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Whoever decided to put so many stairs on the way up to my dorm room is a monster. My legs were already rubbery after the match, but after a couple (okay, a lot) of pints with the lads at The Three-Eyed Goat, I’m not entirely confident I have legs anymore. I’m a pickled brain suspended in a fleshy bag of bones.
This is bullshit. I should just be able to wave a wand and float my way up here. Though with my luck, I’d launch myself into outer space first.
Baz is in the room when I finally make it up the stairs, because of course he’s there. He rarely leaves unless it’s to go out to classes, coffee, or football. Occasionally his minions will manifest in there (I think one is his cousin), at which point I’m expected to fuck off for a few hours. When we were first roommates, I didn’t even think he ate food until I saw him in the canteen about three weeks in.
There he is now, folded up on his bed, looming over a book spread open on his duvet. He’s so tall, he perpetually looms over everything. Even helpless books. And he’s wearing those specs he thinks I don’t know about, the round gold-rimmed ones that make his gray eyes half again as big and twice as soft.
“Evening,” I greet him.
“It’s three in the morning.” He glances at his watch. “3:18, to be precise. Hardly evening anymore.”
I fling down my practice bag next to my desk. “Can’t a lad just be polite without being roasted on his ability to tell time?”
“Not you, no.”
“Prick.”
“Lush.”
“Don’t drink that much,” I say, flopping face-first on my bed. It’s true: I’ve turned down after-match pints loads of times, because I don’t like how it all sloshes around inside my stomach. Tonight, though, the adrenaline and post-win dopamine made the call for me. A call that I’m starting to regret as a headache creeps in behind my eyes.
“Based on your inebriation, I can’t tell whether you won or lost.” Baz flicks a page over in his book. “Not that I particularly care.”
Liar. “We won,” I say, curling my knees up to my chest. A spasm shoots up my left calf as I reach down to take my shoe off, a warning of the cramp that’ll set in less than an hour from now. Maybe Baz has some aspirin I can take – I’m fresh out. “Felt like it took ages. They played hard. But we came out on top in the end.”
“Could you have said that with just a touch more homoeroticism?”
“Dunno, I’ll defer to your authority on that one.”
Baz glares at me. It’s not like it’s much of a secret: he told me he was gay during finals week of our first semester here. Entirely possible he doesn’t remember, seeing as how he drank so much espresso that week he could have shifted into another dimension, followed by an absolute bash at the Moon and Falcons after all the exams were done that left Baz being unable to walk straight. I ended up having to carry him back to Mummers (not that hard – strength training for rugby is intense), and he was somehow gone for the holiday break by the time I woke up the next morning.
He must not remember. I haven’t forgotten.
“Rugby is hardly more than a ruse of intricate rituals allowing you to touch the skin of other men,” Baz mutters.
“Wuzzat?” I swear he’s quoting from a poem, but it’s not coming to me now.
“Brutish. Barbaric.” He sniffs. “At least we football players are proper athletes.”
“Come again?”
“You heard me.”
“I did, and I want to be sure I heard right.”
Baz shuts his book and turns to me, gaze steady. “Football players are proper athletes. Rugby is for people who never grew out of mud fights.”
“Are you seriously suggesting we’re not athletic? That we’re just cutting about on the pitch clueless?”
“I don’t have to suggest what I already know.”
I reach down and hook my finger into the top of my sock (proper knee-highs, thank you very much), dragging it down my calf. When Baz turns back to his book, I wad up my sock and lob it across the room at his head.
The way he screams, you’d have thought I broke his nose. He swipes the sock away and levels his most threatening glare at me, though his glasses make him look a bit like an angry gran.
I grin back at him and wiggle my right foot, still wearing a sock. “More where that came from.”
“All you’ve done is prove my—did you drag your socks through a fish market?” He actually pinches his nose, the uptight bastard.
“No, I sweat my way through a rugby match. Something you couldn’t even dream of doing.” I start working off my other sock. “You couldn’t even sweat your way through one practice.”
“You can’t honestly believe that.”
“I do.”
“Then clearly I’ll have to prove you wrong.”
Turns out it’s rather hard to tilt your head at someone if you’re already leaning against a pillow. You just kind of end up smashing your head further in and putting a crick in your neck.
“Eight o’clock. On the pitch.” I point at Baz. “You and I.”
“Beg your pardon?”
“I’ll put you through your—” I cut myself off with a massive yawn, “—paces. A proper rugby practice.”
“Ten o’clock. We both know you won’t roll your arse out of bed before then.”
“Split the difference, then. Nine o’clock.” I stick my tongue out at him as he gets off of his bed and fluffs his pillows. “Be ready to sweat.”
Baz scoffs and settles back down in bed. Makes me think of a daddy longlegs trying to climb into a car – he’s all limbs. I wait until his back is turned to get up myself and snatch his bottle of aspirin off the top of his desk on my way to the en suite. If he wants a proper workout in the morning, he’ll get one. I just need to be in shape for it.
