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randombush3 · 20 days

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you're not sorry to go

ona batlle x reader

summary: ona and you are best friends, but it's a bit more complicated than that

words: 4.5k

notes: this one is based on true events x

also let's ignore the result of my poll because i want the next part to have smut and it wasn't fitting with the vibe of this part

oh and the title is a quote from 'this side of paradise' by f. scott fitzgerald

January, nine years ago.

Nothing about today has been out of the ordinary.

The weekend is starting, winter drags on, and Ona is all set to train later on in the evening, provided you confirm whether or not you are willing to accompany her to the local pitch.

Barcelona B usually allows for Fridays off, but Ona isn’t stupid. No one becomes the greatest footballer of all time by not playing more. School is beginning to bore Ona to death, and she knows that she wants what she always has: to go professional.

“I have a plan,” she tells you confidently, glad you don’t mind sitting on the uneven, grassy sideline as she sets up her cones with determination. You hold the ball between your hands, though Ona is amused by how foreign it looks to you, and you seem to be holding her prized possession hostage so that she spills. “It sounds simple and obvious out loud, but it’s that I am going to play for Barça while you go to the university. You can introduce me to your smart friends so I can meet my wife, and you’ll have all the boys after you anyway so–”

“Ona.” Her monologue has led her eyes to the ground, but your voice makes her head jerk upwards, not needing much authority to get her to look at you. “I’ve actually had a… realisation, of sorts,” you say with a bashful grin, chin jutting out the way it does when you are gearing up to tell her something that no one else will get to know. “Your cousin is really pretty.”

“I’ll tell her you said that.” It’s a nice thing to say, and you are partly aware that Ona’s cousin knows who you are because she doesn’t shut up about you ever, but you can’t help the frustration that begins to bubble up inside of you.

“No, Ona,” you try again, “she’s really pretty. Like, I would kiss her.”

Ona frowns, then. “Don’t be one of those.” She means the girls who experiment, who toe the line of liking girls but don’t, not really. She has been warned about them by her older teammates, the ones who go out for drinks and kiss girls in clubs. The budding footballer really admires them, because their advice is always good and she gets to explore her sexuality without feeling like a creep. No one in Vilassar de Mar cares much that Ona does like girls, but it doesn’t stop her from feeling judged all the same.

You are one of her best friends, but Ona isn’t sure she can forgive you if you become someone like that.

“I’m not! I wouldn’t do that.” Your offence is suspicious, and you have been so caught up in destroying her worries that the ball has been dropped and is now rolling towards Ona’s feet, where it is instinctively flicked upwards and caught. “I wouldn’t, Oni, because I know it’s unfair to you guys.”

“But you want to kiss my cousin? That makes you interested in girls in general too, you know.”

You bite your lip.

“Ona, I think I’m gay.”

The ball is dropped, along with her jaw, and you shift uncomfortably in your seated position, not enjoying how big of a deal she is making this out to be.

People realise that they’re gay all the time! Why should it be any different for you?

“Oh,” is all Ona can manage to breathe out, wondering what to do next. Although your friendship cracks the padlocks of most secrets, there is one that hasn’t ever been shared. One that now means substantially more than it did five minutes ago.

“Say something, please,” you groan in mock annoyance, moving aside your textbooks so that you can grab Ona’s hand and pull her down on top of you. She is much stronger – she trains every day – but something about your skin touching hers injects a surge of patheticness into her well-earned muscles, and she falls, of course she does, because she always falls for you.

…

A year passes.

You kiss Ona’s cousin, as intended, and Ona knows the breakup is going to be rough but nothing prepares her for when it comes.

She’s conflicted, and she’s older now. No longer left behind by her teammates, Ona gets to go out with them when they don’t have football; she gets to talk to the girls about their sex lives, she gets to be involved in it all. She has met Alexia Putellas and been treated like an equal, and she made out with her fourth ever girl last week, this time progressing past tongues and confidently letting her hands roam.

Ona would say that she has learnt a lot since you dropped your nuclear missile, and she has managed to forget the initial hope she had felt. The secret had been near-faded.

Until you are calling her, sending her a text when she doesn’t reach her phone quick enough.

‘Ona, I really need you.’

She hears nothing from her cousin – they were closer when they were younger – and that, she reasons, is why she is by your side in an instant, meeting you at the windy beach you go to when you are sad, hair damp from running and eyes a little wide as she tries to wake herself up.

“She said she can’t do it anymore,” you whisper, voice cracking under the strain your sobs had put on it. “She said that she really likes me but that it’s not enough, and she doesn’t want to break my heart but she knows she has to.”

Ona doesn’t get a chance to respond, because you have flung yourself into her chest before she can think of the right words to say.

Your shoulders shake as you cry, devastating howling joining the whistles of the wind and the thrash of the waves. The sand is unsteady beneath your feet and you stumble, but Ona holds you firmly, as though she has only ever trained to hold you up. Though you feel her biceps, hard and significantly larger than the last time she had held you this way, you are too caught up in your first heartbreak to acknowledge the tiny, tiny spark between you.

As you cry and cry and cry, Ona can’t help but feel a little bitter towards her cousin. Clearly, your affection wasn’t false and, though it was working towards the severance of your friendship, you actually cared quite a lot for her.

Ona chooses to abstain from her jealousy because she is embarrassed that it is possible.

She is there for you the next day, ensuring you have eaten and allowing you to sleep, but the sun soon sets and Ona vows one thing to herself: she will not take advantage of it.

“I’m going home,” you mumble when you wake from your restless nap, rolling over into the empty space in your best friend’s bed. The sheets there are cold and unused. Ona must not have moved a muscle since you fell asleep. “My parents must be a little confused, and we have people coming over for dinner. Thank you for looking after me.”

“No problem.” Ona nods and you awkwardly stand up. “I think I’m going out with the team tonight, but don’t hesitate to call me if… Well, if you feel sad again.”

“It’s going to feel shit with or without you.”

You are trying to distance her, to tell her that she can have fun. It might be an issue that your friendship only seems to work when the two of you discuss your recent conquests or latest flings, but it is not one that either of you wants to address for now.

“I’m just making sure you know I’m here,” she defends indignantly, rolling her eyes at the glimpse of your happier self making its return.

“Are you going to be drunk?” Your question is pointed and you should really cross your arms and tap your foot impatiently to match your tone. “Don’t you have training tomorrow?”

“Maybe, and not tomorrow, no. I’ve been asked to join the first team the day after so they’ve given me an alternative rest day.”

“Ona, if you get drunk, you won’t be there for me at all. You’ll have your tongue down some poor, poor girl’s throat and your phone will be dead.” You laugh from experience, having grown accustomed to how she behaves under the influence. “I appreciate the sentiment, but I swear that alcohol is what fuels your hormones. I’m not going to burden you with my fucking pathetic crying, and, well, you know me, I’ll just find a boy to talk to. I am going to be fine.”

No one in the room is convinced.

You swat the air between you two, telling her to get on with getting ready. “Now, enjoy your night, and tell me all about it tomorrow morning!”

Ona wonders if you are over-compensating by insisting to hear about whoever she has gotten off with, but you are practically flying out the door the minute you have said goodbye to her family and she is stumbling around her room trying to find a clean bra. Life goes on.

If time did not tick on its own, one of you would task yourselves with turning the hands of the clock manually.

You try to recover from how much it fucking kills to have a girl break your heart by reminding yourself of your worth in the best way possible: male attention. They hound you, but you enjoy it. You crave it, most of the time, even if the feelings are never quite believably reciprocated.

It annoys Ona to no end, the way you play with the boys chasing after you. She hates the push and pull, fed-up with the constant complaining from your end. Often, because Ona speaks her mind when she can, she tells you that it’s not fair on the ones who hand their hearts to you only to watch you pierce through them with sharp, I-was-never-a-lesbian nails.

You don’t talk about her cousin. At least, not to Ona because you have been informed by some other friend that blood is thicker than water.

Or maybe it’s because Ona begins to avoid you, begins to spend more time with her teammates, who don’t hide their sexuality and who like the things she likes. (Once, in a hateful frenzy, Ona thinks to herself that the only thing the two of you have in common nowadays is that she likes you and you like you too.)

“What happened to your best friend?” Laia Aleixandri asks thoughtfully once after training. Ona is helping her collect the water bottles the other girls had left lying around on the pitch. There have been more injuries than what’s comfortable within the first team, and maybe some of the reserves have forgotten that they are not yet professionals. “You’ve stopped talking about her.”

“We’ve fallen out,” Ona answers, settling on that because she doesn’t know how else to describe the shift in your relationship.

“Over what?” comes Laia’s obvious sequential question, more a due dalliance than genuine interest. Laia is one of those girls who plays to play and can sometimes be too busy to spend time with the team outside of training. Because of this, she is largely unaware of Ona’s growing reputation within the squad. As Ona has grown up, her confidence has increased. Girls like that, and they are in plentiful supply to her. She no longer needs to be drunk, but something almost certainly occurs if she is.

“She dated my cousin and, I don’t know, the way she acted in the fall-out was horrible. She likes girls, I know she likes girls, but I think she has been scarred and her ego has been bruised. No boy has ever made her cry like that, and I think she’s traumatised. And it’s valid! I understand, completely and totally, but she is acting as though she never had a thing with my cousin and it’s annoying. It’s as if being gay is a joke to her.”

Laia senses that Ona’s not done, and she is correct to think so.

The next wave is this: “Laia, I really don’t agree with it, and it is hurting me. It hurts to see my cousin be messed around by a straight girl, it hurts to see my best friend hate part of herself, and it hurts me because, well, it just– it just does! I can’t explain it.” She can; she doesn’t want to. Her secret is still heavily guarded and it is going to take more than Laia asking about you to get her to confess. “I just want peace for everyone involved,” she says after taking a deep, diplomatic breath.

“Peace,” Laia repeats with a giggle. “Ona, the things I have heard about you are the opposite of ‘peace’. Aita’s been keeping me in the loop, and she says that–”

“Okay, Laia, I don’t need a lecture.”

What probably would have been very helpful for Ona to know is lost to the devastating final blow of her eye-roll as she jogs to the water cooler to return the bottles and head home.

…

The reconciliation of a decade-old friendship is fast and natural. Things do not quite go back to normal, and the two of you are not as close as before, but your group of friends at school breathe out a collective sigh of relief when the ice thaws and Ona starts to turn up to their gatherings instead of the ones held by her beloved blaugranas.

It’s a camping trip.

Their first year of bach has ended, and someone – Ona doesn’t know who – has suggested a camping trip because her grandfather’s brother owns a farm and the farm has a field and the field is far-removed enough for the smell of cigarettes and red-label whiskey to dissolve before reaching the house.

“Are we really going?” Ona asks, making you all laugh as you haul your bags and tents along the tractor path.

“I do think we should’ve gotten in the tractor,” you agree. Ona nods at you, thanking you for your support.

Everyone else says it’s good fitness, and then hurls insults at Ona for the remainder of the trek because she should be the last to complain if she is going to become a professional athlete.

It’s not as far as it seems, and the tents are set up quickly, along with some chairs, a foldable table, and a hefty stash of various bottles of alcohol.

You start smoking the minute someone flashes their lighter, and Ona uses that as a reason to stay on the other side of the small campsite for a good hour or so.

She stays away from you no matter how much you stare, but you watch her all the same.

The boys you talk to are not satisfying. Some may have innocent intentions but the majority don’t, and you know that you are pretty but you are not shallow like that. You don’t even meet the boys half the time unless they corner you at school and demand a slot of your in-person attention.

The boys you talk to explain football and the gym and why they have to play FIFA until the sun rises because it will definitely help Barcelona win on the weekend. They take you for an idiot, and they hardly acknowledge that your best friend (sort of) plays for their darling club so of course you know the rules and the positions. You know that Ona is a defender, and that she is good at it. You don’t want to be patronised and you don’t care about this kind of thing unless it involves Ona.

Therein lies the issue, actually.

You don’t care about much unless it involves Ona. Ona, who sways to the music bursting out from the speakers just as stiffly as she always has, not exactly blessed with dancing talent but not for lack of trying. Ona, who declines alcohol tonight because she is following a summer strength and conditioning programme with the hopes of playing in the first team’s preseason matches. Ona, who looks beautiful. Always.

Smoke billows from your cigarette, right towards the point of your focus, and, suddenly, doe-like eyes are staring back at you with a small, small smirk. She waves, as if to say that she has caught you, and you lean back on the camping chair you are slouched in, pretending to laugh at whatever your friend has just said beside you.

Later, when everyone else is knocked out from the bad quality of the whiskey, snoring comfortably in the other tents, Ona and you kiss. And once you start kissing, you don’t stop.

Ona is good at this, you assume, because she knows exactly what to do. Contrary to popular belief, you are far more active in theory than in practice, and she surprises you a little bit. Or maybe she doesn’t, because it’s Ona and Ona is good at everything.

You strive to match her, and you do by the time you finish school.

Sporadic, non-committal, and in complete disregard for your friendship, the arrangement of hooking up when you feel like it sees you out of Catalonia, with Ona naturally in tow.

Madrid CFF is happy to have her, and you quite enjoy the challenge of the Spanish capital. It’s not Barcelona, it’s not ideal, but change is good and you need space to explore who you are without watchful eyes and nosy gossipers.

Homophobia isn’t quite a thing in your family. Your parents are not radically against gay people. In fact, you’d say they are relatively supportive. However, that doesn’t stop you from feeling some discomfort. You lived through Ona’s struggle to come out, and her parents are ever more care-free than yours.

Madrid is a brand-new place, and word about how you are doing is easily controlled. Updates come from either you or Ona, and that means there is a filter easily applied to all anecdotes.

Your friends know about the sex, more or less. They know, they don’t approve, but they let you guys sort it out yourselves because everyone agrees that that is just how you and Ona are. They won’t understand it and they have given up on trying to.

Both of you make half-hearted efforts to separate the arrangement from your friendship. You don’t talk much afterwards until the other has left the realm of I-am-in-love-with-you. It’s nice to be in Madrid together, but you find different social circles soon enough and then you are reaching out more for sex than friendly activities and… You stop sleeping with each other upon the footballer’s request. She wants to focus on her career, on her success. She tells you over the phone because she cannot bring herself to end whatever occurred over the last two years in person, knowing that she’d take back her decision in a heartbeat. Ona really, really likes football, and she knows that she has to become obsessed with it to get to the top; more obsessed than she is now. How can she do that if you are distracting her?

You’re disappointed, but you respect her wishes.

Girls in Madrid stop seeming as shiny. The world is a bit duller, because although there had been no exclusivity between you and your best friend, there had always been that guarantee that the other would be ready and waiting. Your growing misery makes studying boring, and you find answers for your emotions in a science textbook, desperately running away from the obvious truth. Less sex means that you are unhappier. It’s biology.

It’s not a crush.

Not on Ona.

No.

And it’s certainly not this not-realisation that flies you to Milan the minute a modelling agency inquires about whether you have ever thought of, well, modelling. They scout you someplace random, and your mother claims that she could have helped you start your career earlier if only you’d have been interested.

When you explain to your best friend what you are moving for, she is oddly unsurprised and uncaring. Her reaction is sickening, because you’d have rathered her get an ego boost from having slept with a model than be so fucking apathetic.

“I’m going to Milan, Ona,” you repeat, just in case she has not heard you. “I’m moving. We did the trial shoots last week, and they loved me. They want me to update my social media and work on building up a following, and they said that I should start learning English because I might end up in New York.”

“That’s good. I’m happy for you.” She doesn’t sound like she means it, and you grow annoyed about how she is not even trying to sound enthusiastic.

“Can’t you be happy for me? Or is it only acceptable for you to have dreams?”

“I am happy for you, I just said that.”

“The words left your mouth, but they definitely did not come from your heart.”

“You’re being dramatic.” Ona rolls her eyes and the pent-up sexual tension builds and builds until the bottle it has been shoved into can no longer withstand the pressure. You haven’t argued since you moved to Madrid, which makes no sense considering you literally broke up – even if it absolutely wasn’t dating. Neither of you has processed your broken heart, and you’re pretty sure you are still too traumatised from the first girl you fell in love with to be capable of revisiting those kinds of emotions.

Ona hasn’t had sex in weeks, and it is affecting her performance. She can’t sleep if she has the energy she does, and she can’t get through her workouts because not sleeping makes her lose her appetite and then she does not have the energy to complete them. Her coaches are worried, but they know that she is young and though almost idiotic, they mostly assume that she is repulsed by the idea of playing for a club in Madrid. They get that a lot with the Catalans that come over from La Masia, whose dreams have been delayed because the first team had thought it necessary that they gained more experience elsewhere.

Ona has wanted to shout and scream every minute of every day, and so have you. Therefore, everything explodes.

…

You inhale deeply, exhaling when it feels as though some of the stress has dissipated. This casting is one of the more important ones of the week. It’s odd to be judged on your appearance, to be paid for it, but it has been almost a year since you moved to Milan and you are enjoying yourself.

You don’t miss university, and you don’t miss your parents. Your friends visit you lots, loving the idea of your career, loving the excuse to escape their dreary weekends in where they have always been.

Milan is great. You make friends with a few other models, though they come and go depending on work, and the more experience you get, the more your following count goes up. Brands send you things, nice things, and events start extending invites to lure you into the glamour of the industry.

Milan is great, you tell yourself on repeat.

Milan is great, but it would be better if Ona were here.

Milan is great, but you regret the way you left things and want to take it all back.

Milan is great but–

“Your fitting is tomorrow,” says the assistant, reading off her iPad. You suppress your wandering thoughts, nodding. You need this job, you need the money to pay for a flight. The agency has given you some advancements – an impressive thing, apparently – but not enough to cover the cost of the ticket to New York for the start of Fashion Week. This show will fluff out your experience, and increase your chances of walking at one of the bigger shows.

You’ve been told that you are quite a good model; attractive, funny, with just the right amount of personality to be both a mannequin and an interesting figure.

The lifestyle is different but good, and you realise that you’d never wanted the mundanity of studying and then working and selling your soul to some kind of tall office building. Not everyone gets the concept of living away from home, especially not those from your tight-knit community who think the city is stretching the distance slightly (the train works, you can live with your parents and have a good job – you’ve been told that a few times), but you don’t mind. You can explain it as much as you want and they would still be confused.

You stay in touch, but you don’t stay present.

As your career snowballs over the next two years, you pull away from your home, always on a flight, always busy. You go to LA and Paris and London, and you rent your flat in Milan out as an Airbnb whenever you’re not there. You love the city, you start to think of it as yours, and slowly but surely, everything else fades into the background.

Apart from Ona, of course. Your friends still visit, or you meet up with them if you ever find yourself in Barcelona, and they continue to affirm just how proud they are of you. They talk about her a lot, too; about where she’s playing now, about injuries and fame and representing Spain. They know you are too stubborn to search it up for yourself, but these are the people who have grown up with you: they know you would like to be informed.

When you hear that Ona has moved to Manchester, you don’t quite think your actions through.

You have had enough. You miss her terribly.

Her number has changed, but someone passes it onto you.

You: I saw that you’re playing Arsenal next week. I’ll be in London then. Do you want to get a coffee?

Ona takes her time replying, but that is only because she wants to delay the inevitable.

Her eyes shine and her hair is damp, but the kick-off had been early and you don’t have anything to do today. You meet her in the carpark, picking her up in a black BMW that’s sleek and shiny and 100% not yours. Her laugh is light and free as she knocks on the driver’s window and juts her thumb out, instructing you to swap.

“I’m not getting in a car that you’re driving,” she declares seriously, though you know she has forgiven you because she would not have agreed to meet if she hadn’t. “Come on, I checked on Maps and there’s a place not too far from here that looks nice. And it’s empty, so don’t worry about the paparazzi.”

“The paparazzi are not after me,” you shut down quickly, not wanting her to think you are a bigger deal than what you are. Successful, yes. Famous? Not so much. “One day it’ll be you worrying about them, when you’re all grown up.”

“I’m twenty-one!”

It comes out so whiny and childish that you burst into a fit of giggles. Ona is proud to have made you laugh.

You don’t kiss her, but you’d like to. Then again, maybe it’s better to just be friends.

#woso x reader #woso #woso imagines #ona batlle x reader #ona batlle #barca femeni #randombush3 #pretend it's not all build up #but it is

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randombush3 · 2 months

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dies irae

alexia putellas x reader

part one, part two, part three

words: 12425 (sorry not sorry)

summary: part four, the part that made me realise another part was necessary

warnings: drugs, alcohol, cheating, (a lot of???) vomiting, general angst tbh

notes: in all honesty, i started this with the intention of finishing the series, but it hit 12k and i thought maybe not x

weird little comment, but the last section was originally written in spanish (hear me out: i was on the plane and i didn’t want the people beside me to read it over my shoulder) and i’m still feeling a little iffy about my translation of my og version but oh well!

i hope you enjoy this and are content w waiting another five years for me to churn out the new FINAL part

The sand is warm beneath your feet, each grain rubbing against your bare soles as you sprint. The ground under such surfaces often hardens, proven by the sweat trickling past the thin string of fabric that holds your bikini together. If the beach were not so private, you would be worried about wandering camera lenses.

