12. 12

12

F remantle made it to the final for the preseason cup and Sean muttered about how bad this was. Jack laughed brightly as he did his cooldown on the bike, Sean sitting beside him doing arm weights. His ribs were fully healed and he continued to relish in his ability to take full, deep breaths. Jack always took the bike near the weights so he could talk to him when they were in the gym, his sweaty face and neck glistening in the sunshine coming through the glass walls that overlooked the training oval. Sean had a superstition founded in fact about winning the preseason cup—win that, season is fucked.

“I dunno what you’re so happy about,” Sean grunted as he worked his biceps in tandem. “Ya know Melbourne are resting all their good players. So if we lose it, it’s gonna be even more embarrassing.”

Jack smiled down at him, his powerful thighs moving up and down at a quick pace, the sweat making his shorts bunch up around his groin. “Yeah, but the team’s really coming together and with you out, well,” he shrugged, “obviously it’d been a worry. Obviously.”

Sean didn’t think there was any point reiterating his position—Jack was choosing not to look at the fact none of the big teams were playing their top defenders, the guys Sean could shake off but Andy Long and Patrick Marley couldn’t. Long because he was young and hadn’t shaken the blows he’d taken playing with the big boys as well as he should’ve and tended to wear those early knocks as a tentativeness that infected his play. And Marley because while he was only a year older than them, he was so injury-prone he played as if the thought to protect himself was at the forefront of his mind even though he probably didn’t intend to. They could’ve played the Kelly brothers down in the pocket, played Tampu in the midfield, but Sean knew Campbell would rest them, would want to avoid risking injury before the actual season. Sean didn’t say all of this—Jack knew this. He was just choosing to ignore it because he was a selective optimist.

Besides, Jack seemed genuinely happy in a way he hadn’t in the month since the BBQ and that awful conversation. It hadn’t seemed so awful at the time, but as Sean turned it over in the days and weeks to follow, he felt something about it seeping into their interactions, creating a politeness between them. At least it looked like politeness, but was in fact a distance Jack hadn’t been putting between them until then. He still looked hopefully at Sean each morning, the remnants of a faith he’d see his Sean restored with daybreak, the careful way he buried it evident when Sean grunted good morning or shook his head slightly. And he’d begun to consider moving out again because it’d become unbearable.

But now Jack was smiling genuinely at him, his legs pumping, and Sean was grateful, more so than he could have anticipated.

“And I don’t reckon your superstition is founded in fact,” Jack was saying as he then went on to detail the winners as far back as 1989 and how well each team had done during the season, failing to mention that the loser in 1989—Geelong—also lost in the Grand Final. Sean said as much.

“Yeah, but they still made the Grand Final, didn’t they?” Jack replied with a grin, panting.

Sean decided to let him have it. He couldn’t see their team making the Grand Final that year, but Jack was adamant they’d make the eight and Sean wanted that too, even if he was looking at a year of sitting on the sidelines in a suit, getting increasingly restless at all the plays he’d make if he were on the ground, he was still happy for his team.

“You done?” Jack smiled down at him as he got off the bike.

“Yeah,” Sean replied and dropped the weights.

Jack held his hand down and Sean took it, let him pull him to his feet and reach for his crutches. Sean got himself adjusted, thought about how strong his right leg was getting, worried over how weak his left leg was, buried in plaster and doing nothing, a wasted limb that’d need months of work to restore. He waited for the platitude Jack would give him, like he could read Sean’s worries as if they were his own. But Jack didn’t, he just continued to smile like he hadn’t in months. It wasn’t completely unencumbered, the caution on the edges ever-present, but it was more open than it had been.

“I’m just gonna shower real quick,” he said. “Meet you in the canteen?”

“Yeah,” Sean replied, a little disarmed by that smile.

