the right to touch her. No when it felt like there was a bridge between them. It was not the distance he felt that hurt him the most, but the fact that she thought she meant nothing to him. That was what he needed to clarify first, even when the knot in his throat was a constant threat.

"You think this is just about that? You think I just use you as a toy? You think that makes me jealous? I'm mad at myself for taking too fucking long to ask you out. It took me too long, and now you're clearly going out with someone else on bloody Valentine's Day. But it’s fine. You’re right. That was the deal. It was my idea. Friends.” 

“You’re unbelievable, Mount.” She fought to hide it. She tried to do it quickly so Mason wouldn't see it. She tried to pretend it didn't matter, but Mason could see her wiping a tear from her cheek. It wasn't the first time he had seen her cry. He dried her tears on bad days when she just wanted to hide away, holding her until she felt better or fell asleep. However, he never made her cry. The promise he made to himself to always make her smile was broken that night, and everything felt even worse. “You could have heard Charlie was not a guy if you listened to the whole conversation rather than just the part you wanted to hear” she added, turning toward her living room window. 

“What?”

"Brooke and Sam have a new cat. He's too tiny and it's their anniversary, so I’m taking care of him. That’s my date. You never mentioned a thing about Saturday so I thought you didn't care.”

It hit Mason like a truck. A slap on the face would have been better. It was worse than any hit or injury he ever had on the pitch. He acted like a jealous idiot and made her cry for nothing. He hurt her for nothing more than a ghost. He was destroying the best thing he had out of fear. He had never felt so stupid in his life. He had never felt so ashamed of himself. He couldn't understand why she wasn't kicking him out. It didn't make sense to him why he wasn't outside the flat, going back home with Ace.

“Bear… Baby, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I’m- God, I’m an idiot. I’m an utter cunt. I’m so sorry. I know I don’t have the right to ask anything of you. I know you owe me nothing. I know it's not a justification, but I really panicked." 

Mason stood up from the couch, but didn't move close to her. There was nothing he wanted more than to hold her in his arms, but he didn't want to push. He knew she was stubborn. She had a tendency to close when she got mad. She always needed a moment to calm down and regain her composure. It was her thing and he respected it, so Mason stayed there, trying to breathe through the panic of losing her and the reality that maybe he already did. 

"I should have told you sooner. I should have done it long ago, but I couldn't figure out how to just sit in front of you and say 'Hey Bear, I broke rule number one and I'm falling for you'. That wasn't the deal, and I didn't want to stop seeing you. I tried to stop it instead. I tried to stop how I feel. I swear I tried. God knows I tried, but that’s not how it works. There’s no switch to turn it off. I tried, but then you kiss me and that’s it. I- God, I forget about everything else. You text me and I come running because I want to be here. The only reason I'm not going insane here is because of you. There are all these rumors about the club and me and-" He swallowed hard, trying to get rid of the knock in his throat. He took a deep breath, too, but it was all for nothing. The only person who could help the pressure on his chest go away didn't want to look at him, so he just sucked it up and kept talking. "If that happens then I know how this ends. I know how this is gonna go and I don’t want to. Leaving Manchester means losing you and that’s not how I want things to be. It feels like a never ending nightmare and every single time I feel I’m gonna lose it I see you and everything gets better. Every time I see you at my couch with Ace or here doing your thing, I feel like I can breathe again. I can pretend that things are normal. I can convince myself that nothing will change for a while. Then I go out there or you leave my place and it all goes to shit again. But the noise stopped for a while when we were together. It was enough to let me sleep through the night. I’m not trying to justify what I said. I’m sorry I jumped. I know I shouldn’t have. I know I don’t have the right to. But I- I don’t wanna lose the one good thing that happened to me in this city. I don’t wanna let this, you, us, go. Not until they-"

He couldn’t keep going. He couldn’t say it. Saying it made it real and he didn’t want it, not that night.

It was only a few minutes, but it felt like hours. His heart arched. The air felt thick to him as he breathed. A room that had once seemed like home had now become a war zone that he brought upon them. And there he was, with his heart in his hand, waiting for her to move.

From all the relationships he had, this was the first time he was truly terrified of endings. Even though he never fully had her, he was afraid of losing her. Of losing what they had. Of walking through that door for the last time. Of knowing those hours on the couch, in her arms, in her life, were going to be the last. It made his heart ache to think that little kiss before she went to the bathroom might be their last. He should have kissed her more. He shouldn’t have hugged her more. Tighter. Longer. He should have said something before. He should have done it because he knew she wouldn't mention anything no matter how much she wanted it. She was too respectful of his time and career. He knew how much she respected his need to keep his life private. He was the one to blame considering how well he knew her. 

Now, she was the one not saying anything, which made it terrifying since she was always saying something. He wanted to beg her to talk to him. To yell at him. To tell him to fuck off. But there was nothing more than the distant noise coming from the TV, the rain hitting the window and her soft sobs that she was trying to hide. 

