22. 22

22

J ack rolled over and found Sean sitting up in bed, the white sheet and doona pooled around his waist, chest bare, eyes intent on his phone.

“What time is it?” he asked.

Sean twitched, glanced down at him. “Early,” he replied and went back to his phone, face pinched.

It was harder when Jack was barely awake to remember this Sean wasn’t his Sean, and he rolled closer, slung his arm over Sean’s hips and rested his head on his stomach. Sean tensed under him, then relaxed deliberately, a hand going into Jack’s hair tentatively before Jack could roll away.

He made himself relax as he remembered. His Sean would ditch the phone, would slide down and kiss him, grab his dick, push him onto his back and tell him they had plenty of time, tell him all the filthy things he was going to do to him in that time. Sean could still be a prickly bastard—closed off and snappish —but he made that wall come down for Jack with increasing frequency.

“What’re you looking at?” he mumbled even though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

“Hanny, new kid in Sydney, got medically retired,” Sean said, his hand scratching Jack’s scalp.

Jack frowned. Hanny was in his first season, third overall draft pick and he was living up to it.

“What happened?” Jack asked.

“Concussion,” Sean replied, “scans came back, small bleeds.”

Jack knew what that meant. He was a high risk for permanent brain injury.

“He got hit in that first game,” Sean went on and narrated the story he was reading. Jack didn’t follow the footy news like Sean did, so he didn’t know anything about it, and he was more interested in the tightness in Sean’s tone, the grip in Jack’s hair tightening with it.

It was silent for a while after Sean finished, just their breathing and Lola snoring softly at the end of the bed.

“It’s not the same,” Jack finally said because it wasn’t. Sean’s brain was perfectly healthy.

Sean grunted but didn’t say anything. Jack sat up. Sean let him go but his eyes followed him. It was there in his expression—he either already knew they were going to medically retire him or he was waiting for it with a certainty he hadn’t shared with Jack.

“I know,” he said though, unconvincingly. “But,” he took a deep breath, “how much you wanna bet they don’t wanna take the risk and end up getting sued down the line ‘cos my brain gets fucked up worse in a game. I got history, remember.”

Jack expected the line to be mean—it would’ve been three years ago, it would’ve been from the Sean who woke up in that hospital bed after the accident—but now it sounded like a simple reminder. As if Jack could ever forget. He’d been the one who’d hit him. Jack hadn’t even been aware of Sean ending up in hospital after the game because of it. But it was a stupid hit, one that Jack could’ve avoided if he wasn’t trying to show off, to be even rougher than usual as if to make up for what’d happened the night before. He’d tried to pull back at the last second when a shove from behind sealed the contact; but that was a poor excuse since he’d been in it until that moment and a push wouldn’t have been a problem if he hadn’t been. He hadn’t even known the damage he’d done until Sean had told him after they started fucking—he’d thought Sean had gone home early with his family. He’d seen him recovering on the bench, seen the ambulance drivers leave him to watch the fourth quarter from the sidelines and assumed it was a precaution. It’d been after, Sean had explained, when he vomited in the locker room, when everything went black, that he’d gone to hospital. And Jack had assumed he’d skipped the TAC Cup because some boys did, especially the country boys, and some of the Aboriginal kids routinely skipped it because they didn’t want to travel that far from home, got recruited through the Colts competitions in their home states instead. Eventually Sean had believed Jack didn’t know how bad it was, hadn’t known, and he saw his mortification at the texts he’d sent right after—Jack still couldn’t think about them without cringing.

“Let’s not worry until we have to,” Jack said now, dragging his knees up, the sheet like a tent over his legs, shielding him from Sean’s blame, which he was entitled to, but which Jack still struggled to face. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Sean snorted. “You got all that on a poster somewhere?”

“No,” Jack replied, eyes on his knees.

“I gotta take her,” Sean said and slid out of bed. Jack watched him, his bare ass and naked back, his black hair skirting his nape since he hadn’t cut it after the accident. As Sean strolled out of the room to his own room—the room Jack had hastily shifted his clothes and stuff into before bringing Sean back from the hospital, the room that’d always been a guest room—he ached for a morning after like before.

He couldn’t tell Sean the reason he wasn’t telling him what they were was because it’d break his fucking heart if Sean didn’t believe him, but it wasn’t just that. How did he tell him how they became more than lovers, became boyfriends, when the way it’d happened was like a threat? The memory of Sean telling him, “Ya better fuckin’ not be,” when Jack casually said he wasn’t fucking anyone else had made his heart soar, especially with how pissed Sean had sounded, but would Sean see it that way now? As a confirmation of them being together? Jack wasn’t sure.

“C’mon, girl, wanna go for a run?” Sean said from the doorway.

