Chapter Nine Matchday #2
“I know,” Eli said. “I’m not pretending it’s not. You’ve got a whole village’s worth of ghosts in your head every time you even look at me too long.”
“Helpful,” Lucas muttered.
Eli’s mouth twitched. “Just accurate.”
He shifted his weight, planted his boots a little deeper into the turf, and then met Lucas’s eyes again, steady.
“I’m not asking you for a full future,” he said. “Not tonight. I’m not asking you to change your life or throw yourself on some rainbow-colored sword. I’m asking for… one honest thing. Here. With me.”
Lucas’s heart thumped hard enough to hurt.
“Which is?” he asked.
Eli took a breath, like he was bracing for a hit.
“I want to kiss you,” he said quietly. “Properly. Sober. Here. So that when your head starts chewing you up again, you’ve got at least one memory where rugby and this”—he flicked his gaze between them—“aren’t enemies.”
The words landed like a dropped ball in the middle of a silent stadium.
Lucas’s pulse sprinted.
Fear reared first: cameras, headlines, sponsors, his mother’s voice, a parish full of gossip.
Want rose up after it, bigger than it had any right to be.
Before he could speak, all the stadium lights cut off with a heavy thud and a long, dying electrical sigh.
Darkness rushed in, thick and immediate.
They were suddenly lit only by the weak glow of emergency strips in the tunnel mouths and the scattered bobbing headlamps of staff up in the stands.
For a second, Lucas just stared into the dark where Eli’s face had been, heart hammering, nerves jangling.
Then Eli huffed a soft, startled laugh.
“Perfect timing,” he said. His voice sounded closer in the dark. Warmer. “See? Maybe God isn’t so ambivalent toward us after all.”
A shocked, helpless sound escaped Lucas—half laugh, half breath.
“Blasphemy on a rugby pitch,” he managed. “Bold choice.”
“Please,” Eli murmured. “If God’s watching us right now, He’s got weirder hobbies than I thought. What a creep.”
The stupid joke loosened something in Lucas’s chest. Like a hand unclenching.
He could feel Eli’s presence in front of him, even without the glare of the floodlights—heat in the distance between them, the faint outline of his shoulders against the barely-lit sky.
“Still want that kiss?” Eli asked softly. “Darkness and all?”
Lucas thought of saying no.
He always thought of saying no first.
Instead, he stepped closer.
Just a small shift of his boots on the turf, enough that he could feel Eli’s breath on his face now, shared air in the cool night.
It was answer enough.
Eli’s exhale shivered between them. “Okay,” he breathed.
A hand came up, slow and careful, fingers finding Lucas’s jaw in the dark, thumb brushing along the rough line of stubble like he was mapping it for keeps.
“Tell me you’re sure,” Eli said, one last time.
Lucas swallowed hard.
“I’m sure I’ll think about it every day if I don’t,” he said. “That’ll have to do.”
Eli’s quiet, disbelieving huff of laughter was all the warning he got before warm lips found his.
No drunken mess. No panic. Just a deliberate, steady press of mouth to mouth in the middle of a dark, empty stadium.
Lucas went rigid for a heartbeat, every muscle braced for… something. The sky to fall. The ground to split. His father to appear in the stands with a Bible.
Nothing happened.
Except Eli kissing him.
Soft at first, careful. Then deeper, slow and sure, like he had all night and no intention of rushing. Lucas’s hand found the fabric of Eli’s jersey at his hip and closed in a helpless fist.
Eli made a low sound—wrecked and reverent—into his mouth and stepped in, chest flush to Lucas’s now. One hand stayed at his jaw; the other slid to the back of his neck, anchoring him there like this was the most natural thing in the world.
The only light around them were the scattered swipes of headlamps up in the stands, occasionally sketching a brief outline of posts or touchline before moving on. Out there on the halfway, they were mostly shadow and breath and warmth.
Lucas let himself lean into it.
Let himself feel the smooth pull of Eli’s lower lip under his, the tickle of stubble, the steady thud of another heartbeat pressed against his own. Let himself open his mouth, deepen the kiss, answer the quiet question in it with one of his own.
Yes. I feel this too. I’m here.
No part of it felt wrong.
That, more than anything, terrified him.
When they finally broke apart, it was only far enough to rest their foreheads together, breaths mingling white in the cold.
Lucas’s heart raced. His hands still shook where they gripped Eli’s hip.
“Still terrified?” Eli asked, voice barely above a whisper.
“Yes,” Lucas said honestly.
“Good,” Eli murmured. “Means you’re paying attention.”
His hand lingered at the back of Lucas’s neck, thumb rubbing a slow line into the tense muscle there before he let it fall.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Eli cleared his throat softly.
“Okay,” he said. “So. Cards on the table.”
Lucas’s stomach dipped. “That wasn’t…?”
“That wasn’t a one-off for me,” Eli said. “But I’m not about to drag you into some big, dramatic thing you’re not ready for.”
He shifted back just enough that Lucas could see the faint outline of his face now, eyes dark and searching.
“I’m saying,” Eli went on carefully, “maybe we see where this goes. Start small. Just… you and me. No announcements. No one else has to know a thing.”
No one else has to know.
The words loosened a knot and twisted another, all at once.
Lucas’s mind flicked back to the airport: two men by the big glass windows, shoulders touching, laughter easy, rings catching the light.
He hadn’t been able to look away.
Now, with Eli’s kiss still ghosting his mouth and the dark humming gently around them, that image came back stronger.
Two men at a window. Two men on a pitch.
The same thing burning between them, just at different stages of its life.
His chest hurt with wanting. For the first time, he let himself feel all of it—the fear, the possibility, the bright, reckless flare of I want this under everything else.
He looked at Eli in the dim light—at the outline of his jaw, the set of his shoulders, the almost ridiculous patience in his voice.
“Start small,” Lucas repeated quietly.
“No one has to know,” Eli said again, gentler this time. “Not Maeve, not the lads, not your family, not mine. Just you and me. We don’t owe anyone a road map for something we’re only just figuring out.”
Lucas thought of Maeve’s texts, of her telling him he deserved more than penance, of her threatening to live vicariously through him. He suspected she’d know before he said a word.
Right now, all he had to decide was whether he trusted himself with this.
With Eli.
His voice came out low and hoarse. “All right,” he said. “Small. Quiet. Just… us.”
He felt Eli’s relief like a physical thing.
“Yeah?” Eli asked, as if he didn’t quite dare believe it.
“Yeah,” Lucas said.
A smile broke across Eli’s face—Lucas could hear it, even in the dark.
“Okay,” Eli said, sounding a little breathless now. “Okay. We can work with that.”
He bumped his shoulder gently against Lucas’s, an almost boyish gesture in the middle of all that weight.
“Come on,” he added. “Before someone with a headlamp catches us and we end up on another fan cam titled ‘they’re definitely dating now.”
Lucas let out a rough laugh.
“At least give them some mystery,” he muttered.
They turned together and started toward the tunnel. At the edge of the grass, Lucas let his hand drift just enough for his knuckles to brush Eli’s.
Eli’s fingers bumped back.
No one saw.
No one needed to.
They stepped into the tunnel light side by side, shoulders almost touching, something new and fragile and fiercely wanted alive between them—
small, quiet, just theirs. For now.