“Why do you even have these?” Leo asks, far too joyously, waving the condom between two pinched fingers.
“Search me,” Oliver admits. “Plausible deniability? Check the date on it, honestly.”
“We’re good.”
“You’regood.”
“Me?” Leo squeaks, all laughter disappearing. “I’m going to?”
“I assume you know how to fuck someone,” Oliver tells him. “And I assure you, I know how to get fucked.” It’s been so long since he let himself have this and Oliver is ravenous for it, to be held in that suspension, full and hungry for more at once. He wants Leo inside of him, he wants to feel it all.
Leo seems to forget his nerves in the face of that mental image, rolling Oliver over and climbing astride, condom momentarily lost in the sheets while he pins Oliver’s wrists above his head and kisses him again. Leo follows the trail of goose pimples down Oliver’s neck and toward his stomach, brushing his chin over his abdomen until he’s tonguing at the edge of Oliver’s tattoo, rose petals framing Leo’s face.
“You’re so…” Leo trails off, sighing a barely-there laugh. “You’re just like I thought you’d be.”
“I hope that’s a good thing?” Oliver says, watching a blushbloom all over his own naked body. He wants it, still, more and more every second, but he’s not a little frightened of it, too, with the daylight streaming in from his bedroom windows.
“It’s perfect,” Leo whispers, reaching down, at last, to retrieve the little bottle. “It’s better than that—it’s actually happening.”
“It is,” Oliver agrees. “It’s all for you.”
Itisactually happening,he thinks as Leo rolls them over and hovers over Oliver’s back, lips brushing where his shoulder blade reaches his spine.Because I don’t know if we can take it back now.
• • •
A secret can be sexy,is what Oliver thinks later, looking across the room full of lads in downward dog. Even the unsexy, utilitarian pieces of Leo’s body are tantalizing to him—just now, as Leo pulls his socks up over the little bones in his ankle in between stretches, all Oliver can think about is getting his mouth on him, on whatever part he can reach. It aches so good, Oliver can feel the pang of it in the back of his teeth. He’s feverish with whatever they’ve unlocked within each other. He knows Leo is sick with it too, because when yoga is done, he looks neither Zen nor rested, but God, hedoeslook flexible. They shouldn’t have arrived together, they shouldn’t leave together again, for the second day in a row, but Oliver can’t say no to Leo when he trails after him. He’s weak, he’s horny, he’s bordering on reckless. He drives them both home.
Up in the kitchen, Leo raids Oliver’s pantry like he’s the one who pays for groceries, scarfing down organic pine nuts that were originally meant for cooking, not nibbling. Affection has made him a weak man: Oliver only takes a fistful for himself and kisses one of Leo’s bulging cheeks.
“You have a wholeroomfull of snacks,” Leo says, replacing the bag and going back in for some chocolate, but he wipes hisoily hand on a tea towel before touching anything else, which is very considerate of him. “This is going to be the best part of dating you.”
“Dating” hits Oliver like an emergency siren. Is that what they’re doing? He has no frame of reference for what any of this means, not with histeammate,not with Leo. Somehow Oliver is both greedy for the idea and sweaty with nausea when he pictures it. This is the kind of thing that’s better blown up earlier, day-one achy instead of year-two brokenhearted. He’d rather go back and spend another lifetime yearning for something he can’t have than finally get what he wants and lose it all anyway—Leo, his career, his reputation, take your pick.
“It’s complicated,” Oliver says lamely, belatedly, trying to shake off the images of transfer windows and tabloid journos staking out the canal bridge. “What we’re doing. What to call it.”
Leo sets the chocolate bar down on the counter very deliberately, like he’s lost his taste for it, and gives Oliver a withering look.
“Seeing someone else, are you?”
“I’m notseeinganyone.” Oliver feels himself clinging desperately to the last vestiges of a onetime thing. All the good reasons for staying quiet are sounding incredibly loud now that Leo is clothed and no longer kissing him. The secret doesn’t feel so sexy anymore. “We just have to be actually fucking careful about this. Famous people get papped getting the mail. We’re under a spotlight.”
“I’m barely famous, Ollie. One friendly for England isn’t going to count, in the long run. But you’re the real deal. You’re worth a lot of money,” Leo says. There’s something unhappy forming in the crinkle between his eyebrows.
“It’s not aboutmoney.” Oliver feels the words that will explain himself slipping away. It sounds so self-important when hesays it out loud, like James Finch is talking through him, but inside everything feels urgent and dangerous and all-consuming. “It’s theattention. People will notice, Leo. If you’re with me, if we’re out together. There’s no way people won’t see what we’re doing.”
“Right, well, I promise I won’t plant one on you at Regent Road, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Leo says tetchily.
We could do a lot less and people would still be able to tell,he thinks.Every time I look at you, it must be all over my fucking face.
“Look, I’ve had a lot of time to think about this, the limits of my situation,” Oliver says, reaching for Leo’s shoulder and feeling bereft when Leo shakes his hand off. He couldn’t even make it a day without ruining everything. At this rate, Leo will be playing second division in Romania by tomorrow and Oliver will probably break his ankle trying to lace his boots. They don’t even need anyone else to give them ultimatums or threats; Oliver can spoil Camden’s season and his entire life just fine on his own. “I made my peace with it. It’s football now and gay someday, or gay now and no football, ever again.”
And it has to be football; that’s what he picked, all those years ago.
“Then we don’t have to call it anything,” Leo replies evenly. “Or, you know, it doesn’t have to be serious. We can hook up, no strings. Nothing more. Just tell me now if that’s what we’re doing, would you? I don’t want to play any games. If I have to start pretending something about myself, then I don’t want to pretend anything with you.”
It is exactly what Oliver was pushing Leo to agree to: something noncommittal and nonchalant. He’s a hypocrite; he hates hearing it.
“It’s not pretending,” Oliver says, somewhere betweendefeated and defensive. “I want to be careful so I can keep doing this, not because I don’t want it.”
