9. 9

9

A few weeks later and Sean reckoned the term blue balls didn’t quite capture the frustration of being constantly around someone you wanted to fuck. The way Jack’s sun bleached hair fell in his eyes as he huffed a laugh while they played a game of Spit with the cards, his seriousness when he stood up from getting Sean ready for the shower, checking he was all good, and the concerned way he sat next to Sean at all his appointments, asked all the questions Sean should probably be asking, his big hands gesticulating with frustration when the doctors refused to commit to an answer on Sean’s head, a firmer timeline for his leg, whether or not he’d pass new concussion protocols and ever be allowed to play again, he was an all-consuming presence.

Having someone like that in his proximity, the desire wasn’t just in his balls. It was in the vicinity of his dick to be sure, but it was somewhere else too. He wanted to reach for Jack and push him down on the bed, work him open and fuck in when it was still too tight, to bite his shoulder while grinding into him, to listen to him make broken sounds, track those sounds until he made just the right one, the one that told Sean he was nailing him just right and he’d hone in on it, take him apart from that point only.

“It’s gonna be alright,” Jack was saying now, hands on the steering wheel, eyes on the road, the uncertainty of that meeting following them into the car, like the sterile smell of the specialist’s office in a fancy townhouse in Mt Claremont had been bottled up and opened again in the space between them with Jack’s words.

And maybe Sean wanted to push Jack down on the bed and lose himself in his body for a few hours so he didn’t have to think about what was said in that office, and Harris’ office the week before, and the news that one of Melbourne’s top draft picks wasn’t even going to get one game after a head injury in training. New concussion protocol meant the league wouldn’t risk further injury, the permanent damage that could come from continuing to play a contact sport.

“Fuck,” Sean breathed out as he focused on the tree-lined street, “I haven’t sheared a sheep in ten years. Don’t reckon I’d be any good anymore.”

“What?” Jack asked. Sean could feel his eyes on him so he turned and met his gaze steadily.

“Shearing. That’s all else I got. That’s what Jayden’s doin’.”

It was true. He wasn’t good with media like some of the other blackfellas. And he wasn’t a leader, wouldn’t be making a career in coaching or advocacy. He could play footy and he could shear sheep. His dad had been a shearer and he’d taught him and Jayden, had made that his work until he dropped dead from a heart attack when Sean was fifteen. That’s what they did—played footy until they couldn’t anymore, then moved back home and joined a shearing team when the money ran out. He’d been hoping for a few more years in the league, but what could he do? When the show was over, it was time to go.

“You’re not bloody well shearing,” Jack said vehemently. “You’re gonna be fine. Maybe you can’t play this season, so you rehab, you get better. You’ll be back next season.”

Sean rubbed the fuzz of hair over the scar on his head. His brain was “perfect”, the specialist reiterated, but—the inevitable ‘but’—with his memory loss they “weren’t sure”, they “couldn’t say one way or another” what the league would do with him. Add his leg, which seemed to be healing fine, but “never know with a break like that, we’ll have to see where it’s at when the cast comes off,” the club’s orthopaedic surgeon had said. He had a metal plate holding the bone in place, and the X-rays showed it healing well, no signs of infection, which had been the greatest concern since the bone had snapped and protruded out of his thigh on impact. How strong the bone would be once they took the cast off was yet to be determined.

Jack might not want to think about all this, but Sean had to.

“What am I gonna do? Sit on your couch forever while you run around after me?” Sean asked.

“Yes,” Jack replied.

Sean shook his head and looked away. Jack made a left-hand turn at the lights and they were on the West Coast Highway, the Indian Ocean an expanse of blue to their right, a few container ships dotting the horizon, waiting to make berth with their rows of cars and cheap furniture and gadgets and poorly made junk from China.

They were parking when Jack spoke again. Sean had felt it in the air between them; he was getting used to that now, the way Jack needed to say something but sat on it until he—and this was a new realisation—had arranged the words right in his head. Sean had thought he did it to think of the best way to line up his manipulations, but since they’d been living together, he’d realised Jack needed to figure out how to put his feelings into words. He wasn’t being manipulative; he was having too many feelings. You’d think having four older sisters would make him an expert in feelings, but apparently not.

“You’re gonna stay here. With me and Lola. And we’ll get you better, okay? And we’ll see different doctors if that’s what it takes.” They sat there, the car heating up with the engine cut, the summer heat only a few seconds and small space away from an air conditioner being turned off.

“You don’t gotta do that, man,” Sean rolled his head on the seat to look up at him. “If it’s the end, I’ll figure it out. I always knew this was comin’ and this is what I’d do. It’s alright. Bit sooner than I expected, but well,” he shrugged and unclipped his seatbelt. He could reach back and grab the crutches and get himself out, but Jack always jumped out and got them for him, helped him out of the car until he righted himself.

