Chapter Text
It starts innocuously enough. Tuchel has them gathered in the room where they’ve done all their film review. The room has, despite generally being a place where they are in a freshly showered state, begun to retain the stink produced by a cadre of large, male athletes. The kind that are currently inhabiting it as casually as a group of teenagers, slumped unconscious all over someone’s flat after a raucous night out. The air of celebration, of confidence, has only built and built after each successive win, and the squad, some of them bitter rivals back in England and further afield in Europe, have coalesced into a buoyant, cohesive gang. Tuchel has to raise his voice a few times like an irritated veteran teacher to get them all to settle in. The Mexico win two days ago was one of, if not the most, dizzying yet. And after their rest day yesterday, they’re all abuzz again with seeing each other in the big group.
Jude endures the affectionate roughhousing, which, mercifully, in the ostensibly civil atmosphere of the conference room, entails a whole lot less armpit sweat exposure than the lockers. But still, as always, he’s hyper-aware of the ways the alphas on the team, consciously or not, pinpoint him as their target. He swears he can hear Harry Kane growl a bit, a low rumble in his chest, as he slams him in an embrace. Jude is used to it. He presented on the earlier side, in the month preceding his twelfth birthday, enough time to begin hormone therapy that largely allowed him to skate under the radar during the vulnerable, adolescent years of the youth ranks. But in Dortmund—
Jude shakes his head imperceptibly. Dortmund is a closed box. He is here now, in a city he’d never been aware of before this year. Kansas City, Kansas, United States of America. Not the glamorous locales that spring to mind when one conjures the USA: the gleaming, densely packed towers of New York clustered around Central Park, or the luscious houses dotted throughout the steep hills of Hollywood in Los Angeles. Nor is it the any of the European metropoli he's toured extensively since he was seventeen. He’s here in Kansas City, which has grown on him somewhat, and it’s time to buckle down as the competition grows ever steeper. Eight teams remain. Then, there will be four, and then two. That’s it. One or two or three more games. Well, one or three, anyway; the losers of the second round will face each other to vie for third place.
Anyway, after what happened, his omega status is an open secret. He has juggled the schedule of his injections for years. Occasionally, this necessitates inconvenient flights, there and back in one day, during interludes while the alphas are able to just rest, or do whatever other manner of rejuvenations they require. While Jude is forced to burn his day flying away from and then back to some tournament or another. It’s possible, he knows, to get the team doctors to take over his treatment regimen. He’s considered it over the years, every time one of those infuriating scheduling snafus comes up.
But two things hold him back. One, he wants the reality of his secondary sex to be as far removed from team life as possible. He knows firsthand the proven anti-omega bias in sports medicine, that the doctors will begin to subconsciously treat him differently, to belittle him, to ignore is fiery strength, to stop pushing him past the utterly insane limits he knows he can break. The doctors collaborate so closely with the coaches, with the dietitians, with the trainers, with every single other professional involved in carving the England National Team into the fearsome weapon it’s become. He knows that moving his hormone management into the purview of the team doctors will only bring his status to the forefront of the conversation, rather than the half-tacit subject it currently is. It comes up, occasionally, but in a furtive, taboo sort of way; Jude sometimes gets the sense it’s being discussed openly right before he steps into the room. No one would ever overtly say to him that he needs to do something some way because he’s not an alpha, like, look out for X, his pheromones are projected to be the most powerful on the field that day, or whatever. He gets a load of open locker room teasing sometimes, but in England, the taboo is far more powerful than it is in Spain, and it’s been somewhat of a relief to have at least a modicum of decorum surrounding him. But he fears that if he begins to involve the England’s medical team in his extremely private hormonal life, his status will go from open secret to just open.
The second reason is that the vast, overwhelming majority of pro footballers, like every other pro sport, are alphas. There are a few exceptions sport-wise, but those tend to be things like Olympic figure skating, gymnastics, or those wiry little climbers in the Tour de France. Football, though; that’s an alpha’s game. Jude attributes his success in the sport to a few factors. One, his brain. He’s got a football brain, that’s for sure. The kind of innate aptitude that can’t be taught. Not every footballer has it. Many get by on agility and training and physical prowess and alpha audacity. But the true greats all have one thing in common with Jude, and that’s the acute mental compatibility with their bodies. Two, his luck. He was already a wunderkind years before presentation, and he’d been considered such an investment that the people who had been around him at that age had gone and found him the best omega treatment team in the UK, so that there would be no interruption to his ascent. Or, minimal, at least. Thirdly, Jude has worked exceptionally fucking hard to overcome the biological disadvantages of his omega body, and he thinks that that adversity has given him a raw determination and perseverance that the other guys, who can coast on their lucky lottery draw of body and circumstance and material resources, simply don’t have. It’s a perseverance that pushes Jude over the edge when his competitors are flagging. The final factor is that Jude is really fucking good at football.
