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“Tell me something I don't know.”
“We’ll be late.” Lee made no move to pull away—angled himself closer, in fact, and Alex pressed his grin against Lee’s cheek.
“I know that. Anything else?”
Lee turned his head just enough for their lips to brush, the contact so light it barely registered. “I want you.”
Jesus.
Alex cleared his throat. “Warn a guy.”
“Where’d be the fun in that?” Lee ran a hand down Alex’s back to cup his arse, pulling him in for a sweet, leisurely roll of Lee’s hips, and okay, Alex was coming to see the appeal of loose training shorts. Especially when Lee bumped Alex away right after, gently but firmly.
Alex blinked. “Hey. I was enjoying that.”
“Me too.” Lee’s voice had dropped by a margin. “We’re already late, though.”
So what?
Alex was about to say as much when he realised that Lee would have spent years herding his sisters, managing their schedules along with his own, making sure they made it to school on time. Funny how Alex’s initial assumptions about Lee had been so far off they’d landed on a different continent entirely—too cool for school, messy, aloof. Wrong, wrong, and wrong.
With a sigh, Alex took a step back and tugged his jersey into place. “All right, let’s go.”
Lee nodded, hesitating for just a second before he smiled. “Later?”
Alex smiled back. “Later.”
Later, as it turned out, amounted to a total of twenty minutes before dinner, hardly enough time for both of them to get clean and change. Alex left the bathroom door deliberately open before he stepped under the shower, and maybe Lee would have done something about it if his mother hadn’t chosen that moment to call. While Alex made a half-hearted attempt to tune out the conversation, he found it impossible to ignore Lee’s voice—quiet and careful, younger than usual.
The phone call had ended by the time Alex exited the bathroom with just a towel wrapped around his hips. Unusually conscious of his near-nakedness, he found Lee in one of the armchairs by the window, expression absent as he frowned at the landscape.
“You okay?” Alex asked.
Lee started slightly and glanced over. Briefly, his gaze dropped from Alex’s face down to the towel. “My mum wants to come to the next match.”
“You said she’s stable, right?” Alex reached for a pair of boxer briefs and the jeans he’d left on his bed, but he didn’t move to pull them on just yet.
“Yeah.” Lee scrubbed a hand down his face, looking abruptly tired. “But routines and regularity are good. Stress and excitement? Not so much.”
“Can’t blame her for wanting to see her son play in a bloody World Cup, though.”
“I guess not.” Lee drew a long breath before he got up. For a few seconds, he simply stood there, watching Alex with a strange kind of intensity before he smiled. It didn’t quite reach his eyes. “All right, I’ll get showered too. I’ll be quick.”
Alex considered asking whether Lee would like some company—but really, not the moment for it. It felt like Lee could use something to lighten the mood, though. “You know what I should get you? A short-sleeved denim shirt with black trousers. It’d go great with your casual vibe but would still be a bit more effort than whatever T-shirt you found at the bottom of your wardrobe.”
It did the trick because Lee’s shoulders relaxed. “Trying to model me into the kind of bloke who could meet your parents?”
Alex was startled into a laugh at the mere thought of his father’s face. “Yeah, that’ll be the day. Think I like you too much for that.”
Something sparked behind Lee’s eyes, gone before Alex could analyse it. “Do you?”
“Yes.” There was more Alex could have added. Time was ticking though, and Lee disliked being late and Alex still couldn’t quite read his mood. So Alex left it at, “Especially when you’re all nice and half-naked after a shower. On that note, I wouldn’t mind getting my mouth on that tattoo on your hip.”
“Such a sweet-talker.” A hint of amusement curled the corners of Lee’s mouth, and Alex reflected it tenfold.
“Plus, I’m pretty—according to you.”
Lee’s smile turned real. “I’m never gonna live that one down, am I?”
