Alessia Russo x Ella Toone - The Winner Takes It All, The Loser Has to Fall.

Love Letters, Unsent.

Cross-posted on AO3, under username 'pjolarrybackup'

THIS IS NOT AT ALL REFLECTIVE OF REAL LIFE. I have no claim nor knowledge of what these girls' personal lives are like. No disrespect is intended, this is FICTION. Probably very OOC, however, you're just going to have to deal with it.

This fic gets kind of heavy at times - I'll put a warning of any potentially triggering content in the chapter notes, please let me know if I miss any. Enjoy!

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"Dear Ella, " The letter read. "I know you'll never read this, but I had to get my thoughts down somewhere, so I'm hiding this box of letters away, with my medical box, so you never find it. Maybe I'll burn it.

Ella, I have found myself in a mess. It's you, of all people, with your messy hair and false lashes and boyfriend, that I have fallen in love with. It took me ages to figure it out. It's funny - you think with all the speculation on Tiktok, and all the shitty news articles, I'd have realised that I was into women, and into you, much sooner.

It was exciting, at first, falling in love. My whole mind was consumed by you- I'd shiver whenever you touched me, despite the fact we're best friends and you touch me all the time. I squealed internally, like a lovesick schoolgirl, when you called me pretty, or complimented my hair. I liked being in love with you. Now, I'm not so sure. All I wanted, back then, was to be around you, whether in training or interviews or even those awful Tiktoks Mary loves.

None of the team knows, by the way, that I'm in love with you. Lucy suspects something, I think, and that means Kiera does as well, but they haven't said anything yet, so I'm just ignoring them for now.

I tried ignoring you, you know? Well, not ignoring, just... distancing. Asking to hang out when I knew you were busy, if I asked at all, scheduling training at the same time I was due to see you, and meeting Sarina to talk strategies instead of having coffee with you. I reckon Sarina knows, or at least suspects, something - she's got all-seeing eyes, that one.
So, I tried distancing myself, for a while. I made it all of five days before you were calling me up, moaning that it had been ages since we'd last hung out, and I'd come crawling back to you.
It's not your fault, I should've been stronger. But I need you more than anything, more than football, more than my family, more than I need myself. I need you like the air I breathe, as cliche as that sounds. I don't know why I thought ignoring you would work.

I lasted longer, shutting you out during lockdown - but I shut everyone out during lockdown, obsessed with that damn calorie app. I counted calories like a lunatic, that lockdown. I ate next to nothing, the bare minimum needed to hit my macros, and then I'd exercise it all off later anyway. I called it a 'low point' in an interview, but I didn't feel low. I felt like I was flying. Sure, I was tired all the time, and my feet were far slower with the ball, and my head hurt constantly and I felt like fainting whenever I stood up too fast, but the inches were dropping off my waistline, and the pounds were slipping off. I was euphoric. I saw a photo of myself, the other day, from back then, and God, I was so skinny. Wish I was like that now, then maybe you'd love me back.

That's not fair. It's not your fault. But it's not like you're ever going to read this, so I can say whatever disordered, illogical shit I want, and no one's gonna know.

There have been nights, after big games and big wins and bigger losses that I've wanted to tell you. Never did though, because they'll always be a 'but'.
I can see it now. After a big win, or maybe a bad loss, we'd be together, as always, and I'd just conveniently ignore the boys you're crushing on and the fact you don't like girls, and I'd confess. It never ends well, even in my own head. You'd be kind, try to let me down gently, and maybe you'd hold me while I cried, but then you'd say:

'I love you, Lessi, but..

'You're my best friend, Less, but..

' I'm sorry, but...

The people I've loved have always come with a string attached, always a condition to be fulfilled.
And your condition is that you are incredibly, painfully straight.

I tried so hard to stop loving you. I really, really did. I dated guys, and fooled around with girls (in secret, of course), but none of it ever worked.
There was one girl, once, a very nice one, the kind of girl you'd bring home to your parents and buy flowers and marry and have kids with. I thought I would marry her one day, and I even introduced you to her - not as my girlfriend, of course, but you liked her all the same. I did like her. I tried to love her. But, in the end, I was just too tired, and too lonely and too entirely taken for her to stay. She was the only person I'd ever loved almost as much as I love you.

She didn't care that I was messed up, or half my smiles were fake, or that I never got angry, until I broke and screamed until I was blue in the face. She didn't care that I had these awful habits, ones even you don't know about, ones that I hope you never know about, and that I'd scroll through hate on Twitter until I felt like starving again, like putting down my plate and closing my mouth and loosing all the muscle I'd spent so long carefully building, chasing after some impossible dream of disordered beauty. It was you that really got to her. She wanted to marry me, one day, after the football, after her art took off, and to have children and raise them in a little house with a picket fence, and I couldn't give that to her, not while my heart belongs to you.

She was called Em, no last name, when I knew her. She made love to me in her crappy old car and filmed it. We danced in empty parks, lonely nightclubs, wherever we could go and be unknown. I called her by the wrong name, that first time in her car, she called me by mine and always, always loved me more than I loved her. Emilia Richardson is her name now and she's happily married to an accountant with a baby on the way and two dogs. I looked for her after you started dating again, and she was very nice and very understanding and very, very taken.

And now I'm so lonely.

I know, I know, who am I to complain about being lonely? Star striker for England, the world at my feet, and yet, I'm so alone. The other girls have their partners - you have your boyfriend, and Kiera and Lucy have each other, and even the few who are single have their best friends.
I have no-one. I already know what you'd say, if you read this. That I have you, but you don't know about me properly. Everything, or nearly everything you see is a lie, so don't tell me 'we're best friends'. Because can we ever really have a connection when I lie to you every day? When I spend half my life loving you, and the other half hiding how much I love you? Maybe, maybe not. Fuck it. What does this even matter? I'm gonna hide or burn this stupid letter anyway.

You're too you to ever stop being so lovable, and I'm too me to ever stop loving you.
I guess I'll just keep being,

Yours forever,
Alessia Russo.