Joe demands to approve Oliver’s clothing choices, then ignores his ideas in favor of badgering him into exactly what he thinks Oliver should wear: the cream-colored shirt that’s cut like a pajama top and trimmed with satin, plus a sturdy pair of black denim, cuffed at the ankle to reveal his most pristine Reeboks.
“We could just stay in and play dress-up all night,” Oliver pleads, trying to fend off Joe’s attack with a comb. “I’ll try on my whole wardrobe, I swear.”
Joe gives up on the hair-brushing campaign and delivers Oliver a flute of bubbly instead. Oliver gamely takes a swig and then puts on a brave face, or rather, grimaces.
“I already know what your clothes look like,” Joe tells him, as if that should be obvious. “Now do me a favor and say thank you for calling us a cab and not letting Anthony start a donation campaign for a party bus.”
“Fucking hell,” Oliver shudders, the idea unbearable in every way. Camden FC is already tweetingHappy Birthday, Harris!what feels like every hour; the last thing he wants is to also broadcast his rapid aging in an enclosed space with all of his co-workers. “Thank you, Joe,” he tacks on dolefully.
Party bus or no, the rest of the team brings the revelry that Oliver can’t summon within himself, all boozy laughter and mostly terrible dance moves. There’s been someone at his side all night, either one of the lads plying him with gin and tonic or one of the beautiful, miniskirted women they’ve summoned for the occasion trying their luck at engaging him. Oliver’s smiling for another selfie, hand fluttering uselessly in the vicinity of a pretty girl’s waist without making contact, when Conor makes an appearance, effortlessly greeting her with a kiss on the cheek that signals a dismissal and Oliver with a handshake that signals something else entirely.
“The man himself,” Conor says. “Happy birthday, brother.”
“Thanks for having us,” Oliver tells him sincerely.
“Oh, it’s a pleasure. You lot never blink at an all-inclusive.” Conor grins wolfishly, which makes his own stomach flip. Oliver’s the celebrity, but Conor is way too cool for him anyway, dressed in a loose batik-printed silk button-down over a turtleneck, carrying the whole thing off like a cover model. Oliver swallows the lump in his throat and tries to decide where the safest place to look is. “You know,” Conor says, meeting his eyesdespite Oliver’s best efforts, “I’m glad I made the invite list to this little soiree.”
“Come on, mate,” he laughs. “You’re the host!”
“I mean, I’ve been wanting to tell you something, preferably when gratuity has already been taken care of.” His voice has slipped into full baritone, a low rumble that makes Oliver’s toes prickle. “I don’t know what your deal is, Harris,” he continues. “Far be it from me to assume. But I want it on the record, just between you and me, that I’m not just playing around. I can be discreet.”
Oliver is hard-pressed to think of another time someone has ever said anything so sexy to him. He’s halfway to another kind of hard, too. He feels caught out, but he’s luxuriating in the throes of being seen. It would be so easy to take Conor up on it, to not confirm anything in words, only with his body. They could trust each other; they could make each other feel good without ever being at risk. He can certainly be discreet himself. There’s a vision of them alone skirting the edges of his imagination, where the light stays on so he can see Conor’s face. It’s tantalizing. They’re standing far too close together now, bodies angled toward each other in confession. Before Oliver can find the words to tell him he’ll take it under advisement, that Conor hasn’t misread the room, their party of two gets broken up by a crush of bodies, as his teammates arrive bearing a tray of flaming shots that are sloshing precariously and obviously meant to stand in for birthday candles.
“You have to take them all,” Joe shouts. “Come on, Harris, your song’s on.”
“Oi, not until you put them out,” Oliver protests in vain as he gets dragged into the center of the room, looking helplessly back toward Conor as he disappears behind aStaff Onlydoor. Oliver could follow him and get everything he’s dreamed of—probablymore—but he stays. “This isn’t even my song,” he sniffs when he hears something about taking pills in Ibiza.
