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Jude wasn't a proud man, not really. Even if he did tell Zero otherwise, or at least implied that he was getting some pride back, he knew better than to expect a full restoration of self-respect after years of being ignored by his father. Begging for scraps when he saw what his friends got for free, with no conditions. There were times when he thought that the relationships his friends had with their fathers was insultingly easy, and he was going about it the man's way -- every little bit of respect earned the hard way.
He knew better now. That didn't really mean much, because he still went into that closet and got lost in Zero again: the smell of his musky cologne, the rasp of his beard, the clench of every over-exercised muscle.
Later that night, Jude looked at himself in the mirror. Such a cliché, he thought. Poor little boy who didn't get enough attention from his father and fucked up his life because of it and probably turned gay because of it. This was bullshit, but there were times when he wondered. It would have been nice to lay this all on someone else's feet and have it be their fault. He tilted his head and looked again. He had done some shitty things in the past, but if there was a scale of justice, he still thought he had more good in him than bad. He wasn't bad looking, and he had a good job, miraculously. He had some money, and now, the genuine desire to change himself, for himself.
All new you, he thought grimly, and reminded himself that there were people who had a fraction of what he had and somehow found happiness. It still didn't feel like much, but it would have to be good enough to start over again. He took off Zero's underwear and put it in the small trash bin near the toilet.
* * *
The next day, in the harsh light of California sun, his resolve needed some food and coffee and a dose more of resolve.
Thirty minutes on the treadmill, thirty more on his home gym. He put on a new suit he bought a few days ago and picked a tie with subtle yellow patterns. Dark French roast, sesame seed bagel with salmon and cream cheese for breakfast -- healthy start. Top 40 on the radio, and he imagined himself in a club dancing to the beat, even if he danced like the worst stereotype of bad white guy dancing ever. In this scenario, he had moves like Channing Tatum, only with more clothes. Maybe he should take a hip hop dance course.
Work was the usual cavalcade of bullshit, but he tried to power on through. Despite his best efforts, that didn't actually change today, even if he and Lionel had a lot of fun trading barbs over the players and the cheerleaders. Or asking each other random questions for the sake of asking random questions and being surprised by the answers.
She was wearing a white dress with red swoops, like a stylish but deranged serial killer bride. Lionel was feeling literal today, not that Jude was going to mention it.
"Who would you fuck?" Lionel asked. They were standing near the window in her office looking out at nothing, side by side, comfortable. She glanced at him sideways, knowing and snide but somehow all the better for it.
"Jelena," Jude said.
"In the world where you're interested in that, sure. I could see it. You have a thing for beautiful and unavailable. But in the other world where any man you were interested in was interested back."
"Channing Tatum." He knew where Lionel was headed, but he didn't mind. Not after everything she's done for him.
She made a disdainful noise. "Cliché, Jude. You can think of better men than that."
"He's a good dancer, devoted family man, and fucking hot. That's a pretty good package."
"Also boring. Entertain me, Jude, please."
He took a deep breath. "Zero," he said, and tried to drain emotion out of his voice. It sounded stiff and unnatural instead, and laid bare more than what it actually concealed.
After a significant pause, Lionel spoke. "So you like insane, demanding, and insecure on top of everything else." She scoffed, but it sounded sympathetic to his ears. "Get taste. Love yourself a little."
He laughed at that. "I'm trying to," he said, and looked at her directly. She met his eyes and smiled. She could never be warm or maternal with him, but with Lionel, Jude got the feeling that he had an ally for life. That was worth a whole lot more than a second mother, and she would have hated that thought anyway.
"He's a player with baggage," Lionel said, looking back out the window. "He thinks he's white Kobe but he's a slightly inferior Nash with no team spirit. It wouldn't be a catastrophic loss."
Jude shook his head and realized that this was the first time he smiled for real this day, or at least as far as he can remember. "That's sweet, Lie," he said, knowing she loathed any kind of nickname.
"I can hire someone to scoop out your testicles with a melon baller," she said, and probably half meant it, in his estimation. She went back to her chair and pressed her mouse. "Now where are we on the De Callo acquisition?"
"Research stage," he said, and got back to work.
* * *
He wasn't proud of it, but for an EVP of a basketball team, he did an amazing job of avoiding anything to do with the team today. All of it felt like mistakes he couldn't fix or didn't want to or got tired of trying. Zero. Sloane. Derek. Oscar was in jail, and that was actually a mercy.
