Chapter 5 #3
He watched it once, then twice, and then a third time. But no, definitely those were marks that indicated blocking. Even suggestions that might lead to better blocking. Trevor didn’t always follow all the intricacies of play design, but he could tell that much.
“What is this?” Trevor asked, waving the iPad towards Lane. “I’ve never seen you go to one of those offensive meetings where Aidan spends hours arguing with Zane over what plays they should be running?”
“I think Aidan would call those debates and not arguments,” Lane said dryly, acting like Trevor wasn’t going to notice that he hadn’t answered the question.
“He probably would,” Trevor agreed, “but—”
“No, okay? No. I don’t.” Lane gave a resigned sigh and slid out of bed, the blanket slithering from his lap, and yeah, Trevor was definitely interested in a second round, but first, he needed to understand what the fuck was going on here.
He felt like he’d just been dropped into an alternate universe, where Lane was possibly better at figuring out this shit than the people that the team paid to do it.
“Why not?” Trevor asked. He watched as Lane grabbed his sweatpants and pulled them back on, no underwear. Hot, he thought, before he could shut that right now with a not never, just not now, reminder.
“’Cause I don’t want to,” Lane said, the tone of his voice growing edgier. “It’s not a big deal. Just leave it, okay?”
“But—” Trevor tried again.
“I shouldn’t have showed you, okay? I just wanted you to know, for sure, that I wasn’t watching that play.”
It occurred to Trevor, realizations toppling over one by one, like dominoes, that Lane had shared something he hadn’t wanted to share at all, just so that Trevor wouldn’t think he was obsessing over the play he’d fucked up. So Trevor wouldn’t feel bad.
“Maybe you should have,” Trevor said, which wasn’t as hard to say as it might have been five minutes ago.
But something was shifting, still, under his feet.
The ground might be unsteady, but it was hard to deny that whenever it trembled, Trevor saw something new in Lane.
And all the new things he’d seen were things he liked.
Lane shot him a look. “You don’t mean that,” he said and continued walking out of the bedroom. Trevor scrambled out of bed, pulled on his pants, and followed Lane into the kitchen.
He’d pulled a stack of menus out of a drawer and was sorting through them. “You hungry?” he asked, glancing over at Trevor, like he’d expected him to be there. Like he’d already anticipated that Trevor would follow him. That he wouldn’t let it go.
“Don’t change the subject,” Trevor complained.
“I’m hungry,” Lane said, continuing to change the subject.
Sometimes Trevor just really wanted to smack some sense into him.
Or maybe it wasn’t that he wanted to smack him, it was that he wanted to do a whole lot of other things, starting with pulling down Lane’s sweatpants and finding out right here, in the kitchen, if he liked sucking cock the same way Lane did.
“Come on,” Trevor said.
“I’m not hashing this out on an empty stomach.” Lane pushed the menus in Trevor’s direction. “Pick something.”
Trevor sighed, guessing that he wasn’t going to be able to dissuade Lane from this. Besides, he could eat too. He’d grabbed a sandwich after the game, but now that Lane mentioned it, he was hungry again. Maybe from the sex. Or the nap. Or both.
He pulled out a menu for a Middle Eastern place they’d gotten food from a number of times and slid it over wordlessly.
Lane picked up his phone, typed in the order, and a minute later, set it back down.
“Okay,” he said, “you wanna talk about it?”
“I thought we weren’t talking about it on an empty stomach,” Trevor said.
Lane rolled his eyes. “Are you really gonna sit on the couch and pretend you’re not dying to interrogate me—or force me to interrogate you—until the food comes? Really?”
“I’m not that impatient,” Trevor argued. But he could be. He knew he could be.
“And I’m not stubborn,” Lane said wryly.
“Okay, a little impatient. Fine. I don’t want to wait. I want you to tell me.”
“I already told you,” Lane said in a careful voice. “You weren’t tracking Wes and the pass rush that was bearing down on him. He had to throw the ball. You weren’t ready.”
Lane wasn’t wrong; he hadn’t been watching Wes, really. The ball, sure. But the rest of the play unfolding around Wes, or the blocking around Wes, no.
But then he’d never done that with Aidan before either, and it hadn’t been a problem.
“If you say,” Lane continued, before Trevor could even bring that fact up, “that you don’t have to do it for Aidan, well, of course you don’t.
He’s Aidan Flynn. You’re spoiled rotten playing for a guy who sees pressure coming and figures out how to evade it before it ever becomes an issue.