However, there is no one else here but your favourite people. Well, maybe Nico has dropped to the bottom of the list now that your energy has been worn down while his does not seem to waver.

“I give up,” you pant as he continues to tumble down the shoreline, changing his tactics and swerving into the water, comfortable in his sea. The same sea he looks at each morning from your bedroom window. The one he learnt to swim in. (That and a variety of hotel pools.) “You win, you win!”

The small figure, around twenty metres away, comes to an abrupt halt, wobbling on little legs for a moment. Then he begins to run again, but this time towards the towels and constructed shade you had set up earlier. Unwillingly, you race him back to base camp.

“He ganado,” he declares as he taps Alexia’s shining back as though she is the signpost signifying the finish line. Your hand caresses the divots of muscle soon after, brushing sand across smooth, tanned skin. Nico peers at you strangely, but understands, thanks to Tia Alba, that the beach outfits are special to his mothers.

“Mi ganador,” comes a tired murmur of praise.

“Did you see, Mami? I was so far ahead.” She nods, craning her neck upwards to talk to him. You gladly sprawl out on the vacant towel, passing on the baton to your wife, fortunate that Elena has been asleep in her buggy for the past twenty minutes. “Can I play with Lela now? Is nap time over?”

“No, sweetheart, naptime has just begun.” He looks up at you with pleading, bored eyes. The one unfortunate consequence of going to a private beach is that, unless you bring along your babysitter, there is no one else for Nico to play with. Alexia and you are both exhausted, and today is supposed to be about relaxation. Three-year-olds don’t understand that concept. “If you don’t want to sleep, how about burying Mami?”

“In the sand?”

“Sí, in the sand.”

He leans close to your ear. “Mami says I’m not allowed to do that,” he whispers, though he has not quite mastered the volume of such a tone yet. Alexia pretends not to be listening, but you can feel her foot prodding your shin in protest.

“Rules are sometimes made to be broken,” you tell him. “And if you do bury her, the only way to make her happy again is to get ice-cream. Which means you can also get ice-cream.”

“You are so annoying,” grumbles Alexia.

“This morning, I believe the word you used was ‘sexy’,” you retort. With the Euros on the horizon, it seems that the two of you are using up what little time you have to spend together. Though Alexia sometimes feels like there are hands wrapped around her neck after she failed to win the Champions League once more, she is more than happy to take advantage of the time off before she tries to make amends internationally.

“Mm. You are magically both.”

You tug your sunglasses – Prada, brand-new from a modelling campaign – down slightly, so that they sit lower on your nose. The sun is warm and doing its best to wear Nico down as he finds his discarded spade and begins to dig, and Elena is still fast asleep.

A mischievous grin forms on your lips, one that Alexia knows well. Topless, she flips over onto her back, excusing herself with a muttered comment about an ‘even tan’, and that is invitation enough for you to cup her cheek, your touch as fiery as the surface of the sun that blankets the beach. The gentle breeze ruffles your hair as you lower yourself down to her level.

“The phrase is ‘annoyingly sexy’ in English, darling,” you murmur, your eyes locked onto hers. Even now, after six years, the proximity ignites desire over every inch of your skin, and you cannot wait to kiss. Alexia’s initial grumble turns into a soft chuckle, her eyes sparkling with a mixture of amusement and something more. Impatiently, you kiss her, aware that the moment will soon be ruined by a spray of sand as Nico pursues his mission.

She is just as eager to kiss you back, craving the way you seem to hold the solution to every problem. Part of Alexia’s mind has not yet been able to comprehend the way in which you love her. It is hidden by the other, much larger compartment: the one that reminds her every day that she should never, ever tell you, because it would break your heart. To you, Alexia is making up for lost time. To her, she is secretly begging for forgiveness that you don’t even know she is due.

She knows the minute your phone rings that everything is about to go wrong. No one is supposed to call you today; you have been emphatic about it. You blindly reach for the ringing device, ready to lob it into the ocean, but Alexia grabs your wrist. “It must be something important,” she says, and it feels like she is telling you she understands; you are busy, and she understands.

“I’ll be quick, I promise.” With a quick jog up the steps and onto the concrete of the promenade, you perch on the stone wall separating the beach from the carpark, bare feet swinging over the edge. The rough surface of the wall presses uncomfortably into the exposed flesh of your bum, but you remind yourself that you will soon be lying back down on the beach towels. “Hi? I thought we agreed that pretty much everything could wait until tomorrow. I don’t care about any photos taken of me, and you know that my automatic position is simply to ensure that the children’s faces are blurred out before they get spread around.”

“Y/n!” Your publicist sounds nervous. It’s a stressful job, you guess. Between organising interviews and brand deals and the like, she has to stamp down on unwanted rumours and be on the look-out for any perceived cracks in your very public person. Naturally, you are not perfect.

“Yeah, I’m here. Hi.”

“I’m afraid that it’s not a picture of you this time.” Alexia is now famous in her own right, as she always should have been. With a Ballon d’Or under her belt, you have been promoted to a ‘celebrity couple’.

“She has her own team, you know.”

“I’m sure she will be firing them soon.” The joke fails to land, instead crashing and burning and… You freeze.

“Why?”

“I am sure that you are aware we have feelers out for anything that could potentially harm your reputation.” You nod foolishly, caught up in the undisclosed severity of the phone call, forgetting that she cannot see you. “An hour ago, we were contacted by a photographer; one of the usual ones we get in when you’re in need of a bit of a press-boost. He’s based in Barcelona, has lots of friends in the area and such. I have the terrible job of telling you.”

Your heart quickens as the confession hangs in the air, leaving a heavy silence on the other end of the line. The anticipation builds, and you can almost feel the impending storm swirling just off the coast, waves beginning to thrash against rocks, nature beginning to tear the world down.

“He claims to have some photos, ones that could potentially damage your image,” she says, tone measured and professional. “I haven’t seen them yet, but he described them as… intimate, to say the least.”

“Of Alexia?” you question carefully, forcing the words onto your tongue. “Intimate? What do you mean?”

“Well, they are of her and someone else. Someone who isn’t you.”

“Who?” Dread sets in, and the wall is suddenly not the most uncomfortable thing about your position. You feel too exposed, unsafe in what you are wearing. Taken advantage of, perhaps.

Cheated.

“I have not seen the photos yet, babe. I don’t know what else to tell you.” He would have attached them in his email. Paparazzos don’t have time to harass you digitally as well as in real-life. She must have avoided opening them. Or. Or she is lying.

“I need to see those pictures,” you assert, your need for clarity driving the sentence forwards.

“Are you sure?” You nod again, unable to speak past the lump in your throat, knowing that she cannot see you but feeling helpless to do anything else. She takes your silence as confirmation. There is a brief click of a mouse, and the animated swoosh of an email. “They should come through in a moment.”

“Thank you.”

“Are you… alright?”

She quickly takes the hint from the lack of response and hangs up.

You rest your phone on your thigh as your arms grip onto the ledge of the wall, pulling yourself backwards so that you do not fling yourself off it. You shake as you reach safety, and your fingers feel numb as they tap the screen, accessing your emails robotically until a pinwheel is all that separates you from the photos.

Intimate, huh.

They are practically snogging.

There are eleven images, and each one delivers a blow more painful than the last.

The beach feels confined, like an elaborate cage that you cannot escape. The shoreline creeps towards you, and you seem to be pressed against the hot metal of the car in the carpark. You struggle to recognise the scenes captured as ones where you were present, and the unfortunate date in the bottom right-hand corner evidences the photos as a time when you were not in Barcelona at all: 2021.

The realisation hits hard and you find that everything you have ever believed to be true has simply been a cruel joke that you were excluded from.

What you have been sent is more than just proof; it is a betrayal etched in pixels, an undeniable record of a moment that shatters the foundation of your relationship. Your heart races as your scroll through the images, cruelly reminded of a reality you desperately wish were not true. One you had no idea existed. One that had been kept secret from you.

The lump in your throat grows, and your eyes blur with unshed tears. You are overwhelmed by sharp pain coursing through your veins, and it is as if you have been injected with a poison that burns through your cell tissue, disintegrating every block of your body. It scorches the things you know to be true.

Love goes up in flames before your eyes.

And then a voice that you really do not want to hear speaks, and, just like that, the ashes of what has disappeared are suddenly ablaze once more.

“Nico y yo vamos a tomar helado. ¿Quieres algo?” Sandals, sunglasses, a loose linen shirt. Nico holds her hand, proud of himself. You cannot bear to look at either of them, so you stare at the towels a few metres beneath you.

“Where is Lena?”

“Dormida, aún.”

Shaking, you stand up, enjoying the sharp rocks that pierce into your skin, reminding you that you are yet to die. “Take Nico. I’ll go back down and sit with her.”

“Vale. Te quiero.”

You don’t reply. You wouldn’t have known what to say anyway.

Every step feels as though the world is cracking open and you are going to fall to your death, yet, in the midst of the impending doom, you feel as calm as can be. Numb, perhaps.

Elena stirs as you adjust the parasol providing her the necessary shade. A hand reaches out, prepared to grab onto you, searching for your body like you are her lifeline. You are her lifeline; you are her mother. And so is Alexia.

A tear rolls down your cheek as you let her pull your fingers to her mouth, nails brushing her lips as she whines with the headache of waking up from a nap. “What are we going to do?”

…

The car journey home is silent on your part. You stew in your nothingness, unwilling to engage in the light conversation Alexia creates to keep Nico awake before his sleep schedule is ruined. Barcelona flashes past you, and the city that you once admired feels like the scene of a crime. Looking out the window is almost as sickening as if your eyes were to land on the woman beside you. Almost.

You withhold your grief for the evening, going through the motions of nightly chores; putting the kids to bed, finishing the remainder of your packing, drying the dishes without throwing them at the blonde hair that sails past as she sorts her own suitcases out. A few texts are exchanged between you and your publicist, in which you graciously decide that those pictures will not come from you. Though if her team fails to catch them before they reach Twitter, that is not your problem.

Under the soft glow of the bedside lamp and the comforting blanket of darkness, you clear your throat.

It has been six hours since you found out.

Every second that has passed has done so with excruciating pain, yet you cannot determine whether it has sunk in at all yet. You wonder if, given the chance, you would crumple into yourself and weep as though she has died.

When you look at Alexia, readying herself for bed, you decide that the whole situation is laughable.

You are so stupid. You thought she loved you more than that, and you were embarrassingly incorrect.

“I want you to leave now,” you say firmly, only the bed between you. Alexia pauses, pyjama shorts halfway up her muscular legs as she peers at you curiously. Her confusion is infuriating. “I want you to… go to your mother’s or something. You’re not sleeping here.”

“Why? What have I done?”

She speaks as though this is a normal argument, or as though you are hormonal and unreasonable. You clench your fists and remind yourself not to wake the children up. “I am surprised you didn’t follow her to Mexico.”

It is then that Alexia Putellas realises three things. The first: she hasn’t spoken about Jenni since she left for Pachuca, and she barely pays attention when Nico persuades her to find the stream for the striker’s matches. The second: it has been six months since Jenni called whatever they were doing quits. And the third… the third is how well and truly fucked she is.

She should have confessed her crime the minute she first slept with her; the night after they were knocked out of the World Cup. Elena wasn’t even a concept, then. You took her back though you were unaware you had ever lost her.

Last year, when it was Alexia all alone, she should have confessed her second betrayal. A longer, more hurtful betrayal. Something fuelled by meaningfulness, not passion and heightened adrenaline. If she were in your position, the physicality would not be what obliterated her heart; the emotion behind the entire affair would.

She wipes her eyes, aware that she has started to cry. It is all the confirmation you need. “I’m so sorry,” is the only thing she can think to say, but ‘sorry’ does not amount to the pain she knows she has caused. ‘Sorry’ won’t heal a wound that has cut deep, cut through years of love and happiness and supposed loyalty. ‘Sorry’ does not change the fact that Alexia lent herself to Jenni, let Jenni take her in any capacity she wished, and then returned to you as though it had never even happened.

In all honesty, part of Alexia is very curious about how you have found her out. Mapi would not risk being caught up in such a storm, and Jenni would gain only suffering from telling you because she knows that Alexia would never choose her. Though she has spent night after night with her finger hovering over her sister’s contact, she resolved never to tell Alba either, for fear that her sister would see her for the monster she is and side with you. Selfishly, Alexia does not want anyone to side with you, but even she finds it easy to hate herself.

“Is that all you can offer me?” you croak, and it is clear to Alexia that you are this calm because you are putting your children before yourself. They do not need to hear their parents’ marriage implode; not tonight, not ever. She cannot bear to meet your eyes as you pierce through her bowed head. “Alexia.” She pulls her shorts up fully, forehead parallel to the floor. “Alexia!” you snap.

“I’m sorry,” she repeats.

Alexia Putellas is regarded by most as intimidating, yet, here, she is anything but. She is meek. Pathetic.

She is a woman who continued to make a stupid mistake although she was given so many opportunities to fix it.

And, when Alexia finally grows the balls to look into your piercing eyes, she sees, reflected in your hardened, dark pupils, weakness and idiocy, rimmed with the most stinging of betrayals. It kills her to see you fight your own tears, and it is worse when you have to break eye contact because you are afraid you will vomit if it goes on any longer.

“You are packed, so you can leave tonight. Sort yourself out while I get the children up.”

Everything is ruined because of her.

It is the last night Alexia lives under the same roof as you. It is a horrible way to end a golden age, and the worst possible confirmation of the fleetingness of all things that exist. You hate the world, you hate Jennifer Hermoso, and you hate that you can’t bring yourself to hate your wife.

Alexia says goodbye to a sleepy Nico and a clingy Elena. Your daughter refuses to let her mother go the minute she is passed to her, and all four of you try your best not to cry, whether it be from confusion, regret, or heartbreak.

Nico, inquisitive as one is at his age, does not let the door open without questions. ‘Why now?’ is what causes Alexia to freeze, searching on your face for permission to have one more second with him. You cup the back of Elena’s head, fingers splaying out against her soft hair, soothing her back to sleep. And you nod.

She crouches to his level, dwarfed by her suitcases. In her pocket, her phone buzzes; her taxi has arrived. “¿Te acuerdas cuando te hablé sobre la responsabilidad? Soy la capitana, cariño, y tengo que cuidar a mi equipo, así que ‘ahora’ es lo mejor para ellas.” You are grateful for the lie.

“¿Ahora yo mando? ¿Como me dijiste?”

“Sí. Tienes que cuidar a Mama y Lela, y protegerlas como yo os protejo a vosotros. Y nos veremos prontito, petit. Te lo prometo.”

He is fighting his tears, stiff like a toy soldier marching off to an imaginary battle. You half expect Nico to salute with his chubby, unpractised fingers, but he simply stands there, between Alexia and you. Though Elena is safe in your arms, Nico is caught in the crossfire, two feet innocently leading him into no man’s land.

You take a deep breath as Alexia closes the door behind her. She has been driven out – her own doing – and she knows, because she knows you, that there will be no space in your life for her until your gaping wound dulls in pain. The journey to her mother’s house is the second time she ever considers killing herself, with the first being the night her father died.

But this is how it goes.

You fly to England the next day, holding it together until Elena and Nico are safely in the hands of Anya, but you do not give her a reason for her much-needed babysitting abilities.

It is a small secret. You keep it because on top of being in agony, you are so fucking embarrassed. You. You got cheated on. You weren’t enough for her. (And Jenni was?) It’s really easy to pretend you’re stressed for Alexia, knowing she is heading into a tournament that Spain could win but won’t.

The first official step you take – the very first – is with a nanny. You meet her the day after landing at London Stansted, and she seems to be the perfect choice for the interim period of your life that you have unexpectedly entered; she speaks Spanish, she is discreet, and she reassures you that she is there to enhance family life, not destroy it. And possibly another alluring factor: she is quick to sign an NDA and promise that no photos of your children will make it into any dogshit magazine.

Her first interaction with your children is two hours before your lunch with your publicist, manager, producer, and lawyer. They have agreed to congregate – they have seen the pictures (an exclusive peek, as the deliciously world-destroying surprise photoshoot has not yet been picked up by anyone with ganas to publish it). Each one has a purpose, each one wants to profit off your heartbreak, and, though they’d never admit it for fear of breaking their hard exteriors, each invitee would also like to see if you’re okay.

“Do you… like her?” you sheepishly ask your son while Isabela, the nanny, supervises Elena’s lunch. You’re not entirely sure your daughter understands that the hummus is supposed to go into her mouth, not redecorate the highchair table from white to beige, but Isabela does her best to instruct her, the familiar tinkle of Alexia’s language making your daughter’s eyes light up.

He looks a little puzzled. “Is she a babysitter?”

“Sort of.” You sigh, “it’s just that I have a lot to do, and Mami is playing football now. Isabela is going to help us, but I want to make sure that you want that.”

Nico shrugs. “Don’t care.”

“And she’s going to speak in Spanish, just like Mami does.” In anticipation of a worse reaction, you wince at the slight insinuation that you’re replacing Alexia. He doesn’t pick up on it.

“She sounds funny.”

“That’s because she’s from Colombia,” you answer him, and he nods, storing that information for later. Probably for when Alexia calls to speak to him (a moment you are dreading).

“Is Colombia near Mexico?” He perks up; you know what’s coming next. “Does Isabela know Jenni?”

You have to remind yourself that Nico has not done anything wrong. The fault of the mother is not the son’s, and, briefly, you pray he has inherited your fidelity for the sake of his future partners.

You pretend that the name that just fell from his lips does not fill you with the overwhelming urge to strangle someone. And, calmly, you reply, “probably not, but you can always ask her.”

…

Alexia does not know what to do.

She wishes, she really does, that someone would pass her a clock… and she knows she has trained and worked hard enough to wrestle the hands of time back a year and change her decisions in every situation. Alas, that is impossible.

She tells Mapi, as the team touches down in England, what has happened. The defender is unimpressed – angry, even, at her best friend – but nothing warrants what is to come.

The morning feels eerily normal. Breakfast is difficult, especially when all Alexia can think while she eats is that every morsel in her mouth fuels the monster she has become. Every bite, every sip of coffee, leads her to live another day. She is not particularly certain that she deserves that.

Mapi does not look at her, swerves her request to be partners when training begins. Head down, eyes slowly filling with tears, Alexia takes the punishment. She says nothing when Pina pinches her side, “Patri’s being annoying”, and drags her into the drill.

She runs, she passes the ball, Pina turns and shoots it into the mini-net.

Pina runs, she passes the ball, Alexia turns.

Something goes wrong.

Maybe it is that the pitch is uneven, cut up from whoever had trained before. Maybe it’s the pass, slightly off-target. Maybe she is at that point in her menstrual cycle where the risk of injury is higher – that’s being looked into, isn’t it?

Maybe it’s that her body can no longer stay so robust when everything else in her life is hurtling towards the ground in the most epic downhill slope possible.

Maybe.

The pop is unmistakable, and the pain searing. She can’t help the scream she lets out, barely registering whoever has rushed to her side while she presses her face into the dirt, tears watering the grass.

“I’ve done my ACL,” Alexia gasps, lifting her head up slightly. She catches sight of the blue sky, the green grass. The bright sun shining down on her, hot against her neck but nothing in comparison to the agony in her knee.

She blinks, thinking her eyes are blurring from her tears.

A second later, she is unconscious.

When Alexia wakes up, she is glad to have passed out. She has no memory of being hauled off the pitch or brought into the medical room. Her head aches and her knee throbs, but she knows that there is someone beside her so she does her best to hold in the immediate wave of sobs that seem to take over her.

A calloused hand reaches for hers, unclenching her fist, urging her to squeeze the pain away, pass off some of it to her companion. They have given her pain medication. She can tell because the white walls dance around her and the only word she can manage to get out is your name.

She whispers it over and over again.

“I know,” comes a soothing voice, poorly concealing the worry that cracks the tone. “Shh, I know, I know. You’re okay, Ale. She’s… she’s on her way.”

…

The call is unexpected.

Mapi never has much reason to talk to you on your own, unless you share a concern for your wife’s wellbeing. You suppose that’s a bit of a redundant commonality now. Your lawyers have drawn up a custody agreement and, upon meek request, divorce papers: a gift for after the Euros.

“Dime, Mapi. Estoy trabajando,” you say curtly, signalling from inside the booth that the phone call is nothing to worry about and you can resume the recording session in a moment.

Mapi’s news makes you even more resentful than you were already feeling, because you can’t help but sprint to your car the minute the address is given.

…

Pain becomes part of everyday life.

Crutches, too.

Alba and Eli already existed as frequent visitors, but the former increases her appearances so that she has moved in the day before Alexia’s surgery.

It spills out, the night of the surgery, that Alexia and you are no longer together. That you left her, with good reason. It’s a surprise, considering you had stayed by her side during the twelve hours in England between the medical room, the hospital, and the airport.

When Alexia reluctantly tells Alba why, Alba decides that you are a saint and her sister, a sinner. She holds her hands behind her back to keep herself from slapping Alexia across the face, but little does she know, Alexia longs for the anger, wishing she wasn’t being pitied for her injury. She wishes there was no injury to be pitied for, but, then again, she tells herself that she deserves it and accepts the agony as one would hold a blade to their wrists and slit them.

