Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The living room was the first proper room Jude saw after Erling took his suitcase and carried it through the entrance hall. Although it occupied most of the back of the house, the deep green wall behind the sofa kept it from feeling cold, drawing the space inward around a vast L-shaped sofa. It looked less like ordinary furniture than something built specifically for a man nearly two metres tall who had presumably grown tired of having his feet hang over the ends of things.

Running along most of the wall, the sofa stood on narrow black legs that made its size seem less ridiculous than it was. A long chaise extended towards the windows on the left, while broad, deep seats faced the television opposite. Its textured upholstery fell somewhere between oatmeal and stone-far too light, Jude thought, for someone who regularly came home in football boots. Cushions in muted shades of taupe, olive and dark blue covered it, though one cream-coloured cushion near the corner looked noticeably softer than the rest, its thick, uneven surface catching the last of the daylight.

Above the sofa, two framed abstract prints hung slightly off-centre, their colours washed out and indistinct. At the far end of the green wall, a gold lamp spread out in a burst of thin metal rays. Jude could not imagine Erling choosing it. Either someone had helped him decorate, or he possessed an unexpected interest in dramatic wall lighting that he had somehow failed to mention during all the years Jude had known him.

On the narrow console behind the sofa, a broad-leaved plant reached towards a stack of books and a dark glass vase. Without the black controller half-hidden beneath the coffee table, the grey sweatshirt thrown over one armrest and the enormous pair of trainers abandoned beside the windows, the arrangement might have looked too carefully designed. Those were the details Jude found himself studying. They belonged to Erling rather than to the house-small pieces of ordinary disorder that made it possible to imagine him living here instead of merely sleeping between training sessions in rooms someone else had arranged.

Across from the sofa, a television large enough to make the surrounding wall look narrow hung above a long cabinet of smoked wood. Its surface was almost empty apart from a shallow ceramic bowl, an unlit candle and a framed photograph turned at an angle Jude could not examine without making his interest obvious. A low coffee table of dark, lightly smoked glass occupied the space between the television and the sofa, its rounded corners and thin black frame reflected in the pale wool rug beneath it.

The kitchen opened from the right-hand side of the room through a wide, doorless passage framed in the same dark green as the wall behind the sofa. From where Jude sat in the inner corner of the L-shaped sofa, he could see most of the kitchen island and the stretch of worktop beyond it.

Erling remained visible whenever he worked near the centre of the kitchen, though parts of him disappeared behind the island when he moved farther back. Jude could follow him easily enough: the turn of his shoulders, the pale fall of his hair and the movement of his hands across the chopping board. The rest of his presence reached Jude through sound, the opening of a drawer, the measured knock of a knife against wood, the brief rush of the tap and the quiet scrape of something being pushed across the worktop.

For two people who had not yet worked out how to speak to one another, it was an inconvenient arrangement. Jude could see enough of Erling to remain aware of every movement, yet the space between the sofa and the kitchen still gave them both somewhere to hide inside the silence.

Curled partly into the corner of the sofa, Jude held a mug of tea between both hands, the soft cream cushion resting across his lap. It gave him something to touch and somewhere to look whenever the room became too quiet. He was still wearing the clothes he had travelled in: a plain white T-shirt beneath an old Real Madrid training jacket, black Adidas shorts and white socks twisted slightly around his ankles. Dressed more for an evening at home than for a visit he had spent several days pretending was unimportant, he must have looked comfortable. Instead, he felt as though every part of him had been placed incorrectly.

Strangely, the room did not feel unfamiliar, despite Jude never having been there before. He had already seen most of it through pictures and unfinished conversations: the sofa whose four-month delivery Erling had complained about, the television Jude had accused him of buying purely to compensate for having no personality, the green wall that had appeared behind him during late-night video calls. Back then, they had made those calls often enough for Jude to recognise the corners of rooms he had never entered.

Now he was sitting inside one of those pictures, holding tea Erling had made without asking how he took it, while Erling prepared ingredients in the next room as having Jude in his house were ordinary.

It was not ordinary.

Before the thought could settle anywhere dangerous, Jude lowered his eyes to the mug. A thin curl of steam disappeared beneath his chin while the knife continued its steady rhythm beyond the doorway, each clean strike against the chopping board followed by the softer drag of the blade gathering whatever Erling had cut into a pile.

He could have gone into the kitchen.

Nothing stopped him from setting down the tea, crossing the few metres through the open passage and leaning against the island while Erling worked. Jude suspected that was what Erling had expected when he brought him the mug and told him to make himself comfortable. Even the phrase had sounded strangely formal coming from someone who had once complained that Jude treated every room he entered as it belonged to him.

Once, Jude would not have waited for an invitation. He would have followed Erling into the kitchen, opened every cupboard until he found something worth eating, criticised the contents of the fridge and climbed onto the worktop despite being told repeatedly not to sit where people prepared food. Erling’s objections had never been serious. Jude had always known the exact moment when the irritated line between his eyebrows would break into a smile.

Now the distance between the sofa and the kitchen felt much greater than it was. Neither the unfamiliar house nor Jude’s uncertainty about whether Erling wanted him there was the real obstacle. Crossing the room would require him to act as though he belonged in this version of Erling’s life, and he had not yet decided whether he was brave enough to discover that he did not.

Instead, he took another sip, though the tea was still a little too hot, and looked towards the dark screen opposite. His reflection sat small and indistinct among the pale cushions.

In the reflection, the training jacket made him look younger or perhaps only more tired. Its white stripes and the club badge on his chest were too familiar to carry much meaning after so many seasons spent pulling on similar things without thought. Before leaving Madrid, he had traded jeans for shorts and chosen the softest T-shirt he owned. Erling had said there would be no one else at the house, and dressing for an ordinary evening had made it easier to pretend the visit was one.

Standing in front of his wardrobe, wondering what to wear when flying to see someone he had once known better than himself, had been strangely humiliating.

In the end, he had chosen comfort, which was either honest or cowardly.

Possibly both.

Beyond the doorway, the knife stopped and a drawer slid shut.

“You gone quiet again ?” Erling called.

Jude looked towards the kitchen opening, though Erling remained out of sight. “Was I meant to be performing ?”

“Would give me something to listen to.”
“You could put music on.”
“I could.”

Erling did not.

What followed was not precisely uncomfortable. Discomfort suggested something sharp enough to make a person move; this was softer, spreading through the room like mist and settling over everything without forcing either of them to disturb it. A bowl scraped across the worktop, plastic tore, and the fridge opened with a low hum.

“Are you actually making fajitas ?” he asked.

“I’m preparing everything for them.”
“That distinction seems very important to you.”
“It is, considering you’re supposed to help me cook them.”

Jude glanced down at his mug so quickly that the tea shifted against the sides. “You never told me I was meant to help.”

“You never asked whether I needed any help.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“It makes perfect sense to me.”
“Most things seem to make perfect sense to you.”

A sound came from the kitchen, perhaps a laugh, too quiet and brief for Jude to be certain. The corners of his mouth lifted before he could stop them.

It was ridiculous how easily that sound reached him.

For weeks after Erling first left Dortmund, Jude had carried his phone from room to room, always waiting for a message after training or a call late enough that he should have been asleep, though he rarely was. Their lives had been busier then, full of new cities, new teammates and people demanding they prove themselves immediately. Even so, they had found time in the beginning: sometimes ten minutes stolen between meetings, sometimes hours while one of them did something else and the other remained on the screen.

Jude had learnt the ceilings of Erling’s temporary flats before Erling chose this house, and Erling had watched Jude pack and unpack the same suitcase in hotels across cities neither of them remembered particularly fondly. They had not needed to speak continuously. The point was simply that the line stayed open, that either could look down and find the other still there.

At first, Jude failed to notice the calls growing shorter. He missed the moment messages began waiting until morning, or plans to visit turned into jokes about impossible schedules.

No argument, no accusation, no single moment he could revisit and rearrange into something better. Only a thinning out: small delays and unasked questions accumulating until the person Jude thought of first became someone he had to consider whether he was still allowed to contact.

It might have been easier if one of them had done something wrong.

Instead, they had both done almost nothing, and nothing had proved surprisingly difficult to forgive.

In the kitchen, one cupboard opened, then another.

“What are you looking for ?” Jude asked.

“The paprika.”
“Top cupboard, left of the cooker.”

Silence fell in the kitchen.

Jude adjusted his grip on the mug, turning it slowly between his hands. Only after the words were hanging between them did he realise what he had said.

He had never been in the house, but many months earlier, during a video call, he had watched Erling search for the same spice while complaining that whoever had organised the kitchen had put everything in the wrong place. Jude had spotted the jar in the top cupboard beside the cooker and directed him to it from hundreds of miles away.

He remembered.

Apparently, so did Erling.

Glass clinked as the correct cupboard opened.

“Bit unsettling, that...” Erling said.

Jude lowered his gaze, focusing on the uneven texture of the cushion in his lap. “You’re the one who spent half your life showing me the inside of your cupboards.”

“Didn’t realise you were taking notes.”
“Someone had to remember where everything was. You’d probably have starved otherwise.”
“I seem to be managing all right.”

Harmless as the words were, their simplicity caught at Jude. Of course Erling was managing. He had a beautiful house, a kitchen large enough to lose things in and a career that had continued without Jude at its edge, telling him where the paprika was.

Jude sank deeper into the corner of the sofa, pulling the cream cushion closer until it pressed against his ribs.

“Clearly.” he said.

Erling did not answer at once. Jude wondered whether the change in his voice had carried through the doorway, whether Erling had heard what Jude had never meant to place there.

Then the tap ran, washing away whatever moment might have existed.

Jude rested his head against one of the larger back cushions and turned towards the windows. Rain clung to the glass in thin, irregular trails, catching the light whenever the clouds shifted. Beyond it, the lawn looked almost unnaturally green, bordered by trees that hid the neighbouring properties and made the house feel more isolated than Jude had expected.

On the drive from Manchester airport, the roads had narrowed as the city fell away, buildings giving way to suburbs, then hedges, fields and houses hidden behind high gates. Erling had kept both hands on the wheel, his hair tied loosely at the back of his neck and his sunglasses resting unused above his forehead, though the afternoon had been bright when Jude’s flight landed.

He had been waiting outside the terminal.

Jude had spotted him first, leaning one shoulder against a dark car with his phone in his hand. He looked almost exactly as he had the last time Jude watched him leave a stadium in person, and entirely different from the boy who used to occupy too much space in Dortmund changing rooms.

For a few seconds, Jude had stood with the handle of his suitcase beneath his palm while people moved around him and the sliding doors opened and closed at his back.

Then Erling had looked up.

Surprise crossed his face, even though he had known exactly when Jude would arrive. Something warmer followed, vanishing before Jude could decide what it meant.

“All right, mate ?” Erling had said when Jude reached him.

Mate.

Jude had hated the word immediately. Erling had called him that before, but here it sounded chosen, the safest possible greeting while they stood facing each other with years of almosts between them.

“All right.” Jude had replied.

For one suspended moment, neither of them moved. Jude did not know whether to offer his hand, hug him or laugh at the absurdity of having to decide. Erling seemed equally uncertain; his arms remained at his sides until he reached for Jude’s suitcase instead.

“I’ve got it.”
“I’m perfectly capable of carrying my own bag.”
“I know you are. I’m carrying it anyway.”
“You’re acting like I’ve arrived with an injury.”
“You always look like that after a flight.”

“Like what ?”

“Smaller than usual.”

Jude had stared at him. “I hate you.”

