29. 29

The team managed to scrape into the final eight at the end of August. Sean couldn’t believe it—he was stoked for them, especially for the younger blokes who’d made it their mission to do this for Sean, for his last season. No one came out and said that, but he knew the rumours were alive and well, saw it in their anxious faces every time he trained with them in a no-contact vest. And while Sean hadn’t signed anything yet, he had started to pack some of his shit into boxes, talked to a real estate agent about putting the North Freo place on the market, got Jayden to send him listings of places back home. Jack had taken to looking like someone had died, and home was a miserable place to be. But they were having a dinner that night to celebrate making the eight and, though neither of them would say it, it was a goodbye too. Because Sean would sign the medical retirement forms and he would leave once the team got knocked out, which would probably happen in the first final.

He’d lain awake in his own bed the night before for a long time, fighting against the feeling he was doing the wrong thing. Even though it seemed like the only thing he could logically do. Him and Jack weren’t together, so what was he staying for?

He didn’t remember falling asleep, but when he woke up, he blinked his eyes against the first of the light seeping under the bottom of the blind and wondered how he’d managed to sleep at all. He heard the back door slide open, slide closed, the distant sound of Jack outside, murmuring to Lola, the BBQ lid creaking open, the light sound of his laughter as the toy thumped on the stretch of lawn.

A feeling so familiar washed over him with that laugh, an image of Jack’s face looking at him after Sean said, “Ya better fuckin’ not be,” and Jack’s laughter turning into a grin. Jack had said, “Well, I’m not fuckin’ anybody else, so.” And Sean had snapped at him; he’d been jealous, possessive. It hadn’t been just fucking, not ever.

Sean sat up quickly, like his movement could chase the memory. His mind flicked back to the locker room, to Jack pressed against the locker, Sean’s chest against his. He sucked in a breath as he saw himself looking at Jack’s lips, remembered Jack’s voice breaking as he said, “You’re not worth it,” and then he saw what happened next: he darted his gaze up to Jack’s eyes—Jack had looked scared, the anger disappearing for a second and his voice was unbearably unsure when he whispered, “Sean?”

“Yeah?” Sean had replied gruffly, his eyes darting back to Jack’s lips.

Sean remembered wetting his own, pushing forward, his heart hammering as he kissed him, nothing fake about it. The adrenaline surged through him, waiting for Jack to shove him off, but Jack sagged back and let Sean kiss him, kissed him back. Sean could feel the memory of his hands sliding into his hair to pull him close, the rush of arousal when their tongues met.

It was Sean who’d pulled back, startled. He’d stepped away and they’d stared at each other, blinking. Jack’s chest had been heaving and he was still slumped against the locker, shirt creased, tie askew and hair mussed from Sean’s hands. Sean had wanted to kiss him again, but he’d turned away, shocked and embarrassed. His hands shook as he reached for his clothes; he could hear Jack breathing behind him.

“Sean?” Jack asked hopefully.

Sean shuddered. He’d yanked his boxers on, his pants, kept his back to him. He wanted to go to him, do it again, to take him home and do a lot more, but the awful memory of Jack’s seventeen-year-old voice, “ It’s just like a joke, right? Just messin’ around. I’m not, I’m not like that ”—those words were scorched into his brain even though he’d been trying to forget them for years. It was those words that made him say, “Just go home.” He listened fearfully to the long pause when Jack didn’t move or say anything from behind him.

But he had left. He hadn’t said anything. Sean had sat on the bench with his head in his hands for a long time afterwards. It’d taken him a week to finally message. He’d written and erased several messages, but it’d been the thirst traps that’d eventually sent him over the edge. He’d wondered who Jack was fucking. He’d hated thinking about it. He’d decided to call him out on it. But Jack, insufferably earnest, didn’t take it like that and Sean remembered why he’d liked him all those years ago; and he started to let the boy he’d met back in, too curious about the man he’d become to let it go.

He threw the blanket off and started dressing quickly. His mind felt like a building that’d been detonated and he was watching the floors crash down in slow motion, each crumbling level another memory. Following Jack out of the club, seething and turned on and unable to control himself anymore—the fire ignited inside him by that kiss finally too great to ignore. Fucking Jack that night for the first time, the exact moment he’d realised Jack wasn’t just letting him be the one to fuck him, Jack wanted to get fucked. Jack had told him the truth—they didn’t manage to get their shoes off, there was nothing romantic about it, but there was something in it, even back then.

