Matchday 33 #5
strangulation. He fucks up another shot, nearly missing the cue ball entirely, then clarifies. but not in a sexy way
kind of in a sexy way
Leo now seems to be having the best time of all of them, smiling devilishly down at his phone while Oliver shoots the worst round of billiards in Camden FC’s history. Joe is begging him to stop embarrassing them, to focus, but Oliver’s hands are clammy and useless, unless they’re touching Leo.
maybe so. but we live ten minutes apart, there’s no need for a text trail
you made the rules for scheduling, Leo replies.
The glass of water is going down like a shot of tequila. And if they don’t leave, right now, all his careful years of subterfuge will go down like the Titanic. Oliver puts out a distress signal:
I’m changing them. consider yourself irresistible and get out of here
Leo responds with a single smirking emoji, which hasn’t always seemed so coquettish to Oliver as it does now.
When he looks up, Oliver can see the live Leo making a big show of begging off, suddenly knackered while he shrugs into his denim jacket.
Maybe he’s more like DiCaprio than Messi after all.
Oliver forces himself to wait six whole minutes before he follows him.
He must have misread the room somehow; Oliver’s front steps are markedly empty when he comes jogging up the lane, ready to carry Leo over the threshold like a blushing bride and then follow said blush all the way down his body.
They’re supposed to be careful, yes, on account of the neighbors, but he didn’t quite intend for Leo to hide in the shrubbery.
??? Oliver texts, only slightly miffed that his grand entrance has gone awry.
His phone rings immediately.
“Where are you?” Leo asks.
“Standing in front of my front door, actually. Where are you?”
“Your door? Oliver!”
“Don’t ‘Oliver’ me! I live around the corner from the pub!” he objects.
“Exactly. Where it would be very easy to be seen,” Leo says, like he’s talking to someone incredibly slow. “I told the front desk my teammate would be coming by to drop off scouting reports and everything.”
Well, he’s got him there.
“Ten minutes, all right? I’m getting in the car right now.”
“I’ll give you eight,” Leo tells him archly as he hangs up on Oliver.
It takes him closer to fifteen, what with the parking and hoping the doorman doesn’t clock the fact that he’s showing up without any trace of a scouting tape.
In the mirrored doors of the elevator, Oliver’s fringe is askew like an old paintbrush, the green in his eyes almost entirely overtaken by black.
He looks rabid, starving. Thinking about what’s going to happen, what’s waiting for him upstairs, turns the whole metal box on its axis until his feet are resting comfortably on the ceiling.
There are still parts of Leo’s body he’s never touched, like the crevices behind his knees and the hollow of his belly button.
Oliver wants it all—consumingly, dangerously so.
Maybe that’s why he goes for the front door assuming it’ll be unlocked, like Leo will have read his thoughts and expedited the process for him, bringing them closer to the moment where they’ll get to have each other.
Maybe that’s also why Leo was waiting in the foyer, eyes up to the peephole, to pull it open for him.
Whatever it is, they go for the knob simultaneously and the door swings inward with full force, right into Leo’s face.
Leo makes a noise like a basset hound, between an argh and a howl, somewhat muffled by an ominous crack. Oliver was already seeing red with sheer desire, but now his vision is crimson from the steady stream of blood coming from Leo’s nose.
“Fuck!” Oliver shrieks, reaching instinctively for Leo’s chin, trying to get him upright so the bleeding will slow.
“Ow!” Leo yelps back. “Don’t touch it!”
“Sorry, sorry. We’ve just got to get your head up, to help with the bleeding.”
“You’re supposed to knock,” Leo says thickly, the p’s turning to b’s like he’s underwater.
“I didn’t know you were standing right there,” Oliver says, carefully groping across Leo’s cheek to feel for his nose as lightly as he can.
“I wanted to surprise you.”
“You did that and then some. Well done.” Leo hisses when Oliver makes contact but doesn’t push him away, screwing his eyes shut and breathing heavily out of his mouth. “Not broken, I don’t think,” Oliver concludes, gently twisting his nose ring back into place.
“How can you tell?” Leo asks.
“Mum’s a nurse. But I’m not, to be fair. I think you’ve got to go to the hospital and make sure I’m right.”
“Will you come with me?”
“I better not,” Oliver says reluctantly.
The thought of Leo in a hospital makes his stomach turn.
