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photmath · 4 months

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NYE Kiss | Trent Alexander-Arnold

Pairing: Trent Alexander-Arnold x Female Reader

Summary: At Trent's New Year's Eve party, he confesses to the reader, his childhood bestfriend, that he's lonely.

Word Count: 4.8k

Warnings: mention of alcohol, angst, miscommuncation, childhood friends, kiss

Note: Happy New Year!

With twenty minutes left until the clock struck midnight, Trent’s brothers, Tyler and Marcel were already setting off fireworks. A couple of Trent’s teammates were also in attendance, and some of the friends you and he shared, but there were still a few valuable ones missing.

Despite Liverpool playing a match the next day, Trent still wanted to do something for New Year's Eve, even if it was a bit risky. But he promised Virgil he would kick everyone out by one in the morning so that they had time to be well-rested for the match, luckily it wasn’t a noon match. Even though he had his brothers, parents, and best mates surrounding him, the night still felt—empty. A bitter taste was left in his mouth as he took a swig of his drink, searching for a solution to his ache.

Trent makes his way over to you, a brown bottle pinched between his fingertips. It’s too dark for you to notice if he’s looking at you, but the pause in his step once his eyes land on you gives you everything you need to know. He stops at the pillar of the canopy, face lighting up with the blast of a firework, “Did the fireworks get too much for you already?”

You purse your lips, shaking your head, “No. I just keep having the recurring thought of one of the ashes falling on my hair and it going up in flames.”

The corner of his lip barely tugged up, “That’s quite an image.”

“It’s very rational,” you defend, tugging the sleeve of your knitted sweater over your hands. Trent was dressed way more casual than you, a black pair of sweatpants and a dark gray hoodie. Had you known him and his brothers would dress like that, then maybe you wouldn’t have nearly lost a finger trying to put yourself into your tight jeans tonight.

A beat of silence washes between the two of you as he decides to stay quiet. He wasn’t usually this quiet when the two of you were with his family, but when he was, he was thinking. So in his head that everything else was irrelevant. It could be a battle trying to ground him back to the present sometimes.

“So, how are you?” you break the silence, sparing a weary glance at him.

“Lonely,” he mumbles. He stays facing the alleyway of Tyler’s home where they light another firework and then scramble away from it.

“Lonely at the top,” you sing, referencing his team’s position at the top of the table. Trent gives you a hard look immediately and you quiet down, averting your eyes from his. “Sorry.” There’s a heavy plate of tension that fills the air between the two of you and despite you both being outside, it feels suffocating. “What’s wrong?”

He shrugs, “Everyone is moving.”

“What do you mean?”

“Everyone moved, I feel like I’m the only one who stayed,” he says. His voice is soft but aloof, still not giving you a glance. “I just thought you would stay. Was a slap in the face to see that your house was for sale.”

It was your parent’s house, the one you grew up in. You lived on the same street where Trent grew up, only three houses separating your families. After riding your bike down the street and dramatically tripping over the rock that you saw at the last minute, Trent came running out of his house and helped you up. Him and his brothers were playing football in the street, the three of them had just gone inside, but he noticed your sparkling pink bike and got distracted looking back at you. Once he realized a kiss to your scarred knee wasn’t going to make the bleeding stop, he called out for his mom and the three of you walked you and your bike back to that house after she cleaned your knee. Trent had stayed by your side the entire time, assuring you that your knee would be okay in the next couple of days.

The sound of a firework exploding shutters you out of the past, forcing yourself to look at a sullen Trent. His bottom lip is tucked through his teeth as his eyes follow the firework’s path.

“Trent, can you look at me?” Trent slowly looks in your direction and his eyes seem more hurt than he lets on. Much different than the bright eyes that welcomed you two hours ago. You swallow, “Did you think we would live here forever? I mean Jude, Alana, Kai….” You list off the friends and neighbors you both shared who had since then moved away.

He shakes his head, “Obviously not, but you could’ve told me you were moving.”

“I know, we’ve just both been so busy. We barely put up the house for sale a couple of days ago.”

Trent blinks his eyes a couple of times and doesn’t speak immediately.

“I am lonely though,” he confesses and it stabs you right in the heart. “The season has felt really long, haven’t seen you or the lads that much. I know you go to some of my games, but we don’t speak afterward, and I miss you. I miss having people around that aren’t my family.”

“Trent,” you sigh. “I’m sorry for not being there.”

“It’s okay,” he shrugs. “I mean, it’s not like I’ve tried to be there for you either.”

