Matchday 23 #3
“Ah,” Joe replies, enlightenment dawning. “And you won with your new friend.”
“Who, me?” Leo asks, the corners of his mouth perking up.
“Hush,” Oliver says to both of them, all holier-than-thou. “I’m a very happy and friendly person, today being no exception. It is not breaking news when I’m having a laugh.” Joe doesn’t even pretend not to smirk, but Leo, mindful of their tentative reunion, fights to keep his face mostly neutral.
Oliver can see Sebastian walking toward their group of three, so he quickly escorts them out the door before anyone else can say something to embarrass him, into the relative safety of commuting, where the only risk is his own big mouth and London’s traffic.
“It absolutely is news when you’re having a laugh, in case you were wondering,” Leo tells him when they pull up in front of his apartment building, idling on the cobblestones.
“Cheers. I’ll keep that in mind,” Oliver shoves him lightly, more to get him out of the car than for what he said, and maybe, a little bit, for the chance to touch him again.
Leo departs but turns back after one step and motions at the window.
When Oliver rolls it down for him, Leo sticks his head back in.
The air smells crisp and wintry, all the streetlights flickering to life and glistening against the slight dampness that cloaks everything from November to March. It’s a perfect evening, Oliver thinks.
“If you want to come in early on Thursday,” Leo says, running his fingers through his wind-rustled, post-training hair. His cheeks are already pink with cold. “I’d swim some laps with you. So you have company.”
“You think you can behave yourself?” Oliver asks. “Won’t try to drown me or nothing? It went badly the first time we had a swim together, you’ll recall.”
“That had much more to do with you than it did with me, if we’re being fair about it.” Leo rolls his eyes. Oliver has no retort for that, because Leo is unfortunately absolutely correct. “Come on, Ollie. I miss the beach. Don’t deny me my pool time.”
“Poor Davito. Can’t have you going as pale as me, you’re right. But I’m not waking up early. We’ll do it after your training session, yeah?”
“Whatever you like,” says Leo—still very tan, still very handsome—as he smiles in the pleased, half-smug manner of someone who’s recently gotten their way. It looks good on him, but Oliver suspects most everything does.
· · ·
“Okay, explain this to me, because I’m lost,” Maggie says after she drains the last sip of her drink, fairly slamming it back down onto the tablecloth. Oliver reaches for the red wine they’re sharing, sloshing the glasses full again and licking a stray drop off his wrist.
“What’s there to explain?” he asks tipsily, stretching over the restaurant booth until his back cracks.
Wine makes him feel loose and sleepy, a bottle of basking in the sun after an afternoon nap on the beach.
The day’s easy, pleased mood has carried through the night and magnified with time, until he’s sloppy and giggly with it.
“A lot!” Maggie whisper-shrieks, pointing an accusing, ring-adorned finger at him.
“You hate the usurper, you reluctantly mentor the newcomer, you bond with your teammate, you fight with your friend, you have a crush, and now…what?” As she speaks, she counts the list out on her hand until she’s waving an open palm in front of him. “What comes next, Ollie?”
“Nothing comes next, Mags,” he says, swirling his drink around to avoid eye contact.
“I had a shit end to last year, then I didn’t know where I stood with the team, with Willem and his plans.
It took a bit of trial and error, and now I do know.
Leo and I get along after all. We’ll probably fit well together on the pitch too. End of story.”
“I don’t believe that.” Maggie shakes her fringe out of her eyes and grabs for his hands, jerking him forward so he has no choice but to look at her.
She sweeps the dining room with a glance, checking to see if they’re alone enough, then continues.
“Are you really going to just keep pretending nothing is going on? Football as usual, just a bunch of straight teammates having normal, straight feelings for each other?”
They’re alone, but the word “pretend” in front of “straight” still makes Oliver wince, popping the balloon of the evening’s atmosphere.
“Be quiet,” he hisses, then continues in a whisper.
The soft, sweet wine feelings have evaporated.
“I have to do football as usual, don’t you get it?
I wouldn’t last one second in the changing room if anyone knew.
The press would crucify me, I would never play again, and my life would be over.
No one’s ever done this, not at my level, and even anyone who wasn’t any good still had their whole lives fucked up when they tried.
It’s not, like, fun for me to lie about this, Maggie—it kills me.
