Matchday 20 #6
Oliver surveys the scene enviously. Aside from Marcos, who looks pissed, and Garcia, knackered, everyone appears to be in good spirits.
The ball is whipping to and fro between the two miniature squads and the men on the sidelines are shouting encouragement between substitutions.
Trev is moving so fast that the ubiquitous Tourism New Zealand and Nike logos are a blur of white on his training kit.
Oliver wishes he could run down and join them, even leap onto Joe’s back and earn himself a booking for goalkeeper interference.
“Golden goal!” Willem announces from where he’s standing and watching at the edge of the pitch.
“Next one wins, gentlemen.” Everyone, save the ten lads in the fray, whoops and shouts.
Georgie digs out a challenge on Finn and scrambles up to pass to Leo.
Unexpectedly, Oliver finds himself calling out to him.
“Come on, take us home!” he yells, accidentally.
As if Leo’s heard him, he stumbles, startled, yet manages to keep the ball in his possession. He takes a sloppy extra touch, but regains control and suddenly whacks a sharp, hard shot with his left foot, right past Joe’s outstretched fingertips. The whole team erupts.
Glittery-eyed and open-mouthed with joy, Leo keeps running, turning a jubilant circle back toward the squad. He spots Oliver and points toward him gleefully, once, twice, thrice, like he’s dedicating the goal. Somewhat bashfully, Oliver returns the gesture with a bow.
Even Willem’s ending whistle somehow sounds pleased as punch.
· · ·
While the others finish slapping each other on the back and singing about needing a one dance (so badly it must be purposefully off-key), Oliver and the rest of the wayward injured orphans lounge around the sofas in the canteen.
Halfway through his second cup of tea, people start to trickle in, everyone appearing distinct for the first time all day in their street clothes and smelling of a hundred different colognes.
The sofa is full to bursting with Joe and Trevor shoving in alongside the three of them, but Oliver keeps his armrest open and waves Leo over so he can perch on the end, because he’s a nice lad and not a dickhead.
This is the first time he’s gotten a good look at Leo in repose, wearing beat-up black skinnies and an absurd, color-blocked windbreaker.
His damp curls and big jacket make him look tiny, and young, and much less threatening.
When Leo brings one leg into his chest, resting his chin on his knee, Oliver can see that someone’s drawn a little sunburst in black ink on the rubbery side of his shoe.
“What happens next?” Leo asks, more eager than anxious. Trevor speaks before Oliver can.
“Your guess is as good as ours,” he says. “Willem is a man of mystery.”
“And he grew up in The Hague, man,” Joe adds. “That’s where he’ll send us if we can’t hack it.”
“Stop it, we talked about this. You know The Hague is, like, a fully normal city,” Oliver tries to assure him, and himself as well. “This is just the first big break we’ve had with him around. Not sure how he’ll handle it.”
“Probably with sprinting drills,” Noah predicts gloomily.
“And heart rate monitoring,” Joe adds.
Leo has the look of someone whose own heart rate monitor would currently be beeping wildly.
Furtively, Oliver jabs him with his arm, just enough to make himself felt without disturbing Leo’s edge-of-the-couch balance.
They make tentative eye contact and, in the relative privacy between them, Leo gives him a look somewhere between a grin and a grimace.
They’re still pulling faces at each other when Willem clears his throat from behind them. The rest of the team is clearly already at attention, looking at the manager. Leo erupts in scarlet and Oliver’s sure he looks the same. Willem is as stoic as ever, not saying a thing about it.
“I won’t keep us,” de Boer tells the full group. “Only to say that this was a great session. We need to have more of them. You’re all very fit and you’ve been so for months. I want you to think of our next meeting in terms of refinement and commitment.”
There’s definitely going to be sprints, then. Or they’re bound for The Hague after all.
“What I mean,” their coach continues, “is that we have an opportunity to hone our techniques. For precision. And we have an opportunity to hone our connections. You will learn to trust yourselves and each other. For the rest of the season, I want you to be able to look at the man next to you, see him and acknowledge his strength, knowing he thinks the same of you.” Willem talks like a cult leader sometimes, but it also works.
Everyone is meeting his eyes with rapt focus, like he’s talking directly to them—Oliver included.
Leo’s forearm is radiating heat where it’s still making the lightest contact with Oliver’s own upper arm.
“We’ll go through the specifics during tomorrow’s session.
