Chapter Ten Friendly Fire #2
Freddie stretched his arms wide with mock innocence. “Me? Never!”
“That’s not what your elbow said to our goalie last season,” Miller, one of the other fire lads, said as he pulled his boots on. “Poor sod was off with a bruised rib for two weeks.”
“That was an accident.” Freddie dragged his shirt over his head. “He walked into it.”
“Walked into your elbow like it was a nightclub door, mate,” another one chimed in .
“Hey, all I’m saying,” Reece cut back in, “is if you copper lot don’t play fair, I’ll be sending in Nathan here to flatten your striker.”
Freddie arched a brow as he laced up his boots. “ I’m the striker.”
Nathan looked up, slow and steady.
Reece chuckled. “So we’ll be expecting more foul play from you then?”
Freddie flipped him off.
The room burst into chuckles and shouts of “Oooohhh!” as someone tossed a ball into the air and another smacked it down towards the door.
“Alright, boys!” their captain called. “Let’s get out there before someone tears a hamstring trying to flirt.”
Laughter. Banter. Even Nathan smiled.
And, fuck, it was beautiful.
He’d forgotten how stunning Nathan could be when he smiled.
But they all barrelled out of the changing hut as if it was Wembley, though the muddy turf and the faint smell of stale Lucozade said otherwise.
Harrow Park’s pitch stretched under dull floodlights, the low hum of anticipation rolling across the field and the cold biting Freddie’s ears, breath misting as his boots crunched onto the worn astroturf.
Around the wire fence, a sparse scattering of locals clapped with the enthusiasm only a small-town five-a-side could conjure.
Mums wrapped in scarves, kids climbing the railing, off-duty paramedics still in their fleeces.
Freddie caught sight of Jude standing near the halfway line with a paper coffee cup and his arm loosely looped through someone’s wife’s. Yasmine Yates, married to Dave Yates from his copper squad. Jude smiled when he spotted Freddie, shy and small, then raised two fingers to whistle .
Freddie gave a smile back, tight around the edges. Uneasy. And he jogged out onto the pitch, the chill and something tighter than cold pulling at his chest.
Because it wasn’t the weather that made him shiver.
It was playing football with Nathan .
The whistle split the air, and the game kicked off under the hazy glow of Harrow Park’s battered floodlights. The Fire Service lads surged forward, all red kits and bravado, shoulders hunched, shouting over one another as if sheer volume might score them a goal.
Freddie’s lot were made up of mostly beat coppers plus Dave, the Captain, from CID who insisted on still playing despite having had a desk job for three years.
“Come on then, boys!” Dave shouted, as if commanding a riot squad.
Freddie cracked his knuckles and took position near midfield, adrenaline settling into his limbs. Across the pitch, he caught sight of Nathan. Already focused. Kit clinging to him in all the right places.
It wasn’t a game anymore.
And it didn’t take long for the testosterone to boil.
Nathan kept pace with the game better than anyone expected, given how he favoured his right leg.
But he read the game like a man used to scanning danger zones, shifting effortlessly from one player to the next.
Freddie, playing mid-to-forward, darted along the wings, cutting inside, commanding the ball as if it owed him something.
Maybe it did.
He hadn’t been the best player as a kid. Mostly sidelined while Nathan got a full game, so maybe this was him proving how much had changed.
Despite nothing having changed at all.
They collided early. Not dramatic. A glancing touch of shoulders, but Freddie felt it like a slap of nostalgia to the chest. Nathan’s body brushed his.
Warm. Solid. Familiar. And for a second, he was sixteen again.
Nathan grunted something low, unintelligible, but his gaze flicked sideways and stuck long enough for Freddie to catch the edge of a smirk.
“Watch it, soldier,” Freddie breathed as he jogged past, throwing him a crooked grin.
Nathan didn’t answer. But he did bump his hip into Freddie’s a little harder on the next pass. Low enough no one else would catch it. Hard enough that Freddie definitely did. A silent yeah, still here.
They jostled again at the halfway line, shoulders colliding, and Freddie shot him a sideways grin. “Christ, you always stomp around like this now? Army knocked the soft outta you?”
Nathan gave a breathless huff of a laugh. “You’re slower than I remember. Must be all those surveillances with doughnuts.”
