“Christ alive,” Matty swears from Sebastian’s other side. “They couldn’t make it easy on us, could they?”
“We’re up ourselves,” Leo says stubbornly, pausing from adjusting his shin guards obsessively to look up and glower at them. He’s been playing hesitantly, without his usual verve, chewed up and spat back out by the rivalry and the quarter meter his roving counterpart has on him in height. “Can we go get this done?”
“It’s the derby, Davito,” Matty explains, paler by the second, waving his arms around at the palpable hostility in the atmosphere. “And two-nil is the most dangerous lead in football.”
He’s prophetic in that way, dooming them all. All of Oliver’s disdain for Kilburn dries up in the hot sun when they start throwing him around like they mean business. The match is unfolding fast and furious around him, rapidly slipping out of his control, before he’s suddenly gasping for air in the intervening seconds between the referee calling for a corner kick and Stewart Reed setting himself up at the far end of the stadium to take it. Stewart’s already got one, so did Loxley, and when the ball reenters their orbit the scoreline is three to two, Kilburn in the lead, Karim Ahmadi heading it home. It’s the seventy-fifth minute and they’ve given up the lead and then some, all their plans and Oliver’s attempts at speechmaking ground to dust.
Oliver doesn’t have a choice, so he keeps running; Willem is tracking him from the sidelines, yelling, impossibly audible over the din: “Do not let up, donotgive up—Harris, do you hear me?” Oliver wants to listen to him so badly his heart might give out from trying.
When the linesman holds up a number 7, so much stoppage time—they’ve been fouling each other with such frequency it feels like the match stops every minute—Oliver is so tired that a huge, weak part of him wants to ignore Willem now. But hecan’t, because he can’t stop thinking about his debut, muddled with the way Leo looked at halftime, how the feeling of his first derby enveloped him then tossed him to the bench with a red card to his name. He felt so small and so lonely, all those bright lights blinding him. As Oliver forces himself to a sprint, digging into the well of stamina he’s honed his whole life, moving back up the pitch now, following Garcia’s metronome rhythm, he can see it all.
He feels every person he’s ever loved and every minute he’s ever played inside of him, holding him up like a puppet on strings. His dad, somewhere, he hopes, his mum in the away stand cursing like a sailor, Maggie chiseling a block of marble with Sky Sports blasting in the background, Joe behind him, omnipresent in the net, and fucking Willem, part of every move Oliver makes with a football now, even when he’s not welcome, presiding over his life, and Leo. Of course Leo, who he wants to share everything with—this especially—regardless of whether they win or lose. Willem was wrong after all. Nothing can hold them apart from each other, not any longer. This is all Oliver’s got, for the next seven minutes, for the rest of forever, this is what he has to offer: his left foot and his heart. He wants Leo to have them. He loves him, he has all along. He should have said it a thousand times already, but he’s going to prove it now.
Everyone is with him as he moves up the pitch. Oliver wants to win for them. Reflected in their eyes he can see the kind of man they believe him to be looking back at him like a mirror, wearing an armband, one that readsCamden FC. He’s going to become who he’s meant to, and he’s going to thrash the Kilburn Rovers right into the fucking sod. Garcia passes to Oliver and he takes off again, ducking and weaving, vaguely aware that he’s dribbled right through Diego Ojeda’s legs, the crowd groaning at the sight of it, seeing the penalty box appear, stepping into it,still in possession, staring the keeper down, ready to shoot, ready to put them back at level ground, ready to score.
It doesn’t happen like it should—nothing ever goes to plan, certainly not in football.
Someone’s tackled him, body colliding right into his lower half, tangling Oliver’s legs and forcing him into an overextension, then down to the ground, tumbling until he skids to a stop, sprawled inelegantly like a chalk drawing of a corpse. There’s a familiar, devastating pain coming from his left thigh. He can already see the beginnings of a bruise dotted above his ankle, a perfect recreation of the studs in Max Wheatley’s boots.
