bit of football
pure projection snoozefest … apologies - trans john x ian
It’s something that John mentions offhand once, not really being able to play football. It’s not a sport for girls, his parents used to say. And, sure, their views are not nearly as regressive as that nowadays, but it sticks.
All the boys around him had supposedly come out of the womb already kicking balls, bought their first boots at age 3 and never left the pitch. It makes him feel distanced from them all, like those girls who sit by the edge of the field at lunchtime and coo at Ian. Who don’t know, like he does, how it feels to have his gentle fingerprints peppered over his skin. That gives him a sense of pride, at least.
At first, he writes it off as just not wanting to. But there’s only so long of that before Ian’s prying into it. He says: “You bloody love watching it, it’s about time you get off your arse and play it.”
So that first excuse is gone after a matter of weeks because he knows Ian’s completely right. He loves football, bleeds red through and through. Begs his parents to turn their programmes off at midday on a Sunday so he can curl up on the rug and cheer with the crowd like he’s there.
His next excuse works a little better because Ian doesn’t understand it so much.
He’s sat in Ian’s overgrown garden on a Tuesday evening, sun diluting the sky into pastels as it dips below the other houses on their estate. Ian’s kicking the ball dully against the fence and it passes it poorly back. Thud. Thud. Thud.
“Why don’t you join in?” Ian scrunches his nose up, sunlight painting such pretty colours on his cheekbones that John could cry. He stumbles for words, eyes stuck on the way Ian’s pink lips move around the words.
“Hurts. It’s..” John reaches up under his polo and runs a hand along the bandages that line his chest. They’re tight, too tight, he knows it, but they still don’t work as well as he wants. “Can’t breathe as good.”
“Just pass, then. Back and forth. No running or nowt.” Ian pleads at him with those big brown eyes, glittery and doe-like. John’s so tense it aches to swallow, eyes darting frantically from Ian to the ball and the fence and anywhere but those eyes.
So John gets up, very begrudgingly. He knows that when he’s shit he can blame those very bandages. Knows Ian is too gentle around those frayed edges of him, and that he won’t try to push too much.
And god, he is terrible.
Ian scrambles for the ball every time, misses it and has to chase behind him, laughing, to get it back. Passes it squarely back to John’s feet, then watches him expectantly.
John can only take so much of this laughing before he disappears into the house and shuts himself in the toilet for a bit too long to raise no alarms. When he comes back outside, Ian doesn’t complain about him sitting quietly and watching.
And for a while after that, Ian stays surprisingly quiet. It unsettles John a bit, because Ian is never quiet. Hasn’t been since they met in the sandpit aged four, and has only gotten worse since he discovered the Sex Pistols. But he appreciates it, at least.
—
It’s an almost identical day about a month later, and a bit later into the night. Ian sits himself on the step next to John, ball cradled between his feet. He kisses John briefly once, then checks behind him to make sure nobody is watching before kissing him again.
“What’s up with you?” Ian murmurs once he’s already reduced John to badly concealed giggles with a few pecks, an arm draped lazily over his shoulders. He’s annoyingly close. “You not bored just watching?”
“Nah, not really.” John murmurs, eyes flicking around Ian’s face skittishly. His lips, his cheekbones, the tip of his nose. It’s true, to a degree; he wishes more than almost anything to play with him, but Ian is too pretty to ever tire of just watching.
Ian tuts, like he knows better. Sometimes John thinks he can read minds, because he comes startlingly close every time. He nudges his shoulder into John’s, then sighs like he’s got the weight of the world on those slight shoulders. “You’re a knob, Johnny. I don’t care if you’re shit.”
“I do.” John manages eventually, and finally meets Ian’s eyes. They’re softer than usual, but filled with a weird sort of determination. A stubbornness he knows Ian cannot get rid of. “Makes me feel like less of a lad.”
Ian shoves John, laughs when his palm slides on the concrete in a futile attempt to stabilise himself. Then he tackles him carefully, limbs an ugly mess as they scramble into each other, grunting and giggling. “Don’t be a twat. I can teach you, ‘s not hard.”
John hesitates, a moment that Ian uses to pin him down with a cheeky grin. Pecks his cheek then steps back, worn trainers squashing the untidy grass under his feet. John follows with a grumble, rolling his eyes.
His whole body is flushed with embarrassment. That gross sinking feeling is creeping down through his heart into all of his veins: the feeling of being less than Ian, of not being a lad enough. It crushes his chest more than any too-tight bandages ever could. It feels like a heart attack and he wants to fall to his knees and cry.
But Ian’s so gentle with him, like he really doesn’t think of him less. Passes the ball with him until John’s kicks are semi-accurate, not laughing or teasing. His hands are sweating, shoved deep in his pockets.
But every time the voices roar in his head or every time he averts his gaze out of shame, when he looks back up Ian is watching him with a fond smile and a slightly cocked head. Then they start again, from the top. Back and forth.