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Isaac doesn’t get more than five steps into the locker room when Colin pops up beside him, which is unusual in and of itself. They’re both always on the early side but it’s rare for Colin to beat him here.
“Hey,” he says.
“Morning, Colin!” He turns towards him and the grin falls off his face. “Hey, you good, mate?” he asks, when he catches a look at his face. “You look like you did that one time we went to that roadside sushi place.”
“Uh, yeah, I, uh…can I talk to you?”
“Sure,” Isaac responds slowly, starting to feel a bit worried.“What’s goin’ on?”
“Not here, let’s…” He heads for the door, dodging ‘round the other players still trickling in. Isaac follows swiftly behind, trailing him as he strides down the corridor, clearly looking for something.
“Oi, Colin, what the fuck—”
“In here,” he says, pulling open a door, and Isaac pokes his head in.
“It’s a fucking broom closet.”
“I know, I…" He takes a deep breath. "Isaac, please…go in."
Isaac goes.
It's a pretty spacious closet, all said and done, enough light and space for them to stand across from each other and have a proper conversation. "We playing seven minutes in heaven, bruv?" he jokes, and Colin blanches. "Uh, sorry." He clears his throat awkwardly. "You wanted to talk?" The intense resolve Colin had been storming the corridors with seems to be wavering now, so Isaac pats his shoulder lightly. "Hey, seriously. You know you can tell me anything."
Colin surveys him in silence for a long moment, and Isaac tries his best to look reassuring. He has no clue what that actually looks like but whatever he's doing must work 'cos Colin takes a deep breath.
"I'm gay. And I'm going to start—" he continues quickly before Isaac can respond, "—I think I’m going to start being a bit more public about it. Not, like, a press announcement or anything but I’m not going to…ignore it the way I’ve been either. And, I, uh, I wanted you to know first. Actually been wanting to tell you for a while now, but I, uh, hadn’t quite worked up the nerve.” He rubs the back of his neck. “‘S funny, huh? I finally come out of the closet and it’s in a closet.”
"Oh," Isaac says finally, and Colin's face falls. "No, no it's—I don't care about—I mean, I do care 'cos it's a pretty big part of who you are but it doesn’t-" He bites off his next words and takes a breath. "Thanks for telling me. Means a lot, you trusting me with this." Something in Colin's expression settles, and Isaac is so relieved that he pulls him in by his shoulder and wraps him in a tight hug.
"Uh, sorry," he mumbles, releasing him quickly, no idea if that was patronising or too much or…fuck, he’s so out of his element here. He tugs the bottom of his shirt to straighten it and clears his throat, but when he looks up he sees that Colin is grinning at him and he exhales, mollified. "Listen, I'm sorry if I ever did anything that, y’know, made you feel like you couldn't tell me. I know things used to be different ‘round here and—"
"No, no you—I mean, yeah there were some pretty shit jokes people were making"—and Isaac winces because he was definitely one of those people—"but I…that's not why I didn't tell you before. I've been figuring some stuff out for myself as well."
The words stir up a memory of a conversation they’d had, weeks, no, months ago now, and Isaac feels a pang when he thinks about how long Colin must have been struggling with all this. "Right, you said you were gonna talk to someone. How, uh, how's that been?"
Colin wipes a hand over his face tiredly. "It's hard. But…" A soft smile comes over his features and something in Isaac's chest twists at the sight of it. "It's been a good kinda hard. It’s sort of like…when you’re sore for days after a really tough training or gym session, but you kind of like it because you know it's making you stronger. Know what I mean?"
Isaac nods, smiling right back at him, because he still looks wrung out, but there's something calmer about him too, as if he’s found some peace Isaac didn’t even know he’d been missing. "I'm really glad you told me.”
"Me too," Colin says on a long exhale, like he’s breathing out everything he’s been holding in this whole time.
A long silence stretches out between them, neither of them moving, and Isaac is just wondering if he should hug him again when Colin's eyes flutter closed.