Erling’s mouth had curved, barely. “Good to see you too.”

They did not come any closer to touching. Even when Erling opened the passenger door, he placed one broad hand against the top of the frame rather than on Jude, as though protecting him from hitting his head despite the concern making far more sense for Erling himself.

Football filled the first part of the journey because it was always available when nothing else was. They talked about the World Cup, though both had spent the few hours they were allowed away from it trying not to follow the coverage on their phones. From there, they moved to teammates, flights, the state of the roads and the weather, which became increasingly English as the city disappeared behind them.

When the first spots of rain touched the windscreen, Jude had turned towards the side window. “I’ve missed this.”

Erling had glanced at him. “You’ve missed the rain ?”

“I’ve missed the general misery of it all.”
“You chose to live in Madrid. You don’t get to complain about missing English weather.”
“I know. It’s terrible there. The sun shines every day, the food is decent, and people actually sit outside after six in the evening.”
“That sounds absolutely miserable.”
“It’s properly grim. I don’t know how I cope.”

That earned him another small smile. Jude spent the rest of the drive aware of it, as if Erling had left the expression somewhere visible between them.

Conversation came more easily after that, but neither of them mentioned the visit itself. Erling did not ask why Jude had agreed so quickly, and Jude did not ask why the invitation had arrived at one in the morning without any explanation beyond "come up after the tournament. stay here a few days".

Jude had read it six times.

Then he had replied, "you asking properly?"

Erling had answered in less than a minute.

"yeah"

That single word had been enough to rearrange Jude’s plans.

He still did not know whether that made him hopeful or pathetic.

Jude found the distinction increasingly difficult to make.

When the tap stopped, Erling appeared briefly in the opening with a glass bowl in one hand and a wooden board in the other. He had changed out of the sweatshirt he wore to the airport. A pale grey T-shirt stretched across his shoulders above black training shorts, white socks disappearing into black slides.

Nothing about the clothes was remarkable, yet seeing Erling dressed for an evening in his own house unsettled Jude. Airport pickups and guest rooms belonged to visits; tied-back hair, washed hands and vegetables on a chopping board felt more intimate. Erling was not entertaining him so much as letting him into an ordinary night.

It looked domestic.

Jude looked away first.

“You all right ?” Erling asked.

There it was again: the most useful question in the English language, capable of meaning anything from hello to you look as if you might collapse, while requiring no more honesty than the person asking was prepared to receive.

“I’m fine.”

Erling remained in the doorway.

Jude could feel him watching. When he finally looked back, Erling’s gaze dropped briefly to the cushion pressed against Jude’s stomach before returning to his face.

“Are you sure ? You look exhausted.”

“I’ve only been here for about half an hour.”

“You’ve been here for nearly two hours.”

Jude blinked. “No, I haven’t.”

“You have.”

“That can’t be right.”

Erling’s eyebrows lifted. “I picked you up at the airport, J. I know exactly when you got here.”

J slipped into the room so naturally that it took Jude a moment to recognise what he had heard.

Not Jude. Not Bellingham.

J.

He had not realised how much he had missed the sound until Erling gave it back to him.

Jude lowered his gaze to the tea, which no longer produced steam. “Then I’m tired.”

“That usually happens after a tournament.”
“Thanks, doctor.”
“Any time.”

Erling moved towards the fridge, but Jude spoke before he disappeared.

“You don’t have to keep preparing everything.”

Erling stopped and looked over his shoulder.

“I mean, we could just order something.” Jude continued, trying to make the suggestion sound casual rather than like an apology for being too tired to stand. Erling’s expression shifted, just briefly, something tightening at the corner of his mouth before he looked away again. “We could always eat it tomorrow instead.” Jude tried again.

“I thought we were going to cook together.”

“We still can. I was only suggesting an easier option.”

“There’s still an avocado waiting for you.”

Jude watched him, unsure whether Erling was teasing or genuinely disappointed by the thought of cooking alone.
That difference mattered.

“You’re really determined to make me cut it, aren’t you ?”

“I’m beginning to think you’re avoiding it.”

“I can cut an avocado perfectly well.”

“You nearly cut your thumb off slicing a bagel.”

“I was tired.”

“You were showing off.”

Jude stared at him for a moment, then felt a laugh escape, quiet but real, and something changed in Erling’s face in response, his shoulders lowering as though he had been waiting for proof that Jude still remembered how to do it.

The memory returned with humiliating clarity: a kitchen in Dortmund after midnight, Jude attempting to cut a frozen bagel because neither of them had thought to take it out earlier, Erling watching from the doorway and telling him to stop before he injured himself, then crossing the room only when Jude ignored him and wrapping one enormous hand around his wrist.

"Give it here, idiot."

Jude could almost feel the heat of Erling’s palm.

“Fine.” Jude said, giving in. “We’ll cook together.”
“Later. We’ve still got plenty of time. You look as though you’re about to fall asleep sitting up. Get some rest first.”
“So now you’re in charge of the schedule ?”

“Someone has to be, because you look half dead.”

“I’m sitting down, not dying.”

“You’re holding that cushion like it’s life support.”

Jude glanced at his arms, which were indeed wrapped around the soft cream square with considerably more commitment than he had intended. “It’s a good cushion.”

“It was expensive.”
“That doesn’t automatically make it good.”
“No ?”
“I’m saying you can spend a ridiculous amount of money on something and still end up with rubbish.”

Erling considered this, then nodded towards the sofa. “You like it, though.”

“The sofa ?”
“My incredibly expensive rubbish.”

Jude pressed one hand into the cushion beneath him, watching the fabric rise slowly around his fingers. “It’s all right.”

“Only all right ?”
“It’s too big.”
“I’m too big for normal sofas.”
“That isn’t much of a defence. You could have bought two smaller ones.”
“So you could sit on the other one ?”

Erling spoke lightly, but the question landed differently from the rest. Jude looked at him. His expression did not change, though one hand tightened almost imperceptibly around the edge of the chopping board.

“Maybe.” Jude said.

For a moment, rain against the windows and the low hum of the fridge became distinct enough to count. Then Erling looked down at the board. “Good thing I bought one, then.”

Before Jude could decide how to answer, Erling turned away and moved farther into the kitchen. Jude watched him disappear partly behind the island, his pulse beating faster than the exchange deserved. Perhaps Erling had only been talking about furniture. Perhaps the invitation meant nothing more than missing an old friend after the tournament.

Not everything was a sign.

Jude had spent years teaching himself that delayed messages, birthday calls, contextless pictures and public comments were not signs.

Erling’s careful efficiency in the kitchen soothed him despite himself. He had always moved differently when given a task: direct, precise, as if his size required him to calculate where every limb would land. On a football pitch the result was frightening; in a kitchen it meant drawers closed with his hip, high shelves required no stretch and anything left out of place seemed to offend him personally.

Jude remembered another kitchen, much smaller than this one, with cheap white cupboards and a light above the cooker that flickered whenever the extractor fan was switched on. Erling had stood over a pan of pasta, insisting that the sauce required more salt, while Jude sat on the worktop eating grated cheese directly from the packet.

They had been young enough to believe proximity was permanent.

Not naïve, exactly, because both of them already understood contracts, transfers and the relentless forward motion of careers in which every season could rearrange a life, but young in the particular way that allowed a person to know things without believing those things applied to them.

Erling had told him he was leaving weeks before anyone else knew. They had been sitting on the floor of Jude’s flat, backs against the sofa, a match playing silently because neither was watching. Erling had spoken without looking at him.

"I’m going."

Jude had known what he meant immediately.

He remembered nodding, remembered asking when, remembered saying that it was brilliant and that Erling deserved it and that Manchester was not exactly the other side of the world, all of which had been true and none of which had been what he wanted to say.

Erling had turned towards him eventually. “You’ll come visit.”

It had not sounded like a question.

“Tsss...course I will.” Jude had replied.

They had both believed him.

Perhaps that was the part Jude found hardest to revisit, not that they had failed to keep the promise, because Jude had visited Manchester and Erling had visited him, but that they had believed geography was the only distance capable of growing between two people.

From the kitchen came the muted thud of the fridge, the scrape of a spoon against a bowl and, after a pause, the return of the knife to the chopping board. Jude stopped trying to identify each task. The sounds mattered less than the fact that they continued.

As long as Erling was moving in the next room, Jude did not have to decide what came next.

He did not have to ask why the invitation had arrived now, when the tournament had left both of them tired enough to become careless with whatever they usually kept hidden. He did not have to wonder what Erling expected from the next few days, or whether anything would be different when Jude packed his suitcase again.

For now, Erling was in the kitchen preparing food they would apparently cook together later, and Jude was on his enormous sofa with tea in his hands and a cushion across his lap.

It was not enough to fix anything, but it was more than they had possessed yesterday, and perhaps that was why Jude was so reluctant to move, because moving would turn this fragile, almost accidental arrangement into something that required another decision.

Evening gathered slowly at the windows. The pale grey-blue sky remained stubbornly bright, but the green wall behind the sofa deepened towards the colour of wet leaves, and Jude’s reflection faded from the black television opposite.

The room had grown quieter as the evening settled over it, although the large windows still held a surprising amount of light, the sky beyond them washed in the pale grey-blue of an English summer that refused to become properly dark even when the day had clearly finished.

In the television’s reflection, the pale sofa seemed to occupy the entire room. Its cushions rose around Jude until he looked smaller than he was accustomed to seeing himself. In theory, the effect should have been comforting. Instead, Jude felt misplaced, as though Erling had set him among carefully chosen furniture and expected him to remember where he fitted. He looked down at the mug. The last of the steam had gone, and the tea had cooled beyond being particularly good, yet he took another sip. Erling had made it correctly without asking; leaving half of it felt strangely ungrateful.

That was ridiculous too.

Remembering how Jude took his tea meant nothing by itself. People retained details even after the relationship around them changed. Jude still knew that Erling hated finding pieces of onion in sauces but would eat them without complaint if they were cut finely enough, became irritable when he was hungry, and slept best on his stomach unless someone else was in the bed, in which case he occupied every centimetre they failed to defend.

Knowledge did not disappear simply because it was no longer being used.

Sensible as it was, Jude disliked the thought immediately.

He leant forward, the cushion slipping slightly against his stomach as he reached across the broad space between himself and the coffee table, then placed the mug on the smoked glass with more care than the action required. He made certain it stood well away from the rounded edge, partly because the table probably cost more than anything designed to hold tea reasonably should, and partly because he could already imagine Erling looking at a ring left on the surface with the particular silent accusation he normally reserved for missed chances and people who put metal utensils into non-stick pans.

Once his hands were empty, tiredness settled more heavily across his shoulders. It gathered at the back of his neck and behind his eyes until remaining upright began to feel needlessly complicated. He had slept on the flight, technically, but airport sleep was little more than an uncomfortable interruption of consciousness. Before that came the tournament: training, matches, recovery, press, unfamiliar hotel rooms. Before that, the final stretch of the season, when every ache required monitoring and rest had to be scheduled like work.

Hotel sleep had never settled properly. It arrived between half-heard announcements, changes in cabin pressure and the awareness that someone might be watching him with his mouth open. Even in the rooms where he left clothes on chairs and chargers by the bed, some part of him waited to be told when to move again.

Even while still, his body had remained alert for the next knock, message or instruction.

Here there was only Erling moving through the kitchen, water slipping from the trees outside and the low mechanical hum of the house.
Jude turned into the corner of the sofa and drew one leg beneath him. The seat yielded at once, sinking around his weight with a softness that made his earlier criticism harder to defend.