“Trent—”

He cuts you off, “I haven’t had much time either but I dunno…the time I do have at home, it’s so quiet. I’ve been staying at my parents house actually, for the past couple of days because I’ve been sick of the silence. Sure, I could’ve walked to your house but I never did…”

He swallows another swig of his drink, the bitter taste in his mouth had yet to leave. And after chewing on the inside of his cheek for so long, he also tasted copper. He couldn’t blame you for being busy. He knew you had just landed the job you had been working so hard for, at a company that treated you well and respected your work, and with the way Liverpool’s hectic season has been going, he didn’t have much time off either.

You're left with your thoughts screaming at you to say something, but what could you say that would heal his loneliness? That you two could schedule a meet up soon? But it wasn’t concrete, ‘soon’ could be tomorrow, could be a week or before the month ended.

“We should hang out sometime,” you decide. “I’ve missed you too. My schedule is clear for whenever, just let me know.”

He downs the rest of his drink, before tossing it in the bin that Tyler usually has next to the side of the canopy but it’s not there. The bottle goes crashing to the ground but doesn’t break, it rolls off some steps away from him and he ignores it.

“Are you drunk?” you ask, eyebrows raised. You knew he shouldn’t have been drinking the day before his game, even if it was New Year’s Eve.

Trent looks back at you, a tsk leaves his lips, “I’ve only had one.”

“One case?”

“Funny,” he grits, any humor in his tone is gone. “I’m being honest.”

You cross your arms, not realizing you pointing out him drinking would upset him. Yeah, maybe you wouldn’t want to be caught doing something you shouldn't be doing, but Trent had been acting out of character the moment he admitted his loneliness. He was never one to talk about his feelings, always shoving it somewhere down deep that you had given up trying to pry out of him a long time ago because it always upset him more than helped.

“Tell me what’s really wrong,” you demand.

He looks away but you watch his Adam’s apple bob as he glances down to the pavement. The door to the house suddenly bursts open behind you, his mother weaving through you both as if you aren’t standing there.

“Fifteen minutes until midnight!” She announces, and then marches back inside but stops once she notices the two of you, “Oh, you two look so cute. Please, you both can stay in the upstairs bedroom if you get too tired to drive home. I’m sure Tyler won’t mind.”

Her presence seems to break off the tension because Trent lets out a low chuckle, “You know, she always thought it’d be us.”

“Us…what?” You bite the annoyance of him switching the topic away.

“It’d be us,” he shrugs nonchalantly. “That we’d be married and have a kid by now.”

Your eyes bulge at his words. He had to be drunk.

His voice rumbles as he kicks an imaginary rock, “What? Does the idea of starting a family with me repulse you that much?”

“No,” you shake your head frantically, hoping you didn't make him feel more bad than what he was already feeling. If Trent was going to be vulnerable for the last fifteen minutes of the year, then fine, you weren’t going to be petty and let your own feelings get in the way of him being open. You choose your words carefully, “I just—” Screw sparing his feelings. “You’re drunk.”

He rolls his eyes, words spitting out of his mouth in irritation, “It was one drink. One drink does nothing to me other than make me honest. Even then, it wasn’t a high percentage of alcohol.”

Your eyes dance between his dark brown ones. They seem more watery than before, the glow of the light from the inside of the house and fireworks glaring off of them. You look away briefly, “Honest? Like I can ask you any question and you’ll tell the truth?”

“Well,” he shrugs, “I don’t need a drink in me to be honest. I’m always honest to you.”

“That’s a lie,” you remark. “You lied to me when you said I could take your car for a drive.”

He rolls his eyes, “That’s because I value my life.”

You huff, “You didn’t have to be in the car with me, but fine, whatever.” You needed to control any impulsive comment you had. Trent was opening up, this was unchartered territory, and maybe he needed a clean conscience for the New Year more than you did. “I wasn’t repulsed by the idea of starting a family with you, I was just shocked to hear you say that.”

Nothing could’ve prepared you to hear him utter those words. Sure, the two of you shared your first kiss together and took each other’s virginities on the night of your twentieth birthday, but the two of you were never anything more. Never went on a date, never received flowers from him—minus the single daisy he plucked out of the grass one day as an apology for leaving the rock in the middle of the sidewalk—but nothing the two of you did was glaringly romantic. He held your hand for a total of two minutes and fifteen seconds one day underneath the table at a shared family dinner, but nothing came of it either.

He was off focusing on the academy, while you were busy studying in school. Once he did make his first team debut, you were in the stands cheering him on. He felt like the happiest man—boy—that day, having both of your families witness his debut. But still, the bone-crushing hug he pulled you into after you all met in the car park, it meant—nothing.