They did win the preseason cup. As Sean watched Jack crush Ben in a hug from his position on the bench under the bright lights of the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the crowd of eighty thousand cheering and clapping as if it were a game that mattered, he couldn’t help his blinding grin as he struggled to his feet and leaned on his crutches. He took the hugs from the guys beside him, readily agreed that this was awesome, what a game—three points in it at the final siren—and chose to ignore, as everyone else seemed to be doing, that Melbourne had rested their superstar, Lacy, and if he’d been on the ground then a loss could’ve been written in before the game even started. He looked over at the other interchange bench and saw the man himself, tattooed throat peeking out from under his suit, gap-toothed grin wide as he backslapped his teammates and no doubt told them they’d played well. The ruckman came over to him and Lacy’s grin widened as he gave him a hug, reached up and said something against his ear that made the big fella laugh. Lacy knew what this was as well as Sean did, but Fremantle took what they could get and Sean decided to let the win wash over him.

By the time they stumbled back into Jack’s house after the celebration in Melbourne, the flight home, the party at the clubhouse the following night with supporters who didn’t fly over for the game, Jack was drunk.

“I know it doesn’t matter,” he slurred for the umpteenth time as Sean watched him trying to fit the key into the door, the sound of Lola scratching and whining on the other side making Sean feel as impatient as she was, “but fuck, it feels good anyway, ya know?”

“Give me that,” Sean said and nudged him aside. “I know.”

He got them inside and Lola went berserk. They’d seen her when they came in that morning, but Jack said she always got more worked up after they’d been away for a game, took a few days to settle, to trust they weren’t going to leave her alone again with Jack’s niece, Helen’s eldest, Olivia, and her boyfriend, Nate. They were both eighteen and Sean asked if they ever threw parties while they were away and Jack laughed, telling him Olivia was even more of a nerd than Helen, her and the boyfriend studying medicine, but assured Sean that in between reading the piles of books they brought over they were very reliable dog walkers.

“Hey, girl,” Sean said as she jumped up his good leg before starting to do excited circles, then charging up and down the hallway. He chuckled at her, felt Jack at his back.

“Fuck, missed you out there,” Jack said as he slammed the door behind them.

“Ya said,” Sean glanced over his shoulder. Jack had also said this multiple times. He was finding painfully earnest drunk Jack less annoying than usual.

He felt Jack’s hands land on his waist and stuttered in his momentum down the hall.

“Nah, but like,” Jack pressed his front against Sean’s back, his fingers pressing indents into Sean’s hips. “I really fucking miss you.”

Jack was a head taller than him, but as he leaned down to nuzzle at the back of Sean’s neck, his beer breath fanning over Sean’s cheek, he felt like Jack was trying to make himself smaller. When Jack’s lips ghosted over his skin, Sean exhaled roughly.

“I miss you so fuckin’ much,” Jack said, the drunken exuberance washed away under the weighted ache in the words.

“I’m right here,” Sean managed after a beat.

“No, but,” Jack sighed and pressed his groin against Sean’s ass. “I miss you .”

Sean breathed steadily; he didn’t know what to say. Jack pushed closer, slid his hands around Sean’s waist and tugged him back against him, tucked his face into the crook of Sean’s neck.

“What do you want?” Sean asked, voice low.

“I want you.”

Sean wanted to say he was right here again, he wanted to tell Jack if he wanted to fuck around, they could fuck around, but it didn’t feel right. Because Jack wanted someone else and Sean wasn’t him. He wondered, as Jack moved his lips against his throat, what future Sean would do. Spin around and push Jack against the wall and kiss him? Take his hand and drag him to the bed and fuck him?

Lola charged back down the hallway, no doubt wondering where they were. Sean shook his head. He wasn’t the guy Jack wanted.

“Jack, c’mon, I reckon it’s time for bed,” he said.

“Yeah,” Jack breathed against his throat, rocked forward.

“Jesus,” Sean breathed out and tried to extricate himself.

