False Start

by Emrys Apollo

  He shoves a hand into Robin's hair, feeling rebelliously content when it gets mussed. He pushes Robin down further, until he's gagging, and then he lets him up again. Robin looks up at him, all wide, hazel eyes, and red, wet mouth.

  “Suck my cock,” Clive orders harshly. His voice is an octave lower and more aggressive, less fond than it's ever been with Robin. He's angry, still. This is punishment for Robin, as much as it's meant to be a twisted sort of pleasure for him.

  Robin blinks and starts sucking him harder, head bobbing as if this wasn't the first time he'd ever had a cock in his mouth.

  Whore, Clive thinks harshly, but he doesn't say the word because he's not that far gone, and he never will be.

  Robin pulls away for a moment. “I love you,” he confesses. It's one of the first times he's said it, and it's so wretchedly unfair that it splinters Clive's heart and sets it alight, angry, burning fire in his veins because he still loves him. He loves him and he hates him, too, for ruining everything, for being perfect and gorgeous and wonderful and brilliantly talented and stupidly funny and ridiculously easy to fall in love with.

  He leans back in and sucks Clive back into his mouth, sucking him harder and faster until he spills into his mouth with a gasp and a quiet moan that he can't quite make himself control.

  Clive pulls away, too, tucks himself back into his trousers. “I need you to leave, Robin. Get dressed.”

  “But - “

  “Get dressed, Robin, and then get out of my house. We’re done.”

  Robin’s face falls, and he looks devastated, and Clive couldn’t care less. He’s almost completely numb. He stands there, naked with hands on hips and soft, flaccid cock hanging limp between his legs, still damp with Robin’s saliva, rapidly cooling. He watches Robin get dressed. His fingers ache to help somehow, to step in close and do up his shirt buttons. His mouth feels the ghost of every goodbye kiss at the same time as it feels the cruel, frigid air between them and desperate for warmth, his lips press together in a thin line. Robin’s fully dressed and all the way at the door when Clive decides it hasn’t been enough quite yet.

  “Don’t call me. I’ll call you, when I’m ready to talk.” Robin looks at him, reluctant acceptance in his eyes, and nods. Clive doesn’t move. He doesn’t move as he hears Robin’s footfalls on the stairs, and he doesn’t move as he hears the front door opening. When it closes, though, his feet take him forward to the window, watching Robin walk into his car, watching him slam his hands into the steering wheel in anger and frustration. He watches him sign and yell in his car, watches his shoulders slump in defeat for a moment as he straightens his spine and reverses the car out of the drive. He watches until Robin gets onto the road, and he watches as he drives off.

  He watches until Robin’s out of sight, turned the corner, and crawls into bed, naked, tucking his face into Robin’s pillow and smelling Robin’s cologne before he starts crying.

  CHAPTER 6

  The ringing of the phone is what wakes him. He rolls over, still half-asleep, eyes closed as he reaches blindly for the phone.

  “Hello?” he croaks.

  “Hi, love.”

  “Robin?”

  “No, Clive,” the man says gently, “It’s Jarrod. How did it go?”

  “Shit,” Clive says shortly, “he sucked my cock and told me he loved me and then I kicked him out of the house and watched him drive away.”

  There’s a sharp inhalation and a long, slow exhalation on the other side of the line - Jarrod must be shocked. But then, St. Jarrod probably never does things like that. He probably never makes mistakes or does cruel things or hurts people. Clive isn’t a saint, though, and he never will be.

  “At least he sucked you off,” he tries to joke, and Clive’s lips quirk upwards for half a second.

  “Yeah, I’m the only man in the world to get a blowjob off of Bartholomew, so I guess that’s something,” he says dryly.

  “Oh, love.” Jarrod’s voice is soft and sympathetic and Clive wants to stretch it out and wrap himself in it, like a soft blanket, wants it to send him off to sleep.

  “I know,” Clive says miserably, “I know. I was just so angry at him.”

  “It’s okay,” Jarrod says quietly, “do you think you can get away? Come see me? We can get shitfaced.”