"There's more," he says, and Isaac's eyebrows shoot up. Colin scrunches up his whole face, squeezes his lips together like he’s gearing up for something, and it’s making Isaac nervous all over again. His face goes slack again and his eyes pop open. "I—I have feelings for you." The words come out so quick, all piled up on each other, that it takes Isaac a second to untangle and decode them, and by then Colin is talking again. "And I'm not saying this because I'm expecting any kind of response from you. You don't have to…" He sighs heavily and Isaac feels another sharp pain in his chest. "I'm just tired of keeping secrets from you. And I guess there's also a tiny part of me that…wanted to make sure. That, you know, you don't feel the same."
Oh, he thinks again, but this time he doesn’t let it past his mouth.
"Ah, shit, Colin, I'm sorry. I don't, uh, listen, I love you like a brother but—"
"No, no it's okay. I figured. But." He shrugs, a resigned sort of sadness tingeing his smile now. "At least now I don't have to spend the rest of my life wondering. And now we can move on the other reason I wanted to tell you," he continues, powering through when Isaac opens his mouth. "So obviously I—I need to move on and I…well, if it's not too weird for you, I was wondering if you'd help me. With my Grindr profile, I mean. I’m asking because I…well, I’ve been having a bit of trouble finishing it and…I feel like you look at me so differently than I look at myself.” He arches an eyebrow. “It's the least you can do for making me fall for you," he adds lightly, going for humour but falling painfully short.
"Colin—"
"Look, will you help me or not?" he asks, shoulders squared, determined stare boring into him.
"Yeah, mate," he says quietly. "Course I will."
"Okay." He nods to himself. "Okay. Maybe after training today? I know it's a lot for you all at once but I just feel like I need to keep this momentum going or I'm gonna get stuck again."
"I get it. After training is fine. Down at the pub?"
"Yeah, alright."
—
The pub is pretty quiet on that Monday evening, but Colin still directs them to a booth way in the back, keeping his head ducked the whole way, and Isaac's heart aches for him a little bit.
But. He can help. This is something he can do.
Once they're each seated with a pint, Colin pulls up his work-in-progress profile and hands the phone over to Isaac, his lip caught between his teeth.
"Okay first of all, what the fuck are these photos. Mirror selfie? You fucking serious, mate?"
Colin clears his throat uncomfortably. "I, uh, heard it's more, uh, appealing on here than on…other apps.”
"I don't fucking care. Look, you're trying to meet somebody right? A relationship? Not just trying to get laid?"
"Yeah, no, I...I want to meet someone."
Isaac nods firmly. "Okay. We got work to do."
At first, nothing really changes.
From his end, Isaac is doing his level-best to make sure of it, tries not to second-guess every conversation, every casual touch he and Colin share. It's hard at first, and awkward, and he's sure by the way Colin is looking at him that he's not as smooth about it as he thinks he is. He doesn't want Colin to think he's disturbed by anything he told him, but he doesn't want to lead him on either. But after a few days of shuffling side-to-side on the locker room bench, trying to find the perfect gap to leave between them to convey exactly that, Colin huffs exasperatedly and slides right up next to him, pressing his shoulder against him so they’re back to sitting the way they always do whenever they’re listening to the coaches’ pre-training talk.
After that pretty much everything goes back to normal. Colin matches with a bunch of guys, has conversations with a few of them, and grabs a quick in-person coffee with even fewer of them. “Rather not risk too many public dates until I know for sure,” he says when Isaac asks him about it. “Or like, 60% sure maybe.” He looks stressed as fuck even talking about it and Isaac doesn’t press him again.
Sometimes they read and respond to the messages together, Isaac hovering over Colin's shoulder as he enters and deletes words based on his feedback. After his coffee dates they meet up for a pint so Colin can give him a play-by-play that they can dissect together.