He’s dizzy with pain, head rattled and the stadium warping at the edges. Wheatley is gesturing to the ball defensively, Stewart appearing at his side to plead their case to the ref, while Emmanuel yells on Oliver’s behalf, out of view.
“It’s a penalty, Mr. Reed,” the referee is saying calmly. “Don’t play stupid. Clear goal-scoring opportunity. I’m not going to send him off, all right? So you take that and calm down.”
There’s still spitting and cursing happening from both sides somewhere above him, but the world has narrowed itself down to the sharp hurt and to Leo’s familiar, beloved hands, reaching for Oliver’s shoulders and pulling him up to sitting, crouched over him protectively.
“Ollie,” Leo whispers miserably. “Please be okay, you’re okay, you’re okay.”
“Hey, you,” Oliver replies dazedly. “You teach Wheatley how to tackle like that?”
“Don’t,” he hiccups. “Come on, you’ve got to get up.”
“Leo,” Oliver says, taking his face in his hands, all the game’s urgency evaporating, overtaken by the need to explain this to him, cupping his palms around velveteen red cheeks, skin to skin. “I’ve got to go see Anna. I can’t take this penalty.”
“Don’tsaythat,” Leo replies, clutching at Oliver’s wrists and holding them in place. “There’s no time, there’s no substitutions—come on, we have to do this.”
“I know,” Oliver says. “Youhave to do this, okay? Can you do it for me, for us?” He knows, as solidly as he’s ever known anything, that this is what Willem would want, what Anthony would do in this position. He also knows what Leo can do on the pitch—what hewilldo—for Camden.
“No, I fucking can’t,” Leo hisses, voice rising anxiously, shaking his head, their entwined bodies moving with the motion. “I can’t, Oliver. Ask someone else, I’m not ready.” Leo pulls away, starting to stand, but Oliver tugs him back down to his knees, pressing their foreheads together. He feels like he’s already been given pain medication, all woozy and drunkenly insistent.
“It’s for you,” Oliver whispers, bringing his lips in close to seal them in secret for one brief moment. He can’t help himself, he kisses Leo’s face, the side of his nose, the curve of his cheek, just above his mouth, once, twice, then again. “It’s all for you, Leo. You are ready. I love you.”
“You what,” Leo breathes, speaking directly into Oliver’s mouth.
“You heard me,” he replies stupidly. His leg fucking hurts. “I love you. It’s supposed to be you.”
“Oliver, I swear,” Leo starts, but the others are arriving, breaking the spell between them, reaching for Oliver to lift him up.
“I’ve got you,” Garcia and Ji-Hoon say in unison, fashioning their bodies into crutches on either side of Oliver. He’ll allow them to make him get up now, he’s said his piece. Leo follows them, still shaking his head, terrified.
“Sebastian is coming,” Garcia adds. “We’re going to walk you to him and he’ll get you off to Anna.”
“I want to watch,” Oliver says stubbornly, hopping on one leg. “And Leo needs to take the penalty.” Over his head, theirteammates are nodding, no fear in any of their eyes; Leo hasn’t missed a spot kick in training since March and he’s the damn breakout of the season, he’s played his heart out this year, better than Oliver has. “Jiji,” he says weakly. “Take this and make him take the kick, please.”
Sebastian has arrived, red-faced, and they’re handing him over, as Oliver holds out the captain’s armband.
“Davito, you’re up. Come on,” Ji-Hoon says confidently as he accepts the little strip of cloth, stepping into captaincy like he’s channeling Anthony’s spirit. He pulls Leo into a brief embrace, shaking him gently by the neck like he’s physically knocking sense into him. “It’s just like practice. You’ve got it, you’re going to smash it.”
Sebastian hauls Oliver the whole way to the bench, even his right foot barely touching the ground, neck twisted to keep an eye on the proceedings while the Kilburn defenders and Camden’s squad assemble themselves in a messy clump. Leo has deigned to listen to the rest of the squad, if not to Oliver, and is now carefully placing the ball for a penalty kick while the keeper hops madly from one foot to the other, arms extended to his full, gargantuan wingspan.
