The Locker Room (31 page)

Chris had laughed after that last one and stroked Xander"s smooth

chest with a droll lift to his eyebrow. Xander blushed.

174 Amy Lane

“I made another appointment,” he mumbled. “This one at the salon

so three women wouldn"t get all squeally about getting their pubes

waxed by the cute guy who makes the home visits.”

Chris closed his eyes and laughed some more. “Isn"t Robbie…?”

“Gay? Yeah. I didn"t have the heart to tell them—it was just too

tragic.”

Xander thought Chris would laugh again, but he didn"t. Instead, he

looked up into Xander"s rather sheepish expression and grew sober, then

pulled Xander into another kiss. This time was slow, and quiet. They

came in each other"s hands because kissing was the point, stroking bare

patches of skin, touching lips to eyebrows, temples, the side of the neck,

under the jaw, behind the ear. When they were done they took a shower,

and then sat side by side on the bed, eating room service, watching an

old movie. (
The Great Escape—
it was one of Chris"s dad"s favorites, and

the two boys had become fans.)

They managed to make love one more time before they fell asleep.

WHEN Xander woke up he was sitting up in bed, and Chris"s arms were

wrapped around his chest, and he was screaming into his bitten palm.

He caught his breath, and Chris pulled him back down onto the

bed, holding his big body while it shook the dream out.

When his breathing had gotten close to evened out, Chris propped

himself up on one elbow and stroked the sides of his face.

“Jesus, Xan—they"re getting worse. I mean… fuck. They were

getting better before I left, but
that
… I thought I was going to have to

tackle you to keep you from going through the wall!”

Xan bounced his head off the pillow and blew out a still-

shuddering breath, and then turned to look at Chris in the darkness. He

was so beautiful. His eyes were so big and expressive, and his narrow-

chinned, pretty face was practically luminous in the minimum light that

seeped through the curtains. Xander walked careful fingers around the

line of his hair and over the shell of his ear, each tap of fingertip to skin a

miracle of touch.

The Locker Room 175

“Christian, did you really think we could see each other mostly

every day for the last… what? Twelve, almost thirteen years, right? And

then you go away, and did you think it wasn"t going to leave a big hole

in my soul?” His voice cracked. “That"s the place where I fight the scary

monsters, man, and now it"s all bleeding because you"re not next to me

every night, telling me they"re all better.”

Chris sighed, and tucked his head on Xander"s shoulder, taking that

wandering hand in his own and threading shaking fingers through it.

“Yeah,” he muttered. “Yeah. Christ, I need a drink.”

And now it was Xander"s turn to sigh. “No, you don"t.”

“You think you"re the only one with a big „hole in your soul",

Xan?”

Xander wrapped his arm around Chris"s shoulders and held tight. “I

think we can"t do this more than one year,” he said. “Eventually, we"re

going to have to decide how we want to handle this. Because I can"t do it

without you, and I"m afraid for you without me, and if I need to be the

wife and quit my job and follow you—”

Chris pulled back and (awkwardly, from his angle) socked Xander

in the arm.

“Stop trying to throw your gift away, you dumb bastard. If either of

us is going to be the wife, it"s going to be me!”

In spite of himself, Xander grinned. “Does that mean I can come

home from work and find you wearing an apron and nothing else?”

Chris chuckled weakly against him. “You perv. You should have

told me that was your thing
before
you filled the house with women.”

Their laughter was short-lived, though. “I don"t want you to have to

quit,” Xander said softly. “It"s not fair.”

“I don"t want you to have to scream in the middle of the night,”

Chris said quietly back. “It"s not fair, either, and right now, it seems so

much more important than me getting one more season somewhere else.

But you—Xander, I"ve been watching you play. You"re a machine—

you"re terrifying. Don"t shut that down. Please? I love this game, and

one of the things I love about it is how beautiful you are when you play.

If I quit, there"s another rookie ready to learn about Scotch and airline

176 Amy Lane

food. If you quit, there"s a hole in the world. Please? Just promise me

you won"t quit. It would break my heart.”

Xander swallowed hard. “I"ll do anything not to break your heart,”

he said, and Chris nodded against him. There was a damp spot between

his cheek and Xander"s shoulder, stinging and uncomfortable with salt,

but they were both tired of acknowledging the pain.

THE west coast team won the All-Star Game that year. Chris won the

most free throws in a row, Xander took the three-point shot contest, and

Chris"s rookie managed a dunk that took Xander"s breath away.

“He"s going to be amazing,” he muttered to Chris, delighted to see

someone that graceful, that gifted, do his thing with that much passion.

Chris"s lips twisted. “If he lives that long. You see how he comes

down?”

And he did. He came down fearlessly, but he left himself a lot of

room to get hurt, and Xander had to acknowledge that he was going to

have to learn a little self-preservation or his career was going to be

damned short.

That night, the night after the various games and before the match-

up itself, as they were undressing for bed (a little more sedate and

dignified than the night before, although they were both trembling, just

from seeing the other take off layer by layer of their casual dinner

clothes) Xander asked Chris why he and Chris had never played with

that much fearlessness.

Chris had looked at him, dark eyes sad, but with a twist at his lips

that said he could laugh about this a little, too, and folded his slacks so

they"d hang neatly over the chair by the little desk. “You and me, Xan,

we always had something to lose.”

Xan swallowed. “You can"t ever lose me, you know that?”