He wouldn’t say he’s having the time of his life, exactly, but it helps chip away the lump of guilt that’s been sitting in his gut ever since Colin’s big Confession, capital C implied and completely necessary. He does like that it’s introducing him to a whole new side of his best friend, especially when he’d thought he’d already known everything about him.
But then Colin matches with this guy, Taylor, and it’s different. Because after a few weeks, they’re still chatting away, except this time Colin is no longer showing him the messages, or even giving him any updates at all.
“It’s, uh, it’s private,” he says so awkwardly that Isaac regrets asking. “Personal, you know.”
He gets it. He doesn’t need, or even want the dirty details of whatever messages they might be sending between them. Still, he gets an odd feeling in his stomach when Colin says that, like he gets when he misses a step going down the stairs. "So when’re you two getting coffee?" he asks, keeping his voice low under the ruckus of the locker room.
"Oh, we already did that."
Isaac freezes in lacing up his boot. He twists and looks up at Colin, who's typing away at his phone with a broad grin in place. "You what?"
"Yeah, ages ago."
"How come you didn't call me after?"
Colin finally looks up from his screen. He shrugs. “‘Cos it went well. Good enough that we went from coffee to beers and still had loads to talk about. I figured I didn't need to bother you for a post-game analysis."
Isaac straightens up. "You're not bothering me. I promised you I'd help."
Colin smiles softly at him. "I know. And you’ve been great, really. But don't worry, you're off the hook. For now at least."
"Meeting him again, huh?"
"Yeah. Though now I just need to figure out where." He taps his phone against his chin contemplatively. "I'd love to do a movie, but I'm not all that keen on getting photographed by some teenager while we're snogging in the back row."
Isaac chokes at that, prompting a strange look from Colin. He quickly clears his throat, swallowing hard before he speaks again. "Think I can help you with that."
Colin raises his eyebrows. "You can?"
"Yeah, mate. Gotchu."
It’s not hard to find a small private cinema to rent in London. Isaac hands over a fat wad of cash on top of the rental fee to encourage discretion and throws in his fiercest glare with it, in case any of the staff are still feeling chatty. They’ve got quite a large selection of movies, and he scrolls through endlessly, trying to find the perfect fit, but nothing feels right. And then he spots it and stops, his cursor hovering. “That’s the one,” he murmurs, and he whistles while he books it, feeling rather chuffed with himself.
"Hey!" he says when he sees Colin the next morning. "How was it?"
"How was—" Colin looks at him in disbelief. "Isaac, you fucking rented us Requiem for a Dream!"
"What? It's a good movie! Oi, Sam, Requiem for a Dream's a good movie right?" Sam, who's got a protein bar between his teeth, nods his head up and down.
"For a date," Colin adds, and Sam's head shakes side to side, eyes wide. "I fucking told you." He whacks Isaac in the chest with the back of his hand.
"Alright fine, I'm sorry, mate!" Isaac says, rubbing his chest. "So, was shit was it?"
"No, actually. Luckily Taylor is a massive film buff and good cinema turns him on, so we ended up muting the movie and making out for two hours."
"Oh," Isaac says, and for some reason his cheeks feel hot, but Colin is giving him that strange scrutinising look again so he quickly adds, "Sounds great!"
"Yeah," Colin says, still eyeing him suspiciously. "We're meeting up again next week."
"Let me make it up to you. For fucking up the first one, even if it did end up working out," he says, trying not to think too much about what ‘end up working out’ meant. "What ‘bout dinner? I’ll make all your faves, make you guys like a little restaurant right there in your kitchen. Be like sitting at the chef’s table!" Colin looks hesitant. “Or I’ll set you guys up in the other room and just come in to serve.”
He narrows his eyes. "You would be up for that?"
"Yeah, bruv. Be fun innit!" Isaac says, grinning so hard his cheeks hurt.
"Okay," he agrees grudgingly. "But please, Isaac. I’m trusting you. Please don't fuck this one up too."
