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Alastair has always hated press launches, even in surroundings as agreeable as Lord’s. Press lunches were only slightly more bearable. Public speaking and making small talk with strangers are unavoidable consequences of his job, but not, unfortunately, ones he’s much good at. He cringes at every hesitant sentence he stumbles through, thinking over and over again: this is not me.
The latest lunch, at least, has had the advantage of him sitting next to Eoin Morgan and across from Jimmy. Even without Swanny, who’s away on county duties, it’s proved a refreshingly silly afternoon.
Somewhere along the line, as he was absently putting down his glass while laughing at something Jimmy said, Morgs declared, “More champagne for Captain Cook!” and refilled the not-quite empty glass to the brim (and slightly beyond).
It was at least the sixth time someone had gleefully said “Captain Cook” in exactly that way, and Alastair had more or less given up glancing towards Strauss at the head of the table and pointing out he was actually only the ODI captain. So he just took another, possibly ill-advisedly large swig from his drink, and tried to concentrate on what the chap from the Telegraph was saying to him.
A little while later, after the Telegraph guy had excused himself to go in search of the bathroom, Alastair reached for the bottle, only to find it snatched out of his way. Not by Morgs, who looked confused and then comically affronted as Jimmy waved the bottle around and said, “Captain Cook doesn’t pour his own drink.”
At which point refilling his glass somehow turned into a contest between Jimmy and Morgs.
Which is how he and Morgs and Jimmy have ended up in some out-of-the-way drawing room in the depths of Lord’s pavilion, polishing off a bottle of fizz that Morgs swiped while Strauss and Broady were walking the last few journalists out. Well, okay, it isn’t really how, at all, but Alastair is perfectly understandably hazy on the exact details. It’s more sort of the backstory to why they’re here.
Or something.
“…And you should have seen his face!” Lolling in an armchair by the empty fireplace, Morgs is gesturing expansively with the bottle. “I swear, this girl was sixteen if she was a day, but Finny was so tongue-tied he couldn’t even get a sentence out. Me and Broady were laughing so hard this woman next to us kept giving us funny looks.” He takes a swig from the bottle, then passes it across to a grinning Jimmy. “Eventually Broady took him off for a blokey trip to the loo to regroup, it was just too painful to watch.” He pauses. “Oof. Talking of which, it’s the little boys’ room for me.”
Alastair is pretty sure Morgs is heading out of the wrong door, but by the time he thinks to say something, the Irishman has long gone. It’s just possible, he decides, that his reaction times have been affected by the alcohol.
Jimmy huffs a laugh. “Finny…” He leans his head back against the armchair, closing his eyes, and a fizzy sort of a quiet falls in the room.
Alastair takes the opportunity to drink in the sight of him. Formal lunch at Lord’s means they’re all in suits, but whereas he never really knows what to do with himself in a suit – the jackets are a source of endless mystery to him, always too tight across the shoulders and too baggy at the waist, and he can never remember when he is and isn’t supposed to have the buttons done up – Jimmy looks as lithely comfortable in charcoal grey as he does in his cricket whites. Somehow the lines of the suit just seem to echo and complement the lines of Jimmy’s body, and… he really needs to stop thinking like this.
He’s trying to find a way to ask Jimmy whether he thinks there’s more to Broady and Finny’s blokey trips to the loo than meets the eye – if anyone’s likely to know, it’s Jimmy and Swanny, right? – when the accents of South Africa, or more accurately southern Africa, drift down the corridor towards the drawing room. A pair of voices; both sound heated. It’s fairly easy to work out whose they are.
“KP and Andy Flower again,” says Alastair with a sigh. “Come on, let’s move before we get sucked in.”
Jimmy’s gaze is darting around the room. “Not a chance,” he says. He puts the bottle down quickly, and nods off to the left. “Cupboard, quick. Let’s hide.” He jumps out of his seat, grabbing Alastair’s arm to pull him up, too.
Alastair looks round, to see a pair of narrow white doors, only slightly taller than they are, set into the wall. He snorts. “Are you insane? We are never—”
“Quick!” Jimmy plants a hand square in the middle of Alastair’s chest and starts pushing him backwards.
Alastair resists, sort of, but he’s also struggling not to laugh and he can’t really focus on two battles at once just now. He gives up and lets himself be manhandled. “What are you— Why?”
“Swanny’ll want the gossip.” Jimmy pulls open the doors. The cupboard, empty but for a few coats hanging up, is a recess, but a shallow one. “I won’t be able to look him in the eye if he knows I legged it when I could’ve listened in.”
Alastair opens his mouth but doesn’t really know what to say to that – of course Jimmy would be doing it for Swanny – and then Jimmy’s hustling them both inside and pulling the doors closed before he can really react properly.
At which point two things become apparent. First, the cupboard really is very shallow indeed, to the extent that the two of them together basically fill it. Second, as a result, the doors won’t stay shut on their own.
As they set about extricating themselves from a more-than-slightly giddy tangle of limbs in the darkness, Jimmy has to keep reaching out and catching the doors before they can swing outwards again. By the time they’ve resolved into two separate people, more or less, Alastair finds himself with his back to the room, his face to Jimmy’s, and the other man’s arms reaching around either side of him to hold the doors in place. There isn’t space to slide a bootlace between them.
