“I only know what Willem told me,” Oliver repeats patiently. “But he looked spooked.”
“Why fourth place? We could play in the Europa League with fifth. Why not start there?”
Oliver slumps back against the pillows and shrugs, rubbing at his scalp tiredly. Leo has a faint line on his cheek and the sleep-rumpled hair of someone Oliver would love to be spooning.
“Haven’t the foggiest. I think when you’re rich enough, the only things you can get off on are ultimatums.”
“Be serious, Ollie!” Leo says. “They’re going to sell you—they’ll sack Willem.”
“No one’s sacked yet,” Oliver insists. “All we have to do iskeep winning. We’re in fourth now and there’s less than a month left. Four matches. Just stay where we are.”
“But you’re nervous,” Leo accuses. “You’re telling me this because you’re afraid.”
He probably deserves that, but it isn’t true. Not in the way Leo thinks. He’s not afraid of losing—Camden players have to get used to that early on. Oliverisafraid of being sent away and losing Camden. He’s afraid that he’s not sure what will happen even if they stay in fourth place and get another season. What will he and Leo be to each other once the league table resets? How long will that next season last, if anyone finds out about them?
“I’m not afraid. It’s just…” He pauses, grasping for words that feel true. “I want you to understand the stakes.” He wants Leo to know how precious these last matches are. He wants them to play together, as well as they can, for as long as they can.
Leo’s eyes soften in the dim bedside light. Tentatively, he scooches back up the mattress and lies down facing him, then reaches out to smush his pointer finger against Oliver’s lips. Oliver softly kisses his fingertip.
“You don’t have to believe me. ButIthink we can do it,” Leo whispers. Oliver wonders if he’s talking about more than one thing. He hopes he’s right.
• • •
Once, when he was properly little, probably too young to be expected to behave, his dad took him to the Proms. The music wasn’t his favorite, with no words to follow along, but both Olivers had sat silent and rapt while they clocked the way every performer moved in tune with each other. That’s what they’re doing now. They’re making some kind of music, conducted by Willem and accompanied by some power bigger than themselves. The midfield is afire, twin flames leaving scorch marks up and down thestadium. Even though the match is tied for a solid forty-five minutes, the Stoke fans draw a collective inhale of panic whenever numbers 6 or 16 take possession. Oliver can’t imagine anything in the world better than this, discovering that the only feeling he likes as well as opening the scoreline himself is cementing a win by assisting Leo.
It’s a gift he’s giving himself, to see the pocket of space and move to it, stepping in time with his heartbeat, ball at his feet, then over to Leo with one surgical pass. Leo doesn’t need any help with it once he’s got it, that’s for sure. The second it’s in the back of the net, Leo reverses, sprinting back toward the team, toward Oliver. Oliver opens his arms to him and gets more than he bargained for, Leo leaping at him like a man possessed, sending him staggering backward with a heavy armload of boy.
“You brilliant fuck!” Leo shouts in Oliver’s face, their foreheads stuck together. “I bloody love you!”
The words ring for a moment in Oliver’s ears, but he insists to himself that they don’t matter: everyone loves the person who sets them up for a goal like that. It’s not the first time he’s heard it from a teammate on the pitch; if he plays well enough, it might not be the only time he’ll hear it today. He holds Leo instinctively, spinning them around deliriously like a sweaty, less-coordinated Fred Astaire while Leo anchors himself to Oliver’s waist by crossing his legs and holding on tight.
There are twenty-five minutes left to run lengths of the long green lawn, but he never truly leaves the sixty-fifth minute, despite his best efforts. It’s the heat of the moment, of the match, that’s getting to Leo, making him say things that sound dangerous and different to Oliver than they would to anyone else. He keeps reminding himself:It was about football,whileLove you, love you, I bloody love youplays in his head on repeat. Oliver talks a lot of shite in the media scrum after the final whistle, telling all the reporters how dedicated Camden FC is to the rest ofthe season, how pleased the squad is with their performance today, while his mind wanders, unbidden, back to the same words.
