Page 12 of Brat on the Ball

“Come on,” I said and held out my hand. He took it, and I led him out of the toilet. We made our way through the noisy club, and I glared at anyone who got too close or even looked at him with lust in their eyes. We pushed through the throng and headed to the cloakroom, where I handed over my ticket and my man handed over his.

The attendant came back with my hoodie and brought back another pile of clothes for the other guy.

“My hoodie too,” he said to the attendant, who had already turned away.

“Wasn’t one there,” she said.

“Can you double check?” he asked.

She rolled her eyes and headed to the back again. He pulled his tracksuit bottoms over my boxers and then pulled on his t-shirt, though the largest and highest of the love-bites still peeked out above the collar. I realised that the workout clothes were damn expensive.

“So you weren’t just in your tight little underwear to cruise?” I asked.

“They wouldn’t let me in otherwise,” he said with a shy smile as the cloakroom attendant came back and shook her head.

“Someone must have taken it,” she said.

“Fuck,” he muttered, barely audible over the music from the club.

“Do you want me to go back there and look for it?” I asked him.

“No. No way, I don’t want to cause a scene. I just…I didn’t want to be seen,” he said.

I took my shirt from the counter and put it on and thrust my hoodie toward him. “Take it. You need it more than me.”

“I…I couldn’t,” he said.

“Please,” I said, not dropping my hand.

“Thank you. Really.” He took my hoodie and put it on, and all that primal, carnal energy bubbled to the surface. I was always dominant in bed, always liked the control. But I had no issues with a pass-around party or group stuff. But this man? This nameless man I knew nothing about? I wanted him to be mine. I wanted people to know I’d marked him, that he was wearing my clothes because he was mine.

He put the hood up so that his face was covered as we left the club and stepped out into the cold street. It surprised me when his fingers entwined with mine, and he held my hand all the way until we reached the end of the alleyway and faced the more brightly lit street outside.

“Thank you,” he said, and leaned in to peck me on the lips gently, quickly. He furtively looked around as if afraid anyone had seen.

“Same time next week? I quite like that hoodie,” I joked. But he surprised me again by nodding quickly. His fingers brushed against mine once more, and then he was walking down the street and into the darkness of the night.

* * *

My mouth felt fuzzy and gross, and my head was pounding like someone was tapping on my temple with a tiny mallet. It wasn’t even the alcohol; I’d only managed a pint before I saw my mystery man the night before. It was a lack of sleep brought on bynot being able to stop thinking about him.

I wished I’d never bought a king-sized bed. I never invited guys back here anyway, always went back to their place or to a hotel. But for some reason, it was starting to feel empty.

That and the fact I’d never really felt a need to decorate the little flat I’d bought in Cardiff Bay. It always felt like I had one foot out the door, in case I got a better offer to play for an English or French club. So the white walls and grey laminate floors had remained the same since the day I’d put down a rental deposit, and I had the same bedsheets that had been in my little flat in Paris when I’d played for Stade Français.

I swung my legs out of bed and shuffled into the living room. I had little to do for the day, but last night had my mind racing. Much as I’d like to think I was a brilliant investigative journalist, there were a thousand pretty twinks within a two-mile radius. My mystery man might be special to me, but there were no skills I possessed as a run-of-the-mill sports journalism student that could help me find out who some random guy was.

That didn’t stop me from thinking about him, though.

I spent the morning cleaning up the flat, then sat down to start work on my dissertation. But the blank page was taunting me. I typed out a title;Out of the Closet - How Queer Sportspeople and the Media Intersect, but then couldn’t bring myself to actually start typing the body text. Maybe it was a little bit too close to home. Perhaps I needed to find a dissertation I could give myself a little more distance from.

I hopped into the shower and turned the heat to its highest setting. He was distracting me from everything, and it wasn’t fair. Men weren’t allowed to make me feel this way. I was the big, butch rugby player who pumped and dumped. Fucked and fucked off. Came and went.

And still…I couldn’t get him out of my mind, even as I stroked myself until I came at the thought of his lips on my body, the feel of his smooth skin under mine, that waistband rubbing against my wrist as I pulled the orgasm from his shaking form.

And then holding hands with him in the street until he got too scared. Lending him my hoodie.I should have used that as an excuse to get his number, I thought. I’d let him go without the guarantee that I’d actually see him again.

Who was I kidding? We’d both make our way back to Wings on Saturday. That’s what we had agreed.

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