Somehow though, at 8:30pm, he still ran into Jelena. He hadn't really interacted much with her, but he knew of her reputation and her ambition. Which made it even more suspicious that someone with a reputation for being so icy was, to all appearances, completely thrown by seeing him unexpectedly in the executive office hallway. She was breathing heavily for someone who looked like she was just walking and clutched a purse close to her chest.
"Jelena," he said.
"Jude," she said.
They stared at each other at a complete impasse. She broke first, nodding at him with an exquisitely drawn brow up, and went on her way.
"That was strange and awkward," he said out loud in the empty space, just for the hell of it. The quiet responded back.
* * *
What he did not expect was to see Zero waiting for him near his car. He hated himself for feeling that rush -- Zero's here he waited for me -- and renewed his pledge to get that under control as soon as possible.
"I saw Jelena a few minutes ago," he said, stopping a few paces before Zero, still in his uniform. "You might still have a chance, you know."
"Why are you even bringing her up?" Zero looked tired, he noticed. A little strung out. He felt ashamed just then, being mean and petty for no good reason apart from wanting to needle someone.
"Sorry." The night was cool, for Los Angeles. He couldn't see much of the stars, and there was too much light around anyway. The usual smell of gravel and smog was all around, but when he inhaled deeply to try and get himself together, the night air was cut with the scent of Zero's expensive cologne.
"What, you can't even look at me anymore?" And that made Jude pay attention, because that was Zero angry.
He looked his fill then. God, Zero was so fucking beautiful that even after he had seen everything he still wanted to look.
"I'm tired, Zero."
"You're being really fucking unfair, you know that?" Zero said, closing the distance. "You just admitted to yourself that you're gay and all of a sudden everything's about not being ashamed and not being a secret, and you want me to throw away everything, everything I've fucking worked for, just like that?"
Jude got angry right back. "You refuse to get it and you never will." He jutted his chin and met Zero's anger head on. "It's not about throwing everything away. Jesus Christ, Gideon, you don't even notice the shit that you do when I'm around, do you? You look around first before you talk to me when you're with your team. You look at women you want to fuck right in front of me and think it's okay. I'm sick of being someone's secret, or someone's whose feelings don't matter."
"Don't put what your father did to you on me."
"Don't bring him into this," Jude said, stopping himself from yelling, but only just.
"Then don't get angry at me for all the shit you still have to deal with that's about him," Zero said. "I know I've done some stupid things, but let's keep that separate."
Jude was fuming. "Get the hell out of way and let me get to my car." He brushed past Zero and pressed the unlock button on his key fob.
"I love you."
He stopped in his tracks. Closed his eyes. He knew the world didn't stop, but his world did. He turned around.
"You don't sound happy about that all."
Zero looked at him, a faint sheen on his eyes that Jude didn't want to think about. "Because," Zero said, "because you're not happy either. I want you to be happy, whether you believe it or not."
He stared at this stunning man, as close to bleeding out as one could get while still being whole, and felt something in him give. Give in a way that would make everything better in the future, but would hurt like hell in the meantime.
"Meet me at my place. Let's talk there, OK?" He waited for Zero's nod, and got into his car. He took a deep breath before starting the engine.
* * *
The knock on his door was tentative, and when he opened it, Zero stood there looking bruised somehow, clad simply in jeans and a plain gray t-shirt that looked like it was ripped out of a package of three rather than off a designer's mannequin. Jude stood aside and gestured for Zero to come in.
It was worse here, Jude thought. He can remember the first time they did it here, the first time Zero was so jealous that he made the move rather than let Jude go off with a photographer's assistant. Daniel? Darren? Danny? "Do you want a drink?" He chose to remain standing.
Zero shook his head and sat down on the couch. "I wish," he started to say, and Jude steeled himself because this sounded like it would be a knife between the ribs. "All my life," Zero said instead, "I had people tell me I was nothing. And the only way I could be something was to be good at basketball, so I got good at it. It's the only thing I'm good at. And you of all people should know that it's scary as fuck to lose something you're good at doing because someone higher up than you thinks you're less than nothing because you like sucking dick."
And with that, Jude felt himself deflate. "I know," he said, and felt worse when faced with Zero's cautious look up. "I get it. But what you don't know yet is how awful it feels when you find something that's right and everyone else tells you to go back to the way things were, when they felt wrong." Zero's shocked look set him back. "For what it's worth, Zero, I'm sorry too. I was being unfair."
He sat beside Zero and felt the rush that his body always seemed to go through with being so close to him.
Zero's head was bowed down. "There has to be a middle ground we can reach here, Jude."