Leo, as the winning goal scorer, was also summoned for media duty, leaving them in a nearly empty locker room once they’re finally turned loose. When Anthony steps into the hallway to call his wife, they’re fully alone, just for a minute. Leo hasn’t gone to shower yet, still sodden with sweat and stinking of it. He’s sitting on the bench in front of Oliver’s locker like he belongs there, so handsome in his kit. It was tailor-made to look good on him, as if he’s been wearing it a lot longer than one season. Smelly or not, Oliver wants to knot his hand in Leo’s collar and keep them leashed to each other.He said he loves me,he thinks, dazed at the memory.He said he bloody loves me. Why did he say that?
“What made you pick 16, anyway?” Oliver asks, to give himself something to do other than ask any of the real questions he has, tracing the smooth outline of the numbers on the back of Leo’s shirt with one fingertip.
“Number 6 was taken,” Leo tells him, all cheek and flirtation, flushing prettier than Camden’s rose crest and looking back at Oliver with winner’s eyes. When their gazes meet, though, something dark flickers over his face. Leo casts his eyes downward, then toward the door, then back at his feet. He’s gnawing on his lower lip. “Oliver, listen, earlier, I was being stupid, the goal, you know—it was an amazing pass. But I didn’t mean—”
“Of course not, mate,” Oliver interjects breezily, at his most lad-like. Obviously, Leo didn’t mean to say it. He didn’t mean it at all. Oliver knows this. He only wishes Leo hadn’t bothered to remind him of how ridiculous the notion is. Especially not in the locker room, where anyone could walk in. “It was a good shot, too.”
He reflexively checks the doorframe again to be sure they’re alone, Anthony still saying his own sweet nothings in the otherroom, so he can swoop down and kiss Leo’s forehead, trying to finish everything he’s saying with the brush of lips. From the frosted windowpane on the locker room door, they might be only huddled and whispering, offering each other congratulations. Oliver gives himself just one second anyway, to be safe, then pulls himself away.
He doesn’t pull away later, when they’ve thrown their bags down in the hallway and gotten into bed, grinding against each other lazily in the way that could maybe lead to sex or just straight to sleep, somehow equally satisfying. Just when Oliver thinks the needle might be tipping toward sleep, Leo ratchets things up, pulling their faces close and licking at Oliver’s jaw, then suddenly sitting upright with the same pace he brings to the midfield, coming up out of the pivot to start a driving run toward a goal.
Leo is looking down at Oliver through a haze, more of a silhouette than a man, but in the dark of his eyes there’s something lit like a flame, a candle that won’t burn out, tipping itself over and starting an inferno.
“Ollie,” Leo whispers. He takes Oliver’s hand and brings it to his cock, and Oliver loves the feel of him in his fist, like silk over stone. He twists his wrist, faster then faster still, and Leo twitches into it, following the motion with his whole body. Oliver wants to feel him everywhere, wants him inside and out. It’s mad, only ten days since they started playing a far more dangerous game than football, but whatever they’ve said in words is being taken over by what they’re saying with their bodies, earlier on the pitch and again right now. Something is slotting into place, like it’s exactly what’s supposed to be between them. They first met when he was in the downswing of his life and Leo was clawing his way upward, toward something, toward Oliver, toward Camden. Now they’re meeting in the middle.
“I know,” Oliver says, belatedly. Hedoesknow, how it feels, what it means. He dislodges Leo gently, turning over to his stomach and slithering downward, pausing to rest his forehead in the flat strip of skin at the edge of his forearm, kissing Leo’s rib cage, imagining he can reach all the way to his heart with his mouth.
“Oh,” Leo sighs, voice cooing then humming wordlessly. Oliver persists, licking a fat stripe across his chest and following through with his teeth, wondering if he’ll leave a mark, if the dressing room will tease Leo for it tomorrow, only the two of them knowing just where it came from, just how it felt for him to receive it. Leo strains upward, body contorting itself for more contact. Oliver could drown in the feeling of knowing that Leo wants him like this, so much, all his own desires mirrored onto that gorgeous body, that handsome face. “Come on, Ollie,” he says, so breathless it’s like he’s just run for a whole other match. “Are you gonna?”
Oliver breathes in the sound and the scent from where Leo’s chest meets his underarm, clean sweat and expensive soap, closing his eyes to intensify all the other senses.
“Yeah, darling, yes,” Oliver says. “I’m gonna let you in. Come here.”
“Uh-uh,” Leo gasps, straining against his embrace, bobbing at the waist in search of a return to Oliver’s palm.