“No,” Jack said softly and gripped Sean’s wrist. “That’s not the plan. That’s not been the plan for a while, okay? Trust me. This is not what you want to do.”

Jack’s fingers circled his wrist, squeezing and releasing, his voice sure and his blue eyes, for a change, steady on Sean’s.

Sean really wondered what kind of friends they were at times like this—so close they could tell the other one what the future held? So close they touched dicks except not again because this Sean wouldn’t do it right? They were the weirdest fucking friends he’d ever heard about.

Sweat beaded under Jack’s thumb and forefinger, the heat inside quickly matching and surpassing outside.

“Is this another one of those things where you’re gonna tell me to go along with it but not tell me why?” he asked.

“Another thing?”

“Yeah, like the ‘we fuck but we don’t fuck ‘cos past me don’t know how to fuck future you properly’,” Sean replied.

Jack let him go and sat back. “That’s not, I didn’t mean,” Jack threw his hands around, that blush rising on his throat. Sean was growing increasingly fascinated with how easy it was to fluster him. In the year they’d been playing together he’d seen Jack get flustered by stupid questions about whether or not he had a girlfriend. Sean had rolled his eyes in disdain at the reaction—why was Jack acting so taken aback? Of course everyone’s asking that question; Jack had never had one, never even bothered to hide it either, he didn’t even bother taking a woman that could be mistaken for his girlfriend to the Brownlow’s, to the club Best this was still hard to say. “You’ve been good to me these last few months. I can see how we’d be friends.”

Jack nodded, but that guard was back up. He sat down in the armchair, hands clasped, eyes on them. “Look, we’re the kinda mates who’re both gay and both can’t do much about that.” He said this with a breathiness that made every hair on Sean’s body stand up. It wasn’t the outright admission he was gay, and he knew Sean was gay, that made him react. He’d always kind of known that, even when they were teenagers he’d felt seen by Jack in that way and felt like Jack had seen him too. He’d been scared, but in a good way. He’d gotten the feeling Jack was scared too, but not in a good way.

This had confused him at the time—if either of them should be feeling worse about this, it was him. He was the blackfella looking to get a crack at the league. Like he needed to borrow trouble on top of it. Meanwhile, Jack was a white boy who went to a fancy private school in a liberal area—they’d probably deck the streets in rainbow flags if he came out. So he’d already assumed Jack might be gay when they met; but after that night on the cricket pitch he’d thought he was a gay boy who’d gotten scared, or (less likely) he was a straight boy who’d gotten confused (at least, this is what he thought Jack wanted him to think). Now he had confirmation. Still, there was something about the line that Sean didn’t believe and he didn’t think it was teenage Jack’s reservations.

“So,” Jack waved a hand forward, made very brief eye contact. “So, that explains that. As for the other thing, well, we’re also just really close, we look out for each other, we like, make plans.”

Sean breathed steadily and decided to tackle this a piece at a time, attack the smaller bit first. “We make plans for our future together?”

It even sounded like a stupid question. If they weren’t together, why would they make plans for a future together?

“Yes,” Jack replied firmly. “We’re really good friends.”

“Really good friends who suck each other off,” Sean retorted.

Jack recoiled. Sean raised his eyebrows—that was an over-reaction. But it was also further reason for Sean not to trust this was the whole story.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Jack said quickly and resumed his posture—hands clasped, eyes down.

“You don’t like it when I say it like that?”

“No, it’s not, well…”

Sean tilted his head to the side. “You don’t,” he said and knew it was true.

Jack flicked his eyes up. “Look, we don’t just,” he swallowed, “fuck. We don’t be crass about it. We do it in a certain way,” he finished, these final words coming very deliberately.

Sean shifted on the couch. The moment felt fragile. He knew he had to get the next part right or Jack would clam up again.

“What certain way?” he asked as carefully as he could.

Jack exhaled and focused on his hands. When he spoke it was quiet, almost embarrassed, but it had the hint of defiance Sean had heard before when he spoke about him and future Sean. “You’re the top and I’m the bottom, right? But it’s like, more than that. You’re, you,” he shook his head, that blush all the way up his throat. “You take care of me,” he finished so quietly Sean had to strain to hear him.

His heart was pounding at the implications of what Jack was saying. He’d heard about these kind of relationships, but he’d never thought he’d be in one. And the way Jack said it? It was so unbearably intimate.

“And we’re not lovers?” he asked again because he couldn’t believe they weren’t.