"I accepted the goddamn agreement because I was stupid enough to convince myself that having you somehow was better than not having you at all," she finally murmured. Mason stayed silent, letting her speak before regretting her decision. "I told myself to give you some time, thinking that maybe if I was lucky you'd like me enough to change your mind one day. I thought maybe one day you would change your mind about us and what you wanted. Maybe one day we could- I don't know. Every time you knock at my door or text me to come over I get all excited thinking, 'Maybe this time'. But it’s never that time, so I say ‘Maybe the next one’. I guess I was an idiot. I was stupid enough to think a girl like me would stand a chance with you and your shiny life like in some ridiculous fairy tale."

“What? Babe, no. Why you...?” He didn't have to finish the question.

“You needed time. You needed to figure things out. But now? I have no idea what we're doing. I know you're dealing with United and the injury, but I don't know what to do. You come here every week and we do this, we act like we’re something we're not. We play house on the weekends and then I think it’s over and you call again and it’s getting harder, Mase. Letting you go gets harder. It hurts. It's really painful to tell myself that's the way it is. Wanting something you won't get is hard. There is no way I can explain how painful it is to want someone you'll never have. I don't know how long I can still be your dirty little secret, Mase."

After two years of coming and going, running one after the other, of nights spent in her bed, of lazy afternoons held in his arms, Mason knew her. He grew to know her body like the back of his hand. He knew if anyone else had that conversation with her, she would run away. That's why he knew he should give her time. The time to take a breath, to think, to even overthink things. He should give her space to decide what to do and what was going to be her next step. He knew better than to push himself into her bubble unless she asked him to. He knew better to stay away unless she came to him. But that night, Mason broke every single rule in the book about how to handle her bad mood and sadness. He wasn’t gonna give her time when she was thinking he didn’t want her. He wasn't going to give her space, especially if it would give the wrong impression. 

Though he never said it, he understood everything she was going through. The situation was getting harder for him as well. Leaving her bed, leaving her space, her arms and her kisses. Feeling like a couple doing domestic things, but then leaving and returning to being her friend. He had a constant feeling of panic in the back of his mind. There was a constant feeling of terror inside his chest. Fear of losing her. Of her finally getting tired of him. Of having someone better show up and give her everything she deserves when Mason was dying to do so. 

Slowly, Mason grew closer to her with calculated steps. Firstly, he stroked her arm, his fingers caressing her smooth skin. Seeing that she didn't move, he placed both hands on her hips. When she stayed, when she sobbed louder than ever before, Mason rounded her body. His arms rested around her waist and his chin rested against her shoulder while his chest touched her back. He could only think about how she didn't push him away and how she said 'Mase'. No Mason, no Mount. It wasn’t the usual 'Masey' she would go for, but it was something. There was still a crack where he could get through among the tall walls she built around herself. If she said 'Mase', then not everything was lost. 

“You aren’t a dirty little secret. You've never been that. You could never be that,” Mason clarified first, making sure she heard that before he kept talking. "I swear it isn't like that. 

"That's what it feels like." 

"I promise you that's not what it is. I have wanted this since we met. I've always wanted you, this, and us, but I was a mess. I wanted to give you something good, but I didn’t know how. I didn't want to drag you into a storm because I had no idea what to do with myself. You know my job involves a lot of ridiculousness, and I wanted to protect you from that. I wanted to keep the bubble around us as long as possible, especially since I had no answers when anyone asked me what we were." Mason explained carefully, softly, trying to make his voice calm even when he was a mess.

There wasn't a need for him to see her face to know she was slowly relaxing. When he kissed her shoulder and she didn't push him away, that's when he knew she was with him. It gave him hope. “I thought you wanted things to stay the same because you never came to matches when I invite you. The minute I mentioned going somewhere, you said we shouldn't. I was about to ask you out when I heard you talking about a date. That's why I snapped even when I shouldn't have."

She was still hugging herself. She still had her arms glued to her body even when Mason hugged her waist. He recognized that pose. He recognized the tension in her shoulders and back. He had seen the ‘I'm trying to hold myself together’ many times before. Several times after work, he had opened his house's door and found her like that. It was normal back then for her to let Mason keep the pieces together for her. The first step would be a long hug by the door. This time he could see her shoulders slowly relaxing, but her arms were still in their place. All Mason expected was her letting him hug her and he was fine with that. It would still be a victory to not be kicked out of the flat, even if it meant sleeping on the couch. But slowly, tentatively, timidly he felt the tip of her fingers touch his arm. Heaven knows, he had to bite his cheek so he wouldn't smile.  

“I said no because I didn’t want to be a bother. I didn’t want you to get into trouble. There's no excuse for me not to be there if Licha isn't playing. A quarterfinal and a semifinal I can lie about, but the rest? I wanted to be there, but didn't know how. I didn't want to cause you more trouble. I didn’t want to be another burden” she finally admitted, voice almost a whisper. He didn’t know how much it took for her to admit such a thing. It probably took as much courage as it took her to slowly unwrap her arms. 

