Page 6 of Offside

He goes. He sets a pace like a professional, which he is, and I meet it, which is my job, and the bed takes the load.

“Hips up,” he says, and I go up, because in this room, and only in this room, I like being the one who gets told. He drives deeper and I stop pretending to run anything.

His hand finds my cock between us without looking. Mine find his back, his hips.

“Tomáš.” His mouth on my neck, his voice a whisper I can barely hear.

“I know,” I say, responding to whatever he didn’t ask. “Keep going.”

He shifts the angle because he knows the angle, and I stop being articulate in any language. I come with his hand working me and his mouth pressed to my jaw, not kissing, just parked there, and he follows a minute after, deep, with my name said quietly, once, like a man closing a door carefully.

Clock check: forty minutes, text to finish. I lie there while the heart does its cooldown lap and file the night where the nights go. Good match. Good party. Good this.

He’s up at the right moment. Not the second it ends, that would be cold, and not five minutes after, because five minutes is more intimate than either of us is willing to be. There’s a version of the rules where I wrote that clause and a version where he did, and after five years I couldn’t tell exactly which it was. He showers fast and gets dressed. He repacks the washbag the way it goes, roll and zip, refills his water at the tap, drinks, caps it.

“Bus at nine,” I say, from the bed. “Front seat if you’re on time.”

“I’m never on time. I’m early or I’m mysterious.”

“Semifinal, Šíma.”

He stops at the door, one hand on the handle, and grins the grin nobody photographs. The one I get in private.

“Semifinal,” he says. “Night.”

“Night. And don’t oversell the ceiling fan to Damian.”

“I never oversell. I let the fan speak for itself.”

The door closes behind him. Protocol is one look through the peephole to confirm the corridor, so I look. The corridor is empty except for Šíma going down it, through the fisheye lens, smaller and smaller, then taking the stairs he always takes. He doesn’t look back. He never looks back. The stairwell door swallows him and clicks. I breathe three times. Then I check the lock and drink the second water.

The bed smells like both of us, which is normal. After five years that’s just what normal smells like. I set two alarms. Across the room the schedule says semifinal in six days, and the word does one more lap, in my own voice this time.

?

BRNO'S BEST #1

Šíma

official minutes. day one of the semifinal era. the committee reconvenes with a headache it declines to explain

item one. attendance. thirty men survived the night. the shirt did not

Novotný

the shirt will turn up

Polášek

the shirt was last seen leaving with the kit man’s cone. they looked happy together

Novotný

one more word about the cone and I release the footage of you doing the handshake with the night porter

Polášek

that handshake was dignified