  Clive thinks about it, yearns for it. But there’s training, and then there’s international break.

  “Can’t get shitfaced during the season,” he murmurs.

  “I’ll cook you dinner, then? A glass of wine with dinner okay, or not even that?”

  The more Clive thinks about it and longs for it, the more possible it starts to feel.

  “Yeah-yeah, that might work.” He pauses, wondering why that feels wrong for some reason. “Wait, no! I don’t want you spending money on me, Jarr, I know what your situation is - send that money home, don’t waste it on me.”

  “It’s not a waste,” Jarrod says simply, “you’re not a waste, Clive Reynold. You’re not. It will be a cheap bottle of wine, though. But if you don’t mind that, I’ll cook you dinner sometime, okay? Just let me know when you’re free and I’ll try and rearrange my schedule.”

  Clive gives him a date, a weekend off, when he’ll be training, but they won’t play until Monday, and Jarrod marks it down. “Wine or no wine, Cli? If you’re not allowed a glass of wine with your dinner, I won’t get any. I’d never manage to get through the stuff on my own and my houseguest hates it. Straight beer men, the pair of us.”

  “Me too,” Clive admits, “but can’t have any during the season. Throws off the metabolism.”

  “I’ll have to cook really well, then, if you’re going to be sober enough to actually taste it,” Jarrod mutters, and Clive laughs, much to his own surprise, the knot in his chest where his heart was supposed to be loosening slightly.

  “I appreciate you calling me back, Jarr. I know you’re busy, I know I was awful, sleeping with him without telling you - “

  “You told me, Clive, it’s fine.” Jarrod lets out a strained laugh, and Clive regrets ever bringing it up, the way it sours the moment. “You told me the next morning, which is about as soon as you could have, unless you phoned me up while he was still inside you. And I’m glad you didn’t do that, mate, really. We’re friends, but we’re not that close.”

  We are, Clive wants to protest, but it’s not true anymore. They aren’t that close anymore. They hadn’t even talked in a month in a half, until Clive had called him earlier today.

  But it still rankles, being told they’re not close, when there are only two men in the world who know he’s gay and one of them is Jarrod. When Jarrod had talked him through getting himself off, when he’d cooked Jarrod breakfast…

  He’d never cooked Robin breakfast, Clive remembers, pulling the phone closer to his ear. There hadn’t been a point, not when Robin was a better cook.

  “We were that close, once.” Clive says the words hesitantly, as if afraid that Jarrod will reject the assertion.

  “I know,” Jarrod says instead, voice full of the quiet, sorrowful regret Clive associated with funerals, “once. But I want to be your friend now. I know you’re hurting, Clive, let me help you.”

  “They say the best way to get over one man is to get under another one.” Clive’s voice is light, trying to cover up the fact that he desperately wants it. He can remember their first time now, the way Jarrod had made sure he was there with him instead of letting him imagine him into Robin. That’s what he needs. Incredible sex from someone he can’t pretend is Robin.

  Jarrod chuckles weakly. “They do say that,” he says awkwardly, voice going slightly higher pitched at the end, and Clive doesn’t quite connect the dots for a few seconds, until he does.

  “Are you with someone?”

  “It’s kind of complicated,” Jarrod says quietly, “I can’t really promise you a steady relationship right now, Clive. I can make you dinner, though.”

  That’s just about the broadest possible range of outcomes. Whe
re did a one night stand fall on this scale? Sharing the same bed? A blowjob in the shower? A rushed hand job in the morning?

  Clive’s thoughts shift, to whoever is making it complicated. It’d be a Scouser, that much Clive knows. Nobody else could spite him like this. They wouldn’t know that they were spiting him, he thinks rationally, it could be a Brummie, one of Jarrod’s classmates, but he shoves that rational thought away and stubbornly clings to his suspicions. Maybe it was Michael Starling. Maybe Jarrod had a type. Maybe he liked hockey players. He certainly liked hockey, a bit at least, enough to watch sometimes. But maybe that was for Starling, and not for hockey.

  That was the problem with gay men, he muses sardonically, you could never tell whether they were in it for the game or for the men.

