Matchday 21 #3
The picture isn’t at all what he expected, not a shot from training, nor a snap he doesn’t remember from their trip to the pub last weekend.
It’s an underlit mural on a brick wall, and the swirl of colors reveals a portrait of Oliver himself.
It’s blocky, somewhat cartoonish, but it takes his breath away.
The man in the portrait is standing tall, one foot on a ball, pointing out onto the horizon before a free kick: a cartographer reaching for unmapped land.
Somehow the artist has captured the green of his eyes and the determined set of his mouth, the way his hair curls up at the ends over the nape of his neck when it needs a trim.
Instead of a pitch, they’ve painted roses all around Oliver’s feet.
His body is drawn long-limbed and strong; he looks immovable, maybe even noble.
And there, in typewriter black script next to his head, they’ve tagged the piece We’ll always have Harris, like he’s Humphrey fucking Bogart.
Leo’s caption reads loving life back in london.
camden street art > national gallery. Already, Trevor’s commented we dem BOYZ and Anthony’s left a stream of arm-flexing emojis.
Something inexplicable is happening in Oliver’s heart; it’s being squeezed in a vice, in danger of bursting open.
He wants to know who sees him in that golden light, enough to paint it, larger than life on the side of a building.
For a split second of insanity he considers that Leo could have done it himself, like the sun he drew on his shoe—but that’s impossible.
Oliver does wonder how on earth Leo found it, if he sees Oliver the same way the artist did.
Some amount of this is visible in his real-life face; Maggie is over his shoulder and stealing a glance at his phone before he can lock the screen.
“Oh!” she gasps. “Where is this?” Oliver hands her the phone so she can see for herself, and she immediately twists into a smile of wicked delight.
“Would you look at that,” she says, pinching at the screen to zoom in on the photo.
“You’ve got an admirer. And I don’t mean the artist.” He shrugs and snatches his phone back, embarrassed and gratified and certainly not interested in discussing it.
Maggie lets it go and returns to her sauce, but he knows her silence means the discussion is merely postponed, not avoided.
Oliver goes back through the last ten, fifteen conversations he’s had with her in his mind to try to tabulate how many times he’s mentioned Leo and what the ratio of complaints to compliments nets out as.
Maggie waits until he’s shoved about twenty tubes of rigatoni into his mouth to pounce on him.
“You should thank him for finding it. And you should try to find out who the painter is so you can buy them a drink. But really, you should thank Leo. That was very sweet of him.” The brilliance of Maggie is that she never tells Oliver what to do, only what he ought to do, and she always lays it out in such a way that if he doesn’t listen it’ll reflect poorly on him: the most elegant of traps.
Even if he wanted to try to worm his way out of it, his mouth is full and the moment for rebellion will pass before he can swallow.
He really should thank Leo—he gives her a resigned thumbs-up. Oliver doesn’t go so far as permitting her to read the text that he crafts over fifteen minutes and a glass of wine, but he does send it before he leaves her place and doesn’t wait until right before bed.
Leo writes back just as Oliver is messily unfolding himself from a cab, right leg first to take the weight off his injury.
Too good not to post! I love that kind of thing, Leo says, then: Willem told me after training I’m not in the squad for Saturday, was feeling grim. Went out for a walk to clear my head and ran into you. Nice omen!
Be patient, Oliver tells him, typing one-handed while he braces himself on the fence post to get up the front stairs. It’s coming. If you want, we can train on Saturday instead. Have the crossing to ourselves?
Instantaneously, Leo sends back a praying-hands emoji. When Oliver checks his phone again as he unlocks his front door, there’s another reply: That’s aces. You’re on
· · ·
The remainder of the week feels every inch of midseason monotony, and not just from the constant, dull pain in his left thigh.
Oliver wakes up, he pounds down a coffee and something caloric, he goes to Camden Crossing, he works himself as close to the bone as he’s allowed, finding the midpoint between exertion and agony, then he comes home, he eats again, he crashes into a dreamless sleep.
These parts of the winter are always like this.
Without a midweek fixture or upcoming travel to break things up, he sinks beneath the waterline of his routine and will only resurface the next time he toes the line at Regent Road.
Saturday does come eventually, though, and Oliver sends the lads his well-wishes before he drives down to the Crossing.