Lola sprang off the bed like she’d been electrocuted—one moment she was dozing, but at the sound of Sean’s voice and that word, she was launching herself into the air and onto the floor, whining, jumping up at him, her nails skittering around the floorboards as she raced past him to the door and then back again.

Sean laughed, his beautiful features lighting up in a way they never did for Jack anymore. Jack threw himself back on the bed and told himself not to be jealous of their fucking dog. He closed his eyes and listened for Sean’s footsteps but didn’t hear anything.

“You good?” Sean eventually asked. He was still in the doorway.

“Yeah?” Jack tilted his head down to focus on him.

“I meant,” Sean jerked his chin at Jack’s body. “After last night…”

“Oh, yeah, I mean,” Jack shrugged. “Used to it.”

Sean frowned, schooled that, shook his head and went to leave.

“You used a plug on me once,” Jack blurted and went instantly red.

Sean froze, turned back to him. “What?”

Jack sucked in a breath. Well, he was in it now, and Sean wanted to know stuff, so. “Yeah, you ah, ordered it online. Bye week. Wanted to keep me open.” He was scarlet, his voice about to give on each word, but he got it out there.

He chanced a look at Sean. His lips were parted, eyes wide.

“Fuckin’,” he stuttered, “really?”

“Yeah,” Jack nodded, as red now at the memory of how hot it was and at telling Sean about it. “We got a place in Gracetown for the week and ya know,” he tried to smile in a sexy way, but it felt too self-conscious, “we did. That. So like, what we did last night? I can handle it.”

Sean groaned and squeezed his dick. “Man, don’t give me a boner. I can’t reel ‘er back in now.”

Jack laughed, a low rumble deep in his chest. Lola was very good about not getting in the bed until they’d finished fucking, and she was great at jumping off if they started up in the night or in the morning, but there was no way she’d accept a reschedule on her run after it’d been initiated. She raced down the hall again, jumped up at Sean and tore off back towards the door.

Sean shook his head, but he was smiling, lighter than he’d been all morning. “We still got it?”

“Yeah,” Jack replied.

“When I get back,” Sean said, eyes heated. “Be ready.”

Jack groaned and reached down for his dick.

“Jesus,” Sean said before his feet padded down the hall, “I’m comin’, I’m comin’,” he said to Lola.

Well, it was a nice distraction, Jack thought as he gave himself a few necessary strokes over the covers before getting up and pulling down the box of toys he’d stashed at the back of their closet under a bunch of other boxes before he’d brought Sean home. If Sean had stumbled on that, there’s no way he would’ve been able to explain it to him—handcuffs, plugs, a vibrator—a small collection they’d only started working on last year.

In Jack’s mind, they’d been together for two years. He’d never asked Sean if he marked the day the same as Jack did, but before Sean got hurt, he was pretty sure that even if Sean didn’t, they’d made it to a place where it didn’t matter. They were together. Sean wanted to tell Ben, wanted to know if Jack was going to tell his sisters. It was Jack who was the hold out, not because he didn’t want people to know he was with Sean—hell, if it wasn’t for the football, he’d probably take his hand everywhere they went and let everyone come to the right conclusion. But he was a football player, and so was Sean, and he still had the fear, however residual, from when he was a kid about what that meant. He’d heard ‘faggot’ thrown around enough locker rooms to know exactly what that meant. He’d snapped, “Not cool,”—the most aggressive he’d ever been—when a few blokes talked shit about Finn after he got outed. And while he might be willing to go that far, he hadn’t been ready to be outside the privacy of him and Sean, to let Ben or his sisters look at him and know his secret.

Except all that had seemed fucking stupid, so miniscule and petty, under the fluorescents of the hospital waiting room when he’d thought Sean was going to die. If he could go back, he’d do a press conference like George did, he’d shout at people on the street and fucking dare them to tell him he was wrong to love the man he loved.

He thought the way they got together was romantic as shit, the night they’d made it official, but he wondered what Sean thought of it. Wondered a lot now at all the things he never thought to ask Sean about and now never could.

Like had Sean really meant it when he snapped at Jack after Jack asked him to move in with him? Jack figured they were together from the first night they’d hooked up, or at least hoped, had actually counted himself all in before that, and had already decided he wasn’t going to be looking elsewhere, as if he had since they were seventeen, as if any hook up had even come close to that kiss, the way it’d fizzed in his stomach and caused his heart to pound so loudly he’d been scared Sean could hear it.

They’d never put a label on it, so Jack wasn’t lying when he told Sean they weren’t lovers, but he knew he wasn’t telling the truth either. He reckoned Sean would have a few opinions on the fact they lived together in a shared bedroom and always had since they moved into this house.

