Chapter 6
Finn
Pi’s leaning against the wall of the old lice room, like he does before every Cents home game.
It isn’t in fact a room full of lice, but an ancient deserted sluice room which sits in a part of the stadium that nobody has access to any more, down a long dark corridor that now leads to nowhere.
Back in the good old days, like pre-Covid, it was another entry passage to the stands, serviced by a small snack kiosk and an even smaller bar, but following a few catastrophic worldwide events, there’d been a massive security overhaul in the stadium, and the entryway had subsequently been bricked up, the kiosk unplugged, and the accompanying stock cupboard and sluice room abandoned forever.
During that time, two of the vinyl stickers from the sluice room door signage have peeled off, leaving only the letters L and ICE.
It has become our well-practiced routine to meet here and suck the souls out of each other’s bodies before a home game. Pi loves routine, and I am more than happy to oblige on these occasions.
Sometimes there’s a little chitchat before the soul sucking begins, sometimes not. Today needs to be a chitchat kind of day.
I broke up with Megan last week. After seeing Orlando and Abs so sickeningly in love at Teach’s, Megs came over to my house.
We stayed up until the early hours of the morning talking about us, or what was once us.
There were a few tears from both sides, but ultimately we agreed it was for the best that we parted ways.
But Pi doesn’t know that we broke up. For some reason, I couldn’t tell him even though I’d planned to.
I imagined phoning him the moment Megs drove away from my house for the last time and inviting him over, but my phone had sat in my hand while I stared at the thumbnail of his goofy blonde head until the screen switched itself to black.
I wrote him a text message. Then deleted it.
I typed an email, pouring my heart out because I thought I’d be able to express myself better with more than one thousand and twenty-four characters.
I never pressed send. It’s been sitting in my drafts box untouched since.
I know what I want to say to him. I’m just not sure how to say it. Or when. I only know that it should be sooner rather than later.
“Wasson?” I ask.
There’s a lock on the old lice room door, but it’s the type you need a proper key to use, and though nobody ever comes down this way, Pi likes the extra precaution of barricading it shut with a rickety old metal shelving unit.
His reasoning is that it’s so clunky and clanky, we’d hear someone entering before we’d see them, like a reverse canary in the mines.
I tug the cabinet in front of the entryway, steady my breath, and gather my words. It’s now or never. Tell him I’ve broken up with Megan. That I did it all for him, and that I’m sorry it took me so long to realise, and would he please, please come to Cornwall with me for the summer . . .
I open my mouth and . . . “We need to speak to the lads today about the dance routine, so we can start planning stuff and practicing.”
Shit, fuck, bollocks, hell.
“No, we’re not doing a dance routine.” He doesn’t seem to register my turmoil. He’s already reaching a hand around my face, sliding it into the back of my hair, and bringing his lips down to my throat.
“It’ll be brilliant, and you know it,” I say to the ceiling.
The old lice room is dark and incredibly dusty for somewhere that only ever sees fresh skin particles twice a month at most. It has a strange smell, which I can only describe as part bin stink, part stale Coke, and part industrial bleach.
Still, because it’s now our secret liaising spot, I’ve kinda grown accustomed to the smell.
Maybe I even like it. It reminds me of these stolen moments together.
“Eggs, please don’t make me dance in front of everyone at the awards ceremony.” Pi’s hand is already in my sweatpants, cupping my ass cheek, his middle finger stretching over and brushing my hole as he kisses my neck. “I will die of embarrassment.”
It’s almost impossible to think about anything other than how much I want him to slip it inside and curl it. Thoughts of Megan and Cornwall are being erased as quickly as a dry-wipe marker on a whiteboard.
“Everything in life worth doing is embarrassing,” I tell him, trying to keep my focus on the things that matter right now.
Megan is a distant smudge on that board.
“Everything’s fucking embarrassing. Singing’s embarrassing.
What if I fuck up all the lyrics and miss all the notes?
Eating a custard slice is embarrassing. What if it gets all over my T-shirt again?
Swimming in the sea. Coming in front of someone.
Giving someone a gift. Playing ruggers in front of twenty thousand people is fucking embarrassing.
Princess, if you can do that, you can dance in front of the coaches. ”
He removes his hand, and I whine in frustration, but he pushes my T-shirt up and kisses down my belly, slowly dropping to his knees. His hands hover at the waistband of my joggers, and he looks up at me.
