by Amy Lane
Chris blinked hard, and blinked again, and then gave it up and wiped his eyes.“Aw, Xander. Fuck you. Why? Why you gotta say shit like that.It totally just levels me off at the balls.”
Xander grinned, appreciating the freedom he had to be himself with Chris as he had with nobody else.“Well, as long as your balls are getting some action, buddy, I think you should just say thank you and take your medicine.”
Chris made a sound that should have been a laugh but sounded a little like a sob, and Xander went about helping him with his morning routine.
“ Its a good thing Im already gay, Chris, because if I had to handle yourequipment every day to help you piss in a bottle, I think Id go gay for you in about two days.”
“Yeah, you say that now, but thats because you havent had to help me crap in a can yet.Thatll turn you off my ass quicker than you can say „slick shit.”
“Baby, nothingll turn me off your ass. Now piss, already, I need to take a shower.”
They had a concierge doctor and a private nurse, and, of course, Lucia there to help take up the slack.
Chris hadnt been there for two days before they realized they had another potential employee in the making, as well.
Xander came back from practice aching all over and dragging his ass through the front door, hoping for nothing more than to veg on the couch and guzzle Gatorade like it was the elixer of life. The weeks of commuting between Colorado and Sacramento during the playoffs hadnt come without a price, and Xander could feel in his bones that he owed the body-god some serious sleep.
Audrey was talking seriously to the in-house nurse, getting instructions for things she could do to help when the man was off duty.
Xander watched the two of them casually, liking the young man very much. He was earnest and geeky, with a hairline that would recede before he hit thirty and a narrow, appealing face—and he liked to make Audrey laugh.
For her part, Audrey was interested in everything he said, from how to calculate meds to tricks to helping moveChriss body without pain.
“I can live with that,” Chris quipped quietly, and he met Xanders eyes. They could both see it—interest, compatibility—and Xanders inner romantic (very, very inner—Xander really didnt relate to people well enough for that guy to exist on the surface of his skin) nodded approvingly.
Little Audrey might have found a guy actually worth a trip back to her apartment or, in this case, her room at the Chris & Xander Flophouse for Lost Girls.
Watching their byplay was enough to rouse Xander from his couch coma so he could ask the question that had been brewing at the back of his mind.
“Hey, Peter, you got a sec?”
Peter, the straight male nurse, adjusted one ofChriss inflatable casts and patted the blanket solidly around those blessedly wiggling pink toes.“Why, Mr. Karcek, what do you need?”
Xander raised his eyebrows at Chris and asked, “When can he go out in a wheelchair? I know he gets solid casts in a couple of days. Can we transport him in, say, a week and a half?”
Chris looked at him curiously.“Whatcha thinkin, Xan?”
Xander smiled, not trying to be mysterious, but hating to commit to something when he couldnt predict the future. “Im thinking, if we get to six games against New York, you get a courtside seat.”
Chris looked tired today. Pain, constant pain, could do that to a person. So there they sat, both tired, both surrounded by parts of a life that were pretty wonderful and parts of a life they deeply regretted. It was a testament to the magic golden boy that still resided in Chriss heart that he could summon a hopeful grin and some enthusiasm.
“A little dramatic, you think?” His dark eyes were sparkling a little, and he looked like the pain might be worth it to get to see Xander play.
“Baby, you have no idea. What about it, Pete—you think he can make it?”
Pete-the-straight-male-nurse looked at Chris thoughtfully.“I think we can do that,” he said after a moment.“I need to consult the doc, and well have to come up with a plan. I dont recommend doing it a lot, but, you know.One game, right?”
“Unless you make it to the finals!” Chris crowed, looking excited about getting out of his medical prison.
“Yeah,” Xander said, looking at him with his heart in his eyes. “Chris, um… dont plan on going to those games, okay? Even if we do make it there, right?”
Chris looked a little hurt.“What—I cant travel to LA?” Because the championship series was at Staples Center that year.