He tries not to think about how good he could be if he was born alpha.
(He thinks about it a lot.)
But, returning to the point, because the vast majority of pro footballers are alphas, the specialized medical staff every high-level team keeps on retainer are unaccustomed to the realities of the omega body. Alpha athletes are easy: powerhouses of testosterone, who can just breathe the right way and pop out a perfect six pack. And they don’t even suppress their ruts, most of them; everyone knows a rutting athlete is an unstoppable force. Some of the guys even try to trigger ruts around their most important matches. That’s another reason why omega footballers at this high of a level are rare. So, the doctors are out of their depths. Sure, they know the med school basics, but they’re not specialists, and Jude knows from experience when he’s been obliged to remind a doctor of his biology that they get a little uncomfortable and can’t quite discuss it in a chill manner like normal doctors can. He doesn’t trust them to provide the seamless and cutting-edge care that his longtime treatment team of world class specialists can.
And God knows the last thing he fucking needs is a slip-up.
Once they’re all settled in, tea and snacks and collagen drinks close at hand, the slog of the videos begin. Jude genuinely thinks, after the World Cup madness, that he would prefer the most grueling practice on the planet over just an average film review. It’s no secret Tuchel has it out for him, as the only omega on the team, and as someone who’s dared to push back against his arrogance— pushback which, Jude knows, is unthinkable for a man of Tuchel’s generation for an omega to provide. On the record, Tuchel has openly stated the opposite, but he knows Tuchel resents an omega presence. It changes things, changes the whole dynamic, and he’s dealt with it his whole fucking life, the little frisson of coolness that dampens the vibe when he walks into certain rooms. He and Tuchel tolerate each other, but Jude doesn’t need him. He doesn’t need anyone who can use the word repulsive to describe him during a live press session. And Tuchel can’t admit to himself, Jude thinks, that Jude is one of the only reasons England has made it this far into the World Cup. They haven’t won since the sixties, for fuck’s sake. If they want a chance against Lionel Messi, they need fresh blood.
They begin with an agonizingly long excoriation of their fuck ups against Mexico. Clips are played in slow motion, one man at a time, until it’s Jude’s turn. Tuchel has saved the longest for last, apparently, and some of the other guys are looking visibly uncomfortable at the sheer volume of criticism that’s been reserved for him. What feels like twelve hours into the barrage, Declan Rice stands up, rolls his eyes, and says, “he gets it, Tom,” and heads off to the toilet. Jude gives him a nod, and someone else takes up the mantle and begins asking questions about their next opponent.
Which is Norway.
Jude’s played him before, of course, since Dortmund, and it had gone fine (though he’d been thoroughly, profoundly rattled before and after). He’s adept at switching off his mind. And body— the parts of it that are irrelevant on the pitch, that is. But he’s been in denial about the idea that he may have to face off with him during the World Cup. At first, it had felt like a non-issue; no one ever expected Norway to make it as far as they have. But all the detractors and casual commenters had failed to take the sheer massive force of Erling Braut Haaland into consideration. Jude has watched with incredibly mixed feelings as his old friend has become a global superstar, blasting through the defenses of every country he’s come up against, and winning the hearts of an unsuspecting public along the way. They’re finding out what he, and Man City’s dogged supporters, have known all along. Not just the magnitude of his threat, but the magnetism of his peculiar charisma.
Tuchel knows it, though. He switches gears, mercifully, to the task of acquainting England’s best with the challenges particular to their Norse neighbors. But Jude’s relief is short-lived. As it turns out, he is to be suddenly confronted with what amounts to a Haaland highlight reel, with brief guest appearances from some other guys. Jude is a master at suppression of everything except rage (his rage is one of the things that draws Tuchel’s ire the most, which Jude thinks is rooted in racism. Again: repulsive.), but suppression is not repression, and though the borders are blurred, in this moment he is definitely aware of the things he’s suppressing.
He loves Haaland— they go way back, to those formative years where they were both being sharpened from raw potential into real stars, a couple of foreigners washed ashore in Germany. They got on 'like a house on fire', Jude remembers one news outlet’s social media post stating, in a feature about his and Haaland’s bromance. He and Haaland were well-matched on and off the pitch, and they did everything together. Erling’s couch was like Jude’s second bed during that period, and even with the (mild) language gap of English as Haaland’s second language, they could finish each other’s sentences. By their second season, they barely even had to speak at all to communicate; their words becoming as unnecessary in everyday life as their communication on the pitch. A two-part machine.