Even the night you lost your virginity, him as well, it was haste. He was in your bedroom, flipping through the birthday cards you received when you confessed to him that it was comical being a virgin at twenty, feeling the weight of society’s judgment on your shoulders for whatever reason, while he didn’t laugh at all. The liquor you both were sipping on gave you both the courage as you went on, sneakily closing your bedroom door and turning a page. After the both of you came down from your high, he cuddled you for an hour before slipping out of your bedroom window and going home.

Nothing was ever really mentioned after that, the both of you deciding it was best to scrape it under the rug so that it wasn’t awkward at combined family dinners, but there was a feeling. A tingling feeling that made your voice hitch whenever he looked at you or texted you. Any visit you made from uni, your heart did flips when he pulled you into a hug and welcomed you home for that weekend.

He snorts, making your eyes dart to him, “We’re being honest, yeah?”

“I’m telling you the truth,” you say.

He nods, “Okay, I believe you.”

Another moment of silence passes between the two of you and he sighs, stuffing his hands into his pockets.

“Can I ask you another question?” you mumble and he nods. “Why did your mom think that?”

Trent shrugs for the hundredth time that night, leaning against the pillar as his head rests against it, “Because I told her that I liked you. She said to go for it, I told her I would, but I never did.”

Oh.

“When was this?” you muster up the courage and power to ask, feeling breathless.

He blows a raspberry, “Maybe ten years ago?”

You're glad that Marcel misfires a firework that goes flying towards a tree to the left of the house, earning a commotion from Trent’s family and teammates, so that you have time to wipe off the shock before Trent looks at you.

Trent looks at the tree and holds his breath, hoping it erupts into flames. Perhaps he needed a break in the conversation as well. He felt exposed, too vulnerable at the expense of your curiosity and even though he said he would be honest, he wasn’t sure how much more truth he could give out when you weren’t exchanging much back.

“Why are you leaving?” he blurts out.

“You know I don’t live there right?” your eyebrow rises. Surely you told him you moved. “I moved out when I was twenty-two. I live almost ten minutes away, but my parents are moving because they need the money. After I left, they started spending on stuff that they shouldn’t have, putting us into a lot more debt than we should be. So, I say ‘we’ decided to sell because the only reason they were keeping the house was for me. For what it represented.”

Your childhood. A part of you was heartbroken for what it meant, but the other part of you knew it was the right thing to do. You knew it would serve you and your family well.

Trent eyebrows furrow, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I knew you would’ve wanted to help.”

Trent averts his gaze, “I can. I can buy it.”

“Trent,” you gawk. “Seriously, I’m going to accuse you of being drunk again—”

“It’s your childhood home.”

“Yeah, and I made a choice. It was my choice to make.”

His shoulders deflate, “So you did want to leave?”

You nod, “It was time for a change. They lived there for the past twenty years. A home isn’t a single house anyway.”

“Do they have a place for after it sells?”

The quick glance at the floor reveals the almost lie you would’ve told him, but the two of you agreed to be honest, so you shake your head, “No. They haven’t left the house entirely. They still live there and whatever they make from the sale, they’ll use it to purchase their next.”

“I can buy it,” he states again and you shake your head.

“Trent, you aren’t going to buy my childhood home, drop it,” you spit, voice unwavering as he looks back at you. His jaw is clenched.

“Fine,” he agrees. “But if you have any doubts, I can buy it. I’ll give them whatever double the asking price is—”

“Trent.” You knew he wasn’t going to drop it, he’d most likely ask your parents first thing tomorrow and you didn’t even want to think about what their response would be.

He sighs, “Okay.”

Instead of letting the conversation simmer into silence, you take a deep breath and ask him another question. Here goes nothing: “Why didn’t you ever pursue your feelings?”

Trent rotates his body towards yours, leaning against the column with his shoulder. His hands are still stuffed into the pockets of his sweats. “I was fifteen, I was scared.”

At fifteen, the two of you would’ve already shared your first kiss and held hands underneath the table. You were so giddy, but you weren’t sure if you were giddy at the idea of getting caught or because you had a crush on Trent. The two of you spent so much time growing up together, playing footy, exploring the neighborhood, everything. Tyler would often tag along, and then Marcel as well once he got older, but still you knew you were closer to Trent more.

“And they’ve just gone away?” you ask without a second thought. Your heart lurches as he looks away. What a stupid thing to say!