He’s a future Hall of Famer. A Super Bowl winner.
He gets his shit done. And before you defend Wes, he’s just not as experienced.
Not even close. You gotta figure out those adjustments and make them, seamlessly. ”
Trevor digested that. It didn’t feel great, still, but he was just beginning to realize why everyone said the transition to the NFL was hard.
He’d thought he was pro-ready. A ton of scouts, his agent, his coaches had all agreed that he was.
But nobody ever mentioned the thousand intangible things, the little tweaks, that you had to make to truly be ready.
Nobody except Lane.
“Mo said today that nobody expects me to know a lot of this stuff,” Trevor said quietly. It was the only reason he wasn’t melting down in a puddle of acute humiliation.
“Yeah, he’s right,” Lane agreed. He went over to the fridge and pulled out two beers. Popped the tops and handed one to Trevor. “But we do expect that you’re gonna listen when we say it.”
Trevor swallowed hard. He wanted to listen. He did. Normally, he thought he was a pretty easygoing, relaxed guy. Good about stuff. But whenever Lane told him something, it was like he froze up, worried he’d exposed a soft underbelly that he wasn’t sure he even understood himself.
Insecurities weren’t new to him, necessarily, but they had never followed him onto the football field.
“Alright,” Trevor agreed. “I’ll try to be better about it.”
“Pay attention to Aidan, not just Wes, okay? That’ll be a good way to start to adjust to it, ’cause he’s got his shit locked down already.”
Trevor nodded. “I can do that.” For a second, he thought about saying something about why he hadn’t wanted to listen, about how the shame crawled up his spine. But if he did, then Lane would know, and he didn’t want Lane to look at him any differently than he was doing now.
“Ramsey’s game is gonna be on soon,” Lane pointed out. “We might as well turn it on, while we eat?”
“That late?” Trevor asked. He was not jealous that Lane had either looked up that info or had retained Nate telling him about it.
He knew Ramsey was with Nate, and they were super fucking happy.
But there was a part of him that wondered, still, if Lane had really wanted him, and was only settling for Trevor because he was around.
“They’re on the West Coast, I guess,” Lane said. “Nate was whining during the game about some kind of long road trip. They gotta go out there once a season or something. Hit all the Cali teams.”
“There’s more than one hockey team in Cali?”
“And I thought I was clueless about hockey.” Lane chuckled under his breath and, grabbing his beer, made his way to the living room, slumping down on the couch. After turning on the TV, he navigated to the right game. He’d been right; it was starting in ten minutes.
Plenty of time for Trevor to go grab his sweatshirt from Lane’s bedroom. To try to transition back into their normal kind of evening. Lane was clearly trying to do it. Trevor should make an effort too.
The problem was that Trevor was beginning to wonder if he didn’t want to transition back to their normal kind of evening.
Maybe he’d liked waking up with Lane’s arm over him, warm and steady and firm. Not holding him down, but holding him.
But Trevor didn’t know how to ask for that. Instead, he grabbed his sweatshirt, detoured to the bathroom and, after pissing, gave himself a pep talk in the mirror that mostly consisted of, you can be normal, you can totally be cool.
When he returned back to the living room, he was pretty sure he could be chill. Normal. Ish.
But then he spotted Lane sitting in his regular spot on the couch, except now his arm was slung, easy and haphazardly, over the back. Like he was just waiting for Trevor to tuck into the empty spot that was right there, at his side.
Trevor wanted to, but they’d never done that before. And it was unclear exactly how far “experimentation” went in Lane’s book. The sex definitely counted, but did cuddling count?
Was it an invitation or was it just coincidence?
Be normal, be cool.
“It’s weird that Ramsey’s got us all watching hockey now,” Trevor said, rounding the couch and settling not quite on the far end, but not quite close enough that the tips of Lane’s fingertips could touch his shoulder.
It was kind of a chickenshit move, but he was trying to be chill.
Lane shot him a bit of a baffled look but didn’t say anything about it. “Hockey’s cool. I wish I could beat people’s asses and only get two minutes for roughing.”
“If you were a hockey player, you’d spend your whole career in the fucking box,” Trevor said. It was exactly what he’d have said to Lane before.
Scoffing, Lane shot him a hot look. “That’s bullshit. I wouldn’t take stupid penalties. I’d only fight people who deserved it.”
“So like every player on the opposing team?” Trevor teased.
“What?” Lane exclaimed, but his eyes had lit up, literally sparkling. God, he looked so good like this. Trevor wanted to eat him up.