And Haaland had had his back completely. Jude still to this day wasn’t sure if Haaland had known his secondary sex before it his secret had been out, but if he had, he had never treated Jude any differently. Even after the incident, Haaland had been his best (and, perhaps, only) line of defense against the ribbing and open prejudice and other assorted bullshit that had come along with it. Everyone suddenly thought Jude was a liability. Erling's defense of him had bordered on the possessive at times, until after awhile he in turn had started catching shit from the other guys about him being Jude’s or vice versa, and he had backed down a bit. He'd had to. But the point had been made, and anyway, though the discomfort remained and the comments continued, there was always something new for the jibes to center around. Jude made damn well certain that his playing was never the source of the taunting. He couldn’t afford any errors, after all, not once they all knew. After that, Dortmund changed, no longer the home it had been, and Jude was out of there as soon as his contract was up.
He tries not to remember the way Erling had pleaded with him, (nonchalantly and playfully in public, but desperately and sincerely when they were alone), to come and sign with Manchester City. Begged him, beseeched him, raw and real, with real anguish in his eyes. But Jude had allowed himself to convince himself that he simply couldn’t pass up the staggering millions of Euro that Real Madrid dangled in front of him, and Spain was a fresh start. Spain was also not where Haaland was. He needed to lock in, and that could not be done on the same land mass where Erling's scent was. It was bad enough he still had to see that strange little smirk all over the internet.
Jude knows that for Erling, the oftentimes melodramatic defensiveness he’d displayed over Jude in Borussia Dortmund was about loyalty. Nothing else. The edge to it was simply Jude projecting his own desire onto the situation. But he knew, as any of the few omega pros in every alpha-infested sport knew, that he could never take a mate, not until retirement, at least. It’d mark the end of his career. They’d come up with some other excuse, of course, but once his contract ran out, he would never, ever be bid on again. And even if he were able to bond, even in the topsy-turvy parallel universe where he could take another pro footballer as his mate, it could never be Erling. Erling was a meteor, quickly establishing himself as one of the best footballers currently in the game.
But, more importantly, Erling didn’t want him. And so Jude had swallowed that intense desire. He had buried it beneath the suppressants and the patches and the testosterone and HGH shots (allowed by FIFA under a special and rather hidden omega clause), and flung himself as far away from Haaland as he could (without being bought by Dubai) as soon as the end to his Dortmund days were on the horizon. He had been sick and tired of the feeling he got around him, after what happened, that high-octane sensation, like pressing a thumb hard into a gnarly bruise. Pain and pleasure intertwined so entirely that he could no longer tell where one stopped and the other began. He constantly felt as though he would drown in this sensation, and in the final couple of months as Erling's teammate he found that he could barely look him in the eye. (They slayed the competition still, naturally.) So Erling, too, had pulled back, and Jude attributed the haunted look in Erling’s eyes when Jude had taken him to the airport on his last day in Germany to this distance alone.
“Jude—” he remembers Erling saying, but he doesn’t remember what random, safe topic he’d started babbling about to shut him up. Suitcases, probably. And times Real Madrid had come up against Man City, Jude had mustered up some excuse as to why he couldn’t meet Erling for a drink, one on one, while his old friend was in Madrid. And they haven’t been face to face since. But the oddest thing was that while their in-person relationship was seemingly over, their texts had continued, albeit sporadically, and remained affectionate. They’d grown sparser over the years, of course, but Erling had a maddening habit of checking up on Jude, and of watching Madrid and England games, sometimes sending a fawning meme he'd found or a wordless thumbs up emoji after a particularly strong performance of Jude’s. And Jude felt his core turn to hot liquid every time, and responded to this feeling by barely responding to Erling at all.
But no, Jude had not really expected whatsoever for England to face Norway. He knew they were on the same side of the bracket: it was like tracing somebody at a party out of the corner of your eye even as you remained engulfed in what you were doing. He watched some of the matches, alone in his room at the Inn at Meadowbrook, when they didn’t conflict with the training schedule. And a highlight reel on YouTube when it did. He had often had to shut the television off, boiling with shame and regret, when Norway's post-match festivities began. An image comes to him, superimposed atop the slowed down clip of Odegaard doing something with his leg that’s up on the projector right now, of Erling’s wide grin, of the cut of his thick, long arms as he beat a drum in some stadium after trampling some poor unsuspecting team, soaking in the love as he led the fan-favorite Viking row. Jude brings his long-empty bottle of water to his lips, eking out just a measly drop, and begins to feel utterly wretched. It’s real now. It’s Madrid and Manchester again, but this time, the world is watching, not just a (okay, substantial) smattering of select Europeans. And there’s Haaland on the screen again, mowing someone down; there he is, grinning like a madman.
Jude has no idea how he’ll cope.