“No,” Jack said firmly, eyes flicking up again before darting back to his hands. “This is just the, you know, the way we do sex. As mates. It gives us both, you know…”

“Orgasms?” Sean asked.

Jack laughed and sat back. “Yeah, that and we just, we get a lot out of it. You said it soothed something in our personalities. When we’d been doing it that way for a while, that’s what you said.”

Sean mulled that over. He could, weirdly enough, see that. Jack looked like he was ready to go to war over it if Sean challenged him and scared shitless all at once—the lazy way he sat back in the chair did not fool Sean for a second. So, he’d circle back to it, but get more answers on the other front while Jack was pliant.

“And this goes hand in hand with the making plans together for the future?” he asked.

Jack retreated into himself again. It was like talking to a hermit crab—Jack would come out, fully retreat, come back out a little bit, retreat a little bit.

“Well, no, it’s kinda separate,” Jack replied, eyes looking past Sean and voice off. So, that was a lie, but Sean was going to let it go for now.

“We live together, we’re never gonna get married, we just, you know, shoot the shit a lot and part of that is what we’re gonna do when we retire. We’d have a few beers and talk about it and we’d decided we’d stay together in the city. I want to get into youth league stuff, use the degree to do a postgrad in education and maybe run like, an advocate program with footy in schools or something. And you wanted to see about doing uni, fine arts, writing kids’ books.”

Sean stared at him. It wasn’t the art part—he liked art, did some painting with the men’s group in his mob when he was back home—it was the audacity of him thinking he could do art as a living.

“I know,” Jack chuckled. “You took a long time to get there, but yeah, that’s what you wanna do.”

“Ain’t any money in art,” he finally said.

“Maybe not, but there is in kids’ books written by an ex-league player,” Jack replied, his smile warm and sure.

Sean shook his head. He could see why Jack didn’t want to tell him this. He’d never want Jack to know something so personal—he thought he could do a fine arts degree and write kids’ books? He certainly believed he’d had to have had a few beers to tell Jack that. And he knew there must’ve been a lot of conversations, hang outs, just time together for him to disclose something like that. Maybe they really were friends. Sean wouldn’t be that vulnerable if they weren’t.

“Okay,” he said. “I can see I’d wanna do somethin’ like that. I dunno if it’s all that realistic, but I’ll think about it.”

“You’ll stay in the city then?” Jack asked, guarded yet hopeful.

“Well, I gotta stay all year either way, don’t I?” He wasn’t out of the hunt yet, it was all speculation, and in the meantime, he’d be rehabbing, eventually re-joining the team for training, doing his own thing alongside the main group. If anything was to be decided, it wouldn’t be until he was ready to play again.

“A year,” Jack said decisively and exhaled. “Yeah, we can cross that bridge if we come to it, and I don’t reckon we will, but for now let’s focus on the year ahead and get you better.”

Sean rolled his eyes. “Yeah, boss. But what about the other part?”

“What other part?” Jack asked.

“Well, I reckon I believe you that we shot the shit about doin’ somethin’ in the future, about me stayin’ in the city at least. But what I don’t get is why we have to stop the other thing.” He said the last part carefully, hoping he was choosing the right words.

Jack looked surprised. “Didn’t we cover that already? We do it a specific way. You now, you don’t want that.”

Sean’s eyebrows went up. “I don’t?”

“No,” Jack said firmly. “You from two years ago? You’re not gonna like the way we do things.”

“I reckon that’s for me to decide,” Sean replied because he didn’t get what the problem was. He liked what happened in the kitchen. And he could see what Jack meant by ‘take care of him’ in that context—take him to bed after, make sure he didn’t feel used. Sean knew all about feeling used, so he could see how if he just hit it and quit it Jack would feel the same, used and discarded.

“No,” Jack said again even though Sean didn’t miss the surprised look the conversation was going this far. He’d assumed Sean would be out once he mentioned the way they did it, maybe squirm away at the ‘take care of me’ idea. He could see how Sean from two years ago would’ve given him that impression, but what Jack—even two years later—didn’t seem to get was that Sean hadn’t always hated him, and those original feelings hadn’t simply gone away because of everything that happened.

“You don’t get it,” Jack said like the conversation pained him, “you’re like, in charge of me when we do that and I don’t think I could bear it if you said or did something…”

Sean understood. “No, yeah, I get it.”

“You do?” Jack asked, disbelieving.

“Yeah, like, you let me do what I want but like, I’m also all respectful and shit, right?” Now he was blushing. It wouldn’t be obvious, but he could feel it.

“Right,” Jack breathed out like that was settled.

“Do we ever fuck normally?” Sean asked.