He coughs, clearing out his throat and your cheeks burn. He looks down at the hem of your sweater, “Would my mother still be trying to play matchmaker if not?”

A squeezing feeling encompasses your chest that you wince. The shock was gone, you were upset now. It had been ten years, you could excuse the first five years because they were hectic with you at uni and him training, but the both of you had sex knowing the feelings were there.

Because no matter how much you tried to convince yourself you didn’t have feelings for Trent, they were always still going to be there. He was the first boy you were really exposed to. The boy you followed throughout the neighborhood despite not knowing anything about him. You wanted to be brave and follow him into the woods. Doing all sorts of things you would’ve never done had he not been by your side. The sweet boy who kissed your knee in hopes of getting you to stop crying held your heart the moment he ran to you.

He watches the way your eyes dart from the fireworks to his family members cheering as they drink a champagne flute. The crease in your eyebrow and nose, he knew you were in deep thought. On a night of too many truths, he was exhausted.

“Just say it,” he whispers. “We’re being honest.”

“You watched me,” you start, voice trembling but teeth grinding, “you watched me get my heartbroken not once, but twice. Gave me all this advice on boys, broke my heart in the process because I thought you didn’t like me back, and then I went on to have two relationships where they were both shit. And you just watched? Knowing you felt something?”

Trent can’t stand to hear the shake in your voice, it itching his ear in a way that makes him tilt his head away from you.

You continue, “I liked you too, a lot. So much that I would sometimes scare myself because I would see my exes as you, even though sometimes it would be months since we last talked. You were always on my mind, and had you said something earlier, all of it,” you wave your arms around to symbolize the time and heartache lapsed. “All of it could’ve been avoided.”

Trent glances down, “I was a coward.”

“No shit,” you yell. Trent abruptly looks at the crowd of people and hopes you don’t catch their attention.

“I wasn’t ready,” he says, truthfully. “I wasn’t ready to give you my all if we had gotten together. I was still finding my footing on the team, all of my focus was on that and wouldn’t have been on you if we were together. Okay,” he relents, “maybe I could’ve spared your heartache had you known, but it just—it wasn’t worth all the drama—”

“Drama?”

He shuts his eyes closed. Think! “It wouldn’t have been worth you getting hurt because I had training. Or I had a game and had to miss something important of yours. I would’ve been physically there but not emotionally present—”

“Do you think I would’ve cared, Trent?” you gape.

He shakes his head, “You wouldn’t, and that’s the problem. You wouldn’t have deserved that. You wouldn’t have deserved me not being present, it would’ve driven us both away. The only times I saw my family were because they came to my game and I met them at their suite. That would’ve been the only time you and I interacted, do you seriously think you would’ve been okay with that?”

No. But you would’ve been content knowing he felt the same. The small moments you saw him would’ve made up for any multi-hour-long day spent with him.

“Like you needed to find yourself at uni and focus on what you were passionate about, I did too,” he says. His voice is much softer and less urgent, knowing that you were understanding and on the same page as him. “But I’m ready now. I’m not saying you have to be ready right now—or maybe you won’t ever be because you don’t have the same feelings you once had—but, I’m here now. I’m as present as I’ll ever be. The season started off fast and will continue to be difficult, but I’ve learned how to be present at home. How to not focus on football and be with my family and pets during my spare time.”

On cue, the rest of Trent’s family—and yours—burst through the back door. There are only a couple of minutes until midnight, those fifteen minutes blew right past the both of you. Tyler and Marcel had stopped popping fireworks as they compiled a bunch together to be ignited exactly at twelve.

Trent looks at you, pulling your hand so that you’re closer to him near the pillar as your family members stampede outside, settling in lawn chairs and anywhere on the floor. Trent hasn’t dropped your hand yet. He caresses the backside of your hand with his thumb as his fingers squeeze tighter around yours.

“I know I was a coward, I know I could’ve said it anytime you were around, but it was never the right time,” he whispers in your ear. “We were busy, our lives never aligned perfectly, and maybe they don’t align right now either, but I’m willing to take the risk.”

A breathy sigh escapes you as you soak in his words. You close your eyes as you lean the side of your head against his chest. You needed to be grounded as you thought, and he was always someone stable. His hands don’t wrap you into a hug because he knows exactly what you’re doing.

“I still like you,” you acknowledge. “I’m a little upset you kept this a secret.” He snorts. “But, if I’m being honest, I’m not sure when I would’ve bursted and confessed the same thing. I wanted to tell you that we were moving, especially whenever we were thinking about it when it was first brought up, but I stopped myself. I was scared, because I knew my first instinct to reach out to you meant that it was something more, that I saw you as someone more than just my friend. That I always have. Every failed relationship was a reminder of it.”

