23. 23

23

W anting to punch Jack was not a new sensation. But for Sean in the last few days, it’d become an all-consuming urge he hadn’t felt with the same intensity since Jack had reappeared in the locker room after getting his trade. Jack wasn’t doing anything, which was the problem. He kept looking at Sean like he was about to say something and the moment felt charged, both of them waiting, and then Jack would say something bland like, “Did you want to drive?” or, “Did you want everyone to come round for the off day?” or, “Do you want me to take her?” when Sean rubbed his leg in bed one morning.

What Sean wanted was for Jack to come out and say what he was clearly holding back behind his near perfect white teeth. He still had that little overlap with the front two, a distracting imperfection, and not something Sean was going to let distract him now. He’d thought after they fucked when he got back from taking Lola, Jack lubed and plugged up, blushing crimson as he waited for Sean in bed, naked chest heaving, dick hard and straining up against his taut stomach—Sean hadn’t even bothered to shower, had just ripped his clothes off and straddled him, coated him in his sweat as he teased Jack’s hole by dragging the plug in and out, fascinated, before it got too much and he’d got him on his hands and knees, covered his body with his own as he pushed inside, fucked him rough and deep, kissed his throat, his jaw, whispered against his ear about how filthy he was, open and waiting for Sean to come home, “Are you that desperate for me, Jackie?”

And yet, Jack was tense after. Braced like he needed to say something, like it was do or die in a final and he had to rise to the occasion. Sean caught his breath and waited too, suspended and desperate to hear it. But Jack rolled on top of him, buried his face against Sean’s throat and as Sean stroked his hair and stared at the ceiling, he felt bereft for the nameless thing he’d never get to hear.

Only, Jack kept doing it. Saying nothing while giving Sean a look like he was full of things to say.

They showered side by side in the locker room after training, steam billowing around them, Jack lathering up and washing perfunctorily, Sean doing the same. It was strange, showering next to Jack—that unspoken agreement to take opposite ends seemingly broken. Back then Jack had always taken the farthest from the door, Sean the nearest to the door, a stretch of shower heads and teammates always firmly between them.

The last thing he remembered before his accident was his surprise and rage at seeing that far shower occupied. Everyone else had left, so it was just him and Jack, and a row of empty shower heads stretched between them. He went back to that moment repeatedly, replaying it, thinking if he could just get past that last point he remembered—if he could push himself into the next moment, then he’d know what Jack wasn’t telling him.

He replayed it again now: seeing Jack there and getting on with it anyway. He’d known even without a small army of men between them, Jack wasn’t stupid enough to try and talk to him. He’d turned the water to hot, stepped under before it’d fully warmed , and hissed at the cold. It was the shock he needed, something to jolt him out of the depressive spiral he’d been sitting in since they’d trudged off the ground.

They hadn’t simply lost the game, they’d choked. From the first bounce, they were behind the play—couldn’t get a ball to land on a chest, couldn’t hold a tackle, couldn’t hit the middle of the posts on the few occasions it’d actually gone down their end. Sean had managed two goals, but that was shit for him. And he could admit Jack would’ve gotten a couple if he’d kicked to him when he was open, but Sean thought he had the shot too, and Jack had been struggling to find the middle after his injury, so it wasn’t the usual pettiness holding him back from kicking to him. Well, it was only a little bit of that.

The shower at the end turned off and Sean tensed. The warm water hit his shoulders, the back of his head, and he turned to put his back to the room. Jack’s feet slapped loudly on the tiles behind him. Sean held every muscle in his body rigid, waiting for him to pass. The feet came closer, would pass right by him and be gone and Sean would relax.

The feet stopped. Sean went so rigid, he felt like a snake reared up and coiled tight, one wrong move and he’d strike.

Jack sighed, gusty and loud behind him, almost as if he was about to fucking speak. But then, he didn’t. The feet moved on with a reluctant splashing on tiles, and then they were gone.

Sean exhaled, his body shaking. It still surprised him how much Jack could get to him. No one else made him so angry, so unsure of himself, so close to losing control.

He remembered he’d stayed in the shower for a long time. He remembered his hand turning the tap off, how swollen his eyes had felt, how the tears had washed away the worst of the disappointment, left tiredness in their wake. He remembered tying his towel in a loose knot around his waist and heading back out to get dressed, grateful to be alone with his red rimmed eyes.

Jack stood slowly when he walked in. He was dressed in his suit, his hair at that point of drying where it’d formed waves around his face. His eyes were hard when they met Sean’s, but they were scared too. Sean remembered that much.