This behaviour, this quiet ideology that she has been punished for her mistake, is what leads Alba to ensure the keys to the balcony are hidden and the kitchen knives are tucked away in a cupboard, out of sight. Or perhaps it is what she hears her sister telling herself in the mirror. Worthless. Degenerate. Evil, cruel, horrible. Selfish!

She has two children with you, for God’s sake!

“I have ruined my own life.” Her words burn, the intensity of her anger enough to make Alba flinch, hands gripping the steering wheel harder, forcing her way forwards. The hospital comes into view and Alexia cries out in anguish. “I have ruined it, Alba! I have ruined everything!”

Alexia, The Ruiner.

She bears the new name with something more than disappointment. She lets the nurses examine her knee, compliment Alba for her care-taking, and reassure her about the surgery. She lets them talk her through possible complications, secretly hoping one will occur and she will wither away; no longer a footballer, no longer a mother, no longer your wife. Just Alexia, The Ruiner.

Alba and her argue, Alexia lying back in the cot, hospital gown patterned against clinically white sheets, light fabric against her paling skin. “You wanting to die is not you wanting to kill yourself. It’s your regret, and it’s your cowardice at not being able to face the consequences of your actions.” Alexia had been hot-headed enough to voice how she did not want to make it through the surgery. She is in excruciating pain, and is convinced they need to investigate it. “It’s your knee, not your heart. Your heart hurts because you cheated on her and she rightfully left you! Don’t you ever say something so fucking stupid again.”

“Alba!” Eli’s entrance is neither good nor bad. “Alba, leave her.” Alexia’s tears run down the sides of her face, hitting the sheets like little bullets. The soft caress of her mother’s hand across her cheek is no comfort, and Alexia only sobs harder. “You are going to be fine, mi cielo. The surgery is going to go well and you will come back even stronger.”

Alexia knows that, once you have torn your ACL, you are more likely to tear it again, so she mentally disputes her mother’s claim. She has no energy to voice the thought, however.

“Mamá, she’s convinced she’s going to have a heart attack.” Alba points to her sister’s chest, as if to disagree by showing their mother that nothing seems to be out of the ordinary. They begin to argue, and Alexia watches her family implode, deeming herself once more, Alexia, The Ruiner.

It’s not a heart attack, it turns out. She falls victim to a severe panic attack just as they begin to wheel her away. They increase her dosage of anaesthetic.

Unfortunately, the next morning Alexia comes to after a successful surgery and remembers nothing. That is until she looks to her bedside and finds only her mother there (Alba having gone to the big, empty apartment to adjust it to her sister’s newly-disabled lifestyle).

She relives the kisses Jenni used to press to her neck, the marks sucked into her skin though Jenni knew she was not hers to brand. She relives your expression when you told her you knew, the grimace you had worn, the way your eyes flicked to the ensuite as though you were going to throw up at any point.

She hears her knee pop again, sees the trophy slip from her grasp, sees it float into the realm of possibility along with the Champions League cup.

“You’re awake,” Eli says with surprise, offering a warm but sympathetic smile. She reaches out to touch Alexia, but Alexia jerks her body backwards, instantly regretting it when her knee begins to ache unbearably. “They said you’ll be in a lot of pain at first, but it will subside and, soon, you can start recovery. Your physiotherapist is going to visit in an hour or so, and I cannot count how many well-wishes you have received.” Weirdly, Eli thinks to herself, Jenni has said nothing.

Alexia shakes her head, trying to dispel the fog in her mind. “Do the… Do the children know I am hurt?”

“I believe so,” Eli replies with a nod. “Y/n broke the news to them, but we haven’t heard from her since you went into the operating theatre. I have no idea whether she’s going to come here. I assume she will.”

“She won’t,” mutters Alexia, refusing to look at her mother.

“Oh, don’t be so gloomy. She’s your wife, of course she is going to come.” A dark storm brews in the cagey hospital room, but Eli remains an oblivious ray of sunshine. “I know you don’t want Nico and Lela to see you like this, but they miss you. They must have been so excited for the Euros!”

All of it is the wrong thing to say. If Eli had known, she would have approached the uncertainty differently.

If Alexia were not so angry at herself, so guilty, so destructive, she would have calmly explained that your absence is both warranted and understandable.

Instead.

Well, instead, this comes out of her: “She is not going to come because I had a fucking affair and she has left me and taken the children to fucking England where they are probably never going to be allowed to see me ever, and I will live out the rest of my days as a fucking coach because I am useless and I am never going to play football again!”

Eli sits back in her chair, shocked.

“What have you done?”

Neither knows if it is a question or a damnation, but Alexia chooses to answer her mother regardless; “I have ruined everything, and now I am paying the price for it.”

…

Your friends gloat a little bit, calling it Karma. Anya and Gio are first in disbelief, but they soon progress onto the stage of hatred – something you have not yet been able to access.

For now, life feels as though it is on auto-pilot. Your children are happy and safe, your country is going to do well in the Euros, and time does not stop ticking no matter how hard you wish it would.

Alexia’s surgery is successful. You see the update on Twitter, not wanting to contact Alba or Eli in case Alexia thinks you have forgiven her. You haven’t. Perhaps you never will.

“There are two ways you can go about this,” Gio says with a smirk, holding out a thong to you as you stand in your bedroom in just a towel. “You’re hot and rich and famous… and now single, too.” You are not completely sure of that, but you nod, following along. You slip into the lace and then point to the England shirt folded on top of your pillow. It gets thrown at your face. “You can wallow in it and weep like a damsel in distress, giving her the satisfaction of breaking your heart…”

“I don’t think she wanted to–”

“She cheated on you,” Gio cuts you off bluntly. After a moment, your shoulders drop and you resign to hearing her plan. “As said earlier, hot, rich, famous… Babe, just get with someone else. Get with everyone else! Your babies are looked after 24/7 and this is London, my dear. The pond is really an ocean and you are a catch. As your bestest friend, I know what’s best for you. You’ve got an album coming out in September, a tour to hop on in November, and about three thousand dildos you can hop on after that!”

You cringe. “Don’t be crass.”

“Don’t be a prude.” She gestures to herself. “Look at me; Mia’s fine and healthy, doesn’t legally have to see her arsehole of a father, and I get a good shag every fortnight.”

“No, I’ve drawn up the custody agreement already. I’ll go back to Barcelona when the school year starts, and we can swap every two weekends. But I’m keeping our home – she can find somewhere else to live, seeing as all of this is her fault.”

“And the tour?” Gio asks as you pull on your England jersey and a pair of shorts. Good weather has blessed the start of the tournament, and you have been invited to the first match at Old Trafford by Manchester United themselves. Gio and Anya are coming, and you think they have put you in with a few of their players and executives. Your father has his own ticket, planning to meet you there and convince you to pay your grandmother a visit (she doesn’t like that you are lesbian and therefore you don’t like her).

“I don’t know,” you sigh, “because I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to make the children’s lives even more unstable. Maybe it’s best to give them a few months to adjust to the idea of us not being together.”

Gio hums in agreement, knowing she had it easy with her own co-parenting adjustment because her daughter was a baby with no recollection of her parents being a couple, much less in-love. “You’re a good mum.” She kisses your cheek and wraps you in a very needed hug. “You’ll get through this because you are stronger than a pathetic affair.”

You swear.

“What time’s our train leaving?!”

The match is a good one, and the atmosphere is enough to make you feel the slightest bit alive. Spain plays in two days, and though you have good reason to believe Alexia is going to be there, you are booking a family trip to Legoland to delay the first hand-off of many.

England win with one goal to nil, courtesy of Beth Mead’s chip. You are on your feet, cheering the entire match. One of the United executives tells you that he loves your passion and asks you if you’d take his ticket to the post-match drinks as he wants to head home for a nap. You laugh, the old Mancunian reminding you of your father, and accept. It’s just the one ticket, so you bid Gio and Anya goodbye, book a hotel for the night (comfortable with the idea that Isabela has safe hands to care for your children), and give your father a valid reason to pass up on the visit to Didsbury.

The only person at this event that you really know is Alessia Russo, after exchanging a few DMs last Christmas to wrangle a signed Manchester United jersey for Nico’s Christmas present (a gift Alexia had refused to say was from her as well).

“No kids today?” she asks with a grin, pulling you into a friendly hug.

“Didn’t manage to get them tickets,” you reply. “But now I get to drink, and you get to watch me and wish you weren’t on a nutrition plan.”

She shakes her head. “We’ve actually been instructed to celebrate the wins. Sarina Wiegman says it’s a key part of tournament success.” You look around the room, noticing every Lioness here, hair still wet from the showers and donning team-issued tracksuits, has a can of beer in their hands. Jorge Vilda could never. “Glad to see you haven’t yet become a Spain and Barcelona fan. Feeling patriotic enough to be introduced to our captain?”

Leah Williamson bears the same concentrated eyes gifted to Alexia; determination, victory, leadership.

You’re unsure if you have ever formally met her, perhaps at the Brits once. “I go with Alex? Alex Scott,” she says, as though she is trying to impress you. She takes the briefest of looks down to your hands that hang near your waist with no glass to hold (the bar has cut you off for half an hour).

You wear one ring. It is not the one with which Alexia promised you her total devotion, but it is from her all the same. An old gift – maybe from your first anniversary?

Leah doesn’t ask whether you are still married.

“I heard your son loves football?” He is obsessed with his mother, he wishes to follow her in every single thing she does. “You should bring him to our next match. I’ll get him one of those passes, and– Hey, you know what? I bet there’s a way I can get him a place as a mascot for one of the matches! Both our next ones are down south.”

You smile. “Really?”

“Yeah, course. He might be a bit young but I’m always glad to help out our little fans, and it might throw Spain off their game.” She winks, offering no further explanation, and is suddenly called away before you can request more information.

You have to admit, the idea of Nico walking (toddling) out with England makes you feel both proud and satisfied. It will be a tiny jab towards Alexia, which, honestly, is a privilege considering how she has stabbed you in the back repeatedly with a machete.

When your son’s first time on a proper football pitch is with Alessia Russo, holding her hand with wide eyes and a wider smile, you are sure Alexia has smashed the screen of whatever TV she has been studying her opponents with.

…

Spain playing England in the quarter-final feels intensely political within your family.

Alexia is in Brighton for the first time in her life, and she hates more than anything that she is not preparing herself for a match. She won’t be going through her pre-game rituals for another seven months, at least.

You tell Isabela to take the children to Alexia’s hotel, unable to put yourself in front of the wheel. Your hands have not stopped shaking since your manager texted you a screenshot of their conversation (seeing as you refuse to talk to her, not for pettiness but for fear of breaking yourself in two), and Isabela poured you a glass of wine before she left to calm your nerves.

You feel sick, and the toilet water turns red as your body rejects the rioja. Once you have wiped your mouth, you laugh at the notion that even Spanish wine is unwelcome inside of you.

“Who are you?” Alexia demands as the revolving doors of the lobby reveal her two babies with a stranger. She is quick to remove Elena from the arms of this new woman, although she is disgruntled by how comfortable her daughter seems. One of her crutches falls to the ground, Alexia not having been able to master childcare and post-surgery impairments because she has not seen the children she is supposed to care for, but she does not find it in herself to care.

“Hola, Sra. Putellas. Encantada.” Isabela holds out her hand but Alexia does not shake it, jaw clenched at the way you have gotten a Spanish-speaking nanny as though to completely erase her babies’ Catalan accents and memory of their other mother! “Me contrataron para ayudar a Y/n con los niños. Me dijeron que usted se encargaría de ellos hoy.”

“Sí, lo estoy haciendo, porque son MIS hijos.” She looks at Nico, who has been hiding shyly behind his nanny’s leg, afraid of his mother’s fierceness. Alexia softens, hoping to welcome him into her embrace, but her stupid knee won’t bend and she can’t get onto his level. Isabela reaches out to help her, or to at least steady her so that she doesn’t drop the squirming toddler she is holding, but the help is unwanted and, quite frankly, embarrassing.

Alexia’s frustration brings tears to her eyes.

She quickly blinks them back.

“¿Le gustaría que la ayudara, Sra. Putellas? Me han pagado por trabajar hoy, así que no es un proble–”

“¡No!” Alexia snaps. Silently, she curses how condescending and petty you have become. Paying the nanny in advance to taunt her for her injuries! “No. Estaré bien. Soy su madre.”

“Por supuesto, pero también está herida.” Isabela looks around the lobby for a moment. “¿Está sola?”

Alexia knows that Mapi’s parents are going to be arriving any minute now, kindly offering to help out with Nico and Elena. “Oh, we do not mind! We’d love for María to have children of her own,” they had said.

“Soy perfectamente capaz de manejarlo–”

“Isabela,” Isabela supplies.

“Isabela,” Alexia repeats. “Ahora, si ha terminado, vaya a disfrutar su día libre.”

She waits on the sofa just left of the door for Mapi’s parents, silently begging them to arrive as soon as possible. Nico is bored and would like to run around, upset that Alexia denies him his fun whenever he whines to play. Elena is tired, grumpily napping in Alexia’s lap, but that means she can’t position her knee the way the surgeons had asked her to. Isabela hadn’t meant to, but she had dumped two rucksacks of toys, snacks, and clothes onto Alexia, who still hasn’t been able to retrieve her crutch from the floor.

Close to tears and very overwhelmed, the arrival of the couple comes as a great relief. “Oh, you poor thing,” coos Mapi’s mother, a caring woman from whom her friend inherited the same quality. She kisses Alexia’s forehead and instantly takes the weight from her lap, hushing the soft whimpers Elena lets out. “Let us look after the babies. You make sure you have the tickets sorted. Have you taken your pain medication? Oh, let me take care of it for you.”

The fuss is something she has had to get used to, but she is thankful for the assistance. They wrestle Nico into his red Spain jersey, something he was not delivered in, and they ensure all three of their wards are comfortable before the stadium appears in the windshield of the taxi.

Alexia begins to get nervous.

Spain has more talent than England – always has – but they don’t have the same funding nor support. Their manager is a dickhead and the federation corrupt, and Alexia’s teammates suffer daily in a way no Lioness would be able to comprehend. She fears for their reputation, for their progression.

Her nerves increase when she sees you in the stands, in your own box of course. It seems that you see her too, but your only acknowledgement of her presence is the wave you give to your children. Alexia has to remind them sharply in Catalan that they are Spanish.

Afterwards, when Spain lost and Alexia is blaming herself for the defeat, you walk through the tunnel, following Leah’s directions that she had sent over text. You’d added her to your contacts yesterday, growing tired of Instagram DMs.

The odd thing about this area is that to your left, nothing is heard and the air hangs its head in shame, but to your right, a nation celebrates its victory. Sadly, you know you have to fetch your children from the Spain changing room before you say goodbye to the English heroines.

You knock on the door, politely. You have never been more glad that a player has not been selected for a squad. Jenni has missed the Euros due to injury, much like her partner-in-crime.

A solemn Ona Batlle, a Manchester United player who serves as a bridge between worlds in your household, opens the door, making no attempt to force a smile when she sees that it is you. You are (were) their captain’s wife; you are like family.

“Hi,” you breathe, not wanting to be the one to pierce through the silence.

Ona stands to one side and you pass.

Most of the girls are tearful, sniffling into their jerseys, heads in their hands, but no one is as distraught as Mapi. Her sobs take the fun out of winning, her devastation crushing and contagious and impossibly hard to ignore. She buries her face into Alexia’s shoulder, but it does nothing to muffle her cries.

You gulp, catching hazel eyes, understanding the plea to not make this feel worse.

You are heartbroken, and so is Mapi. For different reasons, yes, but both organs are shattered in the same way.

Alexia mutters something very quietly, secretly wishing Mapi does not let her go because this is the first time the defender has actually spoken to her since Alexia did what she did, but the blonde hair stops itching her face soon enough.

Rooted to the spot, you search the room for two smaller Spaniards, finding them both taking after Alexia, comforting the players.

“Nico, Lela, come on,” you croak, finding tears in your own eyes. “Say bye-bye to Mami.”

Their hugs and kisses are missed the moment Alexia leaves the country, and the absence of them makes Alexia crumble completely when she finds the letter from your lawyer that Alba has been hiding from her.

…

September rolls around with school, the start of your custody agreement, and the release of your new album.

Judgement Day.

For many, it confirms the split from your wife. Those pictures were never picked up by a magazine, so you have had them deleted with a baseless threat to sue for defamation.

Alexia no longer has to communicate with you through one of your employees, but any texts exchanged are few and far between. She tells you that she is renting a flat near the training centre. It has three bedrooms, but Nico and Elena share one because her mother is living with her while she recovers from her ACL. She also partially tore her meniscus, though she had hesitated to pass that news on, but everything seems to be in order and she is ahead of schedule.

You reluctantly text her whenever you leave the country, whether that is because you are flying to London for work (and to visit Leah, who you are now good friends with) or because a club opening has called and you have answered. It’s not as messy as the media makes it seem, but you agree with the articles that say you seem to drink as though it is what keeps you alive. The word ‘addict’ gets thrown around, but you are sitting in an armchair in front of your therapist before that escalates, if not for yourself then for the sake of your children.

They themselves do not understand. Nico frequently asks when Alexia will come home, though he has usually just visited her when this question pops out, and Elena throws big tantrums during the swaps. Those are done at a neutral location: the park near you. You hope the playground takes the edge off the palpable tension between you and Alexia as you sit on opposite sides of the same bench, exchanging brief updates about your shared duty until whoever is a mother for the next two weekends makes up an excuse to go.

Just before Christmas, once you have calculated that it’s technically Alexia’s turn with their children until January, you go on your biggest night-out since the days when all you were was a 2010s pop star in a girl-group. With no one to go home to and an empty house in Highgate awaiting your return, you get the closest to sleeping with someone else since before meeting Alexia. Her lips trail down your neck, the white powder on her nose rubbing onto your skin as she presses herself into you. You grope her body desperately, painfully dissatisfied by the bones and creamy skin your hands find. You are used to muscle, to strength, to power.

Not some anorexic model who calls you a MILF and hasn’t had a sober day in years.

In the end, you don’t end up sleeping with her, but it makes the headlines nonetheless. Your publicist lets them. “The world needs to see you move on, even if you aren’t,” she says. Your slight disagreement is not voiced, and social media explodes with further confirmation that you are single. A group of football fans are quick to attack you, calling you cruel for leaving Alexia when she is injured, but the thousand-person army doesn’t particularly bother you. You are doing your ex a favour by not opening up about the reason for the split, and you are both aware of that.

You spend Christmas with your parents, who are not pleased to have you moping about their house. Your father tells you that success is the best revenge. You tell him that your album has topped the charts in December, winning its battle against Christmas music.

“But that hasn’t mended a broken heart,” he is unkind enough to point out. “And neither will models, drugs, or alcohol.”

At this point in the day, you have made it through a bottle and a half of wine and a pack of Marlboro Golds. Voice hoarse from smoking and sobbing the entirety of Christmas Eve, you tell him to “fuck off” and call a taxi for yourself.

You don’t remember the destination you had typed in, but you end up at Leah Williamson’s house.

Leah is home, having returned from Milton Keynes half an hour ago, and is not really surprised by the state you are in. She supposes that she has gotten to know you well enough to realise that you are far from stable. This is the first time the English captain has seen you heartbroken, but she is unsure whether it will be the last.

…

Your tour commences the following month, with January being a fresh start to a new year. You tell Leah, who invites you out with her on NYE, that this year you won't be cheated on. It is not the comment that makes her laugh, but rather the way it slurs out of your mouth.

Barcelona feels suffocating when you arrive at the park to say goodbye to Nico and Elena. You’ll be in the States for the entire month and maybe some of February. Alexia is sure it will be fine, especially since the team has taken it upon themselves to look after the two children and help where they can. Additionally, Alexia is growing closer to one of her friends, Olga, who loves children and wanted to be a teacher before she decided on something much cooler.

Alexia has the courtesy to send Mapi and Ingrid in her place, knowing that you do not want to talk to her. You haven’t yet heard her explanation, but that does not matter. Nothing excuses what she did, and nothing will. (And with Jenni, who is no longer the godmother to Elena, the title being revoked instantly.)

“Will you miss us?” Nico asks as you kiss his soft hair, hugging him tightly. “Mami said that we have to swap every three findes so why no now?”

“Why not now?” you gently correct him. “Because I have to work. I’m going to sing in front of lots and lots of people and, maybe, write some new songs!” Your attempt to excite him crashes and burns, but you are not going to give up. “This is a secret so you can’t tell anyone, but some really, really special people want to make songs with me.”

“Who?” he pouts.

“Well, one of Mami’s favourites, Karol G. She is very nice, and she told me she has an idea for a collaboration.” Petty, yes, but also a career move. Nico’s innocence and lack of understanding about the meaning of separation means that he sees your plans as a very nice gift for Alexia. “And, let me think. Ooh, Bad Bunny – you know him, don’t you? I’m sure Pina or Patri or–”

He pulls away from your embrace, taking a step back. “Sí,” he says, sounding exactly like Alexia, “but to Mami, she no like because he says rude things.”