“But I won’t force you to dance if you really don’t want to,” I say, because right now I’d cut out my organs and gift them to him on a plate if he asked me.
I’ve seen his face and those eyes thousands of times, and every single time he robs me of the ability to breathe properly, but when he’s like this, on his knees for me, and I’m seconds away from fucking his mouth, it’s another level of beauty all together.
“If you can last longer than five minutes, I’ll do the dance,” he says.
“Five minutes?! That’s fucking ages.”
“Two and a half minutes, then.” He’s grinning like the Joker. He knows he can only win this bet.
In all fairness, I know it too. “Okay, and what do you get if I come before the two and a half minutes are up?”
“We have to figure out an ‘on the pitch’ way to show Eksteen and Dan how cohesive we can be as captains.”
“Okay, deal.” It’s a stupid thing to agree to, I’ve already lost, but I’m pulling my cock out and tapping it against his pretty face. I haven’t the foggiest idea how we’ll figure this out on the pitch when we haven’t already done so yet, but I guess that’s a problem for Tuesday’s Eggo.
“Put a timer on.” Maybe if I think about other things, like the time I blocked the disabled toilet at the training grounds and they had to jackhammer the car park open to clear the pipes, I might be able to eke out my orgasm.
Pi pulls his phone out of his back pocket, fiddles with the screen, and places it down on the floor.
“Is the timer already going?” I ask.
He smirks at me, like he’s in absolutely no hurry. “Yep,” he says, and then licks up my shaft and wraps his lips around me.
Instant alleviation and warmth and wetness envelop me.
The first blow jobs we ever gave each other were messy, toothy, and weird, but we’ve had a lot of practice since then, and Pi is, as always, the model student, picking up new tricks in record time.
I’m already sagging against the wall, my hands in my hair, my stomach muscles spasming, as he works his mouth up and down on me.
I won’t look down. I won’t look down.
I actually do look down, but not at Pi. I look at the screen of his phone. It’s just out of view.
Fuck, he’s so good at this, but I’m not close yet, and I must have ages, so I sneak a peek at him.
Terrible decision. Holy fuck, was that a bad decision. He has his own cock in one hand and is pumping his fist.
Those yellow eyes of his crinkle at the corners as they make contact with mine, and I slam my eyes shut so I don’t make the same mistake again, but I’m already replaying the image like a lingering camera flash behind my lids.
Then two things happen in quick succession, and I know I’m a goner.
Pi snakes his hand from the base of my cock to my ass, parts my cheeks, and lightly, teasingly presses his middle finger to my hole.
And he whines. Pi, who’s ordinarily inaudible while we fuck, moans onto my cock.
The vibrations work their way through deep tissue and muscle to my spine.
“Fuck!” I yell, before detonating inside his mouth.
My head hits the wall behind me and my vision fizzes out for a few moments. He releases me, swallows my load, then pillows his forehead on my hip and makes the cutest little “Uhhh” sound as his release splashes on the dusty screed floor.
Two seconds later, the timer goes off.
He glances up at me. “When are you seeing Megs next?” The question comes out of nowhere. My heartbeat shoots into overdrive. Does he already know about us?
I shrug. “Not for a while. She’s going to Kent again for a bit.” Not a lie, even though it feels wrong to say it like that.
“Good,” he says. He closes his lips around the flesh on my pelvis, just beside my hip, and sucks until a crimson welt is all that remains.
We time our arrivals separately into the locker room, not that anybody would figure out we were meeting up beforehand to fuck each other’s faces, but Pi likes to eliminate as much doubt as possible.
He also likes for me to arrive before him because apparently I’m a better actor than he is, and I take up more space, both physically and with my majestic presence and raw animal magnetism. I’m paraphrasing his reasoning, but it was something along those lines.
“You’re so fucking loud and massive that you can’t help but draw everyone’s attention.”
“Cheers, me ’ansum.”
“You know what I mean. If I go in first and they ask me where I’ve been, I’ll panic and stutter and the jig’ll be up.”
When Pi walks in fifteen minutes after I do, I barely look up from my conversation with Snatch. It’s all part of our well-practiced routine. I have no idea what he does or where he goes during these little waiting games, but it’s always precisely fifteen minutes later.
“How ya going, Abs? Hey, Gadget. Alright, Dan?” he says, also deliberately not looking at me.