Xander shrugged, and hoped Chris would forgive him for what he had planned.“You can if they let you,” he said after a moment, but he didnt say who “they” might be.
SIX games. Six games, and Xander played every game as though it were his last.Hed told Chris he was playing with Chriss heart. Well,Chriss heart had been his own heart since they were fourteen years old—Xander was playing for them both. Every lunge down the court, every thud of the ball on the boards, every shot, every rebound, every swish through the net, that was for both of them.
For six games, Xander played as though fear was the family lapdog: old, blind, and toothless.
For five of those games, Chris watched on television, and asked anybody listening if Xan looked like a god, or was it just Chris?
“Duh, big brother!”
“He plays beautifully, Mr. Edwards.” (Audreys straight male nurse was still a little in awe of his employers.)
“No, Edwards, I just recruited that bastard and held his hand for five years because heplays like a hyena in drag.” (God bless Uncle Leo, anyway!)
“Hes always been as golden as you, baby.” (Xander blushed when Chris told him his mother said this—he was sure she was sincere, and that was just embarrassing.)
“You were amazing, Xan,” Chris said after every game. Even the two they lost, Chris told him that.“The lead would have been astronomical if not for you—man, you just kept putting pressure on until the buzzer sounded, right?”
Xander smiled a little, sitting next to him and holding his hand. He couldnt seem to stop kissing it or stroking it, and even though he knew that making love was months away (or at least a couple of days away, when Chris got the solid casts and wouldnt put pressure on his healing bones and tissues with any arching or moaning or needing—)
Focus, Xander.Well have the rest of our lives.
“You always talk about it, Chris. How would you like to see me play a game just for me?”
Chris was surprised.“Explain. And dont stop touching my hand.”
“I just… do you want to see me play just for myself? It would be, you know, for you, so Id do it good, but….”
Fifteen years theyd known each other. Eleven years theyd been sharing a bed. Chris knew something was up. But Xander still had the part of him that had kept secrets.Hed kept his home life a secret, kept his hunger under wraps, kept the beatings to himself.Chris hadnt realized about the nightmares until theyd share a bed for longer than a week, and even now, Chris didnt know that they hadnt completely gone. The press had been missing vast acreage of Xander Karcek for years.
Xander had one gift he could still give, one thing that he could make theirs. He was tempted (so very tempted) to just give in, to spill everything to his best friend, his lover, the other half of him.
But he couldnt. Because if he told Chris what he had planned, then this game, this plan, wouldnt be for him. It would be for Chris, for Chriss approval, and that wasnt it at all. This is what Xander wanted, and its what he wanted for the both of th em.
This is what he had to do alone.
Getting Chris to the game took some doing—a private ambulance, a special chair, and, of course, the much-yearned-for fiberglass casts. But get him there they did, with straight-male-nurse-Peter there in attendance, and Audrey there by his side, and even Penny standing next to him. Mandy had appointed herself Chriss special dancer. Any time she wasnt on the floor, doing the dancing thing (which was, Xander had to admit, pretty spectacular, on an athletic level anyway) she
was making sure Chris and his retinue had drinks or a T-shirt (special ones had been made for each series) or even just a friendly presence there in the pregame, and, Xander assumed, the rest of the game.
He took a look at them from the tunnel, looked at Chris, enjoying the attention from the press, from the fans, from the dancers—hell, even from Mandy and Audrey, who did nothing but fawn all over him all day, anyway.
God, he was enjoying himself. Xander watched him for a moment, under the lights, smiling as though pain were the same old tired lapdog that fear had become.
It wasnt his imagination, he thought, swallowing hard past the ache that his throat had become. Chris really was golden.
He turned around to go talk to his team.
The locker room was… joyous. Loose. Everyone was focused but cheerful. There was no squabbling except the good-natured kind, and a lot of checking to make sure the uniforms looked just right. Xander called his starters around him about five minutes before the coach came in to talk to them, and hoped that, maybe, he could put his faith in the people hed served.