Trent chuckles, finally being able to breathe. The tightening feeling in his chest had dissipated, replaced with jittery nerves as he restrained himself from pulling you into a hug.

You drop Trent’s hand and face him. If he was confused, he hid it well.

“I’m willing to take the risk too,” you state, the heavy weight on your shoulders dissolving. “I’m trusting you, just like I trusted you the day I followed you into the woods.”

“We ended up getting lost,” he recalls. He isn’t sure how much longer he can keep his hands off of you.

“I know,” you smile. “But I trusted you still, despite being so scared. I knew you would keep your promise and get us out of there before the moon rose. I’m willing to get lost with you, wherever you are, I want to be there.”

“You trust me?” he cheeses, his lips breaking out further into a grin. A chorus of a ten-second countdown breaks out in the background.

“Of course, stupid,” you smack his bicep and the brief contact makes the both of you hold a breath.

Trent knew he couldn’t get the smile off of his face no matter how hard he tried. He didn’t expect to have this conversation with you tonight, but after seeing you underneath the canopy, your clothes and figure lighting up from the colorful lights of the fireworks, he knew he couldn’t let you walk away from him again. You didn’t even hold his heart in the palm of your hands, you held it in your gaze. One look at him from you and he was floored, a weak and desperate man on his knees begging for your attention.

“…three, two, one, Happy New Year!”

Your blissful eyes combined with his gleeful ones don’t look away as you both lean closer. Your hands stay tucked by your side, his suddenly not wanting to move either as he leans down. The moment your nose grazes his, you close your eyes and let him kiss you. You press your lips further into his as the sound of fireworks go off behind you.

The kiss feels like the first one you shared together, tentative but passionate. It feels like a new promise, one full of commitment for the year to come. A promise from him that he’ll be there for every second of the day, and you a promise to be present as well. To not make him feel like he needs to bottle up his emotions and wait until the last minute to confess them.

His hands find your cheeks at the same time you wrap your arms around his waist. He pulls away and sighs against your lips, resting his forehead against yours. “Happy New Year, sweetheart.”

“Happy New Year,” you smile, pecking his lips one more time before burying your head into his chest. He pulls you in for a bone-crushing hug, squeezing your shoulders tightly against him and then resting his head on top of yours.

Instead of letting you close your eyes to soak in the feelings of him being this close in your arms, he shuffles the both of you and points up, “Look up.”

His careful gaze looks down at you as he double checks that you’re actually looking up at the fireworks, but he bursts into a nervous laugh when he sees you looking back at him. You can feel his heart quicken its pace as he stutters, “No, not me. The sky!”

“You’re so happy,” you whisper. Earlier his eyes were on the verge of breaking down, but now, they seem so full of light and hope.

“Yeah,” he slips his hand back around your waist. “I got the girl of my dreams in my arms, my girl.” He enunciates the last two words like they’re a testimony.

Your cheeks rush with heat that you’re glad he can’t feel them. He leaves a chaste kiss on your temple before looking back up at the fireworks. And then he glances down suddenly, “Do you remember when we made that fort in my living room?”

You burst into a laugh, pulling away from his chest, “What?”

“The fort,” he repeats, “it ended up crumbling because Marcel rolled too far and pulled the blankets down—you remember?”

You nod, bewildered by his sudden excitement.

“Well, the spare bedroom of Tyler’s only has a mattress on the floor, but there are some chairs and sofas we can combine to you know,” he lets his voice fade away.

“You have a game tomorrow, maybe you shouldn’t be sleeping on the floor.”

“It’s a new mattress! That’s why it has nothing else,” he laughs. His laugh is intoxicating that all your logic and usual bickering dies out. He could build the fort, you’d be right there helping him either way.

Your heart swells as his eyes go wide, his face glowing red. He taps your waist, “Look, look look.”

The red firework that just popped erupts into the shape of a heart. You smile, standing on your tippy toes to give him a kiss. To think you’ve been missing this for the past twenty years that you’ve known him. What a fool the both of you were.

That night, Trent holds his promise as you help him build the fort around the mattress. You steal a lantern from Tyler’s shed outside while Trent found blankets to use and old moving boxes. It isn’t an exact replica like the two of you first shared, but it’s quite close, only this time you two are wrapped in each other’s arms.

#trent alexander arnold #trent alexander arnold x you #trent alexander arnold fanfic #trent alexander arnold x reader #trent alexander arnold imagine #em.writes

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