He’d overheard Ben talking to Sean about the places he and Lara were looking at buying. He shot a look over to where they were sitting in front of their lockers, Ben telling Sean he was set on a place with a pool but not happy with the street as Sean nodded along beside him.

Jack had waited until the come was cooling on his stomach later that night, Sean’s arm flopped over his chest, rising and falling with Jack’s laboured breathing under the lamp in his bedroom in the little cottage he rented on the same street as Annie in East Fremantle before he’d asked, tentative but breathless, “Ben’s movin’ out?”

“Yeah,” Sean said on a breath. “Lease is up and Lara’s pregnant.”

Jack took a measured breath. “You’re movin’ out too?”

“Yeah,” Sean replied like he wasn’t really invested in the conversation. He’d rolled over, kissed a path up Jack’s rib cage, tickling him, making him shiver.

“I was thinkin’ of buying a place in Freo,” Jack said.

“Good for you,” Sean rubbed his face back and forth on Jack’s skin.

Jack took a deep breath and tried again. “Move in with me.”

Sean sat up. Jack risked a look at him. He was scowling, but that wasn’t all that was on his face; Jack had managed to surprise him.

“You can pick the place,” Jack said, unsure but honest anyway. “I reckon it’d be fun. To live… together.”

“Fun,” Sean said flatly, but there was still that look in his eyes, wide in the lamp light, something like hope.

“Yeah, like,” Jack rolled his shoulders back against the bed and tried to look nonchalant. “We should live together.”

“You mean as roommates,” Sean said, looking away, about to move back.

Jack grabbed his arm to hold him close. “No,” he swallowed, “I mean, we’ll have a lot of rooms, but like, we’d, you know, share?”

Sean snorted, but he was smiling. “Share a bedroom?”

Jack nodded, blushing. They were together. He was done. He was all Sean’s. Of course they should share a bedroom, share a bed.

Sean sobered, narrowed his eyes. “Fine.”

“Well, don’t sound too excited about it,” Jack said, trying to cover his excitement, his humiliation.

“I’m gettin’ my own place as well,” Sean said.

“Okay,” Jack’s heart sank.

“In case I need to get away from you,” Sean leaned down as he said it like he was about to kiss Jack.

“Okay,” Jack said softly.

“And I’m gettin’ a dog,” Sean went on.

“Whatever you want,” Jack said, distracted by Sean’s lips an inch from his.

“You don’t like dogs?” Sean narrowed his eyes.

“I love dogs,” Jack replied quickly

“You don’t want me to get my own place?”

Jack closed his eyes. “Do whatever you want, you always do.”

Sean kissed him, hard.

Later, Sean explained if he got his own place he’d have an investment, rent money, all very matter of fact and careful not to look at Jack when he said it. Jack took it to mean he really did want to move in with him, really did just want his own place for the financial reasons. And when they’d picked out this house, it’d been the way Sean had loved it that’d convinced Jack to buy it, knowing it was as much his place as it was Sean’s, hadn’t missed the way Sean’s explanations for rental income often slipped to “we”—“We’ll get rent,” “We’ll get an apartment, low maintenance.”

And when Sean brought Lola back from his hometown, a twelve-week-old puppy from a litter from a local farmer, he’d lifted her out of the box, handed her to Jack and said, “Lola, meet ya other dad, Jackie.”

Jack had taken her, his smile splitting his face as he looked from her to Sean; she was their dog, but she’d always be more Sean’s since he’d named her, explaining to Jack about the first time he heard that song, sitting in the back of the family’s old Commodore, his dad turning it up on the radio. He’d listened to the lyrics, slowly realising the dude was crooning about falling for a man. He’d flushed hot with fear and adrenaline, but he’d felt like he might be okay too. His smile had been fixed on Jack’s hands clasped around Lola’s body, an uncharacteristic nervousness about him as he recounted the memory.

“I love that song too,” Jack said, lifting Lola up in front of him, her sweet little puppy face already offset by those clever eyes. “Lola, it’s perfect.”

“Sweet,” Sean replied, his smile small but real.

From that first day, Sean took the lead in walking her, then running her, and she’d always go to Sean first, but in every other way, she was theirs.

Now, every time Sean referred to this place as Jack’s house, Jack’s dog, it set up an ache in his chest that grew until one day he was sure it would consume him—but how could he explain after he’d let it go on for so long? How could he pull it back in without undermining everything? But he’d tell him. Of course he would. It was time—they were inching back to something.

He turned the plug over in his hand and heat washed through him—desire, simple and pure. Maybe after. They always did manage to have their most important conversations in bed—in the dark, spent in the quiet aftermath, when it was easier to be brave.