“Fuck!” I yell, before detonating inside his mouth.
My head hits the wall behind me and my vision fizzes out for a few moments. He releases me, swallows my load, then pillows his forehead on my hip and makes the cutest little “Uhhh” sound as his release splashes on the dusty screed floor.
Two seconds later, the timer goes off.
He glances up at me. “When are you seeing Megs next?” The question comes out of nowhere. My heartbeat shoots into overdrive. Does he already know about us?
I shrug. “Not for a while. She’s going to Kent again for a bit.” Not a lie, even though it feels wrong to say it like that.
“Good,” he says. He closes his lips around the flesh on my pelvis, just beside my hip, and sucks until a crimson welt is all that remains.
We time our arrivals separately into the locker room, not that anybody would figure out we were meeting up beforehand to fuck each other’s faces, but Pi likes to eliminate as much doubt as possible.
He also likes for me to arrive before him because apparently I’m a better actor than he is, and I take up more space, both physically and with my majestic presence and raw animal magnetism. I’m paraphrasing his reasoning, but it was something along those lines.
“You’re so fucking loud and massive that you can’t help but draw everyone’s attention.”
“Cheers, me ’ansum.”
“You know what I mean. If I go in first and they ask me where I’ve been, I’ll panic and stutter and the jig’ll be up.”
When Pi walks in fifteen minutes after I do, I barely look up from my conversation with Snatch. It’s all part of our well-practiced routine. I have no idea what he does or where he goes during these little waiting games, but it’s always precisely fifteen minutes later.
“How ya going, Abs? Hey, Gadget. Alright, Dan?” he says, also deliberately not looking at me.
Sometimes I feel like our constant touching, and hair-ruffling, and buttock-squeezing has to be obvious to the rest of the team, but maybe it’s not. Rugby lads tend to be a hands-on bunch. It’s all part of the rough and tumble, the camaraderie. Boys will be boys and all that. But post-lice room, Pi and I will always avoid touching each other, or greeting each other as we would our other teammates. Just in case.
Eventually Pi catches my eye, and with a deadpan expression, surreptitiously pulls a middle finger from his pocket. “Alright, cunt?”
I think I’m in love with him.
It’s half-time. Eksteen and Dan are having a pitch-side discussion when Pi and I are summoned to join them.
We’re playing the Rigsborough Ravens and we’re currently leading a whopping forty-seven to seven.
“They’re new, and they’re still figuring themselves out,” Eksteen tells us again, just like he did before the start of the game. “That doesn’t mean we should go easy on them, but it gives us the opportunity to try a few things out.”
Technically, the Ravens aren’t a new team. They were founded almost the same year as the Cents, but what our coach means is that they’ve recently had a massive overhaul of players after losing a few big hitters to transfers, injuries, and retirements, and now they have a team made up primarily of youngsters who haven’t had a lot of training or in-game time together.
It’s a charity match, and a pound from each ticket sale goes towards the Bath Centurions’ Community Fund. The score won’t have any bearing on our end of season stats, but it’s still heaps of fun to completely obliterate the competition now and then.
“I’m taking Chelford and Jones off,” Eksteen tells us.
Dan nods.
It makes sense, even to my non-tactical brain. Dan, Gadget, and Pi are probably our three best players. It only seems reasonable to save most of them for when it matters. Why risk injuring our greatest assets when we’re forty points in the lead? Next week’s game against Bristol will be a different affair; we’ll need them in top condition for that.
“So you two’re in charge now, okay?” he adds.
Pi and I look at each other and puff out a breath.
“Ripper,” Pi deadpans.
“Do you remember when we discussed the importance of cohesion?” I don’t know why, but Eksteen’s only looking at me when he says this. I realise that if it comes down to choosingone of us over the other, it won’t be me. Not that I’d mind in the slightest. In all honesty, Pi deserves to be the new skipper.
“Pard, I have literally thought of nothing else,” I say. Dan laughs. Eksteen doesn’t.
“I want to see you working together,” Eksteen says. We both nod. “And now would be a great time to throw out any radical ideas you might have for the second half. Like I said, they’re an inexperienced team. This gives us a bit of wiggle room. I’d like to know what you two can come up with.”