  “Dinner it is, then.”

  “Brilliant!” They agree on a date, and Clive smiles as he hangs up the phone.

  Clive Reynold’s done impossible things before.

  He adds winning Jarrod Franklin back to the list. Even if they don’t last forever, he’s the perfect way to forget about his engaged best mate.

  ***

  The morning is less than kind.

  He wakes up and instinctively reaches over for a Bartholomew who isn’t there. Frankie’s hot enough, certainly, but he can’t compare to his Robin. Nothing ever can or ever will, he knows in the certainty of the moment, harsh sunlight pouring through the curtains.

  On the other side of the curtains is his drive. The drive that Robin had backed down as he’d left Clive’s house. It would be a long time before he came back, Clive knew. It would have to be.

  Even if they had the baby and Kendra went off on tour again, Robin would just have to learn to cope.

  Serves him right, he thinks viciously for a moment before remembering he’d give anything to have a baby with Robin. He’d always wanted a family, some day. Another impossible dream to add to the list.

  The sun keeps taunting him. There are all of ten sunny days a year. Of course fate would have one of them fall on the day after Clive’s heart had been broken.

  He gets up and just about manages to make himself a cup of tea and two toasts that he butters and slaps into a sandwich before stuffing down his throat. He considers a shower, but decides against it, his body too heavy to make it worth the effort. He gets dressed in tracks and brushes his teeth so fast that it’s more to check it off the list than to actually clean them.

  He drives slowly to training, hoping to put it off as long as he can, but still arrives well in time.

  Bartholomew’ car is there already, and he meets his eyes for a fraction of a second as he walks into the locker room. He’s got bags under his eyes. He’s still good-looking, but in a more haggard, less Prince Charming sort of way. There’s a small, brutal sense of satisfaction that blooms in Clive’s chest. He’s hurting too. Clive’s glad and shameless about being that way.

  He strips facing Bartholomew, not looking at him, but making sure he flexes his abs. It’s petty, but he’s allowed to be petty now, isn’t he? Robin’s eyes don’t linger - they’re both much too careful for that, but they definitely steal glances at him, and Clive smirks internally. The glances are tinged with hunger.

  Clive almost wishes he’d fucked him, almost wishes for a grimace in his face as he walks, for a hesitation before they jog outside during the warm-up. It’s the worst part of him, this, wishing harm to his lover - ex-lover, but he can’t quite control it.

  Or maybe he could. It doesn’t matter, either way. He doesn’t want to.

  Training is different. There’s a rigidity in Clive’s body, and it’s mirrored in Robin’s. Robin slips a few times, though, when he scores a goal and rushes into Clive’s arms, only to feel him stiffen up and return the embrace just to avoid causing a scene.

  They manage to get through the day, though Samson and Luke are both looking at them and each other, exchanging concerned glances. Seeing his best friend and his baby brother worrying like this only makes Clive angrier at Robin.

  He saves a healthy dose of anger for himself, too, though, for even trying with Robin. He’d had something good with Jarrod. He’d been - maybe not perfectly happy, but happier than he had been, at least, and that was gone now. He’d thrown that away to make a pass at his best friend and now he was stuck in an all-around shitty situation. It’s his fault just as much as it is Robin’s, he knows. It’s his fault that his poor little brother is worrying about him.

  Luke takes him aside after training, hand gentle on Clive’s arm.

  “Are you and Robin okay? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you two like this,” he says softly. Clive would’ve hit nearly anyone else who’d asked him that question, but he can’t. Not when it’s his baby brother. Not when he’s asking in that quiet voice, as if he’s afraid of what Clive will do to him.

  “We argued, Luke, that’s all,” Clive says softly, “it’ll blow over. Don’t worry about it, mate.”

  Luke looks, if anything, more concerned at his childhood nickname - they’d always kept it reasonably professional at training, even if there was a bit of friendly ribbing between brothers. Clive had been particularly careful with Luke, not to use any embarrassing nicknames that could make things harder for him.

  “Do you want to come and stay with me and Jules for a little bit?” he offers gently.