And no time to move again because the quarrelling pair are, unmistakably, in the drawing room.
Breath seems quite hard to come by, all of a sudden.
He has no idea what to do with his hands. He’s had far too much fizz to handle this like a responsible adult who’s just been made captain (ODI) and oh crap this is really happening he’s in a clinch – as the papers will undoubtedly put it – with the very man he’s promised himself repeatedly he’ll be really careful around and worse still it isn’t even really a clinch because this man is so very taken and yet he’s so very here—
To distract himself from all the touching and the almost touching and the definitely not touching, Alastair puts his hands in his pockets and focuses on the less confusing source of panic. “What on earth are we going to say,” he whispers, “if they find us?”
He can just about make out Jimmy’s shrug in the darkness; he feels it well enough, though, Jimmy’s arms moving against him with the gesture.
Footsteps sound, very near to their hiding place.
Jimmy tilts his head forward, and for a dizzying moment Alastair thinks fears dreams he’s going to kiss him. He closes his eyes, bunching his hands into fists in his pockets, heart racing.
Jimmy’s breath plays on his cheek and neck, just like that vividly-remembered night at the MCG. Then, in a murmur that buzzes so low in Alastair's ear he has to strain to catch it:
“Tell them we lost something.”
The manner of it is thrillingly, ridiculously seductive. The actual idea is, well, just plain ridiculous.
Alastair embraces the ridiculous, because he can’t cope with any more of the seductiveness just now.
“Like what?” he half-whispers, half-squeaks. Luckily, the pair outside are arguing at a sufficient pitch to bury the noise.
Again the words are breathed into his ear. “KP’s humility?”
Alastair clamps a fist to his mouth just in time to stifle a bark of laughter. Soon both of them are shaking with silent giggles, and as Alastair lets his forehead sink into Jimmy’s shoulder for a moment, he remembers that when Jimmy kept topping up his glass earlier, he didn’t neglect his own.
Before Alastair can think that idea through, Jimmy goes very still. Alastair lifts his head sharply, mouths, “What?” and gets only a slight shake of the head in return. He turns slightly, supporting himself with a hand on Jimmy’s shoulder, and strains to hear. The words “book” and “Graeme” reach him – Kev, of course – and at the thought of Swanny, he straightens up guiltily. Then Andy interrupts KP with something about team playing, and Alastair, embarrassed, stops listening. He knows that, as a captain (ODI), he should probably be informed about any dramas affecting his team-mates, any tensions between coach and players, but he just can’t bring himself to eavesdrop like this.
The problem: if he isn’t listening in to what’s going on outside, the only thing left for him to focus on is what’s happening in here. For example, the fact that he’s trapped in a cupboard at Lord’s, drunk on stolen champagne and pressed up against a teammate’s boyfriend, while the team’s second-least discreet member is having a row not six feet away.
No way this can go horrendously wrong.
Jimmy’s staring straight ahead, jaw set, brow creased in a scowl, as if he can see KP through the cupboard doors, and possibly skewer him the same way. Alastair can see the ghost of the lines that crease his temples when he laughs, and lets his gaze sidle to the other man’s mouth. Jimmy’s lips are slightly parted, and for an alcohol-fuelled moment or two Alastair imagines himself kissing them. Not a soft, tentative brush, not a loud, jokey smacker, but a hard, devouring demand for attention. Notice me.
Clearly that’s not a safe place to look. Alastair lowers his eyes, to Jimmy’s long neck – where his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows – but that isn’t much better in terms of the whole urge to kiss aspect. Berating himself as an idiot with no self-control, Alastair relaxes his grip on Jimmy’s angular shoulder, curls his other hand into a fist that presses his nails into his palm – maybe the pain will keep him alert – and settles on closing his eyes instead.
Despite his resolution, he’s dreamily enjoying the feel of Jimmy against him – arms, chest, thigh – when Morgs’ somewhat merry voice rings through the room, cutting right across the low, furious exchange.
“Guys, you have to see— Oh! Sorry! Didn’t realise the room was busy…”
In the dark of the cupboard, Alastair and Jimmy fight fresh laughter.
“I was just looking for Jimmy and Cooky, but I’ll leave you—”
“No, never mind. We’re done here,” snaps KP.
Footsteps recede; two people leaving, one significantly faster than the other. After a moment, there's the sound of what must be the champagne bottle clinking against the fireplace. “Well,” Morgs says, “more for—”
Jimmy finally loses it, venting an extraordinary noise somewhere between a snort and splutter. Without thinking, Alastair clamps a hand across Jimmy’s mouth, getting a rise out those eyebrows and the reward of feeling Jimmy’s lips curl in a smile against his palm, but it’s too late.
Morgs again, wonder in his tone: “You’re not…”
Rapid strides, a knock at the doors that can only be described as sarcastic. Alastair drops his hand, Jimmy lets the doors go with a grin, and the pair stumble laughingly out, to delighted high fives from Morgs and a further round of the now-warming fizz.
It’s a while, though, before either of them catch the other’s eye, and when Alastair does finally look up to meet Jimmy’s gaze, he can’t read his expression at all.