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The four whistle blast sounded for the end of the jam, and Olu sighed and shook out his shoulders. He held up four fingers and made eye contact with the scoreboard operator, and once they nodded and the points were on the board, he took a quick drink and headed back to his position by the jammer line. Time to reset for the next jam. Number 38 was back to the bench, number 404 with the star was gonna be his mark to track, with an eye on number 7 in case of a star pass, and all of the red team were on track, so he didn’t have to -
“Hey, can you call a penalty on Jim?”
Olu glared at Pete. “No! They’re your jammer, you call it.”
“I don’t want them to stab me.”
“Don’t ref, then!”
“Come on, they totally elbowed someone.”
The jam timer called ‘Five seconds!’ and the players on the track hunkered into position.
“I’m not calling a penalty I didn’t see,” Olu hissed.
“It was egregious, this is about the integirty of the game.”
For a split second, Olu tried to ignore it, clenching his whistle in his teeth. He glanced at the skaters, the jam timer’s finger’s counting down. He didn’t look to the bench where Jim was probably relaxing.
Better safe than sorry, he thought, and blew four short whistles to call a time out right before the jam timer’s hand came down.
“If you want the penalty called, call it,” Olu said, impatiently. “Don’t hold the game up because you’re scared of Jim.”
“They’re scary!”
“They’re really not. They’re just a skater like anyone else.”
“Please?”
“I wouldn’t ask you to call a penalty on your partner just because you know them better.”
Which is when Lucius popped into their conversation with a microphone in hand. “Just popping in to get the dirt on this officiating debate!” he said, into the mic, his voice echoing from the tinny sound system over the small crowd in the stands.
“Lucius never threatened to stab you,” Pete said.
“Lucius was never a sexist,” Olu snapped.
This wasn’t how Olu liked to referee. He didn’t care about the details and showing off to other refs about his superior rules knowledge, like Pete sometimes claimed to do. Pete just got under his skin. Especially when he was being like this about Jim. Jim had come to skating with a lot of fear and protectiveness and a reluctance ot let anyone get close enough to know them, even though they were always getting close enough to body someone off the track. That had been years ago, though. Jim had changed and gone from distant and self-protective to slowly accepting that the love and care they got from their teammates wasn’t going to go away, not when they came out as trans and not when they let them see their silly side, and their vulnerabilities. Not when they started accepting penalties gracefully instead of fighting over them; in fact, people respected them more.
And nobody was anything but happy for Jim when they started dating a referee.
Maybe Olu did care a bit about good reffing. Because what Pete was asking was just bad practice. Refs shouldn’t hold grudges when people had sincerely made an effort to change, and really done it. Refs shouldn’t base their calls on whether skaters were ‘scary’.
“What’s the issue?” asked their head referee. Stede was, in Olu’s opinion, way too prone to overthinking things, but he liked leadership and responsibility, which Olu could do without.
“Delayed penalty on the red jammer.” Pete said.
“Very well!” Stede said. “Go ahead and call it.”
“That’s what I said,” Olu added.
“I asked Olu to call it.”
“I didn’t see it! I’m not penalising a skater when I didn’t see it! How am I going to defend that if they ask for a review?”
“Erm.” Stede said. “Well, very true, I can’t reasonably expect Olu to make the call under those circumstances…”
“For those of you wondering about the hold up, the referees are debating whether to issue a penalty to Jiminez for the last jam.”
“Is that all?”
The three referees all turned to look at the bench, where Jim was standing with their hands on their hips. “Just give me the penalty if you’re going to, and let’s get things moving.”
Olu met their eyes. There was no annoyance from Jim, no anger. A little impatience in the way they were sliding back and forth on their skates, but no anger. This was what Pete didn’t get about Jim. They didn’t care about these little fights any more. They just wanted to win.
“Call it,” Olu said, to Pete, firmly.
“But…” Pete protested.
“Are you sure?” Stede asked.
“Call it,” Olu repeated. “You saw a penalty, you’re sure it was against the rules, you should call it. That’s reffing. Anything less is a disservice to the game.”
He saw Pete waver, and for a moment, Olu thought he was going to fight again. Then he straightened his shoulders, blasted his whistle and called a forearms penalty on the green jammer.
Jim met Pete’s eyes, nodded once in acknowledgement, and skated to the penalty box without another word.
“See?” Olu said, as they took their positions again for the next jam. “Nothing to fear.”
Of course, the first thing Jim said to Olu when they got in the car after the game was “That forearms penalty was bullshit.”
Olu smiled as he put the car into gear. “I wouldn’t know. I didn’t see it.”
“What was that whole argument about then?”
“Pete wanted me to call it, but I didn’t see the play.”
“You wouldn’t have thought it was a penalty.”
“Maybe. I wouldn’t know, seeing as how I didn’t see it. You wanna go get dumplings, or straight home for the bath?”
Jim stretched their neck out, left and right, feeling where the soreness was. “Dumplings,” they said, decisively, and Olu promptly turned them west towards their favourite dumpling house.
“Why was it a bullshit call?” Olu asked.
Jim frowned. “I… don’t remember.”
Dusk was falling as they drove, the sun an orange glow ahead of them, and Olu was in his favourite place.
“So you don’t remember and I didn’t see it.”
“Would have been bullshit, though. Why was Pete trying to get you to call it?”
“He’s afraid of you.”
“He should be.”
“No he shouldn’t,” Olu said. “Look how you handled it today. You didn’t even glare at him when you went to the bin.”
Jim was looking out the window, and Olu let them think. Sometimes you changed and you didn’t see the difference. Sometimes you could change, for the better, but still expect everyone else to remember you at your worst.
“He called it in the end, though,” Jim said, at last. “Stede make him do it?”
Looking for a place to park the car gave Olu an excuse to leave off answering, but he knew Jim wouldn’t drop it. When he’d angled their car into the space and turned the engine off, he said, “No, I made him do it.”
Jim raised their eyebrows, with a small smile.
“Don’t!” Olu said. “I’m not head referee material.”
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Jim said, as they hopped out. “I’m just saying, if you think you know how things should be run, one way to make it happen is to run them.”
“I hate responsibility,” Olu groaned.
“Upholding the rules is responsibility, and you do it already,” Jim said. They took Olu’s hand and tugged them towards the restaurant. “What if I told you Pete applied for head ref at the tournament next month?”
“He didn’t.”
Jim shrugged.
“He won’t get it.”
“Better hope somebody else applies.”
“I take it back, you’re a monster,” Olu said, and darted in to tickle them before Jim leaped on his back, out of reach.
“You stink,” Olu said, with Jim’s arms around his neck.
“You love it,” Jim replied. And god help him, Olu did.