He saw it again now, brilliantly alive in his memory—pushing Jack’s pants down roughly, crowding over his back on Jack’s bed, spitting into his hand to lubricate Jack’s hole, the way Jack shuddered and gasped helplessly against the bedspread. Sean had gripped his hip tightly as he leaned over to the bedside table and pumped some moisturiser into his hand, fingered it into him. Jack never said a word, but he pushed back against his hand, rode his fingers; Sean remembered the harsh sound of his breathing against the bedspread, the way he’d tried to spread his legs wider when Sean lined up to push inside. Sean felt like he’d been sucker-punched, overwhelmed by how Jack was not only letting him do it, but begging for it in the way he arched his back, in the way he relaxed as he let Sean in with a gasp that turned into a smothered moan, rocked into his thrusts with these little broken sounds that tugged at Sean’s heart, burned themselves into Sean’s chest.

The hit on Jay Cully cascaded through his mind as he yanked his shirt on; he’d been so terrified for Jack he could barely function in that game. All he could see was Jack’s big body reduced to laying prone in bed, the black smudges under his eyes after a week of saying he was so tired, he felt stiff, he felt sick. Sean had eventually ignored Harris and the training staff telling him it was just the recovery; he’d smashed the button on his phone to end a call with Harris with a “Fuck this,” before hauling Jack out of bed and taking him to hospital late at night.

He’d been there when they diagnosed him with osteomyelitis—a bone infection contracted during the surgery for the knee reconstruction—and he’d been there every day while he did a round of antibiotics in hospital, remembered gruffly telling Jack to “stop being fucking stupid” when Jack confided his fears that this was it, his career was over and he wasn’t going to be able to walk again.

He’d taken him home, looked after him through another round of intravenous antibiotics at home because he still wasn’t getting better. And Sean had to leave him to play in a Western Derby, had to get on the field and be Sean Hiller, had to stop thinking about how he was as fucking shit-scared as Jack was. So when Cully gave him a weak chirp over missing a shot on goal, he’d driven all his fear and anger into Cully’s chest with a crack of his elbow.

He went into the hall and saw all the places where Jack had taken down the pictures of them—photos from BBQs and dinners and the photo of them cuddled on the couch with Lola when she was a puppy. A photo from Gracetown on the beach, Jack in his wetsuit with the top half off, hanging loose around his bare waist, Sean in his trackies and hoodie with his arm snug around Jack’s waist—he’d put his phone on the rocks to get the shot, and Jack was laughing in the photo because Sean had reiterated how he was the smart one to not be surfing in shark-infested waters in the dead of winter.

He looked at the blank space missing the blown up photo of a curry—the dinner Sean had cooked for Jack the first night in their house; he’d whipped out a container of Keens curry and told Jack he’d be cooking him a meal to christen their kitchen. He remembered Jack’s delight when he took the photo, framed it and put it on the wall, of how it had delighted him that Jack wanted a photo of a stupid meal he’d made up on the wall, which always led him to thinking about how they christened the new bed, the memory of Jack’s flushed face against the sheets as Sean tried to show him how soft he was for him for wanting to capture those memories. He remembered wondering if he was succeeding.

As he passed the calendar, he realised Jack had changed it—this one was clean save for games and Lola’s stuff, but their calendar had had dates circled with stars and Jack’s clumsily drawn fireworks. Sean had snorted a laugh when Jack told him it was for their days off, and when Sean got the innuendo, he hustled him into their room to “show him some damn fireworks,” and Jack had snickered, pleased with himself. Their calendar had both their birthdays (with more fireworks), the Bali trip (lots of fireworks), and asterisks drawn by Jack for the nights they had dinner plans.

Then he saw Jack’s nervous face flash in his mind when he’d caught Sean in the garage after the game and asked him to get dinner. The moment Sean realised what he was really asking and the fluttering of nerves in his own stomach because he wanted that too. That night in bed when Sean told him about the hit and Jack’s horror—he hadn’t known.

Oh God, Sean thought now as he went through the living room. Jack had never known. He’d worn that guilt and horror for weeks, no matter how many times Sean told him it was fine, he was just one to hold one hell of a grudge, they were kids and if Jack hadn’t meant it, had never known Sean ended up in hospital, missed the TAC Cup because the concussion symptoms plagued him for months—and Sean believed him, Jack was not that good of an actor—then there was no harm, no foul.

Jack explaining his shame and regret for taking the fall for his friend, for mistakenly thinking Sean knew about it and hated him for it and forcing him to live it. And Sean understanding in the stilted space of Jack’s explanations while they lay in bed in the dark how it’d gone down—those feelings when you’re young and everything feels magnified, like the end of the world, Jack making a bad call based on a rule he’d set for himself, ‘always stick up for your mates,’ and not knowing how to do anything else even when doing it absolutely repulsed him.

And Jack telling him that kiss when they were seventeen had been real, that kiss had been something he’d thought about every day for years, that he’d been stupid and scared and thought he could make it up to him except Sean stopped talking to him. The way he’d said, “Remember when we kissed when we were like, at that carnival?” his hand slipping down to hold Sean’s in the darkness of his bedroom in the old cottage he lived in on Annie’s street.