But I have to. People already call me names, and they don’t even know. What would they do if they did?”
Her beautiful face falls. She slides across the bench seat and winds her arms around his neck. He tucks his chin over her head: easy, familiar motions.
“You know something?” Maggie says, from the crook of his shoulder. “When you told me, when you dumped me, actually, I wasn’t even sad for myself. I was the one being broken up with, but all I could think was about how lonely you would be.”
“I’m not lonely.”
“Aren’t you?” she asks, eyes now searching him curiously. “I don’t think you’re lying, for the record. But I do think you’re keeping a secret. Something that keeps you from everyone else.”
“It’s worth it,” Oliver replies. He’s thought about it a million times since he was eighteen. It’s always worth it, when he does the math. “For now, it’s a fair trade. When I’m old and retired, then I can do whatever I want.”
“That’s the saddest thing I ever heard.” She leans back and takes a long pull straight from the bottle, then offers it to him. He follows suit, paws tiredly at his eyes, and rests his forehead in his palms.
“It’s honestly not usually that bad.” He forces a rueful laugh.
“I’m still one of the lads, even if I’m gay.
I fit in just fine. It’s just, like…teammates are especially off-limits.
” Camden is for football, not for grafting.
These are the rules he’s got to live by, the ones that got him where he is.
It’s the only way he can play. And he’s only ever wanted to play.
“I doubt Leo thinks so.” Maggie hiccups, a playful note creeping back in her voice. “He’s obsessed with you.”
Oliver scrunches his nose, involuntarily pleased at the idea.
Monday night was a lifetime ago, a whole new era of his life devoted to the strange feeling he gets when he looks across the room and clocks the outline of Leo’s collarbone, or sees his peach-fuzz earlobes, or smells his clean, grassy sweat.
He shakes his head like he’s trying to get water out of his ears, snapping himself out of it.
“Come off it. He’s—he’s who he is,” Oliver says, as much to himself as to Maggie. “And I’m a football star. That doesn’t mean he’s into me.”
Maggie smiles dangerously, propping her chin in her hands.
“He’s on his way to being a football star too. Take it from someone who used to fancy you,” she tells him. “It seems like he might.”
She doesn’t get it—obviously, a group of often-shirtless men who spend all their time with each other and exchange glorious, sticky hugs in front of thousands of people seems gay.
But that way lies madness. It’s different for the rest of them than it is for Oliver, and if he allows himself to think, even for a second, that it isn’t, he won’t be able to go back to his normal life again.
Oliver would rather snog Prince Harry on the roof of Buckingham Palace than get caught looking at Leo.
He’s perfected the art of the fully anonymous, pitch-black hookup, but never in his life (not even in the academy, when more than one teammate allowed the other lads to jerk them off because it was the only available orgasm option) has Oliver ever strayed from that.
He’s supposed to be the beating heart of the team, Willem said—he fucking wouldn’t be if everyone knew he was gay and couldn’t look him in the eyes anymore.
He considers trying to explain this, before deciding he just wants to go to bed instead.
“You can get the last round,” he tells her. “As payment for my agony.”
Maggie makes a considering expression, then seems to remember she hasn’t paid for so much as a wine gum since they were twelve years old, and nods in agreement.
Oliver severely regrets that last guzzle of wine by morning, when the fluorescent rectangles of office lights above the exam table are blinding him, head pounding like a nightclub beat. Being injured provides so much more time for midseason drinking than he’s used to.
“I have precisely no sympathy for you at all,” Anna says after he expresses this, perching on a wheeled stool and brandishing an ultrasound wand at him. “You can stop moaning at any time. Getting drunk on a Wednesday, for God’s sake.”
“I wouldn’t be able to drink on weeknights if you’d fix up my leg, Doc.”
“If I’d fix it?” she asks, words rising worryingly in pitch.
“What if you were to stop running on it, against direct instructions, hm? Don’t think I don’t know what you were up to.
” Sebastian is such a fucking rat. Everyone knows he thinks Anna is beautiful—she is! —but it’s no excuse to be a tattler.
“The running didn’t hurt it,” Oliver tries. “It was the tackling.”
Mistake, mistake, mayday. Anna shoves his left leg upright and jabs at it with the wand, pressing into the tender tissue of his upper thigh with none of her usual deftness.