After the film review, there’s a boisterous practice. Despite the ever-blistering heat of the American summer, they are all bored and restless, by the endless inaction as the coaches break down of the tactics they’ll be focused on in the upcoming match. Far and away, the name of the game centers around one thing: subdue Erling Haaland. England’s defense is solemn, drilling with their determined air, and during the scrimmages Tuchel has his strikers imitate Haaland’s brute force. But how to imitate the inimitable? Jude’s glad for once he’s a midfielder, though he knows he is expected to be one of the foremost ball-winners from the Norwegian force. He feels his stomach flip in anticipation of his body crashing against Erling’s, and he reminds himself that he’s had years and years to shore up his iron-clad defenses against alpha musk, that he can do this, that he can power through. That he's grown up and gained more experience since the last time. That he will not be driven to immediately submit to Haaland. That he is in control. That he is always in control. That the added pressure of the World Cup shall not push him over the edge of the already herculean challenge that the Man City match had posed. That he is chill and normal about seeing Erling again.
Because there’s playing Haaland, but then there’s seeing Erling.
One of them will lose. Jury’s still out on whom, but one of them will be tossed on a plane back across the Atlantic in a few short days, to be lauded by their countrymen for their valiant attempt on the world's most prestigious trophy. And then, they’ll have a long break while the rest of the Cup plays out. And after that, it’s back to the relative mundanity of the regular league season, and the memories of Haaland, of Erling, will once again fade to the dormant soft roar in Jude’s chest, that will only be acknowledged occasionally. When he hears the German language. When he sees things that are black and yellow. When he’s only a few days out from an injection. When someone tall walks by. When he hears Norwegian. When he hears the word Manchester. When someone tall and blond walks by. When he can’t sleep. When he can. When he dreams. When someone hoists him in the air after a goal, and he can scent them, and the scent underwhelms. When he watches a City game. When he sees a shirt that’s light blue. When a high-profile omega gets outed, gets mated, gets married. When anyone in his life gets married. When he shows up to their wedding alone despite always seeming to have a plus-one. When he hears something that would have had him and Erling whipping their heads around to make eye contact. When he hears something that would have made Erling laugh, which would have made him laugh. When he watches Man City press. When he sees @erling post those dry, ludicrous posts of his. When he sees Erling’s private snap story for his closest circle. When he sees @erling has liked or commented on a post of his. When Erling’s name interrupts the stream of congratulatory messages after a victory. When Norway’s got a match coming up. During the European tournament. When sports commentators mention Norway. When North Carolina is mentioned. When any of the hundreds of things that have been forever calcified by being the subjects of various absurd and incomprehensible-to-the-outsider inside jokes between him and Erling are mentioned. When he sees a cartoon Viking in an advertisement. When he’s in an airplane. Any airplane. When he’s idle, when he’s lonely, when he’s on top of the world, when he’s low.
So, only occasionally.
But now, the looming encounter with Erling Braut Haaland is getting beneath Jude’s skin a bit, so then he’s angry, and when he’s angry, he’s powerful, even if the indelible image of Erling won’t relent its grip on Jude’s mind's eye, which makes him a bit looser than he’d like. He can’t afford to get sloppy. People have been openly discussing his old connection with Haaland, speaking about it like it’s a liability, casting sharp glances his way. And while Jude can’t afford any noticeable errors on a good day, he’s especially on the hook until the match is over. He’s gritting his teeth so hard his jaw hurts by the time Kane finally trips him up, and he slams the pitch in frustration. He's spent his whole fucking career since what happened trying to prove he's not a liability.
“Hey, Bellingham, you alright, mate?” Harry asks, leaning down to peer at him. Jude is immediately resentful of the concern in his tone. He should be jubilant, mocking; he should be calling Jude some rude name and butting him on the arse with his cleat.
“It’s fucking boiling,” Jude grits out. It isn’t a lie, it’s just not related to this. Not that it makes it easier. Jude is crushed by the sudden overwhelming need to be covered in water, and he allows Harry to hoist him up with one effortless curl of his bicep. They break for the sidelines together, and a bunch of the other lads follow suit. Jude opens a bottle and pours the whole thing all over his head and torso, desperate for relief. He’s already shirtless. He feels like he’s ready to rip Tuchel’s throat out with his teeth, the way he’s been barking at him all day. Kane’s started to have to intervene, and Jude despises the part of him that likes it. It’s led to the tiniest, almost imperceptible dynamic shift, and Jude can tell that some of his teammates are beginning to posture, with an edge that’s a little beyond the usual jostling when you coop up a whole bunch of alphas in peak physical fitness and social status together. Kane’s the obvious leader, but it’s not a position that doesn't necessitate defense, and Jude knows that lately, his presence is starting to make the other guys on the squad itch. He hates it. But he knows they are probably barely aware, if at all. Most alphas don't bother to think about the ways their actions and presence affects others. But Jude also knows that each of them will do what they’ve long done with the force of their insatiable alpha drive to dominate, to possess: they will channel it into prowess on the pitch. But they could stand to touch him a little less. Even if a sliver of him loves it, gets a little hot inside. Even if that same traitorous little sliver wonders what the team’s obvious tactile obsession with Jude might stir up in Erling Braut Haaland.