Jude shifted farther into the corner of the sofa, turning carefully until he could draw one leg beneath him, and the enormous seat yielded at once, the cushion sinking around his weight with a softness that made his earlier criticism of it feel increasingly difficult to defend. He pressed one hand to the backrest for balance as he lowered himself onto his side, expecting the depth of the sofa to feel awkward, but instead finding that the corner where the two sections met formed a sheltered pocket around him, protected on one side by the broad back cushions and on the other by the beginning of the chaise.

His cushion slipped from his lap. Jude caught it, pulled it against his chest and tucked one edge beneath his chin. Its uneven loops were softer than they looked. He wondered whether Erling had chosen it or merely nodded through a serious conversation about texture before paying for everything and using the decorative cushions as back support.

A small smile answered the image.

Getting comfortable proved less graceful than expected. Jude adjusted the cushion beneath his head, but it pushed his neck too far forwards. Reaching behind himself, he tugged at it until it came loose, then shifted onto one elbow to drag it into a better position. As he settled back, his gaze caught on the sweatshirt Erling had left over the armrest.

Jude had noticed it as soon as he entered the room, but from this close he could see how soft and worn it looked, the sleeves hanging loosely towards the floor. Once, he would have pulled it on without asking. He had worn enough of Erling’s clothes over the years for the habit to feel almost instinctive, and the urge to reach for it now was so immediate that his hand shifted against the cushion before he stopped himself.

It would have been easy. The sweatshirt was close enough to take without getting up, and Erling probably would not have cared. That was not the same as knowing he was still allowed.

Jude drew his hand back and tucked it beneath the cushion instead.

When he glanced towards the kitchen, Erling was still at the worktop, partly obscured by the island and apparently unaware of the small decision Jude had just made.

He settled back into the corner instead, surrounded by the broad cushions on one side and the beginning of the chaise on the other. There was more than enough room to stretch out, but Jude drew his knees towards his stomach, folding himself into the smallest space the enormous sofa allowed. The movement pulled his training jacket tight across his shoulders.

He should have taken it off earlier. Instead, he left it where it was. The jacket created a thin layer between him and the room around him, a reminder that he had arrived from somewhere else and would eventually return there.

In it, he was still a visitor.

Too tired to resent the symbolism, Jude turned his face into the cushion.

Cool fabric touched his cheek. He smelled clean cotton and detergent first, then a warmer trace caught in the upholstery, the throw behind the armrest and the grey sweatshirt at the far end of the sofa. Its scent belonged to changing rooms after training, long coach journeys and quiet evenings in flats neither of them had kept for long. It bypassed every sensible argument Jude had constructed during the flight and reached the part of him that still recognised Erling before thought became involved.

Not aftershave. Not shower gel. Something less definable: clean fabric, skin, warmth and the faint mineral scent of rain. Something his mind might have struggled to name if his body had not recognised it immediately.

Erling.

Jude’s eyes closed.

For a moment he was nineteen again, half asleep on a team coach with his head tucked beneath Erling’s jaw and Erling’s arm heavy across his shoulders. He remembered waking with a seam pressed into his cheek and Erling accusing him of drooling on the hoodie. Someone in the row opposite had tried to photograph them without turning off the flash. Jude had denied drooling despite the suspicious mark near Erling’s shoulder, and neither of them had questioned why Jude had chosen that particular place to sleep when other seats were empty. He had not been embarrassed then.

That was the strangest part, not that they had once touched so easily, but that neither had understood closeness as something requiring courage. Jude had slept against him, stolen his clothes, hooked his ankles over his thighs during films and accepted hugs that lasted long after the joke was over.

There had been no calculation because there had been no distance to cross.

Another memory followed: Erling asleep diagonally across Jude’s bed after waiting for a late recovery session, hair loose over Jude’s pillow and one bare foot beyond the duvet. Jude could have taken the sofa. Instead, he had climbed into the narrow space by the wall and woken with Erling curved around his back. Jude had stood in the doorway for several minutes first, irritated by the stolen space and relieved by the sight of him in equal measure. By morning, Erling’s arm had been across his waist and his face pressed between Jude’s shoulder blades.

Neither of them had mentioned it in the morning.

They had not needed to.

Jude tightened his fingers in the cushion until the years between then and now became too sharp. Erling was still there. Only a few metres away. Close enough that Jude could have said his name without raising his voice, though he had no idea what would follow if Erling answered. So he remained quiet. His breathing slowed before his mind agreed to rest. The cushion warmed beneath his cheek; the hand near his face loosened against the fabric.

He told himself he was not going to sleep.

He would wait until Erling finished, then go into the kitchen. They would stand on opposite sides of the island and pretend cutting an avocado together was not the most domestic thing they had done in years. Jude would steal cheese. Erling would complain. Their hands might remember what their words had forgotten.

He imagined the brush of a hip when one of them reached past the other, a drawer opening without permission, an ingredient passed before it was requested. They would concentrate on heat, knives and whether the chicken was cooked through while their words caught up with them. It would not mean they were together. It would not mean the visit had repaired anything. For one evening, though, they might agree not to look beyond the edges of the life they were pretending to share.

Perhaps, within those narrow limits, it could be easy.

The possibility should have frightened him. Instead, Jude pressed his face deeper into the cushion.

Kitchen sounds softened into distant, harmless things. Somewhere between wakefulness and sleep, he wondered whether Erling had known he would come.

Not hoped. Known.

Jude had replied almost immediately, but booking the flight was another matter. For three days, he pretended to consider whether he should actually go. He checked a calendar full of obligations he already knew could be moved, compared flights when there was only one he intended to take, and left the booking page open as if delay might transform instinct into careful thought. The performance was for no one but himself. Admitting how quickly he would rearrange his life for Erling meant admitting that the years between them had changed less than Jude wanted to believe.

Perhaps Erling had understood. Perhaps that explained the immediate answers, the personal airport pickup and the ingredients waiting for them to cook together.

Or perhaps he was simply being a good host.

Jude’s exhausted mind turned the possibilities over without finding an edge sharp enough to wake him. Last came the knife meeting the wooden board with a soft, final knock.

After that, the house folded around him.

*

Erling noticed the silence gradually.

At first, he assumed Jude had disappeared into his phone or his own thoughts. In Dortmund, Erling had learnt that Jude’s silences were not all the same. Some meant tiredness, some anger carefully contained, and some that a thought had carried him so far inward it would take several attempts to call him back.

This one was different.

There was no shift of clothing against the sofa, no soft click of Jude lifting the mug from the table, no impatient exhale at whatever thought had annoyed him. Even the occasional movement of his trainers , socks now, Erling corrected automatically, because Jude had left his trainers in the entrance hall, had stopped.

Beyond the passage, Jude breathed out. The sound was too soft to hear clearly, yet Erling knew what had happened before crossing the room to check.

Jude had fallen asleep.

Relief moved through him first, followed by something warmer he did not trust himself to name.

Nothing in the kitchen genuinely needed doing. Peppers and onions waited in a covered bowl; the chicken sat in lime, garlic and smoked paprika; the sauce had been mixed and adjusted twice. Erling had left the avocados, coriander and cheese untouched so Jude would still have something to do.

That had been the point.

He had not wanted to place a finished meal in front of Jude as though they were strangers conducting a polite visit, nor had he wanted to order something and sit across from him while they searched for safe conversation. Cooking together had once required no planning between them; they had moved around small kitchens, stolen ingredients from one another’s hands and argued about instructions neither of them had read. Erling had thought the familiarity of the task might help.

He had not planned for Jude to fall asleep before they began.

Waking him should have been the obvious answer, especially when Jude had eaten almost nothing since arriving and would complain later when hunger gave him a headache. Erling could have returned to the living room, touched his shoulder and told him to get up, using the same blunt practicality that had carried them through injuries, early flights and mornings when neither of them wanted to attend training.

Instead, Erling wiped a clean section of the worktop for the second time.

He rinsed the knife, although he had already rinsed it once, dried it carefully and placed it on the board rather than returning it to the block, because they would need it later. He checked the lid on the bowl, moved the chicken to a different shelf in the refrigerator and then moved it back when he realised there had been no reason to change its position.

He was delaying.

The knowledge did nothing to make him stop.

For months or even longer, if he was honest, Erling had imagined Jude in this house without admitting that was what he was doing. When the oversized sofa finally arrived, his first thought had been that Jude would call it ridiculous before taking the deepest corner. Erling bought tea he rarely drank because it happened to be Jude’s brand. After Jude compared the green wall to an expensive restaurant on a video call, Erling had spent the rest of the evening considering whether he disliked it after all.

Traces of Jude existed throughout a house he had never entered, hidden inside choices Erling pretended belonged only to him. None of them had guaranteed Jude would come. Eventually, Erling dried his hands and laid the tea towel neatly beside the sink, then turned towards the broad opening between the kitchen and living room.

From where he stood, Erling could see Jude curled into he sofa, one white-socked foot tucked behind the other. The sight caught at something inside him before he had even looked properly at Jude’s face. He had always curled up when he was exhausted, making himself unexpectedly small despite spending every waking hour behaving as though nothing could contain him.

Erling leant against the frame and looked.

Hours of travel had pressed the curls on one side slightly flatter, disturbing the otherwise neat shape of his haircut. Faint shadows sat beneath his eyes, and the cushion had pressed a narrow line along his cheek. Even asleep, a trace of the familiar crease remained between his brows. For one moment, Erling wondered whether Jude had been thinking about leaving. Coming here did not mean he felt comfortable, or understood an invitation Erling himself had not fully understood when he sent it. The cushion might have been comfort; it might also have been a barrier.

He forced the thought aside. Jude was asleep. That was all he knew.

Erling had seen Jude asleep hundreds of times. On coaches, planes, sofas, hotel beds and once on the floor of a changing room because Jude had claimed he was only lying down for a moment and refused to admit afterwards that twenty minutes had passed. He knew the gradual stages by which Jude surrendered to sleep, the crease that remained between his eyebrows until exhaustion finally smoothed it away, the way one hand usually found something to hold and the slight movement of his mouth when a dream disturbed him.

Familiarity did not make the sight less affecting.

Perhaps it was the house around him, the fact that Jude was asleep on Erling’s sofa rather than in one of the temporary spaces they had once occupied together, his body folded into furniture Erling had chosen while rain moved quietly through a garden that belonged to a life Jude had never been part of. Perhaps it was simply that Erling had spent so long imagining the possibility that the real version could not fit neatly inside him.

After a longe time of postponed visits, messages answered too late and conversations that stopped before either of them said what they actually meant, he was asleep in the centre of Erling’s home as though some part of him still trusted the space enough to let go.

Erling remained in the doorway longer than he needed to, watching the slow rise and fall of Jude’s back beneath the jacket and measuring his own breathing against it.

He should have left him alone.

He had no reason to intervene. The room was warm, the sofa comfortable, and several metres of chaise remained available if he wanted to sit at a distance. He could have gone upstairs, answered messages or done anything that did not turn Jude’s sleep into a moment larger than it was.

Instead, he pushed away from the doorway.

The thick rug softened his footsteps as he crossed the room, though he moved carefully regardless, his attention fixed on Jude’s face for any sign that the change in the room had disturbed him. Jude did not move, not even when Erling’s shadow passed over the sofa and briefly altered the light against his closed eyelids.

The mug sat near the centre of the coffee table, exactly where Jude had placed it, and Erling paused to look at it before reaching down. There was still tea inside, nearly half of it, the surface cold and flat.

Typical.