“Adults are allowed to say rude things,” you reply with a cheeky smile, winking at him. “Your mami says rude things all the time, but not in front of you.”

“Really?”

“Yep, but you’ll have to ask her about that.”

Alexia has hobbled through the nighttime routines, aided by Olga, who has halved the job by picking Elena and Nico up from nursery and school and watching them until Alexia’s day at the training ground had ended. Her and Olga haven’t kissed yet, but Alba has advised her sister to be quick about it if she ever intends to. Alexia is not sure she does want that, because your absence has only made how much she loves you (and how much she fucked up) even more obvious.

Their beds are on opposite sides of the room, which is technically the master bedroom – only fair, Alexia thinks, because they are having to share here but not when staying with you – and Elena is fast asleep by the time Nico is tired of the bedtime stories he has relentlessly requested. She brushes off the slight sting of his dismissal of her acting and helps him settle underneath the covers.

As usual, she presses a kiss to both cheeks and the tip of his nose, and tells him to have nice dreams and a good rest. The weekend starts tomorrow, which means he gets to join Alexia at the training centre and sit in on the sessions. Alexia is slightly jealous because she is still stuck in the gym, but as long as he is entertained, she will get over it.

“Mami, how long is a month?” asks Nico, voice small and groggy and… is that a hint of an accent? Maybe the two and a half months of Isabela’s Spanish has affected him. She will look into it.

He tugs on her jumper when she spaces out. “Sorry,” Alexia whispers. “A month is thirty days. Maybe you need to pay attention at school.” She pokes his cheek playfully, and he giggles.

“I do pay attention, I do. Thirty days is long.”

Alexia dreams of the football pitch, of the grass she has been promised she will play on before April. “It can be very long,” comes her agreement, picturing where in her recovery she will be come February. “It can also be very short.”

“I miss Mama.”

His statement, unbeknownst to him, is uncomfortably relatable.

“Thirty days will be very short. You’ll see her again soon, and, you know what? She made me promise to give you goodnight kisses from her every night! She is going to send them to me from America, and I’ll pass them onto you.”

“Really?”

“Sí,” says Alexia with pursed lips, raising her eyebrows to invite him to doubt her. He looks up at her with adoration, as if her word is law. She can only be thankful that you are merciful enough to have not turned her own children against her. You have expressed your wish to keep them from being collateral damage, and Alexia respects you for that.

“Mama said that she makes songs in LA with Karol G!”

Then again, there are other ways to be petty.

…

Touring has always exhausted you. Eat, sleep, travel, sing, in varying orders; the schedule grows repetitive and tight after the first week.

After the first show in LA, you bring a blurry face to your hotel room. You kiss her, you can’t bear to do anything more, and you let her sleep off her drugs in your bed while you take the sofa in your suite.

High on adrenaline half the time and utterly knocked-out when not, you zombie your way through the travelling, grouchily rehearsing new songs on the road, signing merchandise for your screaming fans. You get asked about your private life in a few interviews initially, but the journalists soon learn that the topic is to be avoided if they wish for you to talk to them at all.

The headlines continue to tear apart images captured of you at clubs, and magazines never seem to find the pictures of you with your children when you visit them while you make your way around Europe.

There comes a point where you look at a woman and she becomes, in the eyes of the media, your latest plaything.

Alexia is seething by the time your two-night show in Barcelona rolls around.

One day, when Nico and Elena understand the concepts of affairs and heartbreak, they will see the articles written about their mothers; the hate Alexia gets, the times she has been called a whore by fans of the same sport she devotes her life to, the stark inequality between her and her male counterparts. With these horrors of the world, they’ll see the pictures of you, pupils blown out, eyes red. Women clinging onto you that perhaps faintly resemble Alexia.

Because Alexia knows you, because she loves you, she can see that what has been labelled your ‘slay’ era is really fuelled by devastation. A disaster that she caused. It riddles her with guilt, but she doesn't know how to expel that emotion from her head without reverting to the early days of her loneliness where she ate nothing and made her sister seriously worry whether she was going to find her bleeding out in the bathtub one day. And so, with a lack of command over such a strong feeling, she decides to rage. She is furious with your irresponsibility.

“Where should we eat?” your guitarist asks with a grin as you touchdown in Barcelona. The soft murmur of Spanish and Catalan is unexpectedly comforting, the familiarity grounding. Maybe Barcelona has become your home. Maybe it never stopped being that, because home is where the heart is and, frustratingly, yours still belongs to the woman who tore it out of your chest and didn’t even have the guts to tell you about it.

“I can’t,” you reply quickly, wiping the sweat from travel off your brow with the sleeve of your turtleneck. “I promised my son I’d tuck him in while I’m in the country, and my daughter has been drawing at nursery so I’d like to collect some of the pictures and see if I can get them blown up onto canvases.”

Laughing, your crew make their way off the jet. “You know, most celebrities would pay thousands for abstract art but you get yours from a toddler.”

“She’s talented.” Mapi draws with her, you’ve been told. Elena is what makes Ingrid yearn for a ring to appear in their relationship sooner rather than later. “And take the piss all you want, but if you had had to put my kids through what I have, you’d feel the same.”

The sofa in the Putellas household (the apartment no longer inhabited by Eli, who was very glad to escape the intense atmosphere as soon as Alexia was cleared to live by herself) houses three unsettled humans of varying sizes. The biggest, Alexia, shifts on the soft, new cushions, awaiting your arrival with gulps of brewing tears and the latest set of paparazzi photos of you fresh in her mind. The boy, Nico, practically vibrates with excitement, promising himself that he will drag out this bedtime as long as possible to make up for all the others you have missed. The smallest is upset because she hasn’t fallen asleep yet, kept awake by her older brother who shakes her whenever she starts to drift off, hastily scolding her with a ‘no, Lela! Mama is coming home’.

With no key to this flat, you are forced to be buzzed up.

The anticipation builds. Nico and Alexia try to remember what you smell like, testing themselves to see if they can recall it scent for scent. Have you changed your shampoo? Alexia wonders, Do you still use the same moisturiser?

“Hi, my darlings!” you squeal as the door flies open and Nico comes hurtling into your crouched form, closely followed by his unsteady little sister. “Oh, how I’ve missed you!” You squeeze them as though you are never going to let go, and only release them from the hug when Elena begins to whine, adrenaline rush dying and tiredness overcoming her once more.

“Mama, home,” Nico says with an inaccurate finality. You spare Alexia a glance as he pulls you through the bare walls and grey decor until you reach a door with stickers up and down the white-washed wood. “Mami made me change, but you can read! Lela wants this one.” He rumages through the box of books near the children’s whiteboard (on it, the odd x’s and o’s of football tactics), pulling out a few to stack into his own pile before thrusting something you recognise very well.

“Mami reads to us in English sometimes,” he says matter-of-factly, though Alexia silently curses him from where she is standing in the doorway. “Important to know.”

You chuckle. “Mm, very important. How else would you talk to me?” Elena quietly crawls into your lap, happy to take over Nico’s bed, where you are sitting. You stroke her hair, holding her close. “Mami reads you ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’?”

He is too young to know what scepticism looks like.

“Es que hay ‘La Pequeña Oruga Glotona’.”

You refuse to look at the voice which speaks, but you nod.

“Alright, why don’t you get into bed, and then I’ll start to make my way through the mountain of books. I am absolutely all yours for tonight, my loves.”

…

Alexia’s hands slam down on the dining table, slapping against the wood with a loud bang. “Enough!” she exclaims, her voice slicing through the tense air like a knife. Her eyes blaze in fury and you shrivel, not quite sure what you have done to her. You grant her the silence she needs to continue, though her shout echoes through the shattered tranquillity like a bomb that continues to explode. “It is enough.”

“What, Alexia?”

You sound kind of… bored once you have regained your composure. Your shock is now replaced with a blank expression, and you run your eyes over your nails, examining your cuticles so that you don’t risk making eye contact with her.

“You think you can just waltz in here as if you haven’t offered yourself to the entire world and expect everything to be okay?” Her voice trembles with indignation, venom dripping from each word she spits out. “You can’t go from common slut to mother in one day!”

Nails forgotten, you square your shoulders and set your jaw. “I hadn’t realised you were the jealous type, Ale.” The nickname slips out like a poisonous dart, taunting her, wounding her. It rattles her, and you intend to shake her more. “It’s none of your business, not anymore. Deal with it – or don’t, I don’t care.”

“What kind of example are you setting for our children?” she continues, lips curling into a scornful sneer. “Kissing anything with a mouth! Like some, some hormonal teenager. And to have it all over the papers? It’s trashy! It’s embarrassing for me, because my wife has her hands down the pants of every woman she meets, pumped full of alcohol and drugs and… You, you go to these events, paid to get yourself on the front pages so that they can be mentioned in the location of the incident, and… and that’s like prostitution! Making money from your body, from sex!”

Her fists clench and she storms towards you, footsteps harsher than her bad knee can probably take, but you make no move to back down. You lift your chin up; “I don’t have to resort to prostitution for money. I have more than enough.”

“Then you do it for attention,” Alexia reasons with herself, albeit very loudly. “That is what you are, aren’t you? A slut for the cameras and the glitz and glamour of it all. So quick to jet off on tour, leaving me with our children–”

“I may be a ‘slut’ for attention, but at least I am not a whore for a woman who is not my fucking wife!” You press your hand to her chest roughly, pushing her away from you. “I’m not the one who had an affair, I’m not the one who ruined everything!”

Alexia recoils at your words, freeing herself from your searing touch before she melts. She forces her fury to its boiling point. “How dare you,” she seethes, voice cracking at the ferocity in which she forces the sentence out. “You think you can just throw my mistakes in my face?” You hold your ground. She will not intimidate you. “You think you’re so righteous, but you’re not as innocent as you pretend to be.”

It is a baseless accusation. You both know it.

“The only fact we have here is that you fucked Jenni. Our daughter’s godmother. Your ‘best friend’, my friend too! I trusted her, and I trusted you, and you took that trust and obliterated it by sleeping with her!”

Alexia wants to cut you deep, wants to give you the gory details of it all, but she hears the croak of your voice and knows you will not make it to your hotel if she tells you.

“I slept with Jenni, sure, but you have passed yourself around enough to make us even.”

“Nothing will make us ‘even’, Alexia,” you cry, meaning to sound scarier than you do. You can’t help the tears from streaming down your face, nor the hoarseness of your throat. “And I would never ever do to you what you did to me!”

You have to go on vocal rest the next day, otherwise the concert would be called off.

Alexia refuses to attend, even though most of her teammates will, instead pawning Nico and Elena off to your backstage staff and dangerously driving herself to Alba’s place.

It is one of those nights where Alba cannot leave her side for fear Alexia will choke herself to death on her tears. When the elder of the two can longer hold it all in, Alba ties her hair back with an old hair bobble so that the blonde strands don’t get in the way of her sister’s vomit.

("I don't want to live like this," Alexia says, her eyes wide and alert. Her little sister looks at her with empathy, searching, with a broken heart, for a version of a woman from the past she's not sure she knows. This Alexia is not the same.

"Of course you don’t." It's obvious. Obvious by the way she forces her existence without happiness, without company, without a smile. It's like there is no sun in Alexia's world, nor a blue sky, nor an end.

It never ends.

So, she says, "I don't want to live like this, without her, without the family I dream of every night, every waking moment. I don’t want to live, Alba. I didn’t want to live in August, and I haven’t since, and I… I do it because people rely on me." She takes in a deep, acidic breath, grimacing at the taste of bile on her tongue. “If it were just me, just Alexia”--The Ruiner, she silently adds–“I wouldn’t be here. Alba, Alba, I don’t want to live like this.”

She carries on repeating it because Alba has to understand. There can't be a possibility that Alba thinks her sister is insincere. What a lie that would be! To Alexia, she prefers death over continuing like this, with her head in the toilet and vomiting, vomiting, vomiting.

"If I had the chance, I would go back to August 2021 and never sleep with Jenni. I’d not let her kiss me, not give into it. I'm exhausted from it; from my loneliness, from the kids' questions, asking when their mother will come back home. Do you know that Nico asked me if we still loved him? If she still loves him? And why his friends have two parents and he seems to have a shell of a woman for one, and a vacant space in the king-sized bed for the other?"

"She might not want you again, however, and your imagined future may be false – it is the opposite of reality, no? If I were her, I wouldn't. You cheated on her when she only gave you love and patience and… Well, Alexia, I swear I really want to see you happy, but I just don't think she'll forgive you."

"And why not?"

Alba sighs. She places her hand on Alexia's back, moving it in circles to calm her sister down. When they were little, it was always Alexia who helped Alba. With school, with her problems, with new lovers or ones from the past. It was her responsibility to take care of her little sister, and when their father died and there were only three of them, Alexia felt that responsibility even more.

Here, roles reversed, Alba can only apply that which she has learnt from the heaving lump of flesh slumped on the chequered tiles.

"Alba," repeats Alexia, lowering her voice, relenting. "She loves me."

The younger of the two can’t help the tears that brim in her eyes, distressed in her own right. "She loves you despite your other girlfriend because she's a saint. She's a saint but, if you want her to be happy, you cannot take advantage of her," Alba warns gravely, sincerely, and correctly. Alexia lifts her head and looks at the clock on the bathroom wall. Alba's apartment is clean and trendy, just like the woman, and she has dirtied it with her presence. She remains, for the foreseeable future, Alexia, The Ruiner.

"Smartass."

"It's just the truth."

"Well, if that's the truth, I'd rather you be a liar."

Alba sighs again, more heavily, and asks Alexia to get up from the floor. If Alexia's knee hurts, she says nothing and jumps up and down. "Ay, your knee," Alba grumbles but Alexia keeps going. She keeps going and going until she can't breathe and her lungs hurt. She keeps going because she believes it will rid her of her sadness, or at least hopes so. She hasn't stopped when Alba asks her to. A loud voice breaks the silence. "What are you doing?"

"Destroying everything. If I can't be with her, I don't want to play football. I don't want to walk, or see, or talk. I just don't want to live."

To Alba, this tells her two things. One is that her sister has gone batshit crazy. The other? Well, that is the solution. It's simple, really; one sentence, and Alexia will know what she has to do.

"You need to fix this.")

Heartbreak is ugly, but Alexia’s guilt is uglier.

#woso x reader #woso #woso fanfics #barca femeni #woso imagines #fc barcelona #mapi leon #ona batlle #alexia #alexia putellas x reader #alexia putellas #alexia putellas imagine #randombush3

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randombush3 · 29 days

Text

too sweet

alexia putellas x reader

it's based on the hozier song and i just got bored during my break

icl this might not make sense x

[...]

You aren’t sure how you ended up here.

There was a path, there was a brick lane painted yellow and filled with singing and dancing, and, what? Did you spiral off it? Were you the hurricane, were you the destroyer?

Maybe you are The Destroyed.

It’s too late to think about it.

Not because you are past repair, but because it really is late – later than usual.

The door has been locked twice, meaning Alexia has given in and gone to bed. “Fuck,” you swear as your keys clatter to the floor, typical for you to be the one to break the peaceful silence. A rustle comes from the bedroom; a sigh, a muffled sob. “Ale?”

And it’s instinctive, the way you run to her. Once upon a time, that was all you ever did, back when you played, back when the path was good and smooth and clear.

Alexia doesn’t want to see you. She hates the smell of whiskey, she hates the gruffness of your voice. There comes a point where a person can no longer bear it. No matter how much love she wraps around you, weaving the thinning strings together to form a rope and begging you to let her pull you up from this, there comes a point where Alexia, perhaps blinded too much by her love, is destroying herself just so that you don’t go down alone.

She’s tired.

When you arrive at the bedroom door, she has turned over, the duvet slightly too cold and the bed slightly too empty. “Ale, are you awake?” you ask, drunken foolishness clouding your sense as the lump under the covers does not respond, does not feel she can. “Baby?”

The bed doesn’t look inviting, and you feel unwelcome.

You roll your shoulders back.

“Alexia, don’t pretend.”

The silence is haunting and you try to escape it as soon as possible, letting out a viscous laugh, directing it towards her back. The noise slashes welts in her skin, your tongue a whip, you her mistress and she, your slave. Alexia closes her eyes.

An alarm rings through the apartment. The sun is not quite up, so it would be dark if you hadn’t been staring at the soft glow of the lamp beside the TV for the past hour.

The screen isn’t on.

You don’t quite feel escaping this life just yet.

“Bon dia.” Soft feet pad into the kitchen, face washed, training kit pulled on. Her nose wrinkles as the bitterness of coffee hurtles towards her, and she doesn’t make an effort to conceal her frown at the empty bottle of whiskey on the floor beside you. “Are you planning to get some rest?”

“Are you making coffee?”

“I read a study that says it negatively affects performance.”

“Are you making me a coffee?” you amend with a smirk, sitting up and staring her down. Through the redness of your eyes shines what first attracted her to you, the devilish spark, the clearly set out intention of doing something stupid.

She watches you haul yourself up, staggering towards her. Your hands are cold and clammy, but their grip on her waist feels just as good as it always does. She leans back into you.

“The sun’s not up yet but Alexia Putellas is ready to train,” you murmur into her ear, kissing the skin of her neck as though to soothe where the dig must have sliced her. “No journalist tracks your morning routine, baby. You could’ve stayed in bed a bit longer, let yourself wake up later. Don’t you ever wanna?”

Her body relaxes, choosing to hear your voice but not what you are saying. She lets herself fall into the pit you rot in; your most frequent visitor. “I am drunk on life,” she replies with a forgiving smile.

You step back, Alexia stumbling with you, having been leaning on your body.

“I’m not drunk.” It is far from a new lie. “Have fun at training,” you grit out. She sees the back of you as you lurch towards the bedroom door. Her tears try to fall, but she wipes her face with her knuckles and collects herself before she heads out into the real world. Her home feels like a dungeon, but one that is not meant for her.

The girls undergo the usual ritual of asking after you. Your retirement was forced, but they all saw it coming.

You were not sculpted from the same heroic marble, withstanding heat and terror. Nothing about you fit into training regimes and early mornings, sweetened energy drinks on promotion, discipline and determination. You got by on talent, rough and raw, and listening to your beloved prison warden on occasion.

If Alexia is the Greek hero, you were, perhaps, the weapon she used. Deadly, yes. Sought-after. But, if dropped, clattering towards the ground lifelessly.

She crouches down to pick you up, but your metal burns so hot that she is not sure she can touch you.

When Alexia comes home, you are asleep. She opens the windows, self-consciously airing out the stench of alcohol before a few of her teammates come over for dinner, and she cleans the stickiness from the worktops. She lights a candle. She wishes it were an altar, a conduit to her saviour, and she prays, for a moment, that this will end soon.

When she opens her eyes, she realises the only saviour she has been thinking of has been you.

She crawls into the bed beside you.

You stir at the feeling of fingers combing through your hair.

Alexia is as bright as the morning sun, blazing above Barcelona. She is untouchable.

The distance that has grown between you has grown because she is the zenith and you are the nadir. It is just too far to overcome.

You are real. You suffer, you cry, you poison yourself and enjoy it. You like how you live, you like how free you are.

Alexia’s gentle rousing – but rousing, nonetheless – sends you tumbling past your limit.

This is not how she wants you to be, but you cannot be something you are not.

“You’re too sweet for me.”

She hears the rejection, but she shakes her head.

“No, no,” she whispers desperately, pleading for it to not mean what it does, begging you to swallow it back inside. “No, I’m not. Remember?”

She means her ACL, she means the venomous arguments and the early days where you’d watch her carefully as she inhaled your second-hand smoke. She means now, where she lets you live the way you do because she understands how life works and she gets it, she does, and she really only just wants you to be happy.

You blink slowly. “Ale.”

“No, I’m… I’m just still playing! I have to take my career seriously, but, but, the off-season! You know how I am in the off-season?”

“Baby, you don’t give yourself an off-season.”

“I can!” she vows. “I can, and we’ll go on holiday with the girls, and we’ll wake up dark as lakes and you can make me smell like a fucking bonfire, if you’d like.”

“Ale…”

“Please,” she asks.

You wish you could go along with the farce. In all honesty, you’re a bit surprised that is has lasted up to now.

You cannot do this anymore. Maybe one day, when she is done playing and training and conforming to the intense regimes the club upholds them to, you will come back to her. Maybe one day, she will have sat in the barrel long enough to have soured, bitter, now, and much more palatable.

But you are certain about the present, about the woman lying beside you with tears running down her cheeks. You decide that if you were to taste the liquid, what is supposed to be salty would be sweet, and, with that, you have convinced yourself.

“Alexia, baby, you’re too sweet for me.”

#woso x reader #woso #randombush3 #woso fanfics #alexia putellas x reader #alexia putellas imagine #alexia putellas

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randombush3 · 3 days

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fugaz

alexia putellas x reader

i don't know i just like this song and i was boreddddd

sometimes i wonder if my excessive use of metaphors is unnatural

[…]

It’s, like, two in the morning.