“Yeah,” Sean had replied, tensing.

“I fucked up,” Jack said quickly.

Sean was already getting ready to get out of bed.

“It wasn’t a joke, it was never a joke. I was, I was…”

Sean had gone still. “You were?” he’d asked carefully.

“So fuckin’ into it,” Jack said on a heartfelt breath.

Sean remembered exhaling roughly, his words coming with it, “Me too. Fuck man, me too.”

Jack gripped his hand tightly. “I’m so sorry I acted the way I did, I really fucked it up.”

“I kinda wanted to punch you,” Sean replied and squeezed his hand. He took a deep breath. “It’s why I’ve always kinda wanted to punch you.”

“You should’ve,” Jack replied and rolled closer. “I woulda deserved it.”

“Nah,” Sean replied and loosened his grip so he could stroke his knuckles with his thumb. “I couldn’t bring myself to mess up that pretty face.”

Jack had laughed and Sean had tugged him in until he was wrapped around him.

He saw Jack now outside by the BBQ, half-heartedly cleaning it with a spatula, and he saw now what he hadn’t been able to see for months—the tightness in his shoulders, the tension on his face, the paleness of his skin and the shadows under his eyes. He was hit then with the memory of Jack showing him this house—their house—his smile, so sure, because he knew Sean would like it, the way that smile had widened when he showed him their bedroom, waved his hand around and mumbled about a four-poster bed for “stuff we could do,” his face bright red.

And Sean loved him. In that moment, he couldn’t remember being happier—he was moving in with his boyfriend, they were going to share a room, a bed, get a dog. It’d been early days, but he’d known it was a forever kind of love.

But they’d never talked about it again beyond that first time on the beach because Sean thought they both knew. But maybe Jack didn’t know.

He slid the door open.

“Jack,” he said.

Jack turned to him and Sean saw it in high definition then—the tightness was around Jack’s eyes, the tension was in every line of his body; he’d been so good to Sean and he’d been alone in it.

“Jack, it’s me,” Sean said and walked the few steps to him.

“Sean?” Jack asked, hopeful but unbearably unsure too.

“It’s me,” Sean said again, face splitting into a grin that felt soft too. The same soft look he’d developed only for Jack.

Jack’s face crumbled and he dropped the spatula. Sean caught him up in a hug as Jack began to shake and tears fell from his eyes.

“Ya did so good. It’s me, it’s me,” Sean murmured and gripped him tightly.

Jack pressed his face into the crook of his neck, his tears wetting Sean’s skin, his arms crushing Sean against him.

“I missed you so much,” Jack said against Sean’s throat, voice thick with tears.

Sean squeezed him as hard as he could because he didn’t have the words—now he had him back, he realised if he’d known what was there to miss, he’d have missed him too.

“It’s okay, I’m back,” he said and pressed a kiss to the top of Jack’s head. “‘M not goin’ anywhere.”

And Jack cried harder. Sean huffed a laugh, but he pressed more kisses to Jack’s hair, to the shell of his ear and murmured how good he was, how he took such good care of him, how Sean wasn’t going to leave.

Jack pulled back, eyes bloodshot and bleary with tears, but his smile was the real one Sean remembered.

“You said we were never lovers,” Sean said to him as he thumbed the tears away from Jack’s cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” Jack replied, his hands pulling Sean close like he was afraid he would leave.

Sean smiled up at him. “I wouldn’t have believed you.”

Jack dropped his gaze and nodded.

“And that woulda hurt,” Sean slid his hand around the back of Jack’s neck and gripped him gently. “But we’re more than that, right?”

Jack looked up, eyes searching Sean’s.

“I thought so,” he said after a moment.

“Me too,” Sean breathed out. He leaned up and kissed him and it felt like coming home

They made their way inside, back into their bed, curled around each other, watching one another with legs tangled. Sean could smell Jack’s minty breath, saw with fascination the way his whole face had finally relaxed.

“I reckon we need to tell people,” he said.

Jack looked surprised.

“You were alone,” Sean could see it now, how isolated Jack must’ve felt in all this and with Sean leaving, he wouldn’t have had anyone to back him up if he told Sean the truth and asked him to stay.

Jack blinked back fresh tears. “I was alright. Just worried about you.”

Sean was already shaking his head. “I’m not gonna let that happen to ya again, alright?”

Jack tugged him against his chest. “Nothin’ like this will ever happen again.”

Sean hugged him, but said, “Probably not, but it’ll make me feel better.”

“Okay,” Jack said on an exhale. “Whatever you want.”

“‘Cos we always do what I want?” Sean smiled up at him.

“I always want what you want,” Jack said simply and Sean remembered that being true too.