  “No thanks, Luke,” Clive says with a weak smile, “I think I just need a bit of time to myself. Cool down a bit.”

  He nods in understanding and hesitates a moment before stepping forward and wrapping Clive in a tight hug.

  “Love you,” he says, quiet enough that nobody else will hear, and the old nickname brings a smile to Clive’s face.

  “Love you too, Luke. Give my love to Jules, yeah?”

  Luke nods and walks away, glancing at Samson in the way those two did, sometimes, and Samson must understand, because he walks off too.

  Robin comes up to him, and Clive’s still wondering where he’s been hiding all this time when he speaks.

  “Can we talk?”

  “We are talking.” Clive’s old enough not to play this particular trick, but he’s also young enough and hurt enough not to care that he’s being immature.

  “Clive.”

  It takes all the willpower Clive has not to respond with Robin.

  “I think we spoke long enough yesterday, Robin,” he says instead.

  Robin growls and takes his arm, pushing him against the wall.

  Clive very definitely shouldn’t be aroused by it, but he’s ashamed to find that he is. He can smell Robin’s cologne so clearly after a night away, and he must have just put it on after his shower. His hair is still wet, blond strands drooping just slightly. Strangely enough, he isn’t afraid. He knows he can get out if he needs to get out, and in his mind the scenario plays out.

  Shove Robin away. “Haven’t you done enough?” he’d cry. Walk off to salvage what was left of his tattered dignity.

  It takes a fraction of a second to play in his head, and he dismisses it out of hand. Instead, he squares his shoulders and straightens up, looking Robin right in the eyes, utterly fearless.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he asks harshly.

  Robin doesn’t respond, eyes flicking from his eyes downwards. He presses his hips against Clive’s wordlessly and Clive, caught off guard, can’t quite manage to suppress the soft whimper.

  “I think you know exactly what I’m doing, Clive Reynold,” he says quietly, leaning down for a kiss.

  It is reckless in the extreme. Clive had always been clear on their boundaries, and kissing at the training center or the stadium had always been one of them, even though Robin had wanted to have him in the stadium showers after more than one match.

  Then again, Clive Reynold wasn’t known for playing it safe. He kisses him back. It’s harsh, teeth biting at lips. Robin wants to get him back for the blowjob from the previous night, and Clive still wants to punish him for impregnating Kendra.

  It’
s aggressive, and he feels Robin lifting his thigh, fingers reaching under -

  “Lube,” Clive whispers, “need it - can’t do this without it - “ They could, he knows, but it’s painful. This encounter with Robin is going to be rough, they’re both still angry at each other, but it isn’t going to be painful. That much he knows. It’ll ache when they sink their teeth into each other, Clive will have scratches on his back and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t leave Robin with some pretty souvenirs that he’ll have to take home and explain away to his pregnant fiancée, but the sex itself? That won’t hurt.

  Underneath it all, they still love each other. Even if it’s doomed, even if they’re fucked, in more ways than one, even if it’s not in the right way, or if it’s not enough, they still love each other.

  Robin pulls away from him, looking around desperately. He can’t come up with anything, then has a moment of realization and dashes off to the physio’s office and comes back with massage oil.

  “Shorts off,” he demands shortly, with a grin. Clive doesn’t even mind, just pulls them down and over his feet. He’s still wearing a top, and he’s about to be fucked up against a wall, and in his mind he remembers the last time he’d had sex with Jarrod, in the shower with warm water all around them, air heavy with steam and moans. He lifts a leg to wrap around Robin’s hips and whimpers a little as Robin opens him up - it is rough, he knew it would be rough, but maybe it’s a little bit rougher than he’d expected, and suddenly part of him aches to be loved.

  He doesn’t have the words to tell Robin that, though. He clutches him closer and kisses his neck desperately, adoringly, wonders how he can say I would die for you a thousand times, and I would live for you, too, if you asked me to, with just his body.

  Robin reacts to the shift in his touch. Clive was the one who’d bitten him first, while they were kissing, and Robin had matched him, and now that Clive is caressing him, worshipping him, Robin can’t quite help but soften in turn.