A soft breeze carries salty air into your bedroom, whistling as the smell of Alexia is slowly carried away.

This keeps happening and you don’t know what to do.

Alexia is coarse language and harsh lines; rippling muscle and amazonian strength; stamina and delicious relentlessness. Alexia is tough and strong and wastes no time on useless matters, but her lips taste sweet like honey and there is more to her than that.

She is more than a sport, more than a woman. More than the softer sighs that escape her when she is pleased or the tired whimpers of vulnerability only you are allowed to hear. More than warmth, love, happiness.

With Alexia, it is like catching smoke.

It’s enticing, it’s a challenge, and it leaves you the loser no matter how hard you try.

She is fleeting. You have gotten used to it.

She is fleeting like faith, like golden banners of sunlight, and like all things good in this world.

You try to catch the smoke again.

You search for answers you already know.

The smoke dissipates the more you frantically wave your hands around, and all of a sudden, you can see clearly. Your blindfold has been stolen against your will, but you cannot bring yourself to close your eyes of your own accord.

It is better that she doesn’t come back again, although that is against what your heart would prefer.

Your sorrows are duller when drowned in the lips of other women, and honey never tastes the same but you force yourself not to mind.

The women are not her, but if she happens to call you, you know you will not answer.

It should be obvious.

(Many things should be so, but if you paid attention to them all, you would never have enjoyed soot on your face and dust stinging your eyes to tears.)

You know that it is wrong. Perhaps it feels such a way because Alexia is a goddess to whom you have made an offering – a promise.

But she hurt you.

That is the truth.

#woso x reader #alexia putellas imagine #alexia putellas x reader #alexia putellas #randombush3 #woso

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randombush3 · 1 month

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revocate animos (with or without me)

alexia putellas x reader

part one, part two, part three, part four

the second half of this part (it didn't fit in one post lol)

words: it's over 14k. i had lots to say.

summary: the final part, which originally had a different ending but i was told it was evil so i changed it.

warnings: it's mainly just sad, there's a bit of smut though

notes: i could give you so many excuses as to why this is being posted now but no one wants to read that so i'll just say sorry x

anyway, i got very lost along the way at points and had some serious plot crises that had me tearing my hair out. i researched children's behaviour to the point of needing an honourory qualification, and i spent the last three hours ignoring my girlfriend while i finished this off.

for as much as i put these two through (and myself tbh), i'm sad to finish it off. BUT ALSO NOW IM FREE.

have fun reading! and sorry about the length of it

London smells of dirty rain and exhaust fumes, of a homelessness crisis and inflation attempting to impersonate that of the Weimar Republic; greyish streets, cracks in the pavement, thousands of spices from all over the world. Grubby patterns, hidden by the smudging of millions of bottoms, coloured poles that used to match the train line but no longer do. You breathe it all in, eyes closed as the motion of the underground jerks you sideways, the train leaving London Bridge just as you left Barcelona. Without looking back.

You had laughed when they told you they’d send a driver to get you from the airport. The luxury of some shiny black car held no appeal when compared to the familiar Northern line, its blackened route well-travelled and your own brick-road home.

Part of this choice to ‘slum it’ is borne of your desire to return to the past; a time before the fame and the fortune, when camera flashes came from your parents’ Sony Cyber-shot and not paparazzos with a hunger to splash you across the front page of a slimy gossip magazine. There was no Alexia, then. The extent of Spanish in your life was Anya studying for her A-levels, and you’d spend time writing songs without it feeling like pulling teeth. Without having to relive some of the worst moments of your life.

Those hadn’t happened yet.

God, you were so naive then back then.

Your London shows are in Wembley. Two nights, two journeys through your album, through your heartbreak. Both are sold out.

“See it, say it, sorted,” you mouth along to the voice, pushing the handle of your suitcase upwards, rising from your seat. The doors of the tube swoosh open, the yellow line of the platform attacking your tired eyes as Highgate station is revealed to you. You hear a whisper of ‘is that Y/n L/n?’ but you don’t turn around.

The wheels of your suitcase gurgle against the bumpy pavement leading up to your house, but they grow quieter as you approach. They must sense the tension, glad to have the smoother surface of your driveway to move across as you force yourself to continue walking forwards.

A woman is standing on your porch. Her body swivels around as she hears you stop just behind her.

Leah takes in the sight of you, deciding that you definitely did not enjoy Barcelona. “I was just about to ring the doorbell, but I guess you wouldn’t have answered the door anyway,” she says with an awkward chuckle, not sure if you want to talk about how rough you look. You cried the entire flight, and refused to contact anyone once you had landed, hoping they assumed your plane had crashed and you had drowned somewhere in the English Channel.

“I got here in the morning.” Your voice is unused. It croaks, shattered.

“Let me get your bag?” asks Leah, rather firmly, leaving you no room to decline her request before she has stepped off the porch and into your personal space. She looks up at you, wondering how you manage to look so beautiful even now, hand blindly reaching out for the hard shell of your suitcase as she stares. “How’re Nico and–”

Your lips silence her before she is finished. Leah freezes, surprised this is the moment you have chosen to kiss her.

But she misses you as soon as you pull away.

“I’m so sorry,” you whisper, and she cringes at the self-loathing that drips from your words. A tear rolls down your cheek, but you are unsure whether it falls because you have kissed her or because you want to kiss her again. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

You must have argued with Alexia. Leah’s realisation weighs heavy on her heart. Something has to have happened for you to have made your move, because Leah had been starting to accept the idea that you were still in love with your ex and she was nothing more than a friend. She had been looking forward to your concert tonight, in all honesty, and was excited to see you again, glad to have you in her life in any way, shape, or form.

“Because,” she starts hesitantly, “because you didn’t like it? Or…”

“Leah.”

“If you wanted to kiss me again, I wouldn’t mind.”

“Leah,” you repeat, the vowels almost failing to drop from the tip of your tongue. This is a dangerous game, but the look in Leah’s blue eyes tells you that she is happy to play it. “Leah, I… I shouldn’t have kissed you?”

“Is that a question?”

You blink. “I’m not sure.”

“If it’s a question, I’d say that the answer is the opposite. And that we should go inside.” She slides her hand over the metal handle of your suitcase, warm skin covering your fingers where your grip is still curled around it. “But only if you want to.”

Do you want to?

You value your friendship, you really do; Leah has been there for you many times since you met her, never asking too many questions. She means something more than what you crave from her, and doesn’t deserve to be the woman you use to detach yourself from reality.

But Leah is looking at you with desire that has been missed, relentlessness promised by her toned muscles. Leah is looking at you as though you are the only star in the galaxy or the sun on a rainy day. Leah is looking at you like she wants to devour you, and you, with no soul left to give, resign to letting her have your body.

“This won’t change anything, right?”

It’s a mean question. You know that.

“Course not,” Leah lies.

You let it convince the both of you.

Pink glitter covers the dining table at one end, and shiny green stars are scattered on top of the brown grain of the wood on the other.

“She might be at soundchek,” Alexia explains to Nico, who is finished with his Mother’s Day creation and is now intent on FaceTiming you to show you the card he has made. “And cards are supposed to be a surprise. That’s why we made envelopes!”

“But you said my card should be put in a museum,” he replies with a frown, his nose crinkling in confusion just as yours does. “So we show her now.”

“Mi amor, that’s not how it works,” laughs Alexia, reaching out to ruffle his hair. With Elena settled comfortably on her healthy knee, gleefully pushing piles of glitter around so that it mixes with the glue smeared on her card, it is safe to say that this year’s cards are going to be successes. “Mama has promised to call when she gets home, and you can tell her that you have a surprise for her. That will build up the excitement, and make it even better when she gets to open it.”

Your son has become a cynic. “And when will that be?”

“Mother’s Day is on the 19th, so we have three days to wait.” You have purposely chosen a chartered route to Tokyo that flies via Barcelona so that you get to spend the day with your children before your fortnight in Asia to end the first half of the tour. “Do you want to write the words out for Lela once the glue has dried?”

“I don’t know what Lela wants me to say,” he explains with great concern, turning to his sister with a very serious expression. He speaks to her in English, because he knows that this card is for you. He understands that there are two Mother’s Days, though he thinks it’s because he has two mothers, and that Alexia’s day is in May. When Alexia opens her mouth to speak, Nico is quick to shut her down. “Calla, Mami, no sabes nada de inglés.”

Your legs slam together but find no available route with Leah’s body in between them.

It feels… good.

Liberating.

You haven’t brought her into your bed, which she notices but doesn’t comment on. It’s excusable to be on the sofa, to have stayed downstairs for the hours she has spent trying to make you feel better, because the clock has only just ticked its way to lunchtime. You laugh to yourself at the thought of that, amused by the notion that you have already eaten.

Leah is curious when it comes to you. That much you had expected, having been aware of her lingering gazes long before the sores on your heart had calloused into tougher muscle. She has been waiting for this resiliently, and you present yourself to her as though you are a new toy she finally gets to play with. She kisses you slowly at times, to memorise the warmth of your tongue or the jut of your chin, but she often grows impatient, wanting nothing more than to end her torture and find out what it is like.

What is it like to have a woman like you? To wake up next to you, kiss you, touch you?

How does your mind work? What do you smell like just after getting out of the shower? Does your accent ever slip, or is it really that posh?

The air in the living room is hazy now, and your eyes close in bliss as you let your sweat seep into the grainy fabric of your white sofa. Leah doesn’t crawl into your open arms as you assume she will.

She wipes her mouth.

Although Leah has enjoyed this very much, she knows that this instance has not been you allowing her to start to love you. It has been for her to help you forget how much pain you are in. Somewhere deep down, she cares, but she doesn’t try to search for the emotion.

“So,” she says with a giggle, as if you are two teenage girls, best friends who have decided to kiss so that they can practise for the real thing, “do I need to send an apology present to your makeup artist?” Sitting back on her knees, she swipes one hand down to pluck her t-shirt from the floor, pulling it on top of her naked body before sending you an exaggerated smirk and prodding the developing bruise on your neck.

“Fuck,” you groan, batting her hand away. “I completely forgot I had that thing tonight.” You also need to call your children before Alexia bans your name from her household (if that hasn’t happened already).

“That ‘thing’ being your concert at Wembley?”

“I’d have thought selling out Wembley is the norm for you now, Captain,” you tease, clearing your throat. “England have done it, Champions of Europe for the very first time.”

“You’re freakishly good at a commentator’s voice.”

“Gotten used to being my own commentator. Only Spanish streams in my house – even United matches!” You smile at your own frustration but it quickly sours as awkwardness drops on top of you. You bring your arms up to cover your bare chest, but Leah clears her throat with softened eyes and you no longer feel so exposed.

You feel safe.

“What happened in Barcelona?” You shake your head at her question. “That bad, huh?” she presses.

“I don’t really want to talk about it,” you tell her, grey clouds hanging over you as your voice darkens and lowers. “Like, at all.”

“I think you should. It’s better it comes out now than later when you’ve had lots to drink and no idea who you’re ranting about it to, isn’t it? And it’s just me; I’m not going to judge you.”

“But you know her. You know her friends.” Your hands move to cover your face. Leah can have your body, but you don’t want her to have your tears. “Thank you for caring, babe, but I think I’m going to handle this one on my own.”

“Well, you know that–”

“You’re always a phone call away.” You smile, tears sucked back inside you, bottled away in glassware you store in crates labelled ‘VERY FRAGILE’. Desperate to change the subject, you adjust your position on the sofa, sitting up. Leah tries very hard not to stare at the curves of your chest. “You know, Lee, I never thought you’d be that good in bed.”

…

Alexia is in desperate need of advice.

Her muscles contract and relax, the tissues pulling on her bone, which, in turn, pulls her. She is strung along, driven perhaps by her leap in recovery and impending comeback. She almost breaks out into a jog, but the church she has dragged herself to comes into view before she can gain speed.

She had not expected this from herself.

It’s nothing special to her, though she will admit that the architecture of the building does hold some sense of divinity, but the heavy wooden door is propped open and she is drawn inside.

The Sacrament of Reconciliation, Fridays, 17.00-17.30.

Alexia checks her watch, the golden links gleaming on her wrist, catching the sunlight that filters in through the glass windows.

She catches a glimpse of white behind the doors of the Confession booth, becoming acutely aware of how empty the church is. The curtain has been pulled back, bunched to the left-hand side carefully, as though the previous handler had moved with peace.

It can’t be that bad, can it?

It’s just like therapy.

Her feet carry her forwards once more, leading her into the wooden booth. It smells old. The cushion she kneels on is blue, she thinks, but she cannot tell because it goes dark once she pulls the curtain shut.

Alexia is not a religious person. Sure, she signs the cross before stepping onto the pitch, and, like most people she knows, she is baptised, but her faith is limited to that. When she tore her ACL, she spent evenings trying to pray, trying to force her to believe in Him. It would have been comforting to know that someone had a plan for her, was watching over her carefully with the knowledge of how it was going to play out. It was to no avail.

But somehow she knows what to say, and so she does.

“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” She recites the words like lines from a play, head bowed in shame as she writes her next sentences in her mind. “This is my first and, probably, my last confession.”

Silence.

She rests her hands in her lap, shuffling around to ensure she is not pressing down on her knee in any way that is harmful. It would kill her to have to push back her return to the pitch because of some stupid thing she has spontaneously chucked herself into.

“I messed up.” She laughs. “No, that is actually an understatement. I know this is a church and I really shouldn’t swear, but I fucked up. Father, I had Heaven in my hands and I threw it away as though it were meaningless. Was it greed? Was it greed that led me to do it?”

“Do what, my daughter?”

The priest sounds younger than she’d thought he would be.

“I had an affair with a woman whom I am certain I do love a little bit, but, by doing that, I destroyed a life that was perfect. Was it greed?”

“I think you know the answer to that.”

“Was it temptation?” Alexia tries again, desperately. Part of her yearns for the priest to tell her it was the Devil so that she can shed the responsibility. “I love my wife. More than anything, I love her. I do not think my own life is worth living if it is not in service to her, to our children, to the smile she reserves for her favourite people. I… I didn’t attempt it, but I thought about killing myself.” She swallows the lump in her throat. “Only once, but I thought it all the same. My sister called me selfish.

“It’s just – forgive me – fucked, isn’t it? I got carried away. I got lonely, I was alone. I craved something to make me forget, to pinch the gaping hole in my life shut. I relied on it to make me feel better, and it did for a time. But now it has made me feel much, much worse.

“And I am sorry! I am so, so sorry. I have grown sick of the word; I’ve used it so much that it holds no meaning anymore. It doesn’t do my regret justice, nor my quest for forgiveness, and I’m really on that quest, Father, I want to stress that to you. I lost my temper and said things I should not have said – things I don’t even believe – but I did not mean them then, and I do not mean them now.”

“You are not religious,” accuses the priest, very gently. His voice washes over Alexia’s ears like a wave of warm saltwater from the Mediterranean, and she feels comfortable enough to swim into the expanse in front of her. “Our God is forgiving, but it is not His forgiveness that you seek. I cannot give you a prayer that will make her absolve your sins, because our holy words are not spells.”

“Father,” croaks Alexia. As her lips part, she tastes the saltwater of the sea, dripping down her cheeks as though the tide has come in and there is no other option than for her to be flooded. “Please help me. I don’t know what to do.”

The priest speaks, but she assigns the voice to someone else.

The first thing you forget about a person is what their voice sounds like. It lingers like a feeling you can’t quite name; distant, distorted, enhanced by fantasy.

Alexia does not remember her father’s voice.

The realisation is crushing.

She knows his words – they are her prayers – but, like Catholics do not know the voice of their God, she can no longer hear the voice of hers.

What would her father say if he saw her like this? On her knees in a Confession booth, backed against the wall with nowhere to hide?

This is not the girl he was proud of. Alexia, of course, is not that eighteen-year-old anymore; she hasn’t been for a decade. But, recently, the legacy of that unknown Levante player has disappeared.

Alexia is so very lost.

She does not know where she is in her own city. In her home.

She does not know her place in her life, much less her place in yours – if you will still grant her one.

She has not felt the thrill of football for months, has driven herself to Hell and back, and considered giving up enough to be on the brink of actually doing it.

She has seen countless meals hit the water of her toilet, never digested, never deserving of the very thing that keeps her alive.

She has counted your sacrifices, memorising the digits of an ongoing figure so that she can punish herself with the knowledge.

She has tried to forget English, tried to improve her English, and taken vows of silence.

She has cried and cried and cried until the only thing left for her to excrete is her hot, red blood.

She has searched for a way out of the maze. She has failed every time.

Alexia is lost without you, and she knows it. Everyone knows it, perhaps even you yourself. Do you revel in that fact? Do you enjoy it?

You have a right to watch her suffer. You do, you do, you do.

Alexia runs a hand through her damp hair, sweating as she sobs in the booth next to some stranger who she will never meet again. Her mouth is dry but her cries are wet and raw, and they scrape her throat as she chokes them out, losing her breath and falling silent only to catch it and begin again. The cushion burns her knees as though she is trapped in an inferno, the darkness blazing against her skin.

The priest talks to her for a long time, not letting her leave until she has calmed down. She sniffles, wiping her nose with the back of her palm before softly pressing her thumbs to her blotchy cheeks to clear the final tears from them.

When he is finished, he instructs her to take a few deep breaths, which she does. “You are not entitled to her forgiveness,” he reminds her. He begins the Prayer of Absolution – he insists for the sake of closure – and Alexia walks away from the church no more than five minutes later.

She is still stuck in the maze, but she has restored that voice in her head that she knows will help her find her way out.

…

“So you went to church?” Olga asks with an amused smile, taking the first sip of her latte, relishing in the gentle burn of the liquid. She needs this coffee; she stayed up late last night because she knew Alexia has been struggling. There is nothing worse than being asleep when Alexia calls her for help.

“I have no idea how I ended up there,” Alexia explains, somewhat defensive about yesterday’s catharsis. “Confession is way better than therapy. There is too much accountability in therapy.”

“You have a lot to account for.”

She huffs out a breath, taking a sip of her own drink. “I know, Olga, but I cannot change the past, so what would you like me to do?” Olga doesn’t reply. The brunette parts her lips, but promptly closes her mouth when she sees Alexia’s slight discomfort. “Mama wants you to come to dinner tonight. I… I do too.”

Olga’s smile is big and genuine. “I’d love that,” she answers. “Eli is the best cook out of our friends’ parents. Everyone knows that.”

You’re in London, childless, and are watching the grand old Arsenal play (reluctantly, forced to by Leah if anything). Alexia has seen the pictures of you at the match on Instagram; she has already felt the frustration that you are most-likely never going to watch Barcelona play again unless it is to support the other team. Like clockwork, Alexia seeks to fill the gaping hole you have left in her life. Somewhere, somehow, the lines of friendship between her and Olga have blurred.

…

It takes just over a month for Leah to crack.

You appear in London every two weeks, attending meetings and events, but she has decided, once and for all, to see through your excuses. You come to London for her. She knows that, and so do you. Leah’s ego has not reached a size where she believes she is enough for you, but the facts (and Lia Wälti) tell her she is wrong.

Except, what Leah tends to leave out is that no matter how many times you let her sleep with you, she still is unable to access a certain part of your mind.

She has never been upstairs in your house because you always prefer to go to her place in St. Albans. She has never slept in your bed, nor woken up next to you.

You talk to her like she is still the same old Leah, the captain you befriended during the tournament of her lifetime, your entrance in her life intertwined with the ecstasy of winning the Euros. She closes her eyes and thinks of how you looked that summer; white England shirt, sunglasses pulled down over your eyes. Smiling, cheering. For her, she greedily claims to herself.

Sometimes, in her mind, you lift your sunglasses – you always seem to be crying when she pictures this – but Leah is only vaguely familiar with the timeline of your divorce. This is the issue.

There is a door that you have locked and refuse to let Leah find the key. It leads to heartbreak, to Nico and Elena, to a family you once had.

“I wish you would let me in,” Leah says one day. (The day she cracks.) She tears her ACL two days prior, something that makes you feel guiltily nauseous, and you have come to visit her. She knows that you had flown over the minute you had swapped custody with Alexia.

Your legs curl into your chest as you try to reduce the amount of space you are taking up on Leah’s sofa, cautious of her injured knee. Leah misses the warmth of your thighs, and wants to revoke her conversation starter instantly, pained that she has to even ignite the fire of this forbidden topic. “What do you mean?” comes your quiet reply, unwilling to disturb the peace of her living room. The peace of existing side-by-side.

“Exactly what I said.” Leah nods to emphasise her agreement with herself. “I wish you would let me in, because how do you expect me to love you if I don’t know you?”

She sees the bullet fly through the air; she sees the moment it hits you, the way you go rigid. Dead. Dying?

“It’s crazy because it usually takes years for me to feel about someone the way I feel about you, and I just… I just wanted to tell you that it’s okay to let me in. I want to hear everything, to know everything.”

“Oh.” What had you expected when you kissed her? “Oh, Leah.”

“You don’t have to apologise.” She assigns your guilt, the tears in your eyes, to your distance. Perhaps you hadn’t realised, perhaps it is a coincidence Leah has never slept in the bed you used to share with Alexia. Maybe you are unaware that Leah has never heard you speak Spanish, and doesn’t know a single thing about your life in Barcelona.