He moved it farther away from the edge and turned the handle inwards without thinking, a small act of order that gave his hands something harmless to do. When he straightened, Jude remained asleep, his fingers curled loosely against the cream cushion.

Up close, the exhaustion was more obvious. He lowered himself beside the sofa.

Because the seat was so deep and raised only slightly on its narrow black legs, kneeling brought his face almost level with Jude’s. The position should have felt absurd for a man his size, his knees pressing into the rug and one hand braced lightly against the edge of the cushion, but Erling barely noticed the discomfort.

His hand lifted before he had fully decided to move it, then stopped a few centimetres above Jude’s face.

Years ago, there would have been no hesitation. Erling would have touched him because he wanted to, brushing hair from his forehead, pressing a thumb into his cheek or covering his nose until Jude woke up angry enough to threaten him, because the boundaries between them had been understood through instinct rather than discussion.

Now permission seemed to exist in every inch of air separating them.

Erling could almost hear all the reasons to lower his hand again. Jude had not asked to be touched. They had barely managed a proper greeting at the airport. The affectionate habits of Dortmund did not automatically belong to them now simply because both of them remembered those habits.

Then Jude’s breathing changed slightly, a deeper exhale passing through his parted lips as his face settled farther into the cushion, and the movement was so trusting, so unguarded, that Erling’s resistance gave way.

He lowered his hand.

The backs of his fingers moved over Jude’s cheek with barely any pressure, following the warmth beneath his eye before curving towards his jaw. His skin was softer than Erling remembered and exactly as familiar, the contradiction tightening something in Erling’s chest.

Jude did not wake.

Erling repeated the touch, slower this time, allowing his knuckles to trace the same path while his thumb rested near the corner of Jude’s mouth. A small smile came without permission, not because anything was amusing but because the sight of Jude sleeping against his hand opened a tenderness Erling had spent years forcing into safer shapes.

Messages after matches.

Birthday calls.

Comments left beneath photographs where everyone could see them and therefore no one could mistake them for private.

This was private.

The room, the quiet, the warmth of Jude’s face beneath his hand, none of it had an audience, and the lack of one made the moment feel almost dangerous.

Erling’s thumb moved lightly over Jude’s cheekbone.

Jude’s expression did not change, though his lips parted with another slow breath, and for one suspended second Erling allowed himself to believe the trust was intentional, that Jude knew who was touching him even in sleep and had chosen not to pull away.

The training jacket had shifted farther aside, its collar loose across Jude’s shoulder and the zip angled towards his chest, leaving his neck exposed from beneath his ear to the white edge of his T-shirt.

Erling’s attention caught there.

He knew he should stand.

The awareness remained clear even as he leant closer.

At first, he told himself he only wanted to see whether Jude was cold, though there was no logical reason checking his temperature required bringing his face near Jude’s throat. The excuse disappeared completely when Erling lowered his head and pressed the bridge of his nose into the warm space beneath Jude’s jaw.

For one second, he did not breathe.

His forehead rested lightly against the side of Jude’s neck, while his lips hovered close enough to skin that the distinction between this and a kiss felt unsteady. Erling closed his eyes, allowing the familiar warmth to surround him before he inhaled.

Jude smelled faintly of the airport and clean cotton, of the tea he had been drinking and whichever detergent had been used on his shirt, but beneath those unfamiliar traces he remained unmistakably himself, the scent so deeply connected to memory that Erling felt it before he could describe it.

Changing rooms after training, when Jude dropped onto the bench beside him and leant over until their shoulders touched.

Hotel corridors after midnight, Jude wearing one of Erling’s hoodies because he had claimed his own room was too cold.

A cramped sofa in Dortmund, where Jude had fallen asleep halfway through a film and slowly migrated across the cushions until his head rested in Erling’s lap.

The smell of his hair against Erling’s chest when they hugged goodbye and neither of them wanted to be the first to let go.

Erling breathed in more deeply.

The contact was not a kiss. He did not move his mouth against Jude’s skin, did not allow his hands to tighten or his body to press closer. He only remained there, face buried in the curve of Jude’s neck, drawing in one slow breath and then another while something painful loosened inside him.

Jude did not react.

His breathing remained deep and even, one hand still curled beside his face, his body heavy with sleep. There was no startled movement, no tightening of his shoulders and no indication that Erling’s presence had reached the part of him capable of waking.

For a few seconds, Erling allowed himself to remain exactly where he was.

Then guilt, caution or simple fear finally became strong enough to make him lift his head.

The air felt colder after Jude’s skin.

Erling sat back slightly on his heels and looked at him, searching for any sign that he had disturbed him, but Jude’s face remained turned into the cushion, expression unchanged. Only the jacket had slipped farther down his shoulder, probably displaced by Erling’s forehead.

He could pull Jude’s jacket back into place, find a blanket or simply leave him alone. Instead, Erling looked towards the empty length of the sofa. Several metres separated Jude from the far end of the chaise, more than enough room for Erling to sit without touching him. He imagined settling there and pretending to watch television while counting every breath from across the cushions, and the thought felt unbearable.

Before he could reconsider, Erling eased the cushion from Jude’s arms and slid one hand beneath his knees, the other behind his back. A sleeping body offered no assistance; Jude yielded completely as Erling lifted him, his knees remaining drawn up while his head tipped against Erling’s shoulder.

A quiet sound caught in Jude’s throat, and Erling froze. For one tense second, he expected Jude to wake and find him without any reasonable explanation for why he was carrying him across a sofa large enough to sleep on comfortably. Instead, Jude turned his face towards Erling’s neck and settled again, and the movement nearly undid him.

Holding Jude more securely against his chest, Erling lowered himself into the corner of the sofa and stretched his legs along the chaise. He shifted one of the larger cushions behind his back until he could recline comfortably, then adjusted Jude’s weight across him. Jude remained curled at first, one knee resting over Erling’s thigh and his face tucked beneath Erling’s collarbone, but gradually his body relaxed and settled more fully against Erling’s chest.

One of Jude’s hands lay loosely beside his face, while the other was caught somewhere between them, though he showed no sign of discomfort. Erling placed the cream cushion beneath his elbow to support the arm wrapped around Jude’s back. At last, the ridiculous size of the sofa seemed useful.

For several seconds, neither of them moved. Then Jude rubbed his cheek against Erling’s chest, a small, unconscious motion followed by the faint press of his nose into the cotton of Erling’s shirt, as though some sleeping part of him had recognised where he was and chosen to move closer.

Erling went completely still. Jude settled with one ear above his heart, making Erling abruptly aware of how hard it was beating. The rhythm felt far too loud for the quiet room, but trying to slow his breathing only made him more conscious of it.

His hand tightened instinctively at Jude’s waist before he forced his fingers to relax. He moved his palm once along Jude’s back, from between his shoulder blades to the curve of his side, then let it rest above his hip. Jude’s breathing warmed his chest through the T-shirt, and Erling stared towards the television without seeing it.

All he could feel was Jude’s weight against him, the occasional twitch of his fingers and the overwhelming fact that he had not woken when Erling moved him. Some part of Jude had accepted his arms without hesitation, trusted the shift from cushion to chest and returned immediately to sleep. It should not have meant as much as it did.

Erling closed his eyes. He had wanted Jude close from the moment he saw him outside the airport, but the wanting had been so immediate that he had reacted by doing nothing. He had allowed the uncertain moment for a hug to pass and reached for Jude’s suitcase instead, because luggage was simpler than a body and practical gestures were easier to survive than rejected affection.

During the drive, he had kept both hands on the steering wheel when he wanted to touch Jude’s knee. At the house, he had made tea rather than saying he had missed him and prepared food rather than admitting how often he had imagined Jude standing beside him in that kitchen. Now Jude lay across him as though closeness had never become difficult, and Erling could not decide whether that made the years between them feel smaller or more painful.

The television remote sat just beyond comfortable reach on the coffee table. Erling considered leaving it there. The silence was not unpleasant, but without anything to soften it, every breath and heartbeat seemed to matter too much. Keeping one arm around Jude, he leant forwards and caught the remote with his fingertips. Jude shifted with him, lifting his head slightly before settling back against his chest. Erling waited until his breathing remained even, then switched on the television. Pale light washed over the green wall. Erling lowered the volume until the voices became little more than a murmur beneath the rain and chose the first programme that did not involve football or anything loud enough to disturb Jude. He had no idea what was playing.

Jude’s body had already softened into the new position, his weight resting more fully against Erling. One hand remained near his face while the other stayed hidden between them. Erling returned his palm to Jude’s side, moved his thumb once across his waist and left it there.

The food and the conversation could both wait.

Everything outside the sofa could wait a little longer. Nothing between them had been repaired or named, yet Jude was asleep against Erling’s heart, and for the first time since he had walked through the arrivals doors, neither of them was trying to decide what they were allowed to be.

Erling barely moved. Jude had settled with one ear above his heart, and although Erling knew the sound could not possibly wake him, he remained irrationally conscious of every change in its rhythm. It accelerated whenever Jude breathed warmly through his T-shirt or shifted his fingers against his chest.

As sleep loosened the last of the tension from Jude’s body, his weight spread more fully across Erling. Every point of contact became impossible to ignore: Jude’s cheek beneath his collarbone, one knee resting over his thigh, the hand caught somewhere near his ribs and the slow rise of his back beneath Erling’s palm.

This was not the kind of closeness anyone could mistake for accidental. That did not mean Jude would have chosen it while awake.

The thought returned whenever Erling considered moving him, even if only far enough to place Jude beside him rather than directly on top of him. Yet each time Erling shifted, Jude seemed to settle more firmly against his chest, as though the sleeping part of him had already made a choice his waking mind might have questioned.

Erling knew better than to treat unconscious trust as an answer to something neither of them had asked. He allowed the moment to remain what it was, warm, temporary and free of promises beyond the next breath.

The television supplied the only light in the room, washing Jude’s white T-shirt in changing shades of blue and grey. Its glow caught the Real Madrid badge on his jacket, and Erling’s attention lingered there with an old, unreasonable dislike that had nothing to do with the club itself. The crest represented another city, another life and another home in which Jude moved without him.

It was an unfair thought, especially when Erling had been the one to leave first.

Jude stirred before the bitterness could settle. His forehead pressed into Erling’s chest as one leg slid slowly down his thigh. Erling lifted his hand from Jude’s waist, giving him room to move, and watched as the compact shape he had carried across the sofa gradually unfolded. Within moments, Jude lay almost fully stretched over him, his torso aligned with Erling’s and his legs resting between Erling’s thighs. One white-socked foot reached nearly to the end of the chaise, while his head remained turned against Erling’s chest and one hand rested loosely beside his face.

The new position shifted more of Jude’s weight across Erling’s hips and lower back. A dull pressure formed along his spine, and he adjusted the cushions behind him as carefully as he could without disturbing Jude.

Jude made a quiet, dissatisfied sound and rubbed his cheek against Erling’s shirt.

“Sorry.” Erling murmured.

His voice seemed to calm him. Jude’s shoulders loosened again, and his hand opened near his face.

Erling let his palm move slowly down Jude’s back, smoothing the jacket where it had folded beneath his shoulder blades. The fabric was warm from Jude’s body, though stiffer than the T-shirt beneath it, and Erling remembered how Jude used to complain about being too hot while refusing to remove whatever jumper or jacket he had chosen to wear.

In Dortmund, Erling would sometimes pull them off him without asking, dragging a hoodie over Jude’s head while Jude protested before stealing it for himself.

He did not try that now.