Jack gave him room to move but didn’t let him go. Sean guided them through Jack’s open bedroom door, unsteady on his crutches as the bulk and long limbs of Jack tried to keep him close, tried to get his hands under Sean’s shirt.

“Okay, bed,” Sean huffed.

“Yeah, yes,” Jack moved back an inch and Sean listened to the sound of his belt unbuckling, the fabric of his pants being shoved down his legs, a thump and then another as his shoes came off, the soft sound of his buttons popping open on his shirt.

Then he was in front of Sean, his naked body catching the street light, and before Sean could draw breath, Jack was leaning down and kissing him, his hands coming around Sean’s head to cradle his skull as his tongue pushed into Sean’s mouth.

Sean gasped and tried to pull back. Jack groaned and moved more urgently. Sean couldn’t help responding; he returned the kiss with an intensity that shocked him.

Jack’s hands were on his shirt, unbuttoning him with clumsy fingers. He got halfway down before abandoning it and going for Sean’s pants.

Sean pulled back. “What’re you—”

“Please,” Jack said with that same desperate edge to his voice. He didn’t wait for an answer—he shoved Sean’s pants down and dropped to his knees.

Sean sucked in a breath. It was dark but with the street light and his eyes adjusted, he could see just fine—the muscled lines of Jack, naked at his feet. As Sean’s cock bobbed in front of his face, Jack wrapped his lips around him, sucked him down, eager from the booze, expert in the way he’d been before.

Sean was balancing precariously on his good leg, his armpits digging into his crutches and he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t fall.

“Bed,” he gasped out. “Bed.”

Jack released him and stood. For how drunk he was, he took exceptional care to get Sean onto his bed, get his shoes off, lay him out with his shirt still on, top half exposed and hanging off one shoulder. As Jack slid alongside his good side, Sean knew there was still time to stop this. But Jack met his eyes, searching for him again through the drunken haze, and Sean leaned up to kiss him so he didn’t have to look at that anymore.

Jack kissed him back like he he’d been waiting a lifetime to do it. He kissed him with a familiarity and force Sean could do nothing but answer, feeling that same intensity residing somewhere deep inside himself.

“I wanna,” Jack broke away and panted, his lips lingering, brushing Sean’s, “I wanna make you feel good,” he breathed against Sean’s lips.

Sean slipped his hand behind Jack’s head, gripped the strands of hair in a loose fist and pushed him down. Jack went.

When Jack took him back into his mouth, Sean bucked up into it with a groan. Jack pushed against Sean’s grip, testing him. Sean tightened his hold and Jack made a broken sound, muffled around the erection in his mouth.

“Shit, Jack,” Sean panted. The wet sounds of Jack’s mouth competed with the harsh pants from his nose, the rustle of the bedspread where he rolled his hips down.

Words swam into Sean’s mind, filthy words, demands and orders. He gasped as Jack swallowed around him, pressed his face against Sean’s groin. Sean held him there, turned on beyond his wildest fantasies at the feeling and the things he wanted to say—to tell Jack to take it, tell him he was a good boy, tell him he was made for this, made for sucking Sean’s dick.

“Fuck, I’m gonna,” he pushed up and held Jack there in the same breath as he started to come.

Jack moaned, long and reedy around him as he swallowed. Sean reached down and wrapped his hand around Jack’s throat, felt the muscles contracting and releasing. He squeezed and Jack whimpered, the sound smothered as he swallowed, his hips pumping faster. Sean panted and watched as he stuttered, his glutes bunching and releasing as his hips ground into the bedspread.

Sean watched the top of Jack’s head as he caught his breath, his hand caressed him as Jack pulled back slightly, his breaths still harsh as he lingered around Sean softening in his mouth. Sean wriggled, oversensitive, and Jack pulled off, sucked in a pull of air. He slumped against Sean’s hip, wrapping his arm around his waist. He must’ve been laying in a wet patch but didn’t seem inclined to move. Sean ran his fingers through his hair.