Isaac doesn’t know what happens. He honestly tries his best, makes all of Colin’s favourite foods perfectly, and even throws in charming little anecdotes about Colin every time he goes in to serve, or at least, ones he thinks are charming. Based on the kick Colin gives him halfway through the second one, he doesn’t seem to agree.
It finally all comes to a head on the third course, a curry Isaac made with prawn paste, which he might have forgotten Taylor is allergic to. Luckily, it’s not one of those scary throat-closing, injection-type allergies, but it’s bad enough that Taylor’s itching at himself the rest of the evening, rubbing his eyes until they’re so red and puffy that Isaac can’t even look at them without tearing up.
“Fuck, mate,” he says frantically to Taylor, “I’m so fucking sorry. Shit, that’s—here, maybe some ice will help.” But for some reason he can’t stop staring at where Colin’s got his hand over Taylor’s, thumb swiping soothingly over his skin, and as he reaches for the ice bucket his elbow knocks over what turns out to be a very full glass of wine, splashing it all over Colin and his crisp white polo.
He grabs a napkin and lunges at Colin, dabbing at his chest, but Colin knocks his arm away with a warning glare. “Leave it, Isaac,” he says, but he keeps trying, muttering apologies to both of them, determined to make this all right. “Isaac. Isaac. Isaac!” he shouts finally, and Isaac freezes. "Just stop!" He slams both hands on the table and pushes to standing, and Isaac stares at him, eyes wide. "Stop talking. Stop helping. Just. Leave us the fuck alone."
The room is silent, save for the quiet, steady drip of the wine from Colin’s shirt onto the floor. Taylor glances back and forth between them, fingers frozen on his arm mid-scratch. Colin looks angrier than Isaac’s ever seen him, his chest heaving and his face flushed, and Isaac swallows hard.
"Alright,” he says. “Sorry, I’ll—I'll go."
Colin doesn't even look at him the next day, even goes as far as to grab his stuff and kit up on the other side of the room. Everybody notices, of course, but Colin brushes off their questions stiltedly until they stop asking.
Midway through training they split into two groups to run a possession drill, and when Isaac gets put in Colin's group, he hustles over to make sure they're the only two standing at the same cone.
"What do you want?" Colin asks tiredly, not even looking at him.
"Listen, Colin—"
He suddenly whirls around. "Listen to what?” He prods him in the chest. “I thought you were supposed to be my friend! If you had a—a problem with me being—you should've just talked to me."
"I don't have a problem with it, what the fuck are you talking about?"
"Really? You so sure about that? Because anytime it looked like Taylor and I were about to do something even remotely physical, hell, anytime I even talked about doing something with him, you'd get this freaked out look on your face. And you sure as hell never did that when it was girls I was hooking up with."
Isaac stares, his mouth flapping open and closed like a fish, until Colin throws his hands up and storms off to join the other group.
Did he have a problem with it? It was called unconscious bias after all. Maybe he did and just didn’t realize? It would explain the sick feeling Isaac’d been having in his stomach every time he thought about Taylor’s hands, or his lips, or his anything else anywhere on Colin.
Well, his unconscious will just have to get over it, because he can’t handle this distance between them anymore. He misses him, misses the stupid shit they'd get up to, and the way he always laughed at his jokes with that dumb laugh of his, and the way his hair stood on end after a shower before he put product in it, and the easy casual touches between them, warm and comfortable, and the way his eyes shined when he—
Wait.
Oh.
Fuck.
He heads straight for Roy’s office right after training, his mind spinning. He knocks on the open door and Roy looks up.
"Hey Roy, can I ask you something?"
"What is it?"
"How'd you know?" Roy raises an eyebrow. "That you were like—that you're in love with Keeley."
"Jesus fucking christ." He gets up. "Come with me."
"Huh?"
"Come on!" He shoves Isaac by the shoulder until he moves. They don't go far, just out his door and around the corner in through the next one, into the office where Ted is sitting alone, flipping through some papers on his desk.