Instead, his fingers slipped beneath the open edge of the jacket and paused at the hem of Jude’s T-shirt. The fabric had ridden upwards during the shift, exposing a narrow strip of skin above his hip.

Erling touched it before he could decide whether he should.

Jude did not react.

Bare skin altered the contact in a way fabric had not. The warmth beneath Erling’s fingertips was immediate and familiar enough to make him realise how precisely he had remembered it.

He could have withdrawn his hand. Instead, he allowed his fingers to rest against the curve of Jude’s side, no farther beneath the shirt than the width of his palm. He did not grip or pull. His thumb simply moved in a slow path above Jude’s hip, following the rhythm of his breathing.

Jude exhaled against Erling’s chest and shifted a fraction closer.

Something tightened in Erling’s throat.

Jude remained asleep, making small adjustments without ever moving away. One shoulder shifted, his feet stretched farther along the chaise and his fingers curled and relaxed near his mouth. Erling adapted around each movement, repositioning his arm or flexing his legs whenever they began to grow numb.

Eventually, the advertisement break grew loud enough to make Jude’s brow tighten. Erling lowered the volume, then carefully retrieved his phone from his pocket. The screen lit too brightly, so he dimmed it and angled it away from Jude’s face.

Messages and notifications had gathered while he ignored them, but nothing required an answer. He opened Instagram and scrolled without absorbing much of what passed beneath his thumb: holiday photographs, training clips, a former teammate beside a swimming pool and a dog refusing to leave the sea.

Several tournament photographs appeared. Erling moved past them quickly. He had no desire to look at stadiums, medals or the particular expression athletes wore before their bodies had understood that the work was over.

His attention remained on Jude.

Without the tension around his mouth, Jude looked more peaceful than Erling had seen him throughout the tournament. Even away from the pitch, strain had remained visible beneath every practiced smile. Jude carried pressure as though accepting it willingly made him immune to its weight, and people tended to believe him because he moved through crowded rooms with the confidence of someone who had never questioned where he belonged.

Erling knew better.

He had seen Jude after difficult matches, when frustration left him too restless to sit and too tired to speak. He had watched expectations follow him into hotel rooms despite everyone insisting he should switch off. Jude absorbed criticism, praise and responsibility with the same set jaw, rarely asking anyone to share the burden because asking would mean admitting it existed.

Once, Erling had not needed to be asked.

Years ago, he had known when to pull Jude away from everyone else, when to place food in front of him, when to talk until he laughed and when to remain quiet while Jude rested his forehead against his shoulder. Distance had not merely taken time from them; it had interrupted the instinct through which they once cared for each other, replacing certainty with hesitation.

Erling locked his phone and rested it against his chest. His hand beneath Jude’s shirt fell still as regret and tenderness moved through him, tangled too tightly to separate.

Then he lowered his head.

Jude’s hair brushed his chin as Erling rested his cheek lightly against the top of his head. His arm tightened around Jude’s back, drawing him closer for several breaths before he forced himself to loosen his hold again.

He did not kiss him. Kissing would have felt like a decision he had no right to make while Jude slept. Instead, he allowed himself the simpler fact of contact: his cheek against Jude’s head, one arm around his back and the warmth of him held safely against his chest.

Over the next hour, the feeling returned more than once. Erling would stop scrolling, lower the phone and bend his head until his face rested briefly against Jude’s hair. Each embrace lasted only a few seconds, but releasing him always required conscious effort.

The programme ended unnoticed and was replaced by one about home renovations. Jude slept through a serious argument about kitchen tiles, moving only enough to curl his fingers near his mouth.

Almost two hours had passed since he first went quiet.

The food remained untouched in the kitchen, and Erling knew he should wake him. Jude would complain about how long he had slept, then complain again when hunger caught up with him. The sensible thing would be to touch his shoulder, say his name and accept whatever insult arrived first.

Erling did none of those things.

Waking Jude would bring the rest of the house back into existence: the kitchen, the guest room upstairs, the suitcase in the hall and every unanswered question waiting beyond the easy silence of sleep.

So Erling remained where he was, one hand warm against Jude’s side, and allowed the world outside the sofa to wait a little longer.

*

Jude returned to the room in fragments.

Sound reached him first, although he could not immediately separate one part of it from another; there were voices somewhere at a distance, measured and indistinct, rising and falling without requiring a response, and beneath them a heavier rhythm that seemed to surround him rather than enter through his ears.

Thud. A pause. Thud.

The beat was slow and steady, close enough that he felt it through his cheek as much as heard it, each pulse moving through the surface beneath him and carrying a deep vibration into his jaw. For several seconds, Jude did not know what it was. Then his half-awake mind supplied the answer without offering any explanation for it.

A heart.

He drifted nearer to consciousness but did not reach it, suspended in that uncomfortable, weightless place where the mind began collecting information before the body agreed to participate. He knew he was lying down, knew there was warmth beneath his face and along the whole front of his body, yet opening his eyes seemed impossible, as though the muscles required for it remained asleep somewhere deeper than the thoughts attempting to use them.

Voices continued quietly.

A television.

The realisation followed the first with the same slow certainty, and once Jude had identified it, other sensations began to arrive, not all at once but in an uneven sequence that left him unable to understand the shape of his own body. His cheek rested against soft cotton warmed almost to skin temperature. One arm lay folded near his face.

His legs were stretched out rather than drawn up, supported on either side by something firm and warm. A broad hand rested beneath his shirt, its palm covering the side of his hip while a thumb moved over his skin in slow, repetitive circles. Jude’s thoughts caught on that last detail.

Somehow, the touch had not startled him awake or drawn his body tight. Instead, it had become part of the warmth surrounding him, so familiar that its absence might have felt more alarming than its presence. Each slow pass travelled across his hip, paused near the line of his waistband, then returned along the same path.

Jude tried to remember where he had fallen asleep.

Sofa. Cold tea. Kitchen sounds.
Erling.

A heart beat beneath his ear, and it belonged to Erling.

Jude was lying on Erling.

It should have been too much for his sleep-heavy mind to process. Rather than examine it, Jude let the knowledge settle among the other sensations, as though this were an ordinary place to wake.

Perhaps once it had been.

His body remained heavy, not paralysed exactly, but delayed, every intention travelling through sleep before becoming movement. He tried to flex his fingers and felt them respond faintly near his face, brushing the cotton beneath his cheek. The fabric shifted with Erling’s breathing, lifting Jude a little before lowering him again, and the motion was so gentle that he might have fallen back asleep if something had not changed above him.

Erling moved.

Not much, only a slight adjustment of the shoulder beneath Jude’s head, followed by the quiet rustle of clothing and the nearly silent tap of a finger against glass. A phone, Jude realised, though his eyes remained closed.

For a second, the circles at his hip stopped. Then Jude felt the hand settle fully against his side, moving in slow, absent-minded strokes from the base of his spine upwards and back again.

How long had they been lying here ?

Time had no useful shape in the room. Jude might have slept for twenty minutes or several hours; the light against his closed eyelids felt different from before, though it could have come from the television rather than the darkness outside.

He breathed in. Beneath his cheek, Erling’s T-shirt smelled of warm skin and carried the clean trace of whatever he had used in the shower. Jude pressed his face more firmly into the fabric and, without meaning to, rubbed his cheek across Erling’s chest. Erling’s heartbeat faltered beneath his ear. One beat arrived too soon, followed by another that disturbed the calm rhythm Jude had been listening to. At his side, the slow movement of Erling’s hand stopped, and the body beneath him went still.

Jude might have smiled if he had been properly awake.

Opening his eyes took two attempts. At first, he saw only blurred grey fabric beneath his nose. Gradually, the rest of the room emerged: the pale edge of the sofa, the dark windows, the shifting television light and Erling’s hand holding a phone above Jude’s shoulder. The steady movement of Erling’s thumb made Jude suspect he was scrolling through Instagram. 

Jude closed his eyes again and settled against his chest.

He was not ready to wake fully. Doing so would mean acknowledging their position, wondering how he had ended up there and deciding whether to apologise, retreat or pretend that lying across Erling with a hand beneath his shirt was entirely normal.

For a few more seconds, sleep allowed him to avoid the question.

A quiet click told him Erling had locked the phone. One of the cushions shifted as he placed it aside, and then warm fingers touched Jude’s temple. They followed his hairline before moving towards his cheek, careful enough to feel less like an attempt to wake him than a question asked without words.

Erling traced the line of his jaw and brushed the backs of his fingers across Jude’s cheek. Each touch was followed by a pause, as though he were waiting for a response.

Jude turned into his palm.

Erling inhaled quietly above him, but neither of them spoke. This silence no longer resembled the strained pauses from earlier in the evening. It carried its own language: Erling’s thumb moving over Jude’s cheekbone, Jude allowing his eyes to remain closed and the hand at his side shifting slightly higher without leaving the safe curve of his waist.

Wakefulness spread gradually through Jude’s body. One arm had gone numb beneath him, and he freed it carefully, dragging his hand across Erling’s side until his palm rested against his ribs. Muscles tightened beneath Jude’s touch.

He spread his fingers. Even through the T-shirt, there was too much of Erling to cover, and the familiar impossibility brought a sleepy warmth to Jude’s chest. A hand slid beneath his jaw and guided him gently upwards. Jude followed, lifting his head while the rest of his body remained stretched across Erling’s. Their faces drew close enough for him to feel each breath against his skin.

Warmth disappeared from Jude’s side as Erling withdrew his other hand from beneath the shirt. Before he could miss it, both palms settled around his face, thumbs resting beneath his cheekbones. Despite the size of Erling’s hands, the hold remained careful. Jude’s mind was still too slow to become nervous. He knew only that Erling was warm beneath him, that the hands framing his face felt good and that there was something almost reverent in the way Erling held him.

Erling leaned closer.

His nose brushed Jude’s temple before moving slowly along his cheek. The contact was strange and impossibly tender, as though sight alone was not enough to convince Erling that Jude was really there.

A quiet breath parted Jude’s lips.

Erling followed the line of his jaw, then raised his face until their noses brushed. His breath warmed Jude’s mouth, carrying a faint trace of mint and tea. This time, Jude understood where the movement was leading.

He did not pull away.

Their lips met at the edges, so lightly the contact might have seemed accidental if both of them had not gone completely still. Erling’s lower lip rested briefly against Jude’s before he drew back no farther than a breath.

He waited.

That pause gave Jude’s mind time to catch up with his body. Erling lay beneath him, hands still framing his face, their mouths already carrying the memory of contact.

Jude opened his eyes.

Erling was watching him. Caution softened his expression, but there was no regret, only something Jude had spent years trying not to search for whenever he saw Erling’s face on a screen. Neither of them seemed to move first. One moment, a breath still separated them; the next, their mouths met again with unmistakable intention. For the first few seconds, neither tried to deepen the kiss. Erling’s thumbs moved beneath Jude’s cheekbones while their lips pressed together, gentle and warm, shaped more by recognition than hunger.

Then Jude kissed him back.

Awareness travelled through his body, waking whatever sleep had left behind. He shifted higher along Erling’s chest, one hand sliding beneath his shoulder while the other curved around his side, pulling himself closer until their chests met.

Erling exhaled against his mouth.

One hand moved to the back of Jude’s neck while the other remained along his jaw. Their kiss deepened slightly, not hurried or demanding, but fuller now that neither of them was pretending it might end after a single touch. Jude had wondered, in moments he would never admit to, what kissing Erling might feel like after knowing every other form of his closeness. He had imagined something overwhelming or awkward, as though turning familiarity into desire would require learning an entirely new language.

Instead, it felt disturbingly natural.