“What the fuck you still doin’ here?” Sean asked, voice rough from crying and nowhere near as angry as he’d wanted to sound. He felt smaller than Jack—he was smaller, several inches in height and at least ten kilos in weight, but with Jack dressed in his suit, his dress shoes on, tie loose around his throat in a clumsy Windsor knot like he’d been tugging at it, next to that armour Sean felt as naked as he was save for the towel.

“I’m fucking sick of this,” Jack said. He squared his shoulders and his voice ricocheted around the empty room angrily, but there was a shakiness to it; as if he’d been rehearsing the words in his head and once they came out they’d fallen short of what he’d been hoping for.

Sean barked a humourless laugh and gave him his back as he went for his stall. He hoped it communicated how done he was with this conversation and how much he wanted Jack to leave. He didn’t think he would cry again, and he was grasping at anger to keep it at bay, but the sight of Jack shook him to his core normally, never mind when he was cut open like this.

“Don’t you have something to say to that?” Jack asked, a plaintive note in his voice. “I apologised for that shit when we were kids, Tony showed me the texts. You said it was done, but all season you’ve treated me like shit and I’m, I’m,” his voice failed him at the end and Sean’s body tensed, growing more infuriated the longer Jack went on.

He spun around, “You’re? You’re?” he mocked. “You’re fuckin’ what?”

“Fuckin’ sick of it!” Jack bellowed. His face was red, his eyes were wild, but almost as quickly, the heat went out of him as he stared at Sean. “Have you been crying?”

“What the fuck is it to you?” Sean yelled. He stepped closer, the rage taking over. “What the fuck is it to you?!” There was a hysterical note to his voice and for a moment he was scared of himself, of what he might do here. All those years of hating Jack roared to the surface, and he was unmoored with them.

“What the fuck is it to me?” Jack asked incredulously. “Are you fucking serious? We were gonna be best mates and then yeah, I fucked up, but it was fixed. And you still won’t even look at me.”

“I’m lookin’ at ya now,” Sean seethed and walked right up to him. Jack took an involuntary step back until his back was pressed against the locker. “And all I see is a trade that cost us a fuckin’ fortune and nothin’ to fuckin’ show for it.”

“Fuck you,” Jack said weakly, eyes blinking quickly as he looked down.

“Fuck me?” Sean hissed. He shoved his chest against Jack’s pristine white shirt. “You’d like that wouldn’t ya?”

Jack swallowed, eyes darting to the side.

“No,” Sean said slowly, something clicking. “That’s not what ya want, is it? Fuckin’ fag like you, ya wanna bend over, don’t ya?”

Jack recoiled at the word “fag”, but twitched as Sean finished.

“Don’t fucking, don’t fucking call me that,” Jack said breathlessly. He was bigger and Sean was looking up at him, but he felt it then—all the power he had over him , and in the midst of his rage, he felt a stab of tenderness; he remembered being seventeen and wanting to push Jack under him, to do it carefully, to make it good.

The memory made him angrier, the ball of hurt exploding out of his chest and suffusing his limbs.

“At least that’d make ya good for somethin’,” he shoved hard, Jack’s body crushed between his own and the locker. “‘Cos ya sure ain’t good for football.”

Tension snapped back into Jack’s body and he went to straighten up, tried to get away. “Fuck you,” he whispered, but his eyes had dropped to Sean’s lips.

Sean pulled back an inch, surprise and desire whipping through him, upending the anger. He looked to Jack’s lips, plush and parted, heaving with breath. He’d fake him out, he’d pretend to kiss him and then leave him hanging, the way he’d left Sean hanging all those years ago, and then he’d mock him until the end of time —

“You’re not worth it,” Jack had said, voice cracking.

And that was the last thing Sean remembered, no matter how much he tried to push past that point, he couldn’t see it. He’d wondered, almost desperately, if he’d followed through and they’d kissed. When Jack told him about the first time outside the club, he’d figured not. He’d surmised that altercation had either ended with Jack getting free and making a break for it, or Sean stepping back and leaving him to it. He’d wanted to know in the same way he wanted to know everything he’d lost. But he also didn’t want to know because if they had kissed and it hadn’t, as he sometimes let himself hope, turned into a real kiss, the disappointment he felt was like going back all over again, back to being seventeen and Jack pretending everything meant nothing. And if they’d kissed then, most importantly, who’d kissed who? Had he bridged that gap, or had Jack? It mattered in a way he couldn’t explain, but he knew it damn well mattered.

But now he had Jack holding all those answers away from him and a meeting with management to discuss his future. And all he could think was: if they say I’m done, I’m going home because I can’t do this anymore.