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A fter Jack’s parents died when he was nineteen, after the numb and shock—that fucking sailing accident, after all those years of his dad planning to finally take that trip now all his kids were out of the house and having it end like that—Jack couldn’t let himself think about the unfairness of it because it cut him up and made it difficult to carry on. But as he tried to process it and got ready for a flight back to Perth for a memorial in absence of their bodies, he’d thought, Sean will text me now . What a guilty and shameful thought to have, he’d berated himself, and yet, he’d had it, he’d even expected it. Only Sean hadn’t texted.

As Jack stood with his sisters in the winter sunshine surrounded by hundred-year-old trees in Karrakatta cemetery, all of them drenched in varying degrees of disbelief and grief, he’d thought again of Sean only a few kilometres away, playing in a Western Derby and thought he’d have gone to the game if it wasn’t for this. And another stab of guilt came and it wasn’t until years later, lying in bed with Sean, the room dark and quiet around them as he told him all of this, that Sean had reached over, gripped his shoulder and said he wasn’t a bad person, denial was part of grief, and him wondering about a footy game at a funeral with the way it’d happened, proper grief hadn’t even had time to put its boots on yet, of course he’d be thinking normal things.

“I wrote a text, ya know,” he’d said. “But I didn’t send it.”

“Why?” Jack asked.

“Felt kinda cheap, I dunno,” he stroked his fingers up and down Jack’s neck. “Like I hadn’t talked to ya in years and then I’m like, what? Cashing in on ya grief? I saw you on the news. It already sucked bad enough.”

Jack shook his head. “I really wish you had.”

“Sorry,” Sean replied and Jack knew he meant it, knew his regret in the squeeze of his hand on Jack’s bicep.

“Nah, I know you dealt with worse, and here I am, gettin’ all sad ‘cos something bad finally came and found me,” Jack closed his eyes.

“Don’t do that,” Sean had replied softly. “It ain’t a competition.”

Jack didn’t remember what they’d said after that, he wished he’d paid better attention to all those little moments, recorded them somehow. That conversation had been a month before Sean got hurt. Well over a year since they’d officially gone exclusive. It was another memory that made Jack’s heart clench, and he saw it in his memory like a movie reel.

They’d been sitting next to each other on the floor, stretching after a game. A Saturday afternoon home-game, a win they’d managed by the skin of Sean’s teeth, a beauty of a goal coming off Jack’s boot after Sean handballed it off to him in the dying seconds. It’d done it—a two-point win in an absolute nail-biter.

Sean got snappish, selfish again, after they fucked, had been doing it all season by that point, but on that night, it’d been a week since Jack had been in Sean’s bed—ostensibly his bed, but it felt like it belonged to Sean when he came over—and Sean was in a good mood and Jack felt the tendrils of hope.

He followed Sean out into the carpark, a carefully timed exit to catch him alone before he got to his car.

“Hey, wait up,” he called, hoping to sound nonchalant.

Sean glanced over his shoulder, slowed but didn’t stop. He raised an eyebrow, tried to hide his smile.

“Hey,” Jack said once he was alongside him, a little winded from the question he wanted to ask and not the few feet he’d jogged.

Sean grunted low in acknowledgement, unlocked his car with a beep-beep of the immobiliser in the quiet space, the haloes of pink from the sinking sun streaking the blue sky around them.

“You wanna get dinner?” Jack asked in a rush, held his breath straight after, his heart pounding.

Sean twitched, opened the back of his car and threw his bag in. “Dinner?” he asked, like it was a foreign concept.

“Yeah, like. With me?” Jack said, and winced. He was an All-Australian all-star football player, you’d think he’d have a semblance of chill. And it’s not like it was an outlandish request—they’d been fucking all year, what was getting dinner?

“What’re you? My boyfriend?” Sean mocked and went to go by Jack and get in the driver’s seat.

“Well, I’m not fuckin’ anyone else, so,” Jack said before he could think better of it.

“Ya better fuckin’ not be,” Sean snapped at him, whip fast.

Jack huffed a laugh, then grinned, pleased. Sean recovered himself with an eye roll.

“So, dinner?” Jack asked again hopefully. “Nothing fancy, I was thinkin’ fish and chips, Port Beach.”

“Romantic,” Sean said flatly, but he was doing that thing where he tried not to be soft and it was this tick that gave Jack the flare of hope every time he saw it.

“Meet you there. You’re buyin’,” Sean quipped and got in the fancy Range Rover he’d bought with the cash prize for winning Mark of the Year. He looked up at Jack outside his window just before he drove off and shook his head, but he was smiling, and Jack’s hope burned brighter.