“Um, guys?Can I talk to you here?” He looked at them—Aames, Burkins, Pollack and the completely healed Oswald, and felt a surge of affection for the team that hed never really felt when Chris was at his side. Well, good. It was nice to be part of something larger than himself. He just had to make sure they wanted him for himself, and now was time to test that.
“Guys, you all know Edwards is on the sidelines, right?”
“Yeah—man, hes looking….” Aames trailed off, his light- chocolate, round face grimacing.Hed been going for the classic “looking good,” but what he looked, and they could all see it, was “retired.” He was never going to play ball again—and there wasnt a person there who wouldnt feel that loss like an amputated limb. “Man, were sorry. But, you know, hes Chris. If anyone can have fun after the game, its him, right?”
Xander smiled.“I hope so.” And now for the full-body blush. “Um… look, some of you know, and most of you have guessed, but… um… you guys know that were… um—” Fuck. How did you come out to a room full of jocks?“Married.” His voice—sort of a low-pitched one, mostly, actually squeaked.
“I thought they just voted and said you couldnt do that,” Pollack said, a little numbly. (Unlike his name might imply, Pollack was, in fact, a black man, who wore his hair in a retro seventies afro. He was seven footthree, and Xander had always liked him, simply because hed made Xander feel both delicate and smart.)
“He means theyre the next best thing, Pollack! Jesus—I cant believe they graduated you from Texas.” Burkins was a little more tactful when he wasnt drunk. But not a lot.
Oswald was looking at Xander as though he held a dead bug. “Eww. Really?”
Xander wasnt sure how to answer that. “Um, yeah. But not ewww. Is that going to be a problem?”
Oswald shrugged, still looking a little icked out.“You gonna grab my ass on the court?”
It was Xanders turn to grimace. “Ewww. Really?”
Aames snickered.“I think thats a „no, Scott.”
Oswald still looked unconvinced.“Yeah, man, whatever. You still planning to play ball?”
Xander nodded.“Yeah—if theyll let me after tonight.”
Aames got it first, and the others were still struggling with it when the light dawned.“Aww… Jesus, Xan. Really?Tonight?”
A sudden lump in his throat. God, Xander hoped they would understand.“Yeah, Justin. Tonight.I… I cant do this for everyone else anymore.I gotta sort of do it for me, right?”
Aames nodded, and clapped him on the shoulder.“Yeah, man. No worries. We got your back, right,guys?”
“Yeah, whatever,” Oswald snapped.“Just throw me the ball and dont grab my ass, man. Its all I ever wanted from a teammate.”
Xander felt a little bit of humor seep in—because it looked like they were going to be able to go out and play like they had all season, and thats all hed ever asked.
“You know what, Scott? I can guarandamntee you that I will never grab your ass.”
Coach came out at that moment, and called them all to attention. The music started to shake the floorboards; the entrance to the tunnel went dark with strobing lights to punctuate the darkness. The crowd noise became thunderous and deafening, and the announcer began their intro. And the players were suddenly all about the purity of the game. They took a deep breath, bumped fists, and started the cold-bowel adrenaline dump that Xander always associated with the game.
“Kay, guys,” Xander breathed, loving the way his heart thundered, loving this moment until his atoms quivered with it.“Just remember. Get the fucking ball—”
“Down the fucking court and into the fucking net!” the team finished, and that was their cue to run up onstage, underneath the strobing light and the adulation that awaited them.
THE bench team almost lost their lead, and Xander strained his voice, screaming his mantra at them. Get the fucking ball down the fucking court and into the fucking net! Fuck! (That last word came out on a fit of desperation as the twenty-point lead that the starters had sat down with was narrowed to two points because the bench lost the rebound for the five zillionth time.) The starters were up and into position, dying for the buzzer, pushing against the invisible barrier of time like dogs pushing against a window to get a bone.
The buzzer rang, the coach waved them in, and— Xander had the ball, in what was usually their classic team position, and Xander looked up, saw Aames waiting for the bounce pass, and said, “May I?”