Also, we’ll only have morning training all week.
Light time in the gym. When we play Swansea, I want your legs fresh and your minds hungry. Have a good evening.”
The energy in the room is pleasantly sparking with electricity as Willem ambles off and everyone else makes moves toward departing.
Oliver is nobody’s private detective, but even he can sense what some of this spare time might be meant for.
He steels himself, then catches the sleeve of Leo’s jacket in his hand before he can stand up.
“Okay workout? You feel okay?” Oliver asks, inanely.
“I’m buzzing,” Leo says—and he looks it. He has such an expressive face, the kind that’s impossible to keep secrets with. Oliver surprises himself by smiling back.
“That’s how it’s meant to be,” he replies.
“Good on you. I know I’m missing your first couple go-rounds, but if you have questions, or you just want to talk, I’m here.
” The words feel weighty and clumsy in his mouth, but he finds that he means the offer genuinely.
Leo is wary, his eyebrows scrunching into two puffs.
Oliver goes for broke. “I’m sorry too, while we’re at it,” he confesses.
“I was upset about a lot of things the other day, not just you.”
“And you’re not upset now?”
“Not with you,” Oliver hedges.
Leo runs his index finger across his lower lip. Oliver dutifully maintains eye contact.
“Will you drive me home?” he asks. “I don’t have a car yet.”
Oliver flashes an affirmative thumbs-up.
“I can do that. Let’s go.” Leo gives him an address in Marylebone, just as close to Regent’s Park as his own home, only a little ways south.
The drive is short and silent—when he agreed, Oliver hadn’t considered how claustrophobic it would feel for them to cram into a sports car with only each other for company.
He responsibly keeps his eyes trained directly in front of him as they glide down the outer edge of the park and then across Baker Street, before Leo directs him to a side street and a chic building that might pass for a boutique hotel.
A shiny-capped doorman is holding the front door ajar for a man in a three-piece suit talking animatedly into an earpiece, displaying a polished marble lobby visible even from the car.
“You have expensive taste,” Oliver tells Leo, who blushes again.
“Give it a rest, I needed a quick lease. I’ve barely unpacked,” he replies. “I’m not fancy.” Oliver can’t really argue, what with his own almost-mansion.
“No one said that,” Oliver chides. “Not in that jacket. Expensive, maybe. Fancy, no.”
Leo’s mouth forms a moue, but jokingly—the pout doesn’t reach his eyes.
“You’re teasing me,” he says matter-of-factly. “Like friends do.” It lands with a wallop.
“Maybe we’re going to be friends, then,” Oliver suggests. They aren’t looking at each other, but he can feel the hot weight of Leo’s attention like a physical thing.
“I tried that already,” Leo reminds him. “Now it’s your turn.”
Oliver makes a concerted effort to turn his whole body, so that they’re facing each other over the center console the same way they did across the car park this morning.
“Fair play,” he says. “Should we shake on it?” Leo rolls his eyes and starts for the door handle, but for the second time in twenty minutes, Oliver grabs for his arm.
“I mean it,” he insists, sincerely. “You were right, before. We’re teammates.
No one could accuse me of being a mentor, but I’ll try that too, if you want. ”
Maddeningly, Leo leans into the touch, leaving Oliver gripping the muscle of his biceps and resisting the urge to squeeze.
“No one could accuse you of anything, Harris.” Leo puts his hand on top of Oliver’s to detach it from his arm, letting his forearm flop back into his own lap.
“Thanks for the ride. I’ll see you.” He closes the door and Oliver puts the car in gear, wondering if he’ll ever have an interaction with Leo that doesn’t leave him driving home in a fugue state afterward.
· · ·
The next few days are less emotionally charged, infrequently eventful.
Oliver gets his medical treatment but feels about the same, spins or swims till his mind goes blank, then freezes his arse off in the stands while everyone else does strange bonding activities.
They take Sunday off and that’s as close to normal as anything’s been in weeks.
Oliver shows off by making his mother a chicken korma before she brings him back down to earth when she mercilessly thrashes him at Scrabble, then lets him fall asleep on her sofa under the ancient wool afghan like he’s a teenager again.
You look like your dad, more and more every day, she tells him when they’re saying good night, and it’s more than they usually talk about him, and hearing it sounds like the highest compliment.
All the racking turbulence in his heart settles down to a gentler rocking motion, one that doesn’t make him nauseous.