Matchday 23 #4
“I’m not a miracle worker and I don’t like when my advice and my time aren’t taken seriously, Oliver.
” Her tone is clipped, harsher than he’s hardly ever heard it.
“If you want to spend the rest of the year limping and drinking, be my guest. But I expect this kind of idiocy from Georgie and Henri, not from you. I thought you would take things seriously, after the last year you’ve had. ”
Being mentioned alongside two people who have both been invited to appear on Love Island is about the same as if Anna had cursed at him or called him a dickhead. He is appropriately chagrined by the comparison.
“You’re right,” Oliver murmurs, contrition in his voice.
“I’ve been at sea. I’m working on it.” There’s been a lot swirling around his life and his head since that first week of the year, when he was panicked about his leg and nothing else.
The ache that came solely from his hamstring feels far away from the here and now.
Anna’s still miffed, but she brings her shoulders down from where they were tensely coiled up by her earlobes.
“Then drop an anchor, Oliver. Give me a chance to report some good news to Willem and get your act together,” she says, pulling off her rubber gloves and dropping them in the bin with finality. “Leg is moving along fine, in spite of you. Eight weeks maximum, probably less.”
Oliver can see the calendar for the rest of the season stretched out in front of him in his mind, everything he’s going to have to miss, the international break for England as well. But not the whole campaign. He could be back in time for matches, important ones too—Kilburn, United, maybe Arsenal.
“Would it help if I said I was sorry?” Oliver asks. There’s been a lot of that going around recently.
“You know what? I think it would,” Anna replies, and she even looks like she doesn’t want to kill him.
· · ·
When they dive into the pool for their post-training swim, it becomes immediately clear that Leo’s experience is much more of the sunbathing and sandcastle-building variety, not swimming laps.
He has just about the least efficient stroke Oliver’s ever seen, spinning his arms like a windmill but still mostly staying in one place.
“Quit laughing,” Leo says, forlorn, while he’s catching his breath at the wall. “I’m getting better!”
Oliver is still in stitches—he can’t help it. For all of Leo’s long, elegant strides on the pitch, right now he resembles nothing so much as a cat in the bath.
“Mate, it’s a low bar to clear,” Oliver says, trying to keep his voice from wavering with mirth. “How have you made it this far in life without drowning?”
“I’m just out of practice.” Leo’s tongue is poking out with concentration while he dog-paddles after Oliver.
“You’re trying too hard,” Oliver says, vaguely conscious of how ironic it is for him to tell anyone that as he treads water next to Leo and tries in vain to adjust his body position, one hand gently smoothing the line of his spine until he’s doing something that approximates floating.
“Don’t fight the water, you’re not going to win.
You’ve got to work with it. And you’ve got to get your face wet eventually. ”
Leo is embarrassed but intent, kicking away madly like he’s driving a getaway car, much more comfortably than he was a moment ago.
Oliver chases after him, lungs burning, the water taking all the impact off his left leg and letting him move at the kind of brisk pace he’s accustomed to on land.
They settle into a nice equilibrium, back and forth like a clock pendulum, surrounded by damp chlorinated air and the echoey sound of water lapping against the pool deck.
Oliver loves to swim almost as much as he loves being good at something, and he shows off, just a little, flipping neatly to push off the wall and letting the power of his stroke carry him up the lane.
“I’m Oliver Harris,” Leo says, once he’s fully given up trying and pulled himself up to sit on the ledge of the pool, catching his breath and watching Oliver finish his workout. “It’s nothing personal, I’m just better than everyone at everything. Oh no, there’s no need to clap.”
“You did suggest this,” Oliver reminds him, reaching down to scoop a handful of water and sending it directly toward Leo’s head. “Set yourself right up, is what you did.”
“It’s fun to try new things,” Leo sniffs. “You just make everything a competition.”
“You have no idea,” he says. “Didn’t you ever wonder why I’m not allowed at poker night?”
Leo snorts, kicking his own wave of water back at Oliver.
“I’ve always thought you have, like, the most prickly, old-man vibes—” He laughs at his own description. “Now I realize it’s, like, no, he’s just pretending to be so nobody realizes he’s a fucking madman.”
It’s not exactly what Oliver’s pretending, but it’s a surprisingly good read. He throws his hands up in defeat, laughing at himself too.
“And you should be glad of it,” he warns Leo, taking the offered hand to help him up and out of the pool, shivering at the cold air and their nearly naked touching.
“I’m keeping everyone out of trouble.” And Oliver means it—he does feel like he could easily get them both into trouble, when he looks at Leo shirtless and wet and laughing.
He might have played things a bit differently, that first day in the plunge pool, if he’d known it could be like this.
“You’ve thoroughly worn me out. And I’m starved. Do you want to come over for some dinner? I’ve mapped it, mine is technically closer,” Leo asks as they walk back toward the locker room. “I, ah, have no food, but I can get takeaway.”
Oliver hesitates for a moment, running the internal calculus of what the best, most normal answer is.
“When I’m healthy, maybe,” he replies. The idea of being in Leo’s home, just the two of them sharing a meal, makes his insides squirm in a way that says, Crossing a line.
You want it too much. They’ve spent all day together, more time than the rest of their teammates.
If he gets anything more, he’ll stop remembering where his limits are.
He wants to wear Leo out doing something else besides swimming laps—something he’s absolutely forbidden himself from thinking about.
“Can’t be eating that way without running it off. ”
“Maybe I’ll come to yours another time, then,” Leo says easily, pulling his clothes back on over his suit. He has an uncommon ability to process rejection well, by simply breezing right past it without acknowledgment. “You can make us a salad.”
Oliver half-laughs, slightly nervous, as he slips away to shower and waves goodbye. He’s both relieved and disappointed that Leo doesn’t follow him.