You’re a busy person, after all.

“No, no,” you dismiss quickly, shaking your head. Leah can’t help but wonder if the paranoid voice in her head is right; has she been reading too much into this? “Fuck, I am such a twat.”

But you don’t elaborate further, asking how she’s feeling, distracting her from your realisation about her realisation. Before Leah knows it, you are making her laugh harder than she has in a month, and soon, like most good things, your visit comes to an end.

Returning to Barcelona is a little weird.

You feel as though you have done nothing but check over your shoulder the entire journey, staring the past straight in the eye and wishing you could change it.

You hadn’t meant to make her fall in love with you. (But she has. Oh, she has.)

This week’s swap is no different; the same park as usual, the same pleasant weather to undergo an unpleasant task.

On the bench usually occupied by Olga, a different, blonder head comes into view.

“Irene?” you ask in surprise, wondering if she has been sent in Olga’s stead or just so happens to have brought Mateo, her son, to the very same park. You sit down beside her, somewhat pleased to not see Alexia’s henchwoman today. “Where’s the free childcare?”

The defender’s eyes narrow, as though she is debating whether or not she should tell you.

Irene has known Alexia for a long time, and, by extension, has known you for a long time too. She is calm, level-headed, and mature, much like Alexia. Except Irene hasn’t ever thought to cheat on her wife.

You are clearly in a lot of pain, and you have a right to be; Irene does not rise to your comment. “Olga has gone on holiday,” she states with practised neutrality.

“Ah, they’ve broken up.”

Eyebrows raised, she turns to you, breaking her line of sight that encompasses Nico, Mateo, and Elena. The playground is small enough, and very safe. “They were never together.” You wait patiently for her analysis of whatever the fuck was going on between them. “Olga said she wasn’t what Alexia needed. She’s on holiday with Carla, and I guess she is quite upset.”

“And Alexia?” You know Irene does not like to gossip, nor stir the pot. So you can be nosy about how she is doing.

“I think her ego was bruised, but she sees Olga’s point. She has been… better recently. She’s focused on getting back onto the pitch, and Jona is only saying good things about it.” Irene’s eyes brighten at the thought of her captain’s recovery, and her tone soars through the air. The entire team has worried for Alexia, spending their own nights tossing and turning, wondering if the old version of her will ever return. “I know you two don’t speak, but if you did, you’d get a glimpse of what it was like before.”

You can’t help your smile, and Irene does not make you feel pathetic for wearing it. “Good.”

“I heard you were in London?”

“Visiting a… friend.” Irene is not a gossip, you remind yourself. “I think I might have to stay in this country for a bit and let things cool down over there.”

She chuckles. “Whose heart have you broken?” She won’t tell Alexia, when Alexia inevitably asks about you, that you are seeing someone. Not that you have confirmed that to her.

“I’m yet to break it,” you tell her, sighing, “but I know I will, and that is much, much worse.”

“Hey, at least you have two weeks of being endlessly busy to keep your mind off it.”

Children change a lot in two weeks, so Irene then launches into an update on school, clubs, and everything else. She gets the information from Alexia, of course, who writes out a list every time you switch over. No one has ever handed you the piece of paper before, worried that her handwriting will be an unnecessary reminder of the pain she has caused you, but, for some reason, Irene does today.

You are not put off by the swirling Spanish in front of you, instead choosing to study it. You have spent hours in Alexia’s lap as she scrawls out football notes upon football notes, scribbling prompted by footage or, freakishly, her own memory. From the lightness of the indentations of the pen, you figure that Alexia is exhausted. From the half-finished sentences, you decide that she was rushing when she wrote this.

But, as much as you delight in your brief analysis of the evidence in your palms like Sherlock Holmes solving a mystery, you can’t ignore just how greatly you have missed the letters that swim between the lines (and the hand from which they were written).

Irene spares you your dignity by standing from the bench and checking on the children just as your tears begin to fall.

…

You take one last look in the mirror embedded in the sun visor, ensuring your hair is perfectly in place and your earrings match your cream, sleeveless turtleneck to poise you just between casual and smartly-dressed. A quiet grumble from the backseat draws your attention away from your reflection, though your last glimpse at your concealed eyebags and red-rimmed irises leaves you feeling a little dejected and mourning the days you’d actually get some sleep. (Or wouldn’t, smoking cigarettes on the balcony while talking Alexia’s ear off.)

“Mama, we go,” decides Elena with a huff, tugging on the buckle of her car seat.

It’s Nico’s first-ever recital tonight.

He started playing the piano in September, when his teacher at school had mentioned how he boasted to the children in his class that he was a musician: ‘if I am Catalan because my mami is Catalan, then I am musician because my mami is musician’. You felt guilty. His teacher says he is naturally talented, voice lacking surprise but praiseful nonetheless, and is proud to name Nico his youngest student at tonight’s show.

The bouquet of daisies you ask Elena to hold makes her look like a miniature carnival float, and she toddles into the venue by your side while you do mental gymnastics between the knowledge that Alexia will be here tonight and the nerves for your son’s performance. It’s nothing complicated, but you worry he will hate it. This is the only thing he does that is a nod towards you; his one deviation from his worship of Alexia.

“Mami!” squeals the walking flowers as soon as you make it to the half-full hall. You direct your gaze to the three rows your daughter refers to, every seat lined with either professional footballers or family. With a sudden rush of blood to your head, you feel out of your depth.

You’re not sure whether the hazel eyes that find yours help or worsen that.

“Keep it moving,” you mutter firmly, holding her hand so she does not make a break for it and tumble right over to the cohort of FC Barcelona and Seguras. Not wanting to get too close to them, you take your seat in the penultimate row, knowing Nico will not be able to see you over the grand piano set up on the stage wherever you sit. “You can talk to her later, sweetheart.”

She is in an obedient mood, most-likely intimidated by the tension in the air. You tell yourself it’s the stress radiating from the line of performers sitting on the front row. Nico stands on his chair, waving first to Alexia and then to you (it’s your turn with them so you are a lot less exciting right now), before he is lightly scolded by his teacher and the first child walks up the steps and onto the stage.

Five uninspiring children later, Nico is finally led up onto the stage. His teacher sits down on the piano stool and nudges him forwards. He smiles brightly at the room. You reciprocate, encouraging Elena to do the same to keep her engaged with an admittedly boring event.

“Bona nit a tothom! Jo sóc en Nicolau i tinc quatre anys i ara aniré a tocar ‘Brillia Brillia Estel Petit’.” The audience melts before him. “Mama, that means ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’,” he whispers loudly.

You send him a thumbs up. He sends you a grin back, before giggling as he climbs onto the piano stool beside his teacher.

Situated comfortably, feet dangling adorably far away from the pedals, his chubby, little fingers hit the ivory keys once, then twice.

You pray this goes well.

It does.

He plays with two hands, something you hadn’t expected, and Elena holds in her noisy yawn until after he is finished so she must have been invested in the performance. Your own hands sting after you clap with such prideful force that you are the loudest in the room, and the hoots and hollers from Alexia’s territory only make Nico even happier as he bounces down the steps and back to his seat to wait for the others to do their pieces.

After the recital has finished, you walk down the aisle separating the seats in half to get to Nico, daughter-less courtesy of a squadron of football-playing kidnappers.

“How was that?” you ask him smugly, his arms wrapping around you in a tight hug. “I knew you would be brilliant, even when you were scared you weren’t going to be. Do you know how proud I am of you?”

“This much?” He holds his hand about thirty centimetres apart. “Mami says this much.”

When he widens his hands, you gesture something even bigger.

“‘Immensely’ is the word I would use.”

“Im-men-lee?”

“Es que nuestro orgullo llena una casa sin techo. Hasta el cielo.”

“Up to the sun,” you amend, ignoring the way the voice has made you stiffen. You don’t read too much into her misuse of the collective pronoun. There is no ‘our’ in ‘affair’.

Alexia’s hand hovers by your waist for a moment, muscle memory getting the better of her before she draws it back into her body. Nico gives her a matching hug, telling her how much he has missed her.

You try not to blame yourself for his derailed childhood.

“You were amazing, petit,” Alexia says, picking him up with one strong arm and settling him on her hip. You grip the wrapper of the bouquet you are holding. “Did Mama get you a gift?”

He peers at the daisies in your hand with curiosity. Shaking his head, his confusion deepens as he studies the bouquet you are extending towards him. “They are for Mami? Flowers are for love.”

“I love you,” you tell him, not trying to make a point but instinctively prickling in the presence of Alexia.

The silence is awkward.

A few metres away, whilst entertaining the sleepy toddler on her lap, Mapi is excitedly talking to Alba. “Y/n hasn’t killed her yet,” says the defender with glee, one of your admirers. The team respected you before, never questioning their captain’s judgement nor family, but when word got out about the affair amongst the older girls, most of them began to see you as more than Alexia’s wife. A new layer to your character was revealed; you are a strong, independent, and successful woman. Football nerds sometimes forget success comes in more forms than blaugrana kits. “They made such a beautiful couple.”

“They did.” Alba watches as you talk to your son, your eyes actively avoiding the woman in front of you. “Our mother has sent Alexia over there to invite her to dinner. It killed me to see her sit alone.”

You are too used to the feeling of eyes on you that you no longer notice the weight of people’s stares, but, if this were not the case, you would know that most of the heads attached to the bodies sitting in Alexia’s rows had been swivelled towards you for majority of the recital. Pity is never a desired emotion to have offered to you, but the Barça girls can’t help but feel that way whenever they see your forehead crinkle in an attempt to understand Catalan, presuming you only speak Spanish as you have more than enough on your plate. (And, as most of the players will admit, your children speak better English than them, so one can only assume that it is your main method of communication.)

“She’s a very good mother,” Mapi comments with a small nod, sucking a sharp breath in as she begins to sympathise with you even more. Not a day goes by where she witnesses the suffering Alexia’s idiocracy has caused – as Ingrid, her girlfriend, knows very well – and does not fail to scream in frustration about her best friend’s stupid mistakes.

“She’s a very good person.”

They fall silent as they see your head tilt up, jaw clenching as Alexia begins to speak to you.

“Can you hear what she’s saying?” whispers Eli to her daughter, equally invested in the conversation. “I knew I should have sent you; Alex is too socially awkward.”

“Mami, she is talking to her wife,” replies Alba, though she remembers what happened the last time Alexia and you had spoken and the outcome of that. Maybe that commences her increasing agreement with her mother… “I guess you– Are they coming over here?!”

Even you seem surprised by how your legs carry you towards the Barcelona clan, a step behind Alexia and Nico. Hesitant would be an understatement, but most of them are too preoccupied with congratulating the four-year-old they have come to watch to notice your tight-lipped smile and trembling hands.

“Hola,” you say shyly.

Eli pulls you into her strong embrace without missing a beat. “Te he echado de menos, hija.”

You try very hard not to burst into tears.

They take you to dinner; a plan you had known about but not envisioned yourself included in. Although it’s your fortnight, Alexia (through the conduit of Alba) had previously arranged to drop Nico and Elena over to yours before midnight.

You blow off your FaceTime call with Leah.

The restaurant is on the lower level of fine-dining. It’s chic, but it does not make your children feel unwelcome. The table is set for five places, though Alba informs you that the reason for this is because the reservation was made before she broke up with her girlfriend.

“Mama, what are you going to eat?” asks Nico, slipping back into his old life seamlessly, mixing his English with the Spanish he knows everyone can understand, his legs swinging underneath the table with an enthusiastic energy. He is still too young to pick up on how far apart his parents are sitting, or how you refuse to let your eyes linger on Alexia’s tanned skin, far too much of it shown off by the tank top she sports in the humidity of the busy restaurant.

You glance around the room, searching for those who have recognised you. Under the weight of at least four curious stares, you motivate yourself to enjoy your meal.

“Not sure yet, babe,” you answer. “Alba, do you fancy sharing something?”

“Yeah, of course.” The younger Putellas smiles. Alexia knows who has lost the war.

Dinner passes with light conversation centred on very neutral topics. No man’s land is clearly the children, and you had never expected to be so desperate to continue a conversation about school lunches until the other options are how Alexia had an affair with her teammate or that your song with her favourite singer is topping the charts and explicitly about being cheated on.

Although you and Alexia both watch how many times your wine glasses are refilled, Alba lets loose, as does Eli (probably to ease the stress on her heart that her girls force upon her). Their cheeks redden and Nico begins to yawn, Elena already curled into your side halfway between dreams and reality.

“Should we head out?” you ask it to the table, but the only functioning person is Alexia, really, and so you close your eyes to avoid having to make eye contact.

“I should probably get Mama and Alba into a taxi.”

“If you call one for them, I will call one for us?” Your suggestion is instinctive; an old habit reminiscent of many similar nights, back when there was love and happiness and a relationship that didn’t feel like walking on a floor made of broken glass. “Or did you drive here?”

“No, but you drove,” comes Alexia’s reminder. Internally, you face-palm. Parking the car before dinner seems like years ago; something feels different now. “But if you don’t feel up to it, I could drive you home. I haven’t had much to drink and I have nothing else planned for tonight. Elena is practically in a coma anyway.”

You laugh – a softened version of it so as to not rouse the dead weight of your daughter.

“Are you sure?”

It’s late.

“Yes, I’m sure.”

I don’t care.

“Mama,” Alba slurs, pulling her mother in close. “The saint has given her sinner a second chance.”

It may not be as quiet as she thinks it is. Alexia, occupied, is deaf to the comment. You are not.

This is not a second chance.

This is a lift home.

The last time all four of you sat in a car together was the day you found out about Alexia’s affair.

You had suffered then – are still suffering now – but your anger was hot and sharp and new. Fresh wounds.

Now, though more scabbed-over than healed, those wounds no longer seem to gush blood; you entertain Alexia’s stiff small-talk.

She asks about the tour, never veering too far off the road of practicality and shared custody. When does it resume? Which has been your favourite show?

“Wembley is like playing El Clásico in Camp Nou,” she determines, not needing to ask about that because she knows you too well.

Your memories of the London shows involve a naked Leah Williamson. (If only she knew that!)

“Yeah, London was great.”

Awkwardness is part of Alexia’s personality; something you are fairly certain you still love. She is shy, though it perhaps comes off as stoicity, and she has never been good at making conversation. You know she hates it, and you know that her eyes, Alexia’s eyes, are gazing at you every time she thinks you are not looking.

She is weary about the desire darkening her pupils, but she does not do well to hide her hunger nonetheless.

“Go into the carpark,” you instruct as you approach your building.

Wordlessly, she presses the correct pin into the pin-pad, never having forgotten it.

She parks the car beside a new-looking Mercedes. It’s not a car for children, and she imagines it reeks of cigarettes – there is no way you have stopped smoking.

It belongs in the carpark; in your little world of celebrities and male footballers; of money and fame and fortune. (One could argue you lack the latter, what with your current situation.) Alexia’s life has never moulded with yours.

Perhaps it never will.

Perhaps she slept with Jenni because they are equals, you think. Because Jenni understands Alexia in a way you cannot.

“Mami,” cries a quiet voice from the backseat. You stop staring at the grey, concrete walls, snapping back to reality as Alexia shifts to turn her attention to the source of the whimpering. “No quiero que te vayas.”

“Lela, me tengo que ir.”

“Pero–”

“You could always come up to say goodnight to them?”

It starts off innocently.

Of course it does. Of course you are nowhere near forgiveness, more likely to forget about the crushing affair before you excuse any of her actions. Sometimes, you wish for amnesia. Sometimes, you refer to the tab open in Safari – ‘is there a drug that makes you forget?’.

Alexia is granted a tuck-in and a story for each child, glad that their rooms are separate so that her time in her home is prolonged. The walls are familiar, the floor is the same. There are new pictures in new frames, but the old ones have not been removed. If you had ever wished to take photographs of your relationship down, you have never acted on it.

She realises you must not spend a lot of time here alone. Maybe you cannot bear it. Maybe your life in London is more important to you than she had thought.

Anyway, for as much as she subtly noses around and draws out the night, she has no intention of overstaying her welcome, sure that she probably did that the minute she stepped inside.

In fact, she is on her way out, under the assumption that you will not want to speak to her.

“So you’re back to playing?”

“Sí.”

A doorway conversation.

You’re English. You’re very polite. Alexia knows this, tries to not get her hopes up.

“Does that mean you don’t want a taste of this ‘97?” You hold the bottle up to her, the cork lying on the granite worktop with the incriminating suggestion that you have already had a glass.

“We play the day after tomorrow.”

“Oh, Ale, this is a good one.”

How many times have you said that to her before? The same tone, the same look in your eye; red tinting your lips, one hand on a lighter because you smoke when you’re drunk, even if you refuse to touch the cancer-sticks when you are sober.

“Was this a gift?” she asks, drawn into your magnetic field like a flimsy paper clip; thin, worn metal trying to piece the pages of her life back together. “Or have you been making ridiculous purchases again?”

“I can assure you that it is not ‘ridiculous’.” You moan in delight as you take a sip from a glass you subsequently hand over to her. “Gosh, that is divine, and you are simply going to dissolve when you taste it.”

Dissolve she does, but one can attribute that to the company.

The contents of the bottle dwindles quickly, paired with a vulnerable retelling of her ACL recovery (sans suicidal thoughts and huge, huge regret about the affair – she doesn’t want to bring that up, seeing as you are clearly trying to forget about it), and the warm breeze of the Barcelona nighttime. The salty air from the mediterranean mingles with cigarette smoke, though Alexia softly says that you really should stop.

You hesitate on your next puff, but you inhale it all the same. “I like my wine smokey.”

She opens the next bottle for you.

The wine glasses are soon discarded, pouring becoming shaky and difficult.

“They sleep all the way through the night here,” observes Alexia, surprised that no little hands have knocked on the glass door leading to the balcony. The last time you had reached for the wine, you’d moved closer to her. You have not yet returned to your original seat on the other side of the rattan sofa.

You raise your eyebrows, under the impression that they were both sleep trained. “They don’t at yours?”

“Elena keeps trying to sleep in bed with me.”

“Maybe she likes you more,” you suggest with a light, alcohol-infused laugh. “She must have been upset to find her place filled by your friend.”

“No,” murmurs Alexia, “it has never been filled. Though I don’t think you can say the same.”

You swallow the stickiness of the wine running down your throat.

“Not in our bed. My bed.” You fight yourself. “Our bed.”

“In Highgate?”

“Anywhere,” you breathe.

“It’s been months,” croaks Alexia, your hand pressed against her stomach as you slowly lean into the feeling only she can give you. “Months.”

You kiss her. Time folds in on itself, and you are transported back to when every touch was electric; when nothing was tainted. The pain of the past months, the heartbreak, momentarily fades into insignificance as you lose yourself in Alexia’s warmth.

Her fingers tangle in your hair, pulling you closer, afraid that this moment might slip away too soon. The taste of wine lingers on your lips, and she craves the softness of them – she has been craving them since July.

“Well, now it has only been seconds,” you whisper as you pull away.

With a sense of urgency, she chases your mouth once more, strong arms pulling you on top of her, manipulating your body against her with no hint of uncertainty.

Alexia knows you well.

Her touch lacks curiosity and exploration. Her hands are experienced and confident in their movements, and she has hoisted you up and brought you to your bedroom without needing to have been told that this is what you want.

“Is this what you want?” she asks anyway.

“Please.”

And she really doesn’t make you beg.

Your hands roam her body with a primal hunger, instinctive touches to the most sensitive parts of her, leaving a trail of fire in their wake. Her back is tense, muscles flexing as she pushes your clothes off your skin, her own following their path soon after.

Parted legs and soft moans.

She slots herself between your thighs.

Her tongue is determined, fierce. Sloppier because she is drunk, but, then again, so are you.

Your fingers repay the favour.

“More,” you request just as she pulls away.

“Is it in the same place?”

You nod, panting.

There is a playful glint in Alexia’s eyes as she finds the strap just where she left it. As she secures it in place, you wipe the sweat from your brow, forcing your mind into the dirtiest of thoughts to ward off the building regret.

The room is dimly lit, and the air heavy with desire. Your heartbeat pulses in the silence, the thrum of the organ drums that guide Alexia’s slow, deliberate steps back towards the bed, kneeling atop the scrunched sheets.

She positions herself between your legs once more, and you can feel the heat of her body radiating against your skin. She leans in closer, her breath hot against your neck, sending shivers of anticipation shuddering down your spine.

With trembling hands, you reach out, nails digging into tanned, taut skin. You pull her closer to you, urging her to take whatever she wants.

You want her to have you. You want her to make it hurt less.

As Alexia presses inside, a jolt of pleasure courses through your body. You cry out, the sound igniting a blazing inferno within her that grows hotter the moment you ask her to move. Feverishly, her hands move over your chest, finding purchase on your breasts with a dormant possessiveness as her hips begin to drive the strap in deeper.

Your breath hitches in your throat as you surrender to the overwhelming sensation, encompassed by someone so divine that you begin to separate yourself from all things wrong with this situation. The headboard thuds against the bedroom wall as she pounds her thrusts into a rhythm, and you shut your eyes as you quietly ask her to kiss you.