"Hi, Roy!" he greets brightly.
"Diamond Dogs meeting. Now."
"Oh, well you know we're always happy to bring in our junkyard dog.” He picks his phone up off the desk. “Let me just—"
"Not for me, you muppet." He shifts sideways, tugging Isaac by the arm until he shuffles into the room more fully, and when Ted spots him he softens.
"Ah."
"What the fuck is a Diamond Dogs meeting?" Isaac says, glancing between the two of them.
"Hmm, how do I best sum it up? Is it a meeting of the minds? Is it a support group? Or is it—"
"It's when Higgins, Ted, and Beard get together and talk about their woman troubles," Roy says abruptly, and Ted gives a ‘yeah that’s about right’ nod.
His eyes zero in on Isaac's face. "I think maybe we won't round up all the Dogs on this one," he says quietly. Roy nods at him, claps Isaac on the shoulder and then disappears back the way he came, closing the door behind him. "Why don't you have a seat?" he says, nodding at Beard's chair, and that's all the prompting Isaac's knees need to give out and collapse him into the seat. "So what's going on?" he asks, leaning forward onto his desk.
Isaac looks away, feeling overwhelmed with how fucking big the answer to that question is. There's one undeniable thread through it all though. "I fucked up, Coach," he spits out.
Ted's brow furrows. "And why d'you think that?"
Isaac sighs. "Colin's completely avoiding me."
"I noticed."
"I just wanted to help him, I swear. But every time I tried, I just fucked everything up worse. And now he thinks I’m a shit person who thinks all these fucked up things about him. And even though I don’t, I hate how shitty I've made him feel 'cos he's been doing fucking amazing, Coach, he's—it's so fucking great, to see him feeling more…" He trails off, not sure how much Colin would want him saying, and when he glances over, there's something about the fond look in Ted’s eyes that, for the first time in what feels like forever, makes Isaac feel like he's done something right. Ted raises his eyebrows, waiting for him to continue.
“I’m just…” He slouches down in the chair, feeling exhausted. “I’m so fucking confused, Coach. Colin’s my best mate and I don’t want to lose him. But I think I might want to…” He scrubs his hands over his face. “I don’t fucking know anything anymore.”
Ted pushes back his chair and gets up, coming over to perch on the edge of his desk, and Isaac stares miserably up at him.
"Listen, I'm not gonna sit here and pretend I'm the perfect person to talk to you about everythin’ that's confusin' you, because I sure as heck ain’t qualified for all that. But I do know one thing. You've got good instincts, always have. It's what makes you such a good captain. But I think that sometimes you get in your head too much to listen to them.” He taps two fingers against his temple to punctuate the point. “So, just…take a beat. Catch your breath. 'Cos I suspect you might already know what you want."
Three hours later, Isaac’s standing on Colin's doorstep, Coach's words still running through his head. He presses hard on the doorbell and takes a deep breath, shifting from foot-to-foot as he waits.
Colin opens the door, his face bright and expectant, and it takes Isaac’s breath away because it’s been so long since he’s been the one to make him look like that, and it’s like the last puzzle piece clicking firmly into place.
"Hey, Taylor, I—” The joy immediately falls off his face. “You're fucking kidding me."
"Wait, Colin." He shoots out a hand to stop the door from closing.
"You can't be serious."
"I need to talk to you."
"And it has to be now of course. Right when I'm about to go on my gay date with a gay man. What, now you're just stopping the whole thing before it starts? Is this some sort of saving me campaign? 'Cos I’ve got to say, it—"
"No, it's not—will you just shut the fuck up for a second and let me explain?"
Colin's mouth shuts, more out of surprise than anything else, but he takes advantage anyway.
"Look, I was wrong before."
"You're going to have to narrow it down for me."
"About—well about loads of things, fine. But I meant like...you remember when you first told me. How you feel."
Colin stares at him incredulously. "Vaguely, yeah."