He wanted to ask about the words he’d held back, ask Jack if that’s what he meant about them doing it a certain way. He wanted to ask if Jack was okay, if he’d hurt him. He wanted to pull Jack up beside him and hold him, to make sure he was okay.

But what came out was, “I should probably go to bed.”

Jack tightened his grip; the movement felt more sober than he’d been all night. He rested his chin on Sean’s hip and looked up. Sean watched him. Their breaths were still audible, the glow from the lights outside lightening Jack’s face.

You usually…

Hold you .

“C’mere,” he said, voice horribly unsure, but Jack shuffled up the bed, slid his big body alongside Sean’s, slipped his arm over his chest and tucked his head under Sean’s armpit. He kissed the skin of Sean’s ribcage.

Sean dragged his arm down to pull him closer. It felt surreal, holding Jack Reaver in bed after Jack had sucked him off for the second time. He tried to lean down for the sheet and Jack tightened his hold like he was scared Sean was going to leave.

“Just tryin’ to get the sheet.” It was still hot, cooler in the house than outside, the kind of night when all you needed was a sheet.

Jack reached down for it and pulled it over them, pushing closer once they were covered, slinging a leg over Sean’s waist, his other leg a firm line pressed into Sean’s good side.

Sean felt pinned, but as he urged Jack closer with his arm and Jack sighed into it and clung, he felt settled. Jack’s breaths went even and deep and Sean watched the ceiling and thought that was pretty intense for fuck buddies. But he supposed he’d always been intense about Jack. He’d hated him with an intensity he’d never hated anyone after it all went to shit at the footy carnival; and he’d had good reason to hate a lot of people growing up black, had known racism, casual and explicit, as early as he’d known his own name, but he’d hated Jack far more than the people who’d refused to meet his eyes, the people who’d called him an ape and a black cunt. Those people didn’t matter, but Jack had. And now that intensity seemed to translate into the way they fucked. There was something cruel in the way they were doing it. Or at least, the possibility for it. And Jack seemed to love it. And Sean couldn’t deny that he loved it too. Creeping to the edge of viciousness, but never toppling over. But it felt like a lot more than fucking between buddies; it felt like they were trying to work something out, to say something. He just wasn’t sure what it was.

His hand ran up and down Jack’s back under the sheet. He’d never done this before—slept with someone in their bed after. There was an intimacy and trust to it he liked, but also didn’t understand. Not with Jack.

Lola padded in like she’d been wondering where he was. She saw him in the dark and jumped onto the bed, turned in a circle a few times before settling on his other side and going straight to sleep, like she’d done it a thousand times before, like this was the place she normally slept and things were finally making sense.

“Omelette with zucchini, mushroom and tomato,” Jack said as he placed the plate in front of Sean at the table. His face was red, his eyes down, his movements striving for normal, but skittish. He’d been like this since he dragged himself out of bed earlier, mumbling about crustiness in his pubes before seeming to remember himself, where he was and why he had dry come flaking on his skin.

Sean had huffed a laugh, more uncomfortable than real, but Jack was disappearing out the door, stumbling over their clothes and shoes strewn over the floor, head ducked as he muttered, “Shit.”

He hadn’t held eye contact since and he seemed to have turned permanently red, the blush rising up from his clavicles under the singlet, staining his neck crimson; his cheeks looked hot to touch.

Sean sat at the table instead of on the couch because he had a perverse urge to watch him. He felt off-balance and unsure too, but Jack was next level. He didn’t know what he’d expected when they woke up—Jack still wrapped around him, Sean’s arm holding him close—but he’d thought they’d at least acknowledge what had happened. Jack looked like he’d rather call a press conference and discuss their preliminary final loss, and Jack hated talking to the media and he hated losing that final; Sean remembered that much.

Jack took his time getting his oatmeal, fruit, and smoothie, and Sean waited.

“So,” Sean said when Jack finally sat, unable to put off sitting down to eat any longer.