“It is tonight,” someone declares from the edges of the crowd, grabbing for Oliver and spinning him in a solicitous, unsteady circle under an outstretched arm. When he emerges, stooping to fit himself under the arc of a biceps, Oliver can see that it’s Leo. The sight of him unclenches something in Oliver’s gut and he reaches for the tray and throws back a shot—mercifully extinguished before they could hurt anyone—as the whole team closes around them, bobbing up and down in unison, encircling like they’re playing man in the middle, and his chest burns both from the alcohol and from whatever it was that drove him to drink it.
“You having a good night, then?” Leo yells over the sound of the singer lamenting that you don’t ever want to step off a roller coaster and be all alone.
“I feel proper wizened, to be honest,” Oliver admits, despite himself. He’s on the roller coaster still, he’s not alone at all.
“You look just fine for an old man,” Leo says earnestly, twisting to the synths.
“Couldn’t you play nice for once? On my birthday?”
Leo shakes his head, eyes glimmering.
“Not in my nature,” he tells Oliver matter-of-factly. “You should know by now.”
And Oliver does know—he’s watched Leo skip by any number of defenders with his tongue out, taunting them, daring them to foul him. Leo is a regular ankle-biter, a right menace when he wants to be. Oliver just hadn’t realized it carried over this way, that nightclubs are just as much a field of play as Regent Road is. He snags another shot off the rapidly emptying tray, holding it out to Leo like an offering, but he doesn’t take it from his hand, just raises one eyebrow and pulls Oliver a step closer bythe elbow. When Leo opens his mouth, a lit-up feeling flares between them, like the shot is on fire again, and Oliver cradles Leo’s chin in one palm and pours the liquor in himself. Leo’s throat works once, twice, as he swallows, then he signals for another one and the team hollers back in approval, Oliver’s heart roaring just as loudly.
The drumbeat is still shimmering in time with the flashing lights, casting otherworldly slants of shadow in a way that makes him understand why people love clubbing so much. Two feet away, Woodsy has Matty on his shoulders, while Garcia and Carda are engaging in a drunken bout of gay chicken, grinding theatrically for a flock of girls who giggle and egg them on. It’s the rare night where teammates are better than grafting boots, where no one thinks it’s strange they’re all dancing with each other instead of the girls. They could be anywhere, be anyone, so Oliver gives up fighting it and suppresses the pain in his leg, just for one song, so he can keep dancing and glut himself on the feeling of being near Leo. He’s sweating pure grain alcohol, tipsy enough from the drinks and from Conor fucking Bishop to stay very close to Leo. No one could begrudge Oliver this, especially not at his own party.
Leo has a better sense of rhythm than he does—which he might have guessed from how many times he watched that stupid video of him singing into the orange cone—and now Oliver is just trying to keep up. He’s breathing out of his mouth, sucking for air and getting lost in the streak of red glitter on Leo’s cheekbone, the remnants of a kiss that someone else gave him. Leo’s lips are moving, forming words that are lost to the speaker’s thump. Oliver leans in, cupping his mouth to Leo’s ear, fingers buried in the soft-ending strands of his hair.
“What?” he asks.
“I said nowyou’retrying too hard,” Leo says. SomehowOliver can now hear him at a whisper. Their faces are nearly touching. A pair of hands he can’t see are tugging on Oliver’s belt loop. “Why don’t you just feel it?”
It’s so filthy, bordering on absurd, how the words hit him, engulfing each of his senses one by one. Leo is sweaty and panting like he’s been after a hundred laps around the training ground, but when Oliver looks at him now, he can only see the same vision Conor conjured for him earlier, with Leo’s body in its place, the form he’s coming to know so well. Obviously he didn’t sweat out all of the alcohol, because it’s sloshing around in his stomach, heavier than mercury. Of course he feels it—too much, more than anything.
He wants to laugh it off, to dance around it, and he starts to, looking for another body to make contact with, but the crowd shifts again, the walls closing in on them, and as the next chorus hits in the drunken darkness, Leo steadies Oliver with one hand on the small of his back, holding him even closer than before. Their hips are moving back and forth together now, finally in sync, the same give-and-take as passing a ball.
“Like this,” Leo says, pleased but garbled, and Oliver wants to ask him,Do you like this? Is that what you mean?Canyoufeel it?But the song and the moment seem to float away from him before he can.
Saturday, March 11, 2017: Camden at West Bromwich Albion