Chris shrugged, hooking his thumbs in his boxers and giving a little

shimmy that made his already burgeoning equipment waggle, and made

Xander laugh. “Dude, you"re like, the size of a building!”

Xander grinned full out, and walked, naked, to where his lover

stood, grinning at him, and playing like the boy he might always be. “So

The Locker Room 177

are you when you"re hard! I think we may have a—” He reached down

his hand and squeezed. “Handle on each other.”

Chris smirked, and then his expression darkened, and that pretty

mouth pursed into a little boy"s sadness. “I want to touch you forever,

Xander. You can"t ever lose me either, right?”

Chris"s arms came around his shoulders, and he pressed a kiss

against Xander"s mouth that was more like benediction than it was like

passion. Xander opened his mouth and bent his knees so that their chests

were flat up together, and Chris kissed him until the sadness was gone.

THE next night, the All-Star Game, was their night on the court. San

Antonio was the team with the best record for the year, and Xander and

Chris got along with their Coach Hopkins just fine. For his part, Hopkins

was thrilled to coach them. Xander, he said, was the meat player, and

Edwards was there to showboat, and together they read each other"s cues

like every move down court was choreographed, rehearsed, and set to

music.

Chris"s rookie was thrilled. Yeah, he was a rookie, but Chris

wouldn"t have hung out with him if he didn"t have a good heart, and you

had to love a guy who shouted encouragement and joy down the court as

they made that place their own.

They had a formidable lead after just the first quarter, so the bench

got to play nearly half the game. As they sat on the sidelines for the

whole third quarter and watched the show, Xander confessed quietly to

Chris that he was relieved. “My foot"s still sore, and I didn"t get much

sleep last night,” he murmured. Chris waggled his eyebrows in a playful

response, while watching the action on the court. A flashbulb went off,

and just like that, Chris"s pretty face was the All-Star icon. He was

everything the All-Stars represented—fun, sportsmanship, fantastic

skill—all that in a pretty face with a wicked grin, and that picture was on

every sports page in the country.

Xander would put it up on the wall by their bed, and remember that

moment, locked in time like a colorful flaw inside a crystal.

178 Amy Lane

When the game was over, and it was all whooping and screaming,

patting each other on the back, group hugs and high fives, Xander

remembered that expression. They went out and partied with the players

that night, and left somewhere in the middle, spacing their intervals.

They made love until Chris had to leave for the airport, without

sleeping at all.

After Chris had left, wearing wrinkled jeans and Xander"s sweat

and seed on his skin, Xander flopped back onto the bed and looked

miserably at the clock. He had two hours before he had to leave, and all

he could do was remember the feeling of Chris"s hands skimming his

face as they kissed.

June,
he repeated to himself.
June. We can do this until June. June.

It seemed a thousand years away.

The Locker Room 179

Under the Influence

XANDER"S foot completely healed in the next week, and he played like

a fucking god.

All of the sports pages said so, which was one of the reasons

Xander was glad he and Chris had never gotten into the habit of reading

them.

All he knew was that, on the court? The world was perfect. People

were where he expected them to be, and the ball went through the net.

That was really the be all and end all right there, wasn"t it? The ball went

through the net. Such a simple goal. Nothing complex. The roar of the

crowd, the strain of muscles, the smell of sweat? Trivial. All that

mattered was that the ball went through the net.

On the court, Xander was happy and free. He wasn"t a showboat,

not like Chris, but since Chris wasn"t there, he started to let his joy show

to the rest of the team. He started to urge the whole team on, to shout out

orders when he was on the sideline, to rule the court with that one simple

desire: get the ball through the net.

Chris would tell him over the computer that it was beautiful to

watch. Leo would tell him that he needed to think about next season.

Penny would glower at him and ask him if any of this would change if he

came out. The press would tell him that he was a bona fide superstar.

Xander ignored Leo and Penny, and he
really
ignored the press, but

he listened to Chris, because he"d always listened for Chris, and told him

the truth.

“If I"m beautiful, I"m beautiful for you.”

Chris got embarrassed with too much praise, and Xander could see

the blush over the computer screen. He loved it when Chris blushed.

One night in late March, after returning home from a painful loss to

Chicago, Xander was awakened by cool, masculine hands rubbing the

knot between his shoulders. He rolled over and into Chris"s touch with a

terrible groan, capturing Chris in an all-consuming embrace, and Chris

went willingly, yielded willingly, became six feet three inches, one

180 Amy Lane

hundred and eighty pounds of pliant muscle in Xander"s arms, and

Xander devoured him.

The kiss didn"t end until they were both naked, sweating, and

covered in come, and even then the small kisses, small touches, little

murmurs of “Oh God,” and “Wow,” and “Mmmm” kept going until their

breathing evened out and Chris was mostly asleep, tucked in against his

shoulder.

“Hey, Xander,” he mumbled, even as Xander was following him

into quiet darkness.

“Mmmmm?”

“When you gonna stop feeding those bozos shots when they can"t

get their dicks into their fists, much less the ball into the net?”

Xander chuckled softly. “When the coach stops telling them that if

„a faggot like Karcek can do it, they can too."”

Chris woke up suddenly, rolling over and looking at Xander with

eyes that got suddenly shiny in the dark. “That"s not funny.”

“Shhh…,” Xander soothed. “No, it"s not, but I bet you no one on

the team is laughing, either.”

Chris did settle down, this time facing Xander, but still tucked on