“So, off day,” Jack said brightly.

Sean snorted. Alright, if that’s how he was going to play it.

Jack went on a monologue about his plans to get the outside ready for the patio renovation he was getting done and Sean grunted in acknowledgement in all the right places, wondered how they normally dealt with the mornings after. Not like this, he was pretty sure.

“Jack,” he said in a lull in the monologue.

“Shit,” Jack stood suddenly. “I better call the patio guys ‘cos we got training earlier this week and I don’t reckon Annie’s gonna be able to meet them.”

And then he was grabbing his phone and heading outside.

Sean frowned at him. Was he ashamed? The thought perplexed Sean, then made him feel ashamed. Had he done something wrong? And if he had, Jack should just nut up and tell him, not act like a tweaker, not avoid him.

He levered himself up and hopped back to his room. If Jack was going to avoid him, he’d just avoid him right back.

But he realised he’d need something to do after he sat down and he didn’t know where his phone was. He got up and hopped back out, saw Jack holding his phone near the kitchen island, tapping something out on it.

“What’re you doing?” Sean asked.

Jack jumped. “Nothing.” He flicked his eyes back to Sean’s phone, tapped something quickly and handed it over.

“What the fuck,” Sean said. “Are you lookin’ at my phone?”

“No,” Jack said vehemently, which was pretty rich since he was literally doing just that.

“It’s not what you think,” Jack said when Sean stared at him incredulously.

“What do I think?”

“That I’m like, invading your privacy. I’m not,” Jack shook the phone in Sean’s direction.

“Then what’re you doing?” Sean took it and looked down at it. He swiped it open and saw the notifications lighting up the various icons.

“Nothing you don’t want me to be doing,” Jack said.

Sean glanced up at him; Jack was finally making eye contact, an assurance to his posture that hadn’t been there all morning.

There was a stand-off, both of them staring for a beat, another beat.

“Do you do this a lot?” Sean asked. “What’re you looking for?”

Jack dropped his gaze and tapped his fingers on the bench. “People send you shit on your DMs. I delete it.”

Sean’s lips parted. Jack was thwarting people who might want to hook-up with him? And they weren’t together? And if they were, Jesus, jealous much? Sean couldn’t fathom it.

“You don’t want me to know if other people are tryin’ to hook-up with me?” he asked.

Jack gave him a surprised look, which morphed into a frown, but he buried that quick and said, “No, and it’s not like you’d hook-up with someone like that, come on.”

Sean didn’t like the dismissive tone, but before Jack could bolt outside again, he demanded, “Then what were you deleting?”

Jack exhaled and he looked like he really didn’t want to say what he was about to say. “Racist shit.”

It landed like a bomb between them and Sean felt the impact like he always did—the moment itself was always coated in thick disbelief, seeing those words on his screen, calling him the usual shit, some of it more creative than others—but it was the aftermath, when the dust settled, that was worse. It created a deep depression inside him and it’d last for days, weeks. Like no matter how well he played—in fact the better he played, the more shit he got—but no matter what he did, he’d still always need to be reminded of his Aboriginality, which meant he was therefore less, a second-class citizen.

He remembered a preseason trip the team took to Vietnam when Sean was in his second season, Hurley certain that if they saw how fearless the Viet Cong had been they’d be inspired. Sean had noticed the pride in the way the Vietnamese tour guide talked as he took them through the Cù Chi tunnels, a pride that extended to the population, an attitude of no fucks given for what these white people on this tour—and the blackfellas—thought of them. And he’d been struck by what an attitude looked like when you beat your invaders compared to when you lost. When you were still losing. There was no treaty, there was no end to this war, just the few of them who remained and tried to carve out a life where people tried to pretend you didn’t really exist, that all the problems you had were your own fault.

He hated getting those messages. Riding high on a win, only to open his phone to that shit. It had the power to devastate him, and he hated that more.