It was romantic, sitting on the little wall where the stretch of sand met the carpark, eating the fish and chips Jack had ordered from his car and picked up on the way. He’d been unsure until he’d seen Sean sitting on the wall in the dying light of the sun sinking on the horizon, a gruff smile for Jack when he walked up and handed Sean his own paper-wrapped parcel, pulled a can of diet coke out of his jacket pocket and handed that over too.

“Thanks,” Sean said and carefully unwrapped the paper with his long fingers, eating slowly, eyes on the water.

They didn’t talk much, but they were pressed together from shoulder to hip, knees knocking as they ate, the waves rolling in and crashing in front of them, the odd jogger or couple walking along the beach dark figures against the last of the light.

“Come over?” Jack asked when they finished.

Sean had snorted, but he’d gotten up first, his rubbish in one hand as the other one reached down for Jack. He tugged him to his feet and Jack expected him to let go, but he pulled him in instead.

“Ya really not fuckin’ anyone else?” he’d asked, the first real look behind the guard Jack had seen outside of sex since they were seventeen. He seemed small then, Jack remembered—the way he was huddling into Jack’s body and looking up at him, his wide eyes searching Jack’s sincerely.

“No,” Jack replied, “no one else.” He’d felt like the words were inadequate at the time, and yet they’d carried everything.

“Good,” Sean replied, gruff again, brushing off the vulnerability with a joking, “After all the effort I put in,” he grinned then, quick and sharp. “Looks like I’m stuck with ya.”

Jack laughed, embarrassed and surprised, but he was too happy to be anything but honest when he said, “Good, that’s good.”

They’d gone back to Jack’s and fucked, and it was different, the guard was slipping. Sean always watched him so intently, and his gaze had always been a heady thing to have focused his way, but Jack felt like it’d shifted that night. Sean wasn’t trying to pretend he wasn’t watching him.

He’d returned to form that weekend in the game, giving Jack a real spray after Ben had kicked a goal off Sean’s quick snap to him across the front of the goal, Jack out of contention because the monster Sydney defenceman, Carts, had him in a fucking headlock. It was an illegal play, but the goal was snapped before the umpires deigned to notice it, and life carried on.

Though not, apparently, for Sean.

“What the fuck was that?” he yelled at Jack as Jack went to jog back for the centre huddle, Sean racing out of the pocket to deliver the line, the sound of the crowd roaring around them, but certainly not loud enough to drown out Sean’s seething voice.

Jack stumbled, shocked. He shouldn’t have been—Sean did this—but he’d thought something had changed after that last weekend.

“If ya can’t even shake a fuckin’ tackle, ya should be back in the WAFL,” Sean snapped, closer now. Jack had never played in the state league since he played Colts, same as Sean, so fuck Sean for that, he thought, but didn’t say anything.

Carts snorted a laugh from beside him. “He’s got a point,” he chirped.

“Shut the fuck up,” Sean said to him. “Does it look like I’m talkin’ to you?”

Carts held his hands up and jogged off backwards.

“None of that, Hiller,” the umpire said as he ran by, though he sounded uncertain because in what universe does an umpire have to deal with a fight between teammates?

“Get ya fuckin’ shit together, Jackie,” Sean went on, “or I swear to God I’m gonna—”

“You’re gonna what?” Jack snapped. “You’re gonna what? Come on, fuckin’ tell me what you’re gonna, Sean.”

And Sean smiled at him, quick and bright. Jack stumbled again, wrongfooted, his sharp anger splintering under that smile.

Sean kicked to Jack every time he was open for the remainder of that game, and even though it was too little too late and they got thumped, he gripped Jack on the shoulder after it and ran his hand down to his lower back, lingered for a moment as they walked off the ground together. When they fucked that night, Jack on his knees, hands pulled tight behind his back, arms taut as Sean gripped his wrists in a fist, his other hand in a loose, teasing chokehold around his throat, his thumb stroking Jack’s cheekbone and lips so softly it was a disorientating counterpoint to the way he pounded into his ass with so much force all Jack could do was gasp as each thrust hit his prostate, and Jack didn’t know whether to cry out for him to stop or beg him to never stop, and it was different yet again.

And once again, after, they never talked about it. Sean stared at him across the pillow, traced his fingers over Jack’s throat, the shell of his ear, under his eye, his own eyes staring at Jack intently yet sleepily, relaxed and fond in a way Jack had never seen.

How did Sean expect him to explain any of that?