Erling’s mouth was warm and careful, every small adjustment anticipating Jude’s as though the old instinct between them had survived where their words had failed. Jude tightened his fingers in Erling’s shirt and pressed closer. A low sound caught in Erling’s throat, too affected to be mistaken for breath, and the vibration travelled through Jude’s chest.

He smiled against Erling’s mouth.

Erling felt it and drew back just far enough for their lips to separate, though his hands remained in place. Their foreheads touched, both of them breathing harder than the gentleness of the kiss seemed to justify. Slowly, the room returned around them: the quiet television, the warmth of the sofa and the cushions beneath Erling’s back. None of it felt important enough to interrupt what had happened. When Jude opened his eyes again, Erling was already looking at him. Pale strands had loosened near his temples, and shifting light from the television briefly caught the blue of his eyes before leaving them in shadow.

Jude blinked once.

“Hi.” he whispered.

Something in Erling’s expression softened, the tension near his mouth loosening into the beginning of a smile.

“Hey.”

They remained close enough that the words warmed the space between their mouths, and Jude became aware that his arms were still around Erling’s body, one trapped beneath his shoulder and the other stretched across his back with determined inadequacy.

He made no attempt to move them. Erling’s thumb brushed along Jude’s jaw. “Did you sleep all right ?”

“Mhm.”
“That sounds very convincing.”

Jude’s eyes drifted closed again, though only for a second. “Still waking up.”

“I noticed.”
“Am I…” He paused, looking down as far as their position allowed, then back at Erling. “...am I actually lying on you ?”
“You have been for a while.”

Jude considered this information with the seriousness of someone whose mind had not yet returned to full speed. “Right.”
Erling’s smile became more visible. “Is that all you have to say about it ?”

“For now.Give me another minute.”
“Fair enough.”

Jude shifted his cheek against the heel of Erling’s hand, unable to stop himself from seeking the touch now that he was awake enough to recognise it. “Have you at least been a good pillow ?”

Erling’s eyebrows lifted. “You’re the one who has been using me as one.”
“Ah…” Jude murmured after a moment. “Then yes. You have.”

“Thought so.”
“Bit smug for furniture.”
“I’m expensive furniture.”
“So’s the sofa, apparently.”
“The sofa didn’t keep you warm.”

Jude looked at him.

Lightly spoken, the words settled somewhere deeper, and for a moment the humour between them thinned enough for Jude to see the tenderness beneath it.

He swallowed, his throat dry from sleep. “How long was I out ?”
“Two hours or so.”
Jude stared at him. “Two hours ?”

“It might have been a little longer.”
“You let me sleep on you for two hours ?”
“You were exhausted. I didn’t want to wake you.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It is.”

Jude tried to lift himself, perhaps to verify the time or escape the embarrassment of having used another person as a mattress all evening, but Erling’s hand moved from his face to his back and kept him in place with gentle pressure.

“Where are you going ?”
“I’ve been lying on top of you for hours. I must have been crushing you.”
“You haven’t.”
“I’m not exactly weightless.”

Erling gave him a look. “Jude.”

“What ?”
“You are not crushing me.”
“You still could have moved me.”
“I did move you.”

Jude went still. “What do you mean, you moved me ?”

“You fell asleep on the sofa.”
“So you picked me up and put me here.”
“I did."

„Why would you do that ?“

Erling’s gaze moved over Jude’s face, and for a moment Jude thought he might answer honestly enough to change the entire evening.

Instead, Erling said, “You looked uncomfortable.”

“I was asleep on a four-metre sofa.”

“You still looked uncomfortable.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Does to me.”

Jude studied him, recognising the phrase from earlier and the deliberate way Erling used it to close a door without shutting Jude out completely.

He could push.

He could ask why being uncomfortable had required moving him onto Erling rather than laying him along the chaise, or why Erling’s hand had been beneath his shirt when he woke, or whether the kiss had been something Erling planned while Jude was sleeping.

The questions gathered briefly.

Then Erling’s fingers moved once along his spine, and Jude let them go.

“Sorry for using you as furniture.” he said.

Erling’s mouth curved. “You apologised to the wrong one.”

“What ?”

“The cushion. You nearly strangled it before I moved you.”

Jude glanced towards the side of the sofa and found the cushion trapped beneath Erling’s elbow, flattened but otherwise unharmed. “It smelled nice.”

Erling’s expression changed by a fraction. “Did it ?”

Jude realised too late what he had admitted. He could have corrected himself and blamed the detergent or the fabric, but the sleep remaining in his mind made lying seem unnecessarily difficult.

“Smelled like you.” he said.

Erling became very still.

Behind Jude, the television continued with someone discussing a kitchen extension in inappropriate detail. Neither of them looked away.
Jude felt the hand on his back tighten slightly.

“Right.” Erling said, his voice lower than before. “I wasn’t expecting you to say that.”

Jude’s mouth twitched. “Very informative.”

“I’m still trying to work out what I’m supposed to say.”
“You can take your time. I’m not going anywhere.”

They remained there, the silence returning without awkwardness, Jude stretched along Erling’s body while Erling’s hand moved slowly between his shoulder blades. After a while, Jude became aware of a faint ache in his stomach.

He ignored it.

A few seconds later, the same ache returned with greater insistence.
Erling must have felt something shift in his body, because his eyes narrowed slightly.

“Hungry ?”
“No, not really.”
“You’ve barely eaten anything.”
“I was asleep.”

“Nutritionists would probably disagree with that.”

Jude sighed and lowered his face towards Erling’s chest again, stopping only when their noses brushed. “You’re ruining the moment.”

“There was a moment ?”
“Apparently not.”

Erling smiled, slow and almost shy despite the teasing. “We should cook.”

Jude did not move.
Neither did Erling.

Beyond the dark green opening, the kitchen waited: vegetables covered, chicken marinating, every practical part of the evening ready as soon as one of them chose to leave the sofa.

Jude looked towards the doorway, then back at Erling.

“In a minute.” he said.

Erling’s hand settled at the base of his neck, thumb moving once beneath his hair.
“Yeah...” he answered. “In a minute.”

One minute lasted long enough for the programme on the television to move from one aggressively renovated kitchen to another. Jude remained over Erling with no greater intention of moving than he had shown while asleep.

He was awake now, technically, although his body seemed unconvinced by the distinction. His thoughts had returned in something close to their usual order, enough for him to understand where he was and remember the kiss that had brought him there, but his limbs remained warm and heavy, reluctant to surrender the support of Erling’s body for the considerably less appealing task of standing upright.

Erling appeared to be experiencing no urgency either. His fingers continued their slow movement beneath Jude’s hair, occasionally tracing the side of his neck before returning to the same place, and every time Jude considered lifting himself, the touch encouraged some quieter part of him to remain exactly where he was.

Then his stomach made the decision for both of them.

Not especially loud, the sound nevertheless carried through the gap in television dialogue with humiliating clarity: a low complaint pressed directly against Erling’s abdomen.

Jude closed his eyes.
Erling’s chest moved beneath him.

“Don’t.” Jude warned.

“I didn’t say anything.”
“You’re laughing.”
“I’m breathing.”
“That isn’t how you normally breathe.”

Erling made an unsuccessful attempt to flatten his expression, which only caused another tremor of laughter to pass through his chest. “We should probably feed you.”

“I had a sandwich.”
“When ?”

Jude searched his memory and found an airport café, an overfilled paper bag and a sandwich he had eaten one-handed while answering a message from the driver taking him to Madrid airport. “Earlier today.”

“That clears it up.”
“It wasn’t that long ago.”
“You’ve been here nearly five hours.”

Jude opened one eye. “That sounds impossible.”

“You slept through two of them.”
“Because someone decided to use himself as a mattress.”
“You were the one unconscious on my sofa.”
“And your solution was to let me use you as a mattress.”
“It worked, didn’t it ?”

Jude considered arguing, but the warmth beneath him, the lingering pressure of Erling’s mouth and the hand resting at his neck made dishonesty difficult. “I suppose it did.”

“That is very high praise coming from you.”
“Don’t get used to it.”

Erling’s gaze softened in a way that suggested he might already have become used to far more than Jude intended to admit, though he said nothing, merely allowing his thumb to pass once behind Jude’s ear.

That gesture nearly bought them another ten minutes.

Jude stopped it by planting both palms against the sofa on either side of Erling’s shoulders and pushing himself upwards, an action that appeared straightforward until his left arm, which had spent an unknown amount of time folded beneath him, responded with a burst of pins and needles and very little actual strength.

He managed to lift his chest several centimetres before the arm trembled.
Erling’s eyebrows rose. “You all right ?”

“Fine.”
“You look very capable.”
“Shut up.”

Jude shifted his weight towards his right hand, attempting to bring one knee beneath himself, but his leg had apparently joined the same rebellion as his arm, and the moment his foot touched the cushion, the room seemed to move half a second later than his head did.
His balance disappeared.

He had just enough time to realise he was falling before he landed directly back on Erling, his chest colliding with a broad shoulder and his forehead narrowly missing Erling’s chin. Erling caught him without difficulty, one arm wrapping around his back while the other steadied his hip, the impact forcing a quiet breath from him but nothing resembling surprise.

For several seconds, neither of them spoke.

Jude remained sprawled over him in almost precisely the position he had been trying to escape, his face pressed into the side of Erling’s neck and both hands trapped uselessly between their bodies.

Erling’s arm tightened around him.

“Successful.” he said.
Jude’s voice came muffled against his skin. “I really hate you.”

“You’ve mentioned.”
“My arm has gone numb.”
“So had the rest of you until about five minutes ago.”
“I am perfectly capable of standing up.”
“You’ve made that very clear.”

Jude lifted his head enough to glare at him, though he suspected the effect was weakened by the crease still visible on his cheek and the fact that Erling was supporting most of his weight.

Erling looked unbearably pleased.
“You’re enjoying this far too much.” Jude said.

“A bit.”
“You’re an awful person, Erling Haaland.”
“And yet you still flew all the way here.”

Delivered with the same lightness as everything else, the words found one of the softer places between Jude’s ribs and quieted the answer already forming. Erling seemed to realise it; his amusement gentled, and one hand moved along Jude’s back as though smoothing away the edge he had created.

“Come on.” he said. “Try again, but take it slowly this time.”
“I do know how to get off a sofa.”
“Evidence suggests otherwise.”

Jude muttered something impolite and tried again, though this time Erling moved with him, sitting upright beneath him and keeping a secure hand at his waist while Jude shifted one leg towards the floor. The sofa’s depth made the movement unnecessarily complicated, requiring Jude to slide forwards farther than expected before his socked feet finally reached the rug, and even then Erling did not release him until he had stood and remained standing for several seconds.

Jude’s body swayed faintly as his balance adjusted.

Erling rose beside him, unfolding from the sofa until the room seemed to lose a considerable amount of available space. The height difference was never something Jude forgot exactly, because forgetting a man of Erling’s proportions was difficult, but it became less noticeable when they were seated or lying down, which meant standing beside him again always produced a brief sense that someone had altered the scale of the world while Jude was not looking.

Erling kept one hand at his side.

“Are you still with me ?”
“Unfortunately.”
“You look a bit lost.”
“I’ve only just woken up.”
“You woke up ages ago.”
“We kissed a while ago. That doesn’t mean the rest of me has caught up yet.”

A yawn interrupted the final word, arriving so suddenly that Jude had no chance to hide it. His eyes closed, his shoulders lifted and one hand rose automatically to cover his mouth before moving to rub at the corner of his eye with the heel of his palm. When he looked up again, Erling was watching him with an expression so openly fond that Jude stopped moving.