“Cheeky fucker.” Freddie elbowed him lightly in the ribs as he sprinted past, heart thudding harder than it should’ve been for a friendly five-a-side.
He weaved through players, laughing under his breath, feeling Nathan’s presence like a shadow at his back as he darted to intercept a loose ball, but before he could get clear, a heavy arm hooked around his middle.
Nathan tackled him enough to drag him backwards off the ball and into his chest. Freddie stumbled, caught in the grip of muscle and heat and way too much history.
He twisted instinctively, and somehow ended up facing him, bodies mashed together, hands gripping each other’s kits as if neither of them knew who was holding who up anymore.
For half a second, no one moved .
The world around them blurred. Shouts, whistles, the thud of boots on fake turf, perhaps even a wolf whistle and banter about flirting.
But all Freddie could feel was Nathan’s breath ghosting over his jaw.
Hand fisted in the front of his shirt. The steady pound of his heart going completely fucking rogue.
“Gotta be quicker than that, Webb.” Nathan’s voice was low, rough in his ear and it sent Freddie into a spiral of mush.
But he smirked, even as his lungs forgot how to work. “That the line you used in the army? Bet it worked a treat, soldier boy.”
Nathan’s mouth quirked. Half a smirk, half something a lot darker. And he loosened his grip, letting Freddie push away before the moment could snap into something neither of them could undo.
Freddie jogged off, laughing as if it was nothing. As if he wasn’t seconds from turning back around and grabbing him by the shirtfront all over again and asking him to growl in his ear, rough and untamed. Insult him again like it was their foreplay.
But the game pulsed around them again. Sprints, rushed passes, shouted jeers and laughter from the sidelines.
And Reece, playing striker for the Fire Service, got the first goal under his belt, swaggering across the pitch as if he was Erling Haaland.
He was quick with the ball too, but quicker with the gropes.
Too handsy in the tackles, especially with Freddie.
And Nathan noticed. Oh, he noticed.
Every time Reece got too close, Nathan hovered. Shielded. Intervened .
Freddie wasn’t sure what to make of it.
But he kept going, and a chance to even the score presented itself and he cut across the halfway line, dribbling with precision, weaving through defenders. He was heading for the goal, clean on it, only Reece trailing close. Too close. Behind, Nathan limped. Pace faltering.
Freddie powered forward.
Then Reece slid in. Not clean. Not legal, either. And he clipped Freddie’s heel before the shot, sending him sprawling across the turf.
“Jesus—” Freddie grunted as he hit the ground, palms stinging, breath knocked clean out of him.
Reece didn’t apologise.
Didn’t even pretend to be sorry.
He yanked Freddie up by the arm. “Didn’t used to mind a bit of rough and tumble.” Then with a smug grin, he reached around and squeezed Freddie’s arse. Firm. Possessive.
There was no time to react, no moment to pull away or slap Reece’s hand back or spit out the string of words burning up his throat.
Because Nathan was already moving.
No shout, no warning. A blur of rage and velocity, he slammed his shoulder into Reece, sending him stumbling a step before Nathan’s clean, practiced right hook cracked across his jaw. A punch born of discipline, of combat drills and silent fury. A soldier’s punch.
“That’s the last time you touch him without a fucking invitation,” Nathan snarled.
Reece staggered back, stunned, blood blooming from the corner of his lip, dabbing his fingers into his broken flesh to check the damage.
Everything stopped.
The match, the shouts, the laughter. Choked off like a cut wire. The other players stood stunned, some with mouths open, others already pulling back, uncertain whether to intervene or let it play out .
Freddie couldn’t move, either.
Heartbeat like a snare drum, stuttering and jagged in his chest, he stared at Nathan. His heaving chest, his clenched fists, the wild look in his eyes that slowly faded as awareness sank in. Not for what he’d done, but for where they were. Who’d seen. What it meant.
Nathan looked around.
At the stunned silence. The ref sprinting over. At Reece, holding his jaw. And at Alfie on the sideline, stood up on a railing.
Then finally, at Freddie .
“What the fuck, Nate?” Freddie whispered that same line Nathan had said to him all those years ago when he’d done the same thing to him.
Nathan looked as though he might speak. But he didn’t.
He swallowed. One hard, shaky gulp.
Then he turned.
And walked off the pitch.