Leo is waiting outside, loitering by the doors like he was before his first training session.
The tension of that meeting is gone now—Leo is all loose-limbed and casual, leaning up against the brick wall in running shorts and a hoodie.
“You’re going to freeze,” Oliver tells him as he opens the door. “Why didn’t you just go in?”
Leo looks embarrassed.
“I didn’t know if this was some kind of secret practice.”
“If I was going to try to get you in trouble, I would’ve been much cleverer about it,” Oliver sniffs as they make their way through the hall and down the back stairs to the pitch.
The sun is dipping down under the skyline, drenching the field in a warm red glow.
A few people are lingering at work through the match, their office lights casting a dappled, lantern effect.
It’s the perfect time and place to play.
Regent Road might feel like magic, but Camden Crossing has its own alluring spell on this sort of evening.
It reminds Oliver of being five years old, when he could run circles around his parents in the courtyard of Nan and Grandpa’s flat for a thousand years without getting tired, back when Dad was just starting to be tired all the time.
Leo has a grin on that splits his whole face in two.
“Your call,” Leo says to Oliver, tossing the ball he snagged from somewhere over to him.
“What if I said to run laps?” Oliver asks, partly because he’s curious and partly, he can’t help it, to be mean.
“I’d listen.” Without missing a beat, Leo starts jogging away down the sideline. Some kind of topsy-turvy feeling rushes through Oliver’s abdomen, his worst instincts almost taking over when he thinks about all the things he could tell him to do.
“I’m kidding, I’m actually kidding,” Oliver calls out, regaining control of his senses. “Come back!”
Leo decelerates and loops back toward him, beaming.
“I probably only would’ve done one,” he says. Oliver rolls his eyes and gestures him over.
“Let’s just play. But go easy on me, I’m frail.”
Leo nudges the ball away from Oliver and to his own feet, arcing it up in a neat swoop and beginning a series of keepie-uppies, each one more elaborate than the last.
“I’m not about to get sent back to Spain for reinjuring you! I’m staying away.”
Oliver stalks toward him, gingerly using his right leg to poke the ball free. Leo skips forward and takes it right back, backpedaling until he’s a body length away.
“I mean it!” Leo says. “Don’t come any closer.”
“Remember thirty seconds ago, when you said, ‘Your call’?” Oliver reminds him. “You’re all bluff. I’ll send you some passes, show me a one-touch shot.”
Leo, again, listens to him. It’s an easy rhythm, no different than the game Sebastian made them play a few weeks back.
Oliver kicks the ball without force, using his right leg, trying different angles and paces from twenty or so yards out as Leo runs at them full tilt, then sends them on toward goal.
It’s a shadow of the real thing without a keeper, but the energy ramps up, Oliver getting trickier with his passes and Leo meeting each of them like they’re at the end of a crucial match.
Time slips away from both of them. When you really love football, the game encloses itself around you like a physical thing. It’s self-contained and self-sustained.
Oliver could do this without a trace of boredom until he keels over.
It’s a revelation, playing with someone who feels it too.
Every new shot is a surprise and delight, every new pass an opportunity to discover something that’s not been done before.
He can see every thought Leo’s having on his calf muscles and in the slant of his body; it’s like they’re having a conversation. God, it’s so fucking fun.
“How have we never done this before?” Oliver asks. “You’ve got a hell of a left foot.”
“You were always too good for me, Harris,” Leo pants, catching his breath.
“It’s taken me this long to catch up.” Then he goes back to running; he moves with an uncannily fierce connection with the ball, accelerating without it ever straying from the inside of his left foot.
The movements are so precise as to be almost delicate; combined with his slight frame, he might be dancing, twirling all across a grassy stage.
Oliver is an elegant, composed player—but he’s certain he doesn’t look like this when he runs.
It’s been dark for hours when it finally occurs to them to check the score of the match.
Camden’s won it, one-nil from a free kick by Emmanuel.
Oliver pulls up the larger table of all the day’s scores, and there it is: the team is sitting in fifth place.
He pumps his fist, euphoric and awash with adrenaline.
Standing next to him, panting and sweat-soaked, Leo holds up his phone too, open to a message thread.
Sitting there on the screen is a note from Willem.