“What ?”

Erling’s mouth twitched. “Nothing.”

“That expression is definitely not nothing.”
“You look about five years old.”
“That’s exactly what every grown man wants to hear.”
“You’re doing the little eye thing.”
“There is no little thing with my eye.”
“You always rub it like that when you’re tired.”
“I do not.”

Erling bent slightly, bringing his face closer to Jude’s level, and reached out to catch the wrist Jude still held near his eye. He guided the hand away before Jude could continue rubbing at it, his thumb passing lightly over Jude’s knuckles.

“You absolutely do.” he said.

Jude opened his mouth to argue.
Erling kissed him instead.

It was nothing like the kiss on the sofa, which had unfolded slowly enough for Jude to feel every hesitation leaving them; this one was brief and warm, stolen in the space where Jude’s protest should have been, Erling’s mouth touching his once before withdrawing almost immediately.

By the time Jude understood what had happened, Erling had straightened and released his wrist.

“Kitchen.” he said, turning towards the doorway.

Jude stared at his back.

“Did you just kiss me to stop me talking ?”
Erling continued walking. “It worked.”

“That’s incredibly rude.”
“Come and complain while you cut the avocado.”

Jude remained beside the sofa for another second, his thoughts attempting to reorganise themselves around how casually Erling had done it, before following him through the broad green-framed opening.

Warmer than the living room in both temperature and colour, the kitchen glowed beneath pendant lights above the pale island and smaller lamps under the cupboards. Dark wood, brushed metal and broad surfaces still looked carefully designed, but the order had softened: a tea towel near the sink, opened tortillas and bowls arranged along the worktop.

Evenly sliced peppers and onions sat beside a ceramic bowl of sauce; chicken waited in the refrigerator. On the far side, Erling had left the avocados, coriander, lettuce and cheese untouched.

Jude looked at them, then at Erling.

“You really did save me all the exciting jobs.”
“I know how much you like responsibility.”
“You’ve already done everything that required a proper knife.”
“There’s a knife on the board.”

Erling pointed towards the chopping board, where a small kitchen knife lay beside two avocados.
Jude picked it up and examined the blade. “You can barely call this a knife.”

“It’s enough for an avocado.”
“For you, maybe.”
“Are you expecting it to fight back ?”
“It might. You never know.”

Erling opened the refrigerator and removed the bowl of chicken. “Just try not to injure yourself.”

“You nearly let me fall off the sofa five minutes ago.”
“I caught you.”
“You caught me after I fell.”
“Still counts.”

Jude placed an avocado on the board and cut into it with more force than necessary, rotating the fruit around the stone until the blade met its starting point. When he twisted the halves apart, one side opened cleanly while the stone remained lodged in the other.
Erling glanced over as he placed a large frying pan on the hob. “Very impressive.”

“I’ve only just started.”
“That’s what makes it impressive.”
“Your standards must be very low.”
“Not usually.”

Jude looked up.

Erling was measuring oil into the pan, his attention apparently fixed on the hob, but the corner of his mouth had lifted just enough for Jude to know the answer had been deliberate.

“You’re getting brave.” Jude said.
“You’re the one holding the tiny knife.”
“It would still hurt if I threw it at you.”
“I was hoping you meant the avocado.”

Jude removed the stone with the spoon Erling slid towards him without being asked, then began cutting the flesh into the skin in uneven lines. His fingers remained slightly clumsy from sleep, and the first half emerged from its peel in pieces too soft and irregular to resemble anything intentionally prepared.

Erling looked into the bowl.

“What’s that ?”
“Avocado.”
“It looks injured.”
“You told me to cut it.”
“I didn’t tell you to punish it.”
“It’s still going to taste the same.”
“Does it ?”

Jude picked up one of the softer pieces and held it out. “Try it.”

Erling regarded him for a moment, then leant down and took the piece directly from Jude’s fingers.

Brief as it was, the warm brush of lips against Jude’s fingertips silenced his next remark and left his hand suspended between them.
Erling chewed thoughtfully. “Tastes all right.”

Jude lowered his hand. “Of course it does.”

“You look surprised.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“Turn your pan on, mate.”

Mate emerged with more bite than affection, a deliberate return to the safe language of the airport. Erling only smiled and switched on the hob while Jude focused on the second avocado.

Soon, the kitchen settled into a rhythm that felt newly familiar rather than old. Practical necessity took decisions away from them: Erling collected ingredients without looking while Jude moved bowls into reach, and when Jude searched for a grater, Erling reached around him to take it from the drawer beneath his hand.

“You could’ve said.” Jude complained.

“You looked very committed to finding it yourself.”
“I was looking in the right place.”
“You were staring at the potato peeler.”
“I thought it might be underneath.”

Erling placed the grater on the worktop. “Course you did.”

Jude grated the cheese with unnecessary aggression while Erling transferred the chicken to the pan, and the kitchen immediately filled with the sharp hiss of the marinade meeting hot metal. Steam rose around Erling’s hands as he separated the pieces with wooden tongs, the scent of garlic, smoked paprika and lime spreading through the room strongly enough to make Jude’s stomach complain again.
Erling glanced sideways.

“That me breathing wrong as well ?”

Jude threw a small piece of cheese at him.
Erling caught it against his chest, picked it from his shirt and ate it.

“That’s disgusting.” Jude said.
“You were the one who threw it at me.”
“I didn’t expect you to eat it.”
“It would have been a waste of cheese otherwise.”

Jude pinched another piece from the pile he had grated.
Erling tapped the tongs against the edge of the pan. “Stop eating it.”

“I’m checking the quality.”
“You’ve already checked it three times.”
“I’m being thorough.”
“At this rate, there won’t be any left.”
“There’s loads.”

Erling reached across the island and moved the bowl beyond Jude’s immediate reach.
Jude stared at it. “Really ?”

“You can wait until dinner is ready.”
“I’m an adult.”
“Then you should be capable of showing some self-control.”

Jude stepped closer, intending to reach around him, but Erling shifted at the same moment and blocked him with the breadth of his body, one hip resting against the edge of the island while his free hand remained on the bowl.

“Move.” Jude said.
“No.”
“That isn’t even your cheese.”
“It’s in my house.”
“I’m your guest.”
“Exactly. Behave.”
“You invite me here and then starve me.”
“You’ve eaten half the ingredients.”
“I’ve had three pieces.”
“Four.”
“You were counting ?”

Erling’s expression became smug. “I notice things.”

Those words could have gone somewhere dangerous, but Jude refused to let them. When Erling raised the bowl above his head with the complete lack of dignity Jude expected, Jude drove a shoulder lightly into his chest.

“Give it back.”
“You could try asking nicely.”
“Give me the cheese, you massive viking.”
“That was not particularly nice.”

Jude stepped onto the lowest bar of one of the island stools, gaining several useless centimetres while Erling lifted the bowl higher.
“This is discrimination.”

“Against short people ?”
“I’m not short.”
“You are from where I’m standing.”

Jude abandoned the attempt, returned both feet to the floor and narrowed his eyes. “Your chicken’s burning.”
Erling turned towards the hob immediately.

Jude took the bowl from his lowered hand.
Nothing was burning.

When Erling realised it, Jude was already on the other side of the island, putting a triumphant handful of cheese into his mouth.
“You’re twelve...” Erling said.

Jude chewed. “And yet I beat you.”
“You lied.”
“Strategy.”
“That’s cheating.”
“I still got the cheeeeeeese.”

Erling watched him for several seconds, then shook his head and returned to the pan, though his smile remained visible in profile. Ease crept up on Jude.

He noticed it only after several minutes had passed without his mind reaching for the distance between them, because there had been no room for it among the small arguments and ordinary movements, the sound of the pan and the clatter of bowls, Erling telling him to wash the lettuce properly and Jude accusing him of behaving like someone’s grandmother. Their conversation no longer required the careful selection of subjects; it built itself out of whatever lay in front of them, one remark passing naturally into another until the silence, when it returned, no longer felt like something either of them had failed to fill.

Jude sliced the lettuce while Erling added the peppers and onions to a second pan, and when Erling asked for the salt, Jude placed it into the hand held out behind him without needing to look. Erling caught the bottle, used it and returned it to almost the exact place from which Jude had taken it.

Only seconds passed.

It affected Jude more than it should have. There had been a time when they knew one another’s movements that way, when shared spaces created no collisions because each of them anticipated where the other would reach. Jude had thought those instincts would disappear without use, but perhaps the body stored them differently from memory, keeping them intact beneath everything they had allowed to grow complicated.

Erling tasted a piece of pepper directly from the pan and frowned.

“Something’s missing.” he said.

“Do you think it needs a bit more lime ?”

“No, there’s already enough lime.”

“Then maybe it needs more salt.”
“Maybe.”

Jude came around the island and stopped beside him, close enough that the heat from the hob touched his bare legs. “Let me try.”
Erling selected a piece with the tongs, blew on it and held it towards Jude. Jude looked at the offered food, then at him. “I can feed myself.”

“I know.”
“You don’t trust me near the pan?”
“No.”

Jude opened his mouth and let Erling feed him the pepper.

It was still hotter than expected, and he pulled back with an offended noise, covering his mouth while Erling laughed.

“Why didn’t you blow on it properly ?”

“I did.”
“Clearly not for long enough. You’ve burnt my mouth.”
“Don’t be dramatic. You’ll survive.”

“You could have killed me.”

“With a pepper ?”
“People have died from less.”
“Have they actually ?”
“No, but that’s not the point.”

Erling turned back to the hob, still smiling as he stirred the vegetables into the chicken. Jude remained beside him.

There was nothing left for him to do immediately, the lettuce and avocado prepared, the cheese grated and the tortillas waiting to be warmed, but returning to the other side of the island felt unnecessary. He leant one hip against the worktop instead and watched Erling work, noticing the small details he had missed from the living room: the way his hair, still tied back, had begun escaping near the nape of his neck, the concentration that drew his eyebrows together whenever he judged the heat and the faint movement of his mouth as he counted something beneath his breath.

Erling had always done that.

Jude could remember him counting repetitions during training, seconds while pasta cooked and steps from one end of a hotel corridor to the other when he had too much energy to remain indoors. The habit had survived everything else.
Recognition opened something quiet inside Jude.

He looked at the broad shape of Erling’s back, the grey T-shirt stretched across his shoulders and tapering towards the waistband of his shorts, and felt an impulse so immediate that he acted on it before deciding whether it was sensible.
He stepped behind him.

Erling noticed the movement but did not turn, continuing to stir the pan while Jude stopped close enough to feel the heat gathered along his back.

“You’re hovering.” Erling said.
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I’m standing.”
“Right behind me.”
“Your back’s in the way.”

Erling glanced over his shoulder. “Of what exactly ?”
Jude placed both arms around his waist.
Erling went still.

“There.” Jude said, fitting himself against the broad line of Erling’s back and resting his cheek between his shoulder blades. “Not hovering.”

For one second, only the food continued moving, sizzling quietly in the pan while the tongs remained suspended above it. Then Erling lowered the heat. His free hand came down over Jude’s forearms where they crossed his stomach, fingers closing carefully around one of Jude’s wrists.

“Bit clingy, are we ?” he said, though his voice had lost some of its earlier teasing.
“You let me sleep on you.”
“You were asleep. That was different.”
“Still did it.”
“Fair.”

Jude closed his eyes.

What began as an answer-a physical extension of the joke-became too comfortable to abandon quickly. Erling’s back warmed Jude’s cheek, his breathing moved Jude’s head and the hand over Jude’s wrist held him without pressure.