"Why?"
Zero looked up. "I want to try."
It felt like infinities, Jude would later remember. It felt like time went elastic and loopy but Zero remained sharp and vital beside him, hope softening the sharp edges of his face.
Jude tipped his head so that their foreheads would touch. He put a hand on the back of Zero's head to keep him in place.
"Okay."
* * *
The trip to his bedroom was quiet and solemn. For a beginning, it felt hushed and fragile. After Jude said okay, Zero had unbuttoned the top two buttons on Jude's shirt and took huge lungfuls of breath on Jude's neck and chest, as if Jude was oxygen in a smoke-filled room. When things felt less desperate, they held each other on the couch. And now they found themselves here.
"You know where the toothbrushes and spare clothes are," Jude said, breaking the silence. Zero nodded and disappeared into the bathroom. Jude had wanted to shower but found himself too tired for it, so he took off his office clothes and left them on the floor, putting on a fresh pair of boxers in their place. He turned around when he heard the bathroom door open and saw Zero standing there, down to his underwear.
"I want to look my fill," Zero said. Jude gulped and stood there.
"What's the appeal?" he said, trying to make light of it. "You've seen you. This," he gestured to his body, "doesn't hold a candle."
"You can be so stupid sometimes," Zero said, not unkindly, and Jude felt himself flush.
"Shut up and let me brush my teeth." Zero stood aside and bowed as a joke, which merited an eye roll.
Jude remembered looking at himself in the mirror this morning and resolving that things would change. Would they now, he wondered. He grabbed his toothbrush and stared at his reflection. Zero loved him. That was a change. Jude believed him. That was a change too. They both said sorry, and that they needed to talk was in the air. That was a big change, because before, they would have just fucked.
When he stepped out of the bathroom, Zero was already in bed, leaning back on the headrest with pillows bunched up behind his back. Jude got into his side of the bed and mirrored him.
"I have a plan," Zero said.
"Yeah?"
"Yup. It has five parts. One, take you out on a date in public. The lucky thing about being considered a straight basketball player who does hookers on the side is that everybody thinks I can't stop thinking about pussy. So we'll know it's a date but no one else will."
Jude laughed despite himself. "Hiding in plain sight?"
"Exactly!" Zero rubbed his hands, clearly warming to his plan, and there was still a small part of Jude that hated how charming he found that. "Two, come clean to you about everything that I know."
"And what's that?"
"Terrence and Jelena are planning to buy out the Devils, and I've been blackmailing them to trade Derek for my silence," Zero said. "I'd check that office where Jelena was tonight when you saw her if I were you."
Jude stared at him. "When you commit to something, you don't back down, do you?"
"No," Zero said. He tentatively reached out, and when Jude met his hand halfway, he felt his hand squeezed hard. "You'll find it annoying soon, believe me."
"What's three?"
"Three is we both get a therapist." Jude felt his hand squeezed again, and he could tell that cost Zero a lot. He couldn't help himself anymore. He took his hand out of Zero's grasp and put his arm around him instead. Tipped Zero's head down so that it was on his shoulder. Zero's arms wrapped around his middle, and that felt like the world sorting itself out.
"Agreed," Jude said, feeling lightheaded. "What's four?"
"Four is I sign up to be a spokesperson for Athlete Ally and maybe do some fundraisers for The Trevor Project."
"Sounds amazing. And five?"
Zero was quiet for a few seconds, and Jude found himself holding his breath. Steeling himself yet again.
"Five should have been one," Zero said. "I tell this amazing guy I know that I love him, but all this will take a couple of years. That I can't do it all overnight, but I'll do it, because when I make plans, I go through with it. I just can't do it that fast."
Jude closed his eyes. Before, in his worst flights of melodrama, he imagined the world pressing on his chest, squeezing all the air out and crushing organs and bones and somehow begging for more. But this moment with Zero now, it felt like something new growing in the busted up places, filling in the holes, letting in a little bit of light, something given freely instead of bits and pieces being doled out.
It was hope, Jude realized. And trust, and love. He believed Zero.
"That guy will stand by your side," Jude said. "He's willing to work it out. I'm pretty sure of it. Even if it is for someone with a name like Gideon."
Zero flung Jude's arms aside and straddled him. Jude looked up and was speechless at the expression on Zero's face, amazed that something he has stared at and fantasized about and dreamed of could still reconfigure and unravel and make itself beautiful in all new ways.
"Be patient with me, OK?" Zero asked. Jude kissed him to say yes.
THE END