Tears cascade down your cheeks, but you do not know to whom they belong. Her tongue smothers your moans, and her hips begin to snap into yours more urgently, with more desperation. The pressure builds inside of you, and you feel as though you might explode.

You feel as though this is the end, and you are glad that here is where your misery terminates.

You’re glad, you’re really glad.

Your back arches, your chests pressing together, large hands holding you close to her.

And then it all comes crashing down.

Everything.

You wipe your eyes once the orgasmic bliss subsides, seizing your wine haze as the tide goes out and destroying the blindfold that had deprived you of seeing things straight. Right now, with the pleasant ache between your legs, you can’t quite bring yourself to regret it, but you know you will. You haven’t forgiven her; you’re not sure that it is possible.

“You can shower, but you can’t stay here.”

…

Nico knows that he is special. He is lucky, and he is loved, and he gets to go to a very nice school that Mateo (his ‘cousin’) claims is fancy.

He likes his teacher. She reminds him of someone he once knew – you have suggested the nursery helpers back when he lived in London. He is not sure if you are right, but he doesn’t remember what London was like so he tries not to think too hard about it.

Nico’s friends, like Pau who is sitting beside him, all think it is really cool that he can speak English. Pau says she hears his mother on the radio sometimes, but Nico hasn’t yet grasped the concept of fame past the annoying camera flashes and big, sold-out stadiums. He dislikes fame as he knows it, anyway, because the cameras hurt his eyes and the stadiums are so loud that he has to wear ear-defenders that squeeze his skull a bit too much.

“My mum is from Bilbao. My dad is from Barcelona,” states Paula as she swipes a crayon over the sheet of paper her drawing is on. Green wax slowly stains the white to form ‘grass’. Everyone is drawing their family today, although Nico hasn’t yet started, waiting for his teacher to circle their table so that he can ask for another piece of paper. “And this,” Paula carries on, squiggling brown hair onto a smaller version of the stick-figure father, “is Ander, my big brother.”

“Who is that?” Nico asks, pointing at the fifth figure on the page, guessing that the fourth and Pau-sized person is, in fact, Pau.

“My sister! She’s called Nerea, and she plays basketball.” Pau promptly makes an orange circle the size of Nerea’s head, which floats in the air between her and her sister. “My mum says Nere is going to be a lesbian, but I don’t know what that means.”

“My mums are lesbian!” he blurts out, excited enough to garner the attention of his teacher. When she appears, he grins at her sweetly; the kind of smile that has melted many hearts, though Nico is unaware of how many people know he exists. “More paper, please.”

“Nico, you haven’t even tried with your first one.”

She isn’t harsh at all, but he has slowly learnt to stop asking follow-up questions. Six months of exasperated ‘I don’t know, Nicolau’s has taught him that.

He shrugs. “Okay.”

He learnt what a shrug was the other day, when Mapi told him off for doing it to her. (“Don’t shrug your shoulders at me, Nicolau Putellas!” she had chided playfully. “All I asked was which of your mamas’ houses we need to go to.”)

“Nico, what’s ‘lesbian’?”

“Mama says football is lesbian. Basketball might be lesbian! That’s why your sister is lesbian.”

“My mum says that lesbians kiss girls.”

“Mama kisses girls! And Mami. And they used to kiss each other but now they don’t speak and me and my sister swap houses.” Nico begins drawing it out for Paula when she peers at him, befuddled. “Here is Mama’s.” A big square, a glamorous-looking woman inside of the blue shape; a stick with a circle on the end of it; the notes he sees in his piano music floating in the air. “And…” he says, tongue sticking out as he concentrates on the opposite half of the page, “here is Mami’s.”

He draws a football. He picks up the red crayon too, and uses both the blau and the grana simultaneously. “Mami plays football for Barça.” He draws two lines on Alexia’s t-shirt. 11. “Mami made me get 11 at football.” Nico had originally worn the 10, but then the affair had come to light and Alexia was suddenly deep in conversation with his coach and apologising to the boy Nico then had to swap shirts with.

Then, he drops the crayons in his hand and searches for the stack near Paula. He selects the purple one, gripping it tightly, his friend still listening to him with intrigue.

“This is me and Lela.” Two stick figures are drawn in the middle of the page; the middle ground between each of the squares.

Nico sometimes feels stuck between it all.

When Mami got very sad, he and Elena went to stay with Mapi and Ingrid for a few nights. He held his little sister’s hand as much as he could. He always tries to remind her that he is right there with her.

Mami once told him that it was his turn to protect Elena. Nico hasn’t forgotten that.

“I keep Lela safe.” He has encouraged her, slightly selfishly, to call him ‘skipper’, which he has picked up from the Lionesses. Luckily, Alexia has not told him off for it because she doesn’t know what it means. “Lela is my little sister. She is a baby. She doesn’t remember what it was like when Mama and Mami loved each other, but I do.”

The purple crayon scrapes on the page as he presses it into the white, colour rubbing out in the shape of a heart. “Lela and I are together tot el temps. Mami tries to take me from her sometimes, but I don’t let her.”

His story – and ability to make Paula pay attention for longer than ten seconds – has already attracted the quiet attention of his teacher, but she moves closer as Nico continues. The four-year-old leaves out how Alexia is usually inviting him to training with her. Since Elena has yet to show any interest in football, it remains her and Nico’s special thing, and, of course, his mother misses him when it is not her turn.

You benevolently give your permission if you have no prior plans. It is upsetting that the only hindrance to extra time spent together is the little boy who once worshipped Alexia Putellas like a god.

“Nico, why did you want two pages?” asks Paula curiously, assuming he is finished now that his whole family is displayed on the piece of paper.

He frowns. “Because now I have to do this.” And with that, he tears the sheet in half.

Paula’s mouth drops open in surprise, as does his teacher’s.

“What’s wrong?” comes a mature voice, a hand placed on his shoulder just like it is when the other children in his class cry. Nico doesn’t cry. He is strong and brave, like a little soldier. “Did you not like your drawing?”

“No,” he replies neutrally, “half can live with Mama, and half can live with Mami.”

“But now you are ripped down the middle.”

He traces the jagged edges of the halves of his life. One of his legs is on your side, the other on Alexia’s.

“I know, but it’s okay. I don’t cry.”

Alexia does, though, when his teacher talks to her that afternoon.

…

“I slept with Alexia,” you confess quietly, comforted by the sound-proofing of Anya’s home-studio. She asked for help with her album; your success might be contagious, she insists. “Last week, when Nico had that recital.” You clutch your mug protectively, as if she will strip you of the right to drink your tea to punish you for your crime.

Anya is unsure what you would like her to say. You search her face for anger, but do not find it.

“If Gio were here, she’d probably slap you.”

You snort, almost spilling hot liquid all over yourself. “You two are like my mothers, and you’re the nicer one by far.”

“God, you are such an idiot.”

“And a slag.” She waits for your next admission with excitement. “I also slept with Leah Williamson.”

“Do you think you and Alexia are just destined for polyamory?” Her amusement is quite pleasant, but one thing wasn’t dulled by the wine that night and you have been dying to tell someone about it.

Your knee bounces up and down as you gear up for it, having thought it through

“I think we are destined for each other.”

Song-writing be damned, Anya fully removes her headphones, placing the equipment beside her keyboard before letting out a small, exasperated laugh. “You are in love with Alexia again,” comes her accusation, with no real malice behind it.

“I never stopped being in love with Alexia. She just made it a lot harder to love her.”

Is that an understatement?

“Hey,” you say with sudden energy, sitting upright and grasping at your phone, tea wobbling over the lip of the mug and running down your wrist. “Should we go to Bali in August?”

…

You avoid both of your footballers right until the World Cup camps roll around.

Leah doesn’t get to go, subjected to the ACL curse. Alexia’s call-up is not necessarily unexpected, but you do find yourself wondering how many more betrayals her friendship with Mapi León can handle. (Mapi is on her last straw, but she knows her friend really needed the win after her hellish year. The Champion’s League was never going to sate Alexia’s hunger to be the best at football – possibly an overcompensation for her terrible relationship skills.)

Your children, this time, are delivered to the park by their very own mother. Alexia beats Leah in this sense, because she has a valid excuse to see you without confessing feelings you do not want to hear.

“I have something for you,” she says just after she has finished her goodbyes, pressing a small box into your hands. Her voice is filled with nerves and you are intrigued, hating yourself for being so. “Don’t open it until you get back home.” Her eyes meet yours for a moment. I’m sorry, they seem to say. “Alright, have fun in Bali, and don’t forget that I legally have custody but I am not going to go to court to battle you for it as long as you put them in Spain kits for Spain matches.”

She could, if she wanted to be difficult, have you send Nico and Elena to New Zealand during her weeks. It would be very unreasonable, but the contract your lawyers drew up still stands.

“They were delivered yesterday. I think it’s going to be a struggle to convince them to put on the worst kit ever.” You still don’t forgive Alexia for cheating on you, but there has come a point where acceptance replaces the animosity. Nico’s teacher has been the catalyst in this step forward. The developmental pamphlets she had thrust in your faces were enough for the two of you to come to a mutual agreement of increased civility (that maybe, maybe was only made possible by the fact that you have very recent memories of each other’s orgasms). “But, yes, I agree to your terms. Don’t forget that his favourite player is Alessia Russo, however.”

“He is in a phase where I am ‘uncool’! It’ll pass.”

“If you say so, Alexia.”

“Anyway,” she carries on, rolling her eyes. “Open it when you get home.” She… presses a kiss to your cheek? “I’m so sorry, mi amor.”

You blink back your surprise, but she is gone before you can reply.

The small, neatly-wrapped box sits in the palm of your hand, the corners edging off your skin and sticking out as you stare at it. Nico and Elena continue their (unsupervised) playing, but you manage to call out a warning for ‘five more minutes and then we’ve got to pack’ while you examine Alexia’s gift.

Is this how Pandora felt?

If you open it, what will be unleashed?

Alexia, before now, hasn’t actively pursued your forgiveness. She has given you the time and the space you had broken-heartedly requested, nodding as you communicated your wishes to her through someone else, never before able to confront the face that tore up your life before your eyes.

There was a time when all you ever wanted to do was talk to her, but she tried to forget about that when she realised the extent at which you went to avoid an interaction. When she had understood your desperation to be left alone fully, she began to breathe. The step backwards gave her room to examine just how royally she had fucked it all.

She now feels a bit more capable of tackling the clean-up, working with a much clearer mind. Everyone is relieved that she hasn’t killed herself, or, at least, that she is keeping those thoughts at bay.

You realise that she has bought you a ring, and regardless of whether you wear it or not, she wants to tell you that she is sorry.

...

IT'S NOT OVER YET! THIS WILL TAKE YOU TO THE SECOND HALF

#woso x reader #alexia putellas x reader #woso #woso fanfics #randombush3 #leah williamson x reader #woso imagines #barca femeni #alexia putellas #alexia putellas imagine

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randombush3 · 2 months

Text

another snippet while I slave away lol

this one hurt a bit to write x

“My mums are lesbian!” he blurts out, excited enough to attract the attention of his teacher. When she appears, he grins at her sweetly; the kind of smile that has melted many hearts, though Nico is unaware of how many people know he exists. “More paper, please.”

“Nico, you haven’t even tried with your first one.”

She isn’t harsh at all, but he has slowly learnt to stop asking follow-up questions. Six months of exasperated ‘I don’t know, Nicolau’s has taught him that.

He shrugs. “Okay.”

“Nico, what’s ‘lesbian’?”

“Mama says football is lesbian. Basketball might be lesbian! That’s why your sister is lesbian.”

“My mum says that lesbians kiss girls.”

Then, he drops the crayons in his hand and searches for the stack near Paula. He selects the purple one, gripping it tightly, his friend still listening to him with intrigue.

“This is me and Lela.” Two stick figures are drawn in the middle of the page; the middle ground between each of the squares.

Nico sometimes feels stuck between it all.

Mami once told him that it was his turn to protect Elena. Nico hasn’t forgotten that.

The purple crayon scrapes on the page as he presses it into the white, colour rubbing out in the shape of a heart. “Lela and I are together. Mami tries to take me from her sometimes, but I don’t let her.”

His story – and ability to make Paula pay attention for longer than ten seconds – has already garnered the quiet attention of his teacher, but she moves closer as Nico continues. The four-year-old leaves out how Alexia usually is inviting him to training with her. With Elena yet to show any interest in football, it remains her and Nico’s special thing, and, of course, she misses him when it is not her turn.

You usually give your permission if you have no other plans. Alexia is upset that the only hindrance is the little boy who once worshipped her like a god.

“Nico, why did you want two pages?” asks Paula curiously, assuming he is finished now that his whole family is displayed on the piece of paper.

He frowns. “Because now I have to do this.” And with that, he tears the sheet in half.

Paula’s mouth drops open in surprise, as does his teacher’s.

“No,” he replies neutrally, “half can live with Mama, and half can live with Mami.”

“But now you are ripped down the middle.”

He traces the jagged edges of the halves of his life. One leg is on your side, the other on Alexia’s.

“I know, but it’s okay. I don’t cry.”

#randombush3 #woso x reader #woso fanfics #woso imagines #alexia putellas x reader #alexia putellas

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randombush3 · 16 days

Text

a sense of coming home

ona batlle x reader

summary: part two of this! ona and you are (frustratingly) still just friends

words: 6.5k (i have NO idea why i waffle so much but lets pls allow it)

warnings: there's like five secs of smut at the end

notes: this has been the most self-indulgent fic i've written because this is how i met my gf and so i am glad to show you a nice happy ending

again, the quote is from 'this side of paradise' (said gf's fav book - i don't recommend however because the protagonist is a twat)

also i didn't proofread bc i am exhausted and i am hungover and i am very ready to go to sleep (#globetrotting is not for the weak) x

There is something difficult about forcing oneself back to their toxic roots. Ona discovers as such as she presses her body into a temple of meaningless sex, but she does so because she is a driven person. Ona is determined to get over you, once and for all, except she’d quite like to stay friends (hence why she agreed when asked). She also thinks it would expose her to fall out because her feelings shouldn’t have existed anyway, so she technically shouldn’t be heartbroken?

Anyway, Ona rampages through Manchester! They appreciate her accent – some even ask her to speak to them in Spanish when she is three fingers deep inside of them, to which she obliges with little fanfare – and it isn’t like the city lacks queer women. It is a super solid way to keep her busy, to tear her attention from hungrily checking your Instagram whenever possible.

It’s also what lands her with coronavirus. She’s embarrassed to admit just how many people she has come into contact with when the club doctors ask her questions over the phone.

You send her a lovely message after hearing she is yet another fallen soldier.

Ona is at home, isolating, and you are apparently trapped in Spain, unable to get into Italy. You haven’t quite made it to your parents’ house since your flight was supposed to depart from Madrid. “How come you’re not on the phone to one of your ‘connections’?” Ona asks suspiciously, wondering why this call has lasted longer than ten minutes. “Surely someone knows someone else and they can get you back home.”

“I’m hardly out of my depth in my own country,” you remind her with a twinging sigh, pained that she has suppressed all memories of your childhood. “It’s not like I don’t speak Spanish.”

“Didn’t you get rid of it in your head to make space for Italian and English? Oh, and French too, right? That’s where the fashion weeks are.”

You laugh at her pride for knowing something about your job, but it is not to ridicule her. “I am speaking to you, aren’t I?”

“In Catalan,” she points out. “Forget Spanish, but don’t forget Catalan.”

“I can’t. It’s the language everyone uses to tell me about how fucked you’ve been lately.” You take in a deep breath, uncomfortable with Ona’s silence but knowing your piece needs to be said. “Are you aware of what happened a few months ago? Why I missed the wedding?” One of your friends met her dream man and he whisked her off to Menorca for a small ceremony. Only the people she loved the most were invited, which included your childhood friend group. “We were in New York, a whole bunch of us. It was late but the show had been a big deal so we went out to celebrate, and… these ‘friends’, these people, they aren’t the same as you and me. Most of them are English, you know, and they come from very fancy schools where addiction is normal. Two of them ended up in the hospital that night – the bag hadn’t even made it round to me by the time they’d dropped. I know it seems far-fetched, but all I’m trying to say is that addiction has consequences. Bad consequences.”

“So you’re not on my side?” Ona isn’t taking this too seriously. A few people have joked about her questionable new hobby, but no one has made it seem so dire that they have needed to get you involved. You who, of course, Ona will listen to.

“I am always on your side.”

That is her main take-away from the conversation, Ona chooses, when it ends an hour later. She swoons, meaning the last twenty women have been a waste of time, but she also tortures herself into ignoring the potential problem. Being a sex addict would be embarrassing, so she won’t be.

Though your subtle shaming for her abundance of quick-fix flings is hypocritical, Ona would also hate for you to see her that way. You can avoid commitment all you like, but she is determined to be different to prove to you that she is a viable candidate, should you wish to stop stringing her along. It’s probably toxic; it probably means that you are both clinging onto a friendship that should either end or be labelled something else. It probably is the push and pull that has kept you interested, Ona thinks, because she knows that you like the chase.

However, as much as she’d like to be freed of whatever game she is caught up in, she can’t seem to let you go like that.

…

The next time Ona and you have a proper conversation about something other than how your love lives have been stunted or how people back home are not as successful as the two of you is when most of the restrictions have been lifted.

You waited out the pandemic in Vilassar de Mar, much to your annoyance, but now that you can travel again, the first person on your mind to visit is your childhood best friend. You’re not as close as you used to be, having drifted further during even more years apart, but it does not dull your love for her, nor hers for you.

Ona has changed her mind about Manchester and is forcing herself to like it. It works enough for a visit from you to be the last thing on her mind, and so she slows her response time down until the next arranged date to see each other in person is all set for the summer before the Euros in England.

You’re not quite home but you are in the country, and, with the pre-Euros camp in two days, Ona is spending the final few hours of calm left before the storm in the comforting presence of her mum and dad.

And… you, apparently.

“You weren’t supposed to be here yet,” is Ona’s greeting when she opens the front door.

Your smile is wide and genuine, and you are holding a gift bag in one hand. There is a nice bottle of wine in the other. “Not even an ‘hola’?” When no reply comes, you swallow the emotions that have arisen; the ones that are maybe, just a little bit to do with how soft Ona looks with her hair down. And the slope of her jaw. And the ghosts of defined biceps that bulge even when she isn’t flexing her arms. “I’m dropping by to see your parents. I thought you were in Barcelona with your footballer friends.”

“You visit my parents?” asks Ona curiously.

“Of course.”

With that, you side-step her and call out to her mother, announcing both your arrival and your desire to hand them their gifts. Dinner is just about to be served, and Ona is soon tasked with setting another place at the table for you as though the last ten years had never happened and your friendship hadn’t lost its innocence.

Maybe it would be better for Ona to not know what it feels like to kiss you, to touch you, to – dare she think it – love you. It would certainly make things less painful, and would have saved her from catching at least one illness and spending a good amount of money on Ubers to escape from random apartments. It would make it easier to listen to you talk about your life in Milan, where you seem to exist in a bubble of incredibly attractive people who are desperate to hold hands and form a raft.

“Modelling can be brutal,” you agree, nodding at Ona’s father as you follow on from his concerns about your career. He voices them regularly; whenever you see him. Ona realises you have spent a lot of time with her parents without her. “It gets quite competitive between the girls so I’ve been somewhat avoiding them. They’ve brought in someone new, scouted from Germany, I think, and I’m a little worried that I’ll have to switch agencies if they start prioritising her.” You glance at Ona, wanting to know if she is listening, hoping she is. You wish that she were as good at suppressing her feelings as you are. You wish she didn’t look at you like you hung the moon, because you know that you have to tell her you have hung it for someone else. “I’d move tomorrow, to be honest, but I’ve started seeing this guy and he’s convincing me to stay in Milan.”

“The minute he is your boyfriend, you bring him here,” commands Ona’s mother in a tone she hasn’t yet used on her actual daughter (said daughter has never mentioned anyone before). “Show us a picture of him! Is he a model like you?”

He is, and if Ona holds her fork tighter after she sees the photo you pull up, that is her business. You secretly take in her clenched jaw and furrowed eyebrows, and this might be the worst thing you have ever had to do. To see her so defeated, so hopeless, is upsetting, especially since you are harbouring the same feelings. However, you are able to admit when it is time to throw the towel in, and you can no longer live like this.

Ona is too perfect for you. She is driven, hard-working, and funny. She likes to nutmeg little children on the street, and she likes to buy them an ice-cream if they slip a goal past her, slotting the flat footballs into imaginary nets and celebrating as though they have just won the Champions League. She knows a lot, more than she thinks she does. She cares about people, but sometimes it manifests in anger, in frustration.

Any aspect of her is an aspect that you could love, and that is reason enough not to. Because how can you allow yourself to taint such perfection?

But, in this unspoken rejection, the compliment is obscured from the recipient’s view. All Ona sees when you gush about how he buys you flowers and takes you out to dinner, is a burning, bright question. It flashes red and yellow, both as a warning and cry for attention. How can she compete if you don’t even recognise her as a competitor?