“Did I ask you to do that?” he asked, a bewildered embarrassment crawling under his skin. He didn’t want to be vulnerable about this in front of Jack.

“Kind of,” Jack replied carefully. “We never talked about it, we … I just started doing it and you,” he paused. Sean looked at him—he expected pity, he expected something other than the anger that took over Jack’s face, anger not directed at Sean. “You never said anything, never stopped me.”

“I know you do it, but?”

“Yeah, you know,” Jack nodded.

“Was there anything?”

“Sean …”

“Tell me.” Christ, he wasn’t even playing.

Jack sucked in a breath. “Yeah. I got rid of it.”

Sean dropped his phone to his side and tapped it against his good leg. “Okay,” he said after a moment and then went back to his room.

Dropping his phone on the bedside table, repulsed by it, scared of it, he lay back, rearranged his leg with several tugs and shifts, and stared at the ceiling. It was one of those old ceilings, back when people took ceilings seriously—ornamented flower patterns spun out in a spiral around the light fixture, a carving into plaster someone must’ve taken care to do, must’ve thought it wasn’t just a structure to hold up the roof, it was something someone might look at when they lay down, might take pleasure in. Someone thought that deeply about houses once, someone over a hundred years ago while his people were being hunted like dogs and herded onto missions, put in chains, jailed or shot or poisoned for taking a sheep when the whitefellas were shooting all the roos and fencing all their land, someone else was thinking about how important it was to make this ceiling beautiful.

“Hey,” Jack said from the doorway.

Sean cast his eyes down without moving his head. Jack came in, more calm in his movements than he had been all morning. He got on the bed on the other side of Sean, stretched out with an inch between them and sighed deeply into the stillness.

Lola’s nails skittered on the floorboards as she came down the hall, growing louder as she entered the room, her body landing with the slightest indent on the quilt. She curled into a ball at Sean’s feet and went to sleep.

“Don’t you have a bunch of shit to do for your precious patio?” Sean asked. He heard the snark and felt guilty—Jack didn’t do anything. But Jack didn’t get it either, he’d never get it.

Jack huffed, somewhere between a joyless laugh and a resigned sigh. “No, the workers will do most of it, I was just,” he waved his hand up, fingers fluttering at nothing, “bein’ weird.”

“You’re always bloody weird,” Sean replied.

Jack huffed a laugh then. “Yeah, according to you.” He was serious when he went on. “They’re fuckin’ assholes, Sean. They got no lives, they got nothin’ goin’ for them and so they wanna run you down. It’s got nothin’ to do with you .”

Sean scrubbed his hands over his face. He hated talking about this. The team mandated a sports psychologist for all the players. A lot of them got out of it, the blackfellas most of all since the team’s Aboriginal Liaison Officer would have a word if they said they didn’t want to talk to some white person about their problems. But he’d been forced to go in his first season after a coordinated attack happened to him and some of the other blackfellas from West Coast. She’d kept saying she understood. “ I understand. I know this is frustrating, but you have to talk about it .” But she didn’t understand, she couldn’t. He’d talked to his mum, his aunties, Jayden, the men’s group and the other brothers—they understood. And besides, it never affected his game, made him play even better—the ultimate fuck you—but he was loathe to listen to Jack tell him how to feel about it.

“You don’t—”

“Understand,” Jack finished before he could. “I know.”

Sean saw it then—they’d been through this—how many times? Jack said that with a weight like he really did get it.

He closed his eyes, wished he could call his mum and his eyes burned. He still couldn’t believe she was gone.

Jack’s hand came down and he slid his fingers between Sean’s. Sean jerked at the touch, but he didn’t pull away and neither did Jack; he swept his thumb up and down Sean’s knuckles and stayed quiet.

Sean breathed deep, desperate to get the impending tears under control. He swallowed a few times, blinked and the liquid spilled over, warm and quiet, but that was all.

He squeezed Jack’s hand and Jack tightened his hold in response.