It felt like he could breathe again when he felt her hands over his. It felt like heaven. Like home. Her fingerlaces laced with his felt like a glimmer of hope. But sadly, Mason had to let her hands go for a moment. He didn’t go away, just moved around to stand in front of her. For a second he wished he didn’t because the sight in front of him broke his heart even more. Her beautiful eyes, normally full of light, were now full of tears, all red and sad. Her cheeks were wet. And her mouth was a tiny pout that Mason wanted to kiss until it turned into a smile again. But he didn't dare kiss her. He wasn’t going to push it that far. The only thing he did was place his hand on her cheeks, meeting her gaze. 

“You could never be a bother,” Mason assured her softly, gently stroking her cheeks. "You could never be a burden to me, baby. Not even if you tried. If anything, you have been one of the most amazing things that have happened to me since I moved here. I’m sorry I made you cry. And I’m sorry I made you wait so long. You weren't the problem, it was me. So if you still want to do this, I'd really love to take you out. The whole deal, you know?”

“You’re an idiot.” It wasn’t a question. There was no doubt about it. It was an affirmation and Mason knew she was right about it.

"I know, I know. But I’m an idiot who’s ready to beg you not to kick him out tonight because he really wants to cuddle with you. And probably for the rest of his life. I'm an idiot, but I want to be your idiot, holding hands, taking you on dates,anything you want."

She still had a serious expression on her face. She still looked like she was mad as hell at him. Her forehead was still frowning, and her face was red from crying, but out of the blue, she rested her hands over his chest as she always did. It took everything he had not to smile like a silly kid in love. He had to take a deep breath and pretend he was fine, but she was surely feeling his heart jumping inside his chest. There was no way she wouldn’t notice. 

“I’m not kicking you out tonight, but you’ll have to work for it. Now dinner is definitely on you. You are definitely taking me on a date. And you’re the one talking to Licha about this” she affirmed, poking his chest with her fingers at everything she named on the list. 

"Licha's gonna kill me, baby. You know it."

"Then you should have thought twice before kissing me."

"You kissed me first!" 

"Then you should have thought about it before getting inside my pants."

"Did you ever look at yourself in the mirror? How could I resist?" 

“Look who’s talking,” she murmured, shrugging slightly. “One last thing. I want a jersey with your name to go to Old Trafford. I’m gonna be that kind of bad bitch.” 

“Hey, don’t call my girlfriend a bad bitch. She’s just badass as hell.” And finally, she smiled. There was a tiny, shy and adorable smile on her precious face after what seemed like a lifetime. It was a beginning, but it meant everything to Mason. “Oi! She smiles! Look at that! All I had to do was say the magic word!” 

It was impossible to describe how relieved he felt when he saw her smile. It was like a breath of fresh air. Like breathing again after holding it for too long. It felt even better to say the word he had wanted to use for months. He couldn’t describe the happiness of finally calling her his girlfriend and the fact that she didn't tell him it was too much. She didn’t reject him. She didn’t push him away. She just had that cute, small smirk that could melt icebergs just as easily as she could melt his heart. 

“I still can kick you out,” she replied quickly, slapping his chest in revenge. Mason didn’t mind. He just grabbed her hand and brought it to his lips, kissing each one of her knuckles with nothing but patience and love. "Or better yet, I can change you for a cat. He’ll probably behave better than you do.” 

“Yeah, we'll talk about that Charlie guy later. I'm not a fan of it. I don't think Ace is gonna like it either. What if he licks you or something? He pointed out with complete fake seriousness. Now that the storm had passed, he was there to make every joke about it. 

“What if he takes me on a date and all?”

“Low blow, I deserve it. But hey, I can take you on dates and lick you too!”

He didn’t think about it, he just leaned over, but instead of giving her a kiss like he would normally do, he licked her lower lip like a cat would do. The giggles that came from her were all he ever needed. Now she sounded like herself, full of joy, light, and warmth. It was like being back to hours earlier when they were laughing together on the couch. 

“You’re seriously ridiculous. You're lucky I'm crazy about you." He knew he was lucky. Heaven knew he was a lucky guy for too many reasons, but he was happy to add her to the list. Mason was lucky enough to be able to kiss her head and keep her close to his body. “Hey Mase?”

“Mmhm?”

“The whole United thing? I hear you. I don't want you to worry about us. It doesn't need to end. We'll figure it out if it happens. At the end of the day Manchester is just another city. That's not really what matters. "Not to me," she whispered, resting her hand on his chest. 

“You mean it?” 

“Hundred percent. As long as I have you and puppy eyes I’m all good. But I want cheese ravioli with bolognese. And for breakfast I want those yummy cookies you got me once. And cuddles. Lots of cuddles. I think I deserve a kiss as well. After the trauma, the tears, and especially calling me your girlfriend without even asking. I think you should close the deal." 

He didn't think. He didn't say a word. His hands moved under her shirt and over her cheek as he kissed her. It wasn’t just to keep her close, but to keep himself grounded by her warm skin against his. It was their first kiss as something else, but definitely not as friends. It was their first kiss while shifting into a couple and somehow it was the same, but better. It was sweeter than usual.