Sean was tempted to cancel the BBQ. He was back, all of him, and he wanted to sink into that feeling with Jack and only Jack. And Jack was instantly amenable to the idea. His, “Yeah, course,” was so quick it made Sean huff a laugh and kiss him. And kiss him and kiss him.

“But probably better to rip it off like a Band-Aid, all at once,” he said and pulled back.

Jack pushed up onto his elbow, traced Sean’s face with his hand. He was smiling like he’d never stop smiling. “It’s a good opportunity, with everyone together.” He didn’t sound convinced.

Sean groaned. “I wanna be just us.”

“Me too,” Jack replied.

“Ya know, you’re really no help at all,” Sean said and rolled up, pushing Jack onto his back and straddling him. He’d missed this too—knowing exactly how to move Jack, how to tie him up—

“Where’re our toys?” he asked and looked around.

Jack rumbled with laughter underneath him. “I hid ‘em. Can you imagine if I had to explain that?”

Sean cracked up. “Yeah, nah.” He probably would’ve thought Jack was using them with someone else, which would’ve sent him into a rage spiral, which he would’ve taken out on Jack and Jack would’ve stoically taken it without saying a word. Because he’d rather bear the brunt of Sean’s rage than threaten the stability of his fragile mind.

Sean leaned down but stopped just before he kissed him. “I love you, ya know that?” He’d never said it before. Neither of them had.

Jack looked like he was about to cry again. “I love you too.”

“Yeah, I know,” Sean replied, smirking.

Jack laughed, his thick torso rumbling between Sean’s thighs. “When did you know?”

Sean shrugged, kissed him, pulled back. “I reckon when you picked this house for me.”

Jack blushed but didn’t deny it.

“When did you know?” Sean asked and rolled Jack’s nipple between his thumb and forefinger.

“I don’t,” Jack said, arching into the touch, “I don’t know if I did until just now. I hoped, I thought, probably? But we never said.”

Sean frowned. “We’re gonna get better at that.”

“Yeah,” Jack breathed out. He was a sight, red rimmed eyes making the blue starker, his plush lips stretched into a beautiful, radiant smile. Sean wondered how he’d gotten so fucking lucky. He wondered how long he would’ve stayed home if he’d left, reckoned he would’ve been making his way back to Jack pretty quick. Nobody left this.

“And we’re gonna tell people,” Sean reiterated. He groaned and planted his face on Jack’s bare chest. “We can’t cancel.”

“No,” Jack replied, his hand running through Sean’s hair.

“Ben?” Sean asked after a while.

“Yeah.”

Sean nodded. “You never told your sisters?”

“No, never. I’d never without your permission.”

Sean sat up again. “Yeah, but, with all that,” he waved at his head, “you needed someone to talk to.”

Jack rolled his shoulders against the bed in a shrug, slipped his hands around Sean’s waist. “It still wasn’t my place to say. And you never committed to wanting that, before. You said, but never like, made plans to do it.”

“But—”

“No, Sean,” Jack tightened his hands. “No buts. I’d never fuck you over like that, no matter what. And I was fine, really.”

Sean spread his palms on Jack’s chest, stroked his fingers up and down his rib cage. “No, you weren’t,” he said quietly. “I’m so fuckin’ sorry, man, I was a cunt.”

“No,” Jack said vehemently. “You were hurt. It’s not your fault, none of it. And I was really fine. Happy, just happy to have you with me, no matter what. The only bad thing you did was say you were gonna leave.”

“I woulda just come back,” Sean said.

Jack gripped him tighter and his voice was both unsure and hopeful when he said, “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Sean nodded, sure of it. “I’d never be able to stay away from all this.” He ran his hands up and down Jack’s chest.

Jack closed his eyes. “Good, that’s good.”

And Sean really was an asshole—he’d seen how much this had been cutting Jack up before, and he’d been going to leave anyway. It was time to get him some back-up.

Ben came over early on his own as requested.

“Okay, I’m here, where’s the fuckin’ fire?” he asked as he came in with a carton of beer under one arm and a bag with snacks in the other hand. “Lara’s got the salads and she’s bringing the birthday present. Sorry we forgot it last time.” He went on a long-winded explanation about getting his kid dressed to go out anywhere and how you’d turn around for one second and turn back and find him naked, tearing around the house.

Sean grinned at him. He was looking at Ben, here and now in his living room, but he was also seeing him on his wedding day, Sean beside him as his best man, seeing him in the hospital holding his newborn son, the awe and joy in his face on both occasions. He felt a weird ache at the loss he’d experienced of the memories.

“Beers in the esky,” Sean said as Jack said, “You didn’t need to get me a present.”

Ben rolled his eyes and told Jack he was an idiot.

“Alright, sit,” Sean said once Ben was done with the beers.

“Geez, cuz, what’s gotten into you?” Ben replied but did as he was told. Jack and Sean sat down across from him.