Jack considered this, eyes distant. “I know what you’re asking. What we do feels normal to us now. Even when we started we, uh, we were kinda playin’ in that realm. So, no, I guess even before we talked about it, you were kinda in charge and I, you know,” he shrugged and refocused on Sean before dropping his gaze, “liked it.”

Sean didn’t want to freak Jack out, but even this conversation had him thickening up in his shorts so the thought of not getting to do it felt impossible.

“So even from the start I was all,” he waved a hand between them, “respectful and shit.” His mind tripped back to his last memory—the locker room, shoving Jack against his locker, a fight that got confused when he looked at Jack’s lips. He didn’t know if they’d kissed. The memory cut out at that point, but he knew if they’d done anything, it would not have been respectful.

“Well, no,” Jack allowed, smiling wryly. “You were a bit of an asshole, but I wasn’t totally submitting to you back then either. It progressed.”

Sean nodded thoughtfully. “So, you reckon if we do it now, I’ll be like I was back then, but you’re too far gone on the new way now so it’s not gonna work. Like, you’ll be all good and shit and I’ll be an asshole.”

“Yes,” Jack breathed out, relieved. He looked like he was about to get up, conversation over.

“What if I promise to be like, nice and shit.” It pained him to say it, it really did. But he’d been playing over that scene in the kitchen for a month and he reckoned if he didn’t get another crack at it, he’d combust. He could be nice. He could definitely be really fucking nice.

Jack rubbed his hands on his thighs, shorts riding up with the movement, muscles flexing under his fading tan. “I dunno…”

“Can you at least give me a shot?” Sean asked. He hated that he’d been reduced to this, but he knew it was worth it.

Jack looked at him, his face saying he was already about to say no, but then Sean saw something in his mask slip—it was desire. He wanted Sean like this too, and as he swallowed, Sean got the keen sense Jack had missed this. Which, now Sean thought about it, of course he did. They’d no doubt been fucking on the regular and now, unless Jack was screwing someone when he was at training, which was highly unlikely, he wasn’t getting laid anymore either.

“You’ve got a cast on,” Jack said and waved his hand at it, but it was a weak objection and they both knew it.

“Cast doesn’t get in the way of sucking each other off,” Sean retorted. “Wristies, could probably even fuck if we got creative. And it’s not like I can’t, you know,” he waved his hand at Jack.

“I reckon you need to be able to say it,” Jack scoffed and looked outside. His tone aimed for mocking, but Sean heard the sadness in it. They might not have been lovers, Sean was getting that, but he was also getting the sense they were really close, close enough to be able to hug without making it a joke, to talk about the future, to take care of each other the way best mates who weren’t going to be in a relationship with anyone else would.

“Hug you,” Sean said seriously. “Hold you, cuddle, stroke your hair.”

Jack laughed, met Sean’s eyes and stopped laughing. He shrugged, a hint of vulnerability to his expression. This really meant something to Jack, a lot more than he was letting on.

“I can do that,” Sean said when Jack didn’t say anything.

“Yeah, okay,” Jack breathed out. “But—”

Sean was about to pump his fist in celebration and ask when they could start when that ‘but’ stopped him.

“No, what ‘but’?” he said.

“This is serious,” Jack sat forward and clasped his hands together. “It’s hard to explain, but you in two years?”

Sean nodded.

“I don’t want to piss him off,” he said slowly but like it wasn’t exactly what he wanted to say.

“Well, I’m him and I’m not pissed off.”

But Jack was already shaking his head. “No, you don’t get it. I, we, if we do this, it sounds stupid, but I kinda feel like—”

Jack cut himself off, shook his head and stood. “Nothin’, it’s stupid.”

“No, tell me,” Sean asked. Why would future him be pissed off? If he was fucking his fuck buddy again, who cared? Unless there was some ownership thing to the way they did this weird buddy fucking.

“Do I have some kinda claim on you?” Sean asked.

Jack had busied himself with the hand weights for Sean’s physio, getting everything ready. He was still looking at them in his hands, but Sean knew he’d heard him just fine from the blush on his neck, the awkwardness of his movements.

“Yeah, nah, nothin’ like that,” he said and focused on what he was doing. “It’s all good,” he smiled brightly and met Sean’s eyes. “Let me know when you wanna…”

Now , Sean wanted to say, but decided having some chill was probably a good idea. Also, he wanted Jack when he was behaving less like a startled horse. So, maybe he’d order the Indian takeaway they both loved, order Jack’s favourite beers, get him to sit next to him on the couch and relax.

He nodded and Jack returned it, relief and something else on his face. It was a few hours later, after physio, when Sean was dozing on the couch with Lola pressed against him when he realised what it was—happiness. A tiny, pleased moment of joy had been on Jack’s face and in the months Sean had been living with him, he’d never seen it before.