Of course it’s drizzling when I finally crack my eyes open. Wouldn’t be the first rugby practice I’ve had in the rain, but it’ll be Baz’s first. They cancel football matches at the slightest hint of dampness, while we’ve slogged and scrummed through torrential downpours. The rain certainly won’t improve his mood.
He’s waiting for me down on the pitch sidelines, his shin guards sitting on a nearby bench. As I get closer, I see he’s shivering under his polar fleece pullover. Can’t relate: I’m in one of my rugby shirts that’s too stained for game time, and I’m perfectly cozy. No big deal. The exercises I have in mind will get his blood pumping.
“Lovely day, innit?” I call out.
The stare he levels at me could stun a dragon. “Hardly.”
“You’ll be fine! We’ll probably be inside in a half-hour anyway – you won’t hold out that long.”
“According to you.”
I shrug just to piss him off more. “Right. Gotta start with stretches. Toe touches first, unless you’re too tall to do those.”
Baz rolls his eyes and dips down, his ponytail flopping as he grabs at the toes of his absurdly expensive running shoes. Why does he have such meshy shoes? His feet are going to be soaked in so much mud, he can save himself a spa trip. (Not a joke – I know for a fact he goes to the spa like twice a month.)
We run through other stretches, windmills and such. He takes rather well to doing lunges across the field in pissing rain. Same with the side planks. When we start jogging around the perimeter of the pitch, he seems to wince at how his feet stick every so often, but other than that he’s handling everything in stride. I let him get rather far ahead of me, because unfortunately he was right about me overdoing it at the pub last night. Whatever is worse than hungover (flat on your face, maybe?), that’s where I am.
“Right,” I say once we’re done, trying to hide how out of breath I am. He’s fast, I’ll grant him that. Nearly untouchable. His jogging is like a sprint for me. “Time for something simpler.” I close my eyes and let myself fall backward, my arse hitting the soggy ground with a satisfying splat!
“Is naptime part of the typical rugby practice?” Baz sneers. I don’t even have to look at him to know the kind of shitty expression he has on his face.
“This is part of an actual exercise, you prick. Get over here.”
Baz squats down next to me. I crack my eyes open and motion for him to kneel down, which he does with a raised eyebrow.
“The most important part of rugby is endurance,” I tell him. “Doesn’t matter if you’re the smallest, biggest, lightest, or heaviest player in the scrum; you have to be able to take whatever the game throws at you. Some of that’s your physical strength, but the rest,” I thump my chest, “is in here.”
“If we’re going to do some mental fortitude building, surely that doesn’t involve—”
“Get on top of me.”
Both of his eyebrows go up. “Excuse me?”
“Not like—over me. Hands on either side of my head. Knees on either side of my hips. Go on.”
While Baz clambers over me, I try not to think about how close his hands will be to my neck, and how he could just choke me out here and now in the middle of Watford University’s pitch. But he doesn’t. Instead, he gazes down at me uncertainly, rain dripping off of his forehead and nose. I could almost mistake him for being cute.
“Now, I’m going to put my arms up around your neck,” and I do that, “and I’m gonna try to lift my legs—”
“Is this rugby practice or a wrestling match?”
“Would you shut up and let me explain?” I snap. “You’re going to crawl across the pitch—”
“Oh, now I know you’re making this up.”
“I’m not! We do it all the time! Builds endurance. You should see Gareth get dragged around by our best hooker—” I cut myself off, realizing how that sounded. “I’m serious, Baz. If you don’t do this, I’ll give you a failing grade for this practice.”
Saying that unlocks something in Baz’s brain: the ferocious, competitive part that won’t let a challenge go unanswered. With a genuine growl, he claws his way forward through the wet grass, forcing me to tighten my grip around the back of his neck. Somehow I get my knees up enough to press gently into his sides before he gets too far.
After Baz is halfway through his second lap back across the pitch, I realize that I never told him how long he has to do this. I don’t think anyone on our team has managed more than half the pitch before they tap out. It’s just as exhausting of an exercise for the person getting dragged around as it is for the person doing the dragging. But Baz doesn’t look the least bit tired, with his gritted teeth barely showing through the crack in his scowl. If anything, he looks more determined than ever.
Baz is about to start on the third lap when I speak up.
“Mate, seriously, you can stop,” I groan, straining from keeping my belly pressed to his. “This is—ah—far more than I expected. You win, okay? Better athlete and all that.”
Baz finally looks down at me, his expression softening. Without a word, he crouches a bit so my back rests on the soaking grass. I let go from around his neck, my arms practically rubber. My legs feel exactly like they did last night when I got back from the pub once I let them drop. He leans down closer, his nose touching mine. Even with my eyes crossing, I can see the drops trembling on his lashes. Neither of us breathe.
“I always win,” he whispers. And then, all at once, he vanishes from on top of me. When I manage to haul myself up on my elbows, all I see is his silhouette stalking away from me, off of the pitch.
He really is a prick.