"And remember how I said that—when I said—"
"Isaac, it was bad enough the first time, we really don't have to relive the whole thing."
"No, just listen. 'Cos I was wrong, innit. I don't...not feel that way." Colin squints at him and he tries again. "I mean about you. I think—I don't think I realized but...I...I feel the same way, Colin. Like what you told me."
Colin stares at him. "No you don’t."
"What do you mean I don’t?" Isaac says, offended.
"You can't even fucking say it! You're just—I don't know what this is, Isaac, but it's not—it's cruel, okay? Whatever you're doing, if you're just like missing your old pal Colin or if you’re just trying stuff out, whatever it is, you can't just—you can't say shit and just—"
Isaac fists his hand in his stupid polo and tugs him forward into a hard kiss. He pulls back, chest heaving, and Colin gapes at him. "I'm in love with you, Colin." Colin is still blinking at him like his brain hasn't come back online and Isaac drops his hand, automatically smoothing Colin's shirt the way he'd always fixed his clothing and honestly how the fuck did he not realize any of it sooner. "I should go."
He walks down one step, then takes a deep breath and turns back. "Sorry, by the way. For fucking up all your dates. It wasn't on purpose, I swear, but..." He shakes his head at himself. "Think I was jealous and just didn't know it. But I—I'm glad you still managed to find Taylor. He seems like a decent bloke."
And with that, he walks down the rest of the steps and off into the night, already thinking about all the whiskey he’s going to need to drink to get Colin's horrified expression out of his head.
Fortunately it's a bye weekend, which means he doesn't see or hear Colin for two whole days, which is perfectly fine by him. But by Monday morning he's an entire ball of nerves, and gets to the clubhouse so early that he has to wait outside the locker room door until Will shows up a good half hour later.
Ted arrives shortly after and pauses briefly on his way through to his office. "Everythin’ alright?" he asks, and Isaac nods.
"Just trying to step up as a captain, you know, set a good example and all that."
Ted nods slowly, obviously seeing right through him, but he takes the hint and continues on to his office. He's got a spring in his step and a lipstick stain on his cheek and it makes everything in Isaac ache with loneliness.
He's unlacing his shoes when he sees a familiar pair of dark blue Yeezys appear in front of his. He looks up.
"Can I sit down?"
"Course, bruv!" He injects as much false cheer into it as he can and Colin raises an eyebrow as he settles in next to him. "How's Taylor?" he forces himself to ask.
Colin shrugs. "No clue, really."
"What—"
"We decided we weren't going to see each other anymore."
"You did?" He tempers his tone, coughing lightly to try and clear the treacherous hope creeping into his voice. "Uh, I mean, I'm sorry to hear that. What—thought you guys were doing good. What happened?"
"Well," Colin says, leaning back on his hands, "turns out it's hard to start a relationship with someone new when you're totally, idiotically in love with someone else. Especially when you thought you had no shot in hell with that someone else, but then he turns up on your doorstep and tells you he loves you, somehow managing to ruin your date for the third time in a row."
Isaac's cheeks heat. "Fuck, I know, I’m so fucking sorry. I didn’t—wait." Colin is watching him patiently, a small smile on his face. "So you're saying..."
Colin rolls his eyes and, in a very familiar move, grabs a handful of his shirt and pulls him forward into a kiss, much gentler than Isaac's poor attempt, and it shoots sparks all the way down to his toes. "I'm in love with you too," Colin says when he lets him go.
“Oh,” Isaac responds dumbly, and this time the simple word lights up Colin’s entire face, his eyes dancing and his mouth stretched in an ear-to-ear grin, and Isaac never wants to go without that face ever again. “Thank fuck.” Colin laughs, and it takes all of Isaac’s willpower not to throw himself on him right then and there. “Do you want to go out tonight?” he asks instead.
“Hmm.” Colin licks his lips, his eyes flicking up and down, and Isaac’s stomach flips over. “Think I'd rather stay in.”
Isaac grins. “My place or yours?”