“Might look a bit dodgy.” Leo frowns as he nods, still covered in red.
Oliver hates the incursion of these stupid rules when Leo is hurt, in need of him.
For a split second he thinks of calling his mum, then puts that idea right back into a box.
“Give me your phone, let me call you a cab,” he says instead.
“Dodgy, right. They might ask who hit me,” Leo says impatiently, stepping away from Oliver taking out his own phone. “I’ll call the car. Don’t want it to be under your name. Should I plan on you being here when I get back?”
“Not in range of the door,” Oliver says gently. “But here, of course. Got to see our matching nose bumps, hey?”
“Sounds all right when you put it like that,” Leo admits, scrunching his face and wincing when the movement reaches his nose. “Okay, okay. See you.”
When the door swings shut behind him and he’s alone in Leo’s flat, allowed past the threshold for the first time, Oliver is overtaken by the urge to snoop, but finds it far less gratifying than what they were supposed to be doing.
He’s been in flats like this before, the starter place of a young man with cash to burn and a schedule that precludes hanging out at home.
It’s more charming on Leo than on anyone else.
Oliver follows his curiosity from the kitchen into the bedroom and finds the aftermath of a hasty cleanup.
It’s silly and slightly endearing to him, that the bed is half-made and there’s been a clear effort to stuff some of the strewn-about clothes back into the wardrobe.
On the nearly empty spare nightstand there’s a waiting glass of water set out like an offering.
Oliver can see the two of them together in this room, the way he’s starting to picture Leo popping up in every nook and cranny of his own house, making himself comfortable.
He likes the impossible image of it, despite knowing better.
Wherever they end up after this season, in Oliver’s imagination they might still be right here, in a flat in Marylebone.
When he turns back toward the main room, Oliver’s eye catches on the top of the low wooden dresser.
Sitting next to a clump of cologne bottles and sketchbooks and headbands, a pool ball is nestled among the chaos.
It could only have come from the pub, could only have come from tonight—when he brings a hand to it, it’s still warm to the touch like it was recently in a coat pocket.
It’s a solid: number 6, painted almost–Camden green.
He can also picture Leo lifting this, quietly ruining one of the lads’ games of pool, to take a token of the night, one bearing Oliver’s number.
His heartbeat reaches up past his throat, quickening on the back of his tongue.
He’s not sure if he was meant to see this, or if it was never meant for him to find.
Leo sends him a picture not long after—Oliver is still sitting on the edge of the bed, thumbing through drawings of skylines and football pitches and handsome faceless figures—he clearly jumped the queue to see a doctor so fast, and in a private room, no less.
Leo’s got on a bloody grin and some gauze stuffed up one nostril. He looks tired but relieved.
ok, dr. harris, you were right. no break. gotta tell anna for monitoring purposes but not “injured.” be back soon
So there won’t be any face masks or squad list announcements; Leo can play the next match.
Oliver gets to keep him, here in this bed and later on the pitch.
How Leo will explain this to Anna is another matter entirely, one Oliver is too exhausted to unpack or even worry about, going right in the box with the abandoned plan to call Nicola.
· · ·
Leo and his intact nose are of great use later, when Camden wins again, firmly lodged in fourth place and with another assist for Harris in the referee’s book.
Even after all the running, Oliver feels alight with the spring air.
It isn’t until he’s half back into his clothes that he remembers his plans for the evening and the associated, somewhat morbid occasion for them. It brings the mood down slightly.
No one is going out: the schedule has reached the end of season, the warm-weather fever pitch where they can’t drink beer and can only just catch their breath before it’s time to play again.
They’re driving to Stoke-on-Trent tomorrow evening to face Stoke City on Wednesday—Oliver can only keep track because he updates his Google calendar obsessively and because Sebastian and Willem spend every spare minute hammering tactical updates at them, sending scouting videos practically faster than they can be produced.
“I’m having dinner with my mum,” Oliver says out of one side of his mouth to Leo, loitering above his locker casually. “I’ll see you in Stoke?”
Leo nods and replies even more quietly, a tiny whispered “Miss you.” Oliver doesn’t say anything back, because if he does, he won’t be able to stop himself from admitting he’ll miss him too.
Only once he pulls up in front of the flat on his bike, muscles finally relaxing, does he fish out his phone to send a single text: save me a seat on the coach.