…

“--And then they proceeded to finish a film they were halfway through as if it were the most normal thing ever,” Ona rants the minute she hits the concrete of Las Rozas, walking into the facility with Aitana and the other girls who travelled with her from Barcelona. Only the midfielder has been gracious enough to listen to the entire monologue, but the others joke that that is because Ona’s emotional state has led her to spiral in her native language. It is forbidden for them to openly speak Catalan in the Spanish camp, according to Jorge Vilda, who loves to hurl a ‘we can send you back to where you came from in an instant’ their way if he so much as hears a ‘bon dia’. Naturally, Aitana doesn’t give a fuck about the rule, although Ona chooses to believe that she is listening because she cares.

“Are you done?” Aitana asks thoughtfully, sucking on her bottom lip as she tries to absorb her friend’s crisis and formulate a valid, sensible response. The two have known each other for a while now, and Aitana remembers a time when Ona was relentlessly teased by their older teammates for being in love with her best friend. It is clear to her that those feelings never ceased, though she has heard through the grapevine (Leila Ouahabi) that you are now a model and you live somewhere in Italy. You’re part Italian, is what Leila also claims, having professed your ethnicity to a small huddle of fellow gossipers one day in the gym at the Barça training facility.

“No! Nothing is ever done with her. It’s viscous and it continues in a horrid cycle that has me flapping around in circles like some idiot. I am one of her boys.” Ona groans dramatically, the sound perhaps a little too loud. A few of the girls in front of them turn around to see why a cat seems to have been strangled, but they quickly lose interest when they see it is just Ona and her disastrous situation. “Do you know how fucking humiliating it is to be one of her guys? I am a professional footballer! I play for Manchester United, one of the most historic clubs in the world, and I am about to represent my country in a major tournament. I am successful, Aita, and yet I am still not enough for her.”

“Maybe she only likes men.”

“A man has never made her scream like I have,” she bites back. Aitana blushes, but Ona is too far gone in her rage to hear her crudeness nor preserve her friend’s sanity. “She’s been like this since she decided she was gay! Isn’t that hilarious? ‘Ona, I think I’m gay’, she said. I know lesbian breakups can be hard, but there is no way my cousin fucked her up to this extent.”

“I can’t help you with this, Oni,” Aitana laments, sorry to have to confess this to her friend. “I think you need to talk to her about it. A proper conversation to fix long-term issues, not like the ones you obviously had when agreeing to stop having sex and things like that. Only she knows what she’s thinking.” It is definitely not the advice Ona wants to hear, but she cannot deny the midfielder’s wisdom. “But for now, we focus on winning.”

…

You are more than a little confused.

To start from the beginning, Ona’s cousin fucked you up. She broke your heart, and that first impression of dating girls was incredibly traumatising. With girls, you don’t just kiss and sleep with them, you get close – really close – and then when you break up, it is like you have lost both a girlfriend and a best friend.

Men are a lot simpler. Men like you and they aren’t shy about it. They can sometimes be just as cruel, but you have never felt invested enough to care too much.

Some nights, you don’t fall asleep, tossing and turning between your sexual identity, aware that you don’t need to label it but desperate to… discover yourself. If you don’t understand that part of you, how will someone else? How can you be loved? How do you even know who you want to love you?

For as much as Milan is great, it definitely doesn’t help you with your crisis. Girls in Milan like to do what they want. It is not uncommon for the models to kiss each other in clubs, in front of appreciative male gazes or not, and then reveal their engagement to their future husband the very next day. It’s easy to be drawn into such a bubble, but the minute you step out of it, you are hit with the real world.

It’s what makes the pandemic so distressing for you personally, because you are forced to live like normal people for some time. Your eyes are held open and the question is shoved down your throat, and it really doesn’t help that Ona’s cousin never moved out of Vilassar de Mar.

She sees you one day, saying hello from a suitable distance as you pick up milk as per your mother’s request. “I heard you’re modelling?” she asks with no agenda, no seductive glint in her eye. You notice the ring on her finger, and she feels the heaviness of your staring. “Oh, I got married a year ago. Did Ona not tell you?”

You realise that you and Ona try to avoid talking about anything other than the love interests you have. “No, she didn’t. Congratulations, though. She’s a lucky woman.”

“You don’t have to pretend you’re happy for me,” laughs the woman opposite you, amused and somewhat apologetic. “Look, I’m really sorry for how I acted when we were younger. I was definitely not the most mature person out there, and I know I hurt you.”

“I cried for months.”

“I’m sorry,” she repeats. You suck in a deep breath, trying to hold the memories of your pain at bay. “The first breakup is usually the worst but at least it gets better, as you probably know.”

She looks at you expectantly, awaiting your confirmation. It never comes.

“I haven’t dated another girl since,” you tell her, sounding rather detached from yourself.

Her eyebrows furrow and she is clearly frowning behind her facemask. “What about Ona? I thought you were together when you lived in Madrid. It takes more than a friendship to do what you did.”

You were originally going to go to university in England. It was your dream, and Ona wasn’t entirely aware of the situation because you hadn’t wanted to tell her you were leaving. Then she was sent out on a professional contract to Madrid, and it wasn’t like you were the only one leaving.

Ona’s cousin, years ago, had suggested that you go to Madrid if you wanted to get away from Vilassar de Mar. “You’ll be close enough to come home when you’d like, but not so close that you’ll feel as though nothing has changed,” she had said.

No one had known about your offers in England aside from your parents. And Ona’s cousin, who’d only found out because you had called her, drunk on celebratory champagne, because you had to tell someone.

“You gave up a dream for her because you didn’t want her to be alone.”

“I moved to Milan. In the end, she was alone.”

“You sound like you regret it,” she replies, nodding once at you to bid you farewell and then heading over to a woman who is standing with a puppy in her arms. You watch as she pulls down her mask and kisses her wife, her eyes shining with love and happiness, and your blood runs green with jealousy.

You hate Ona’s cousin for devastating you once more.

Do you regret it?

It’s unclear.

You try to make sense of it when you don’t hesitate to fly back to Italy the minute you can, going home to lick your wounds at Ona’s non-committal response to meeting you when you are in London the next month. It hurts that she is no longer at your beck-and-call, but you are somewhat happy for her. You know that lines have been crossed and that she has suffered for it. You know that you are probably the one at fault here.

This time in Milan, you don’t fight it as much. You kiss other girls and let them go home to their boyfriends; you submit to the thing you had convinced yourself you would never become.

As you drive yourself deeper and deeper into your stereotype, the thought of Ona gets pushed away and newer, more culturally-acceptable fantasies come to mind.

It takes a photoshoot for him to ask you out on a date.

It takes returning home and gaining the approval of Ona’s parents (who are far more open than your own) for you to agree to be official.

You don’t ask Ona what she thinks. She’s busy, you reason, because she is representing Spain at the Euros. She won’t care who you are dating and she certainly doesn’t need it rubbed in her face.

There are many reasons why you go out with him.

One is that you do like him; he’s nice, he’s funny, he treats you well. (He’s not Ona.) Another is that rent is going up and him sharing the load is helpful. (He’s not Ona.) There is also that he is very popular within the agency, and your chemistry on camera is enough to keep your jobs rolling in and casting directors satisfied.

He’s not Ona. You know that.

That's the whole point.

If he were Ona, you’d be deeply in love with him. If he were Ona, you would never leave the house, never leave his embrace, never leave the little bubble created when it is just the two of you and no one else. If he were Ona, you would be excited about the conversations he gently guides you into; marriage, children, where you are going to live one day. You’d miss him more when he isn’t here. You’d care.

But you just… don’t.

Another year passes, more Ona-less than the last, and then she is suddenly coming back home to Barcelona, a medal around her neck and word of a relationship floating above her head.

You could ask her about it if you wanted to because she is still one of your closest friends, but the truth is, you really, desperately don’t want to hear it. While Ona has been falling in love with someone else, you have been proving your stupid feelings to yourself.

The act (your current relationship) lowers enough for you to go home for Christmas. You leave Milan as though fleeing from a hurricane, and you refuse to control the damage until you have entered the new year. Your parents aren’t entirely sure they want you moping about the house, confused how someone so successful can revert to a moody teenager the minute they are back in safe territory, and they heavily encourage you to accept an invite that was extended out to you a few months ago.

Your friends are going skiing in Andorra, and they’d like for you to come with them.

“Ona won’t be there,” one of them regretfully informs you. “She said she doesn’t want to make things weird. She has a girlfriend – or, I don’t know, a talking stage. She wants you to have fun.”

“But Ona and I are friends,” you try to explain, feeling exposed by the look of pity she gives you; the same look someone receives when they find out their ex has gotten married or something similar. As a defensive mechanism, you hastily pull out your phone and dial her number. Everyone watches you, now uninterested in their food as you dine and plan your holiday.

Ona picks up on the third ring, escaping her dinner with Lucy and rushing into the cool, nighttime air of Barcelona.

“Hi?” she says – asks – with raised eyebrows, wondering if you’re in danger.

“You’re coming skiing with us, aren’t you?”

Your friends hide their laughs behind their hands, surprised by how firm your tone is. You do not need it for Ona, because she does anything you say regardless, but they enjoy seeing this side of you. This is someone who has had to fend for herself in a foreign country.

Removing the phone from her ear for a moment, Ona sighs, disappointed in herself.

“Yeah, of course. I’ve missed you, you know.”

…

Skiing is not something Ona is really allowed to do. As a footballer, her legs are what pay her wage. Career-destroying planks of metal are not the best way to spend the dying embers of the year. She knows that. She does, she swears, but she is so eager to go that Jonatan cannot crush her dreams. He tells her, “if you get injured your contract will be reviewed, Ona Batlle,” and she promises him that it won’t happen. Nothing bad is going to happen.

It will be the first time she has spent more than a day with her childhood friends, and she is unbelievably excited.

Lucy finds it adorable and makes it known, helping her pack for her trip, versed in what to bring because her sister skis or something like that (Ona can’t really focus on her almost-girlfriend's monologue). Lucy likes Ona a lot, and it makes her stomach flutter when she thinks about Ona and her friends talking about them. She’s sure her feelings are reciprocated, and she cannot wait for Ona to return to her in the new year, all smiles and lingering hangovers, and ask her to be her girlfriend. Officially.

Your friends convene in the centre of Vilassar de Mar with two cars between you. There are ten people coming.

Someone, most-likely trying to keep the peace, instructs Ona into one vehicle and you into the other. The drive isn’t too long, but you suppose that the tension is uncomfortable for those who aren’t accustomed to maintaining a friendship despite the weight of it.

It’s five days, and you are determined to have fun.

Ona is naturally good at this, although she claims it is her first time. You, living in Milan, are just as advanced.

By the third day, the both of you agree that going off together to do some of the harder runs will be harmless. Spending the day together won’t feel like a date or a romantic holiday. Watching Ona glide over the compacted snow won’t be attractive, watching her cocky smirk as she scales the bumps along the side of the piste won’t do anything.

It won’t. (It does.)

And it just has to be the third day that someone pulls out two bottles of tequila and a drinking game that is going to ensure every single one of you is off your face by midnight.

In rooms opposite one another, you and Ona call your respective partners and tell them about how great a time you are having, actively avoiding telling them about who you spent the day with as though it counts as cheating. It doesn’t, technically. Nothing has happened. But, still, it feels intimate and secret; forbidden.

Then, there is a shout that rings through the house. Everyone comes to the table; the party has begun.

Ona finds out that she is absolutely terrible at drinking games, and loses in every way possible.

You find out that she is still just as touchy when she is drunk.

Your friends try not to comment on it, all having agreed upon yet another passive role in such an irritating situation. Their non-interference almost ceases by the time Ona climbs onto your lap, head turning as she whispers something into your drunk ears, making you laugh privately. In fact, someone has to hold someone else back before they shout at the two of you to make out or break up.

But it’s not really necessary, their prompting, because it hits a certain hour and… nothing else matters anymore.

Ona has been touching you the whole night and you have finally reached your limit.

Boyfriend be damned, you lead her to your bedroom.

She asks you many times if you still want this, and you cannot think of anything to say other than ‘yes’.

You’re not as drunk as she is, and you both know that, but everything feels so perfect and right.

When you wake up the next morning, your anger is more at yourself than the sleeping woman beside you, but she is an outward target for such a boiling emotion and it just makes things easier.

“Ona.” You shake her awake, not caring for her hangover. “Ona, I can’t believe we’ve done this.” She rubs her eyes, dazed and confused for a moment but coming to her senses soon enough. “I have a boyfriend, Ona, and… I don’t like you like that.”

It’s not true.

It’s really, really, really not true, but the fact that you have said it is enough for Ona to leave your room with the intention of never seeing you again.

She gets the train back to Barcelona, turning up at Lucy’s flat in floods of tears, and barrels straight into those strong arms with the intention of never mentioning what she has done.

…

You break up with your boyfriend a month later. Or rather, he breaks up with you, tired of being messed around, tired of your hesitation to fully commit.

The break-up is not the most upsetting thing you’ve been through, but your ego is a little bruised.

You try to make it look like you are having a great time in Milan, even though the agency has once again discarded your file and overlooked you for shoots you used to book in an instant. You try to seem like things aren’t falling apart, but it’s of no use when your father calls you and tells you that your mother is ill.

It isn’t cancer but it’s similar, and you know that you need to come home.

You pack your bags and leave without a second thought, because maybe Madrid was far enough. Maybe there is a reason Ona signed for her home club again and most of your friends still live relatively close to their parents.

Maybe you are not meant to be separated from those you love, because running away is futile if you are always going to end up together again.

In Barcelona, a modelling agency eagerly draws up a contract with you. Although you are from there, your career being based in Milan previously creates an international allure about you (or so they say), and you are assured that work is going to rush towards you as though someone has just knocked down a dam.

Your job is secured, your mother begins treatment, but there is something you cannot shake off.

It hurts to think of Ona, to think of how you left things, but it helps, too. Seeing her face in your mind is comforting. You hear her voice as you drift off to sleep, and you let it soothe you in your dreams.

“Ona has a girlfriend,” her mother tells you when you next visit them. Her frown is unexpected because all she has ever wanted is for her children to be happy and loved. “It’s not right, it doesn’t feel right.” You begin to shrug your shoulders and crawl into your shell, but she interrupts your thought process; “I think you should go see her.”

“Why?”

The woman rolls her eyes. “Just do what I say.”

You nod because she is so scarily sure about it, and you… It’s hard to believe, but you call Ona.

She picks up.

“I was sorry to hear about your mum.”

“Don’t worry. She’s fine.”

“Are you back at home?”

“Yeah, I am.” You pause. “Well, not quite. I’m living in Barcelona.”

Something fizzes in the air; pops, crackles.

“Need me to show you around the city?”

And it’s Ona, so how could you say no?

…

Your visit goes very well.

She takes you out to dinner and shows you around her neighbourhood. She introduces you when she runs into people she knows, and she is insistent about dragging you to her football match on the weekend.

Everything is seemingly forgiven and Ona is intent on integrating you back into her life.

She wants you to feel at home, though she knows you should already, and she wants to lessen the stress of hospital appointments and death and, if not death, then a difficult recovery.

You are sitting in her apartment – now devoid of all signs of Lucy – on her comfortable sofa, watching something together after a day of walking around and sealing up the cracks that formed in Andorra.

Sitting leads into cuddling and then into wandering hands that eagerly roam underneath layers of fabric.

Ona’s breath hitches as you brush the hard lines of her abs, your hands particularly drawn to them and just how strong she has become. “You must have only felt them on men,” she offers as an explanation. “How many have you slept with in comparison to–?”

And your hands stop.

“Sorry,” Ona mumbles, seemingly upset at her outburst. “I’m just curious. I can’t work you out.” She can’t quite look you in the eye, mainly due to the logistics of your position, but she isn’t sure she wants to see the truth attached to her statement.

You question if that’s a good thing, the fact she needs to ask; the fact that she has no choice but to communicate. It was going to happen sooner or later. “A few,” is what you settle on. Ona leaves it at that, carefully pulling the hair tie from your plait, unravelling it with one hand as the other rests against your stomach in an embrace. You smile. “You’re not going to ask who?”

Her fingers stop for a moment. “No.” She speaks so quietly, her voice almost a whisper in your ear. “I don’t care about them.” You relax into her more, feeling her against your back, feeling the softness of the blanket against your feet as it hangs at the edge of the sofa.

“Who do you care about, then?”

“You.”

Carefully, both her hands hold your hips and she sits you up, smiling as she does. You tell her she’s showing off, she replies that you are always showing off. To that, you brush those hands from your sides and lean down to kiss her, more decidedly for once; more in control. It’s a surprising feeling for both of you, the forcefulness. Urgency. Not unfamiliar, but unexpected for this time on this day.

The last time you kissed Ona, you had a boyfriend.

Your mouth goes to her neck as soon as she decides that she wants her hands back on your hips, pushing you down into her lap. It’s now a competition, you think. She’s quickly coming completely undone by your kissing and biting, but you are not ignoring the feeling as she makes you grind down, makes you need that friction. “Fuck,” you moan in her ear. She grips you tighter.

You start to pull off her shirt having had enough of the grey between you, asking if it’s okay, if she’s sure she isn’t too tired. Her reply is, “take it off, god,” and then the removal of your clothes that get thrown just shy of the wine glasses set out on her coffee table. Leggings aren’t the most practical for impromptu sex, but she’s quick and smooth and someone who has definitely done that before.

With your bare chest on display and almost nothing between Ona and you, she lifts you up for a moment with the intention of flipping the two of you, getting you on your back. You pause for a moment, trying to decide if she’s doing it because she wants to or because she thinks that’s the only way to do it, but her hands are moving now, up your sides, round the front of your chest and you relax. She laughs quietly, amused, because the tension dissipates, dissolving like sweet, sweet sugar in hot coffee as soon as your legs wrap around her back.

Ona asks before she does it, picking you up and laying you back down without needing to part her lips from your own. You watch her as she sits up, body in between your thighs. “You’re going to just stay there?” She shakes her head. “I can top,” you tease, a stark contrast from how it was the last time you did this. Ona doesn’t like being told she can’t do something. However indirectly.

“Yeah?” You nod, biting the smirk out of your lips. “I don’t care.”

You are in the process of rolling your eyes when her cocky mouth is put to good use. Your underwear was taken off at some point earlier — you hadn’t realised. Ona’s head moves between your legs, up and down, your hand that isn’t holding onto the sofa in her hair, the soft waves lacing between your fingers.

She’s good at it; thorough, practised. Her tongue circles your clit for a moment before dipping into your entrance. Something about the cockiness of her movements, her tongue, her hand rubbing between her own legs, makes everything more surreal, more blissful. She moans softly, lips kissing their way up your body, hands no longer focused on herself. Instead, they take the place of her mouth, two fingers inside you as quickly as it takes for her to ask if you are okay to carry on. Your reply (“yes”) is cut off quickly by her mouth on yours, tongue swiping at your bottom lip in another question of permission. You can taste yourself on her.

At her command, you sit up, letting her pull you back onto her lap as she sucks at your neck. “Don’t leave any marks,” you warn as her teeth pull a whimper from your supposed stoicness. “I don’t want the makeup artists asking questions.” It comes out too late, because you feel her teeth graze your collarbone quickly, not painful, no, but something that feels so, so good. “Ona.” She sighs in disappointment and adjusts where you are in her lap, so your legs are either side of her thigh.

You find yourself rocking slowly, letting her savour your breasts between her hands and her mouth. She whispers that she wants to see you come, that you don’t need to hold back – not with her, not ever – so you start grinding down, harder, faster. Her hands drop back to your hips, guiding your movements, forcing you to slow down when she feels everything building up. Each time, you let out a “fuck” and attempt to go against her grip to get that friction. “Not just yet,” she mutters, no longer touching you anywhere other than where her hands meet your hips and her thigh presses between your legs.

“Fuck off, Ona,” you breathe, frustrated. “When, then?”

She slows the pace even more. “Can you last a little longer?” You look at her face, brushing away the strands of hair that have fallen over her eyes, ghosting your fingers along her cheek, running your thumb along her lips. She smiles again, eyes creasing slightly.

As her hands drop to cup your face, you say, “you’re beautiful.”

Ona blushes.

You look down at her exposed cleavage, nipples pebbled against the sports bra that is unusually low-cut. It might border on intense staring as you begin to grind against her with the intention of actually getting off now. She laughs, saying her eyes are higher up than that, but going back to her trail of kisses along your jaw nevertheless.

For what seems like longer than a few seconds, the build up finally stops, the tower toppling over in a rush of pleasure. Ona’s hands move your hips as your head drops to rest on her shoulder. She talks you through it, telling you that you look so pretty, telling you that she’s so turned on.

And that’s when she whispers it.

It has taken years to get to this moment, many of them filled with unnecessary suffering.

It has taken years but it does not matter.

Ona tells you that she loves you and that is when you have finally come home.

#woso x reader #woso #randombush3 #barca femeni #woso imagines #ona batlle x reader #ona batlle #ona batlle smut

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