He had hugged Erling from behind before, years ago and usually to inconvenience him, attaching himself while Erling attempted to walk or prepare food until Erling either dragged him along or threatened to throw him over his shoulder. This was quieter, no attempt to stop him moving and no audience to make it funny, only Jude holding him because the sight of him at the hob had produced a need for contact that Jude did not want to analyse.

Erling appeared to understand the difference. He stopped teasing and returned the tongs to the pan, stirring with one hand while the other remained over Jude’s arms.

“You all right ?” he asked eventually.

This time, the question did not feel like a greeting or an escape route. It was soft, almost hidden beneath the sound of the food. Jude could have said yes. Instead, he pressed his face more firmly against Erling’s back and answered, “Mhm.”

Erling’s thumb moved over the inside of his wrist. The reply was not honest enough to explain anything, but it appeared to be sufficient for now. They remained that way until the chicken needed turning properly and Jude’s arms made the task impossible, at which point Erling nudged him lightly with an elbow.

“I can’t finish dinner with you hanging off me.”

“You managed perfectly well a second ago.”

“I could manage better if I were allowed to move.”

“Sounds like a design flaw.”
“J.”
“Fine.”

Jude released him, though not before tightening his arms once around Erling’s waist, a brief pressure Erling returned by covering his hand again. When Jude stepped away, Erling caught his wrist and pulled him back just far enough to press a kiss against his temple.

It happened without comment.

Jude returned to the island with warmth spreading beneath his skin and pretended to become deeply interested in arranging the avocado.
They ate at the kitchen island because neither of them wanted to carry everything into the living room, sitting side by side on stools rather than opposite one another, their knees touching whenever one of them shifted. The meal was less elegant than the preparation suggested; Jude overfilled the first tortilla until it split along the bottom, spilling sauce across his fingers, while Erling constructed his with the precision of someone who had apparently been studying structural engineering in secret.

“That’s upsetting.” Jude said, looking at Erling’s perfectly folded wrap.
“What is ?”
“Yours. It looks far too neat.”
“It’s food, Jude.”
“That’s my point. Food is supposed to be enjoyed, not presented.”
“You’re only annoyed because mine hasn’t fallen apart.”
“I’m not annoyed. I just think yours lacks character.”
“You’ve got half of yours on the plate.”
“Exactly. More ways to enjoy it.”

Erling took another bite, watching Jude attempt to rescue a piece of chicken from the folds of the torn tortilla.

“Want some help ?”
“I can manage.”
“It’s falling out.”
“I can see.”
“You could use a fork.”
“That would be admitting defeat.”
“It’s dinner, not a competition.”

“It became a competition when yours stayed together.”

Jude lifted the tortilla with both hands and took a bite large enough to prevent himself from responding. Sauce caught near the corner of his mouth, though he did not notice until Erling reached across and wiped it away with his thumb.

Both of them stopped at the touch.
Erling looked briefly at his own hand, then at Jude.

Jude swallowed.

“You missed some.” Erling said.

“I hadn’t noticed.”
“I know.”

Neither moved away.

Then Jude caught Erling’s wrist and turned his hand enough to press a kiss against the inside of it, a small answer that surprised him almost as much as it appeared to surprise Erling. The moment could have become heavy. Instead, Erling looked at Jude’s ruined tortilla and said, “Still not helping you with that.”

Jude laughed, the sound escaping before he could contain it. “You’re an awful person.”

“You’ll cope.”

They finished the meal slowly, taking more food than either expected and arguing about whether Jude’s additional lime had improved the sauce or ruined it. By the time they carried the bowls to the sink, the sharp edge of hunger had disappeared and the late hour had begun pressing itself into Jude’s body again, his earlier sleep having delayed rather than removed the exhaustion.

Erling washed while Jude dried, though Jude’s contribution became increasingly unreliable as he placed utensils in the wrong drawers and spent nearly a minute holding the same bowl while staring at nothing.

“That goes there.” Erling said, pointing towards a cupboard.

“I knew.”
“You opened three other cupboards first.”
“I was checking how well you’d organised everything.”
“And ?”
“That your system is terrible.”
“You’re the one who can’t remember where anything goes.”
“I’ve only been here for one evening.”
“You knew where the paprika was.”

Jude paused with his hand on the cupboard door.
Erling looked over, the teasing fading just slightly around his eyes.

Jude placed the bowl onto the shelf. “Lucky guess.”

“Right.”

They both knew it had not been. Erling did not press. When the last pan had been washed, he pulled the plug and dried his hands, then turned to find Jude leaning against the island with his arms folded and his eyes half closed.

“Time to go to bed.” Erling said.
Jude opened one eye. “Bossy tonight ?”

“You’re about to fall asleep standing up.”
“I was thinking.”
“It looked exhausting.”
“Shut up.”

Erling picked up the Real Madrid jacket Jude had abandoned over the back of a stool at some point during dinner and held it towards him.

Jude stared at it, then made no effort to take it.

“You keeping that ?” he asked.
“It has my club badge on it, so yes.”
“You could probably sell it.”
“I don’t need the money.”
“Then you could give it to someone with a smaller sofa.”

Jude pushed away from the island and took the jacket, though rather than putting it on, he draped it over one forearm. “You’re obsessed with the sofa.”

“You spent two hours asleep on it.”
“On you.”

Erling’s gaze held his for a beat. “Yeah.”
No embarrassment coloured the answer.

Jude looked away first.

They switched off the kitchen lights, leaving only the smaller lamps in the living room glowing while Erling checked the back doors and collected both of their phones from the sofa. Jude stood near the foot of the stairs watching him move through the house, waiting without being asked, and when Erling returned, he placed one hand lightly at the small of Jude’s back.

“Come on.”

Jude followed him upstairs.

Upstairs, thick carpet muted their steps and low wall lights illuminated the landing. Several doors opened from the corridor, all closed except for one at the far end, where warm light reached across the floor.

Jude did not look closely at the other rooms.

His attention remained on Erling’s hand, which left his back only when they entered the bathroom. It was large enough for both of them to stand before the mirror without crowding, though Erling’s reflection still seemed to occupy most of it. He opened a drawer beneath the sink and removed a new toothbrush in its packaging, holding it towards Jude with a tube of toothpaste.

“You keep spare toothbrushes in here ?”
“People visit.”
“Do people stay here that often ?”
Erling met his eyes in the mirror. “Sometimes.”

Jude tore open the packaging. “Do any of them know where you keep the paprika ?”
“No.”

Erling answered without hesitation. Jude lowered his gaze and concentrated on the toothpaste. They brushed shoulder to shoulder, their reflections oddly domestic beneath the soft lights: Jude’s hair flattened on one side, his T-shirt creased, his jacket on the closed toilet lid; a small patch of dishwater darkening Erling’s hem.

They did not look like visitors preparing for separate rooms. Jude noticed the thought and allowed it to pass without examination. When they finished, Erling returned the toothpaste to the drawer and left the bathroom door open behind him. He followed, carrying his jacket and the new toothbrush without asking where he was supposed to put either.

Beyond the open door at the end of the landing, a dim bedroom held a bed large enough to make the sofa downstairs part of a wider architectural theme. Pale bedding and dark wood softened another deep green wall; clothes on a low chair proved the interior designer had not controlled everything.

Erling crossed to the chair and took Jude’s jacket from him, laying it neatly over the back rather than allowing it to join the rest of the pile. Then he opened one of the drawers beneath the wardrobe and pulled out a dark T-shirt.

“Put this on.” he said, holding it towards Jude.

Jude looked from the shirt to him. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing ?”

“You’ve slept in that, cooked in it and nearly covered it in sauce.”

“That doesn’t mean I need changing.”

Erling kept the shirt held out between them. “You’ll be more comfortable in this.”

Jude took it slowly, feeling the soft fabric gather in his hands. “You just want me wearing your clothes.”

Erling’s expression barely changed, but something possessive settled into the steadiness of his gaze.

“I’m not pretending that I don’t.”

The answer left Jude with nothing useful to say.

He turned away and pulled his own T-shirt over his head before replacing it with Erling’s. The fabric dropped past his hips, the sleeves reaching almost to his elbows. It was at least three sizes too large, carrying the clean scent of detergent and the warmer trace that belonged unmistakably to Erling.

When Jude turned back, Erling was watching him.

“You look pleased with yourself.” Jude said.

“It suits you.”

“It looks ridiculous.”

“It still suits you.”

Erling stepped closer and caught the hem where it had folded beneath Jude’s hand, tugging it down until the shirt hung properly around him. His fingers lingered briefly at Jude’s hip, as though adjusting the fabric gave him an excuse to confirm that Jude was really wearing it.

“There...” he said quietly.

Jude looked down at himself. “I’m practically disappearing inside it.”

Erling’s hand remained at his side. “I know.”

There was something in the way he said it that made the shirt feel less borrowed than claimed. Erling pulled back the duvet on the left side of the bed, then moved around to the other, placing his phone on the bedside table.

Jude climbed in.

Cool sheets met his legs as the mattress dipped beneath him and then held him more firmly than the sofa had. Erling’s shirt gathered around his waist, too large in every direction, while the pillow carried a fainter version of the same scent surrounding him now. He turned towards the centre as Erling switched off the lamp and climbed in beside him.

Darkness settled softly rather than completely, a narrow line of bathroom light fading across the carpet.
Erling lay on his back.

Jude moved towards him.

There was no conversation about it and no moment in which either of them appeared to consider another arrangement; Jude simply closed the distance until his head rested on Erling’s shoulder, one arm crossing his chest while Erling’s arm curved around his back and drew him securely against his side.

His body fitted there with an ease that felt older than the house.

Erling pulled the duvet higher over Jude’s shoulder, then rested his palm warmly against Jude’s side over the thin cotton of his T-shirt.
Jude released a slow breath.

Sleep approached quickly now, heavier and cleaner than before, no longer interrupted by the strange awareness of a new room or questions about what would happen when he woke. He had nearly surrendered to it when something shifted into place in his mind.

“This isn’t the guest room.” Jude murmured.
Erling’s chest rose beneath his cheek. “No.”

“You didn’t say.”
“You followed me.”
“I’m exhausted. I would have followed you into a cupboard.”
“I know.”

Jude lifted his head just enough to look at him, though the darkness left little more than the outline of his face visible. “You still could have told me this was your room.”

“Would you have chosen to sleep somewhere else ?”

No challenge sharpened the question, only a quiet uncertainty absent downstairs. Jude thought about the closed doors along the landing, the untouched room prepared for him and the careful distance they had maintained until sleep removed the need for it.

He lowered his head back onto Erling’s shoulder.
“No.” he said.

Erling drew him closer.
Nothing else needed to be decided.

Somewhere down the hall, the guest room remained ready and unnecessary. Jude closed his eyes and placed his hand more securely over Erling’s chest, feeling the steady heartbeat beneath his palm.

Erling turned his head and pressed a kiss into his hair.

“Night, kjære.”

Jude moved closer, his face settling into the warm space beside Erling’s neck as sleep pulled him under for the second time that evening.
“Night.”

Nothing between them had been explained, and nothing waiting beyond the morning had become easier simply because they were sharing a bed, but Erling’s hand remained warm against Jude’s skin, his arm secure around Jude’s back, and for tonight neither of them reached for the distance they had spent years placing between them.

Jude opened his eyes.

Around them, the bedroom remained dark, Erling’s breathing quiet beside Jude’s ear and the hand at his waist still.