“Do it!” And Xander blew past the defense and down the court and onetwo-up for a dunk, the kind where the basket was about at his waist.
The crowd screamed, and the game was right back on.
Xander had caught glimpses of Chris as hed played. When hed been on the bench during the third quarter break, the two of them had met bugged-out eyes every time the other damned team had scored. This time, as the other team snapped the ball back into play and their forward rushed past Xander in an attempt to get into an unguarded position, Chris said, “Way to go, Xa-an!” and Xander whirled, managed to wink at Chris, and threw himself in front of the opposing forward just in time to intercept the ball with an unbelievably long-limbed, one-armed catch.
Before the crowd even realized what happened, Xander was down the court for another shot—this one from the three-point line, because he felt like it, and suddenly, what had been a two-point lead was a sevenpoint lead, and the timbers of the little tiny Arco Arena rattled with the bloodlust of the nearly eighteen thousand rabid fans who had been long denied.
Tonight was their night. The rest of the team helped, of course, but for that quarter, the fourth quarter, Xander played every play as though he was the star.
Because, for once, he was.
He handed the ball off when it was needed—Aames, Oswald, Pollack, Burkins—all of them racked up a few points. But Xander had a twenty-five-point quarter. Twenty-five points that he took for himself, and made them beautiful, and made them count. Twenty-five points where “Get the fucking ball down the fucking court and into the fucking net” was absolute fucking poetry of muscle, blood, heartsong, and bone.
Two seconds before the buzzer, Xander made his last shot, impossibly over the heads of two ofNew Yorks finest, dunking again like a rookie show pony, landing like he had nothing to fear.
The buzzer went off, and he threw his hands to the sky just like Chris would have wanted to, and screamed triumph into the stands.
If hed wanted to, he was sure he could fly. Anyone looking at the tape to see him cut a swath down the court would have sworn he already had.
WHEN the press of his screaming, hugging, sweating, shouting, delirious teammates had faded, he suddenly found himself facing his first reporter, one of ESPNs finest, and he wondered if the woman—a strong, beautiful black woman in her early thirties who had won Olympic track medals in her youth—was ready for the sports scoop of her life.
He turned around and spotted Chr
is on the sidelines (where his retinue was taking care to make sure hewasnt jostled too much by the crowd) and waved, a little shyly.
Chris grimaced —shy? In front of twenty-gazunga people? After a game like that? But he winked and waved back.
And Xander turned to the reporter and made history.
“So, Im talking to Xander Karcek, the undisputed MVP of tonights game. Mr. Karcek—youve said before this series that you were playing all your games for your best friend, Christian Edwards, who was injured earlier this year in an automobile accident. Was that true tonight?”
Xander shook his head.“Chris kept asking me to play one for myself. Tonight I played for myself. I figured, you know, the guy was my heart anyway.If I played to make myself happy, hed feel it.”
The reporter looked a little disconcerted.“So, Christian Edwards, your best friend….”
Xander looked at her, looked at the camera, and then looked past both of them to where Mandy was pushing Chris so he could hear the interview. He winked at Chris, saw Chriss dawning comprehension and surprise, and said, “Hes more than my friend, Ms. Robinson, and if the NBA doesnt know it, its because they havent wanted to. My whole life, all Ive wanted was basketball and Chris Edwards. Tonight, I had basketball.The rest of my life, its going to be Chris Edwards.”
He tried a smile after that, as the reporter floundered for words. “But… but… but the NBA playoffs… are you going to play the playoffs…?”
And now Xander said what hed always wanted to say, even from the beginning, from that first kiss behind a hedge, clinging to the only thing he knew was good.
“If basketball loves me as much as Ive loved this sport, then its not going to care who I am when I play it. If the world hates me more than it loves basketball, then Id say thats the worlds loss, but Im not going to live like that anymore, and Im not going to make Chris do it, either.Now if youll excuse me—”