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They don’t end up doing much when Adam comes over. Jordan opens the door and it’s like a funny reversed feeling, as though seeing Adam’s face produced the same effect as when he stands at his own door. Like coming home, or something. He feels a sudden rush of heat to his face, so he turns aside, letting Adam squeeze past. Adam puts a hand out and Jordan feels it, a tender pressure against his side, brief.
“How’s the foot?” Adam says, turning around in the hall.
Jordan scratches his head, shifts. It was sore and he shouldn’t be up. “It’s alright. I shouldn’t be up.”
“Go on then.” Adam says, closing the distance between them with two strides. “Sit down.”
Jordan resists for a bit when Adam gets to him, both hands on his elbows and trying to steer him towards the couch. He drags Adam closer, fits their bodies together, wraps his arms around Adam and breathes. Adam laughs quietly – shoulders shaking, bumping up against Jordan’s chin- and lets him.
“Sorry.” Jordan says later. They’re sitting on the couch, watching a golf match replay.
“What?” Adam says, turning away from the screen, half surprised.
“I’m just. Missed you.” Jordan says, and then huffs a little, feeling a flush go up his neck again. Adam grins at him, changes the channel to a replay of some old x factor episodes. Jordan looks at his hand holding the remote, resting on an up drawn knee. He looked at ease in Jordan’s couch, shoulders loose, the lines of him blurred and soft. He’s wearing a t shirt with some terrible graphic on it. Jordan wants whatever it was to cease happening, whatever it was that made it hard to swallow when he looks at Adam. It made the days without him stretch out like years.
Adam yawns, teeth flashing, his face briefly stretching out of shape. Jordan watches him, all of him, going from loosely sharp featured to carelessly goofy and back to Adam, this time with the corner of his mouth tugged up in a smile. He props his head on his hand and stares over at Jordan lazily, reaches a hand across to pull at Jordan’s shorts.
“Food?” Adam says.
Jordan thinks about pressing him back on to the couch carefully, then says, “Yeah.”
“Chinese?”
“Sure.”
Adam pulls out his phone and dials, absent. Jordan turns back to the program on television, ignoring the jostle in his chest when Adam drawls out his order without needing to ask. So that happened, too. He couldn’t recall when it had. Yep. Number 18 and 23. Extra order of rice. That’s it. Cheers.
Adam gets up to throw their takeaway boxes in the trash, gives Jordan a look that meant stay still. It makes Jordan feel a little like a dog, or something. Certainly starved for affection, willing to do anything for a smile. Realizing that makes him stand up, stubborn, limps after Adam to the kitchen.
Adam’s at the sink, tap on, holding a glass.
“Jordan.” His voice is that much more admonishing. Jordan forgets sometimes that Adam’s the older one, soft voice aside, and was annoying as hell besides.
“Ads.” He says, trying not to smile.
It does the trick, or maybe just the way that he was leaning against the counter faux casually but fooling no one, trying to take the weight off his foot. Adam comes closer, cups a hand under Jordan’s chin, runs his thumb along his jawline. Jordan closes his eyes and lets Adam prop him up, press kisses in to the hollow of his throat, his own hands braced on the edge of the counter.
“Bed, okay?” Adam says, and Jordan nods.
They lie in bed for a while, just touching each other with all their clothes on. Jordan thinks about it, this, running a hand over Adam’s waist, cotton under his palm, a strip of bare skin where his t shirt ends and before his waistband, warm. Jordan is 25, wears the captain’s armband for his club, has a solid 22 caps for his country. Jordan is 25, wears his snapbacks backwards, professed scared of nothing, too old for trembling hands and sweaty palms. Jordan is 25, can’t think about what he’s doing right now, pretends it’s not Adam he’s going to kiss. Jordan is 25, still can’t think about fucking Adam without flushing.
Adam smirks, leans over closer to him.
“Foot alright?” Adam breaks off sometime later, eyes wide.
Jordan groans and starts laughing, pulls him back in. Adam calls him a wanker, almost makes him beg for it, kisses Jordan’s eyelids when they’re screwed shut. Jordan can’t help it, laughing. It’s a bit like running a fever, or something, his hands, Adam’s hips, his heart, Adam’s smile.
Jordan winces leaning across the bed for a condom in the bedside table. Adam says, “Alright. No.” and makes him prop his foot up on a pillow.
“Really?” Jordan says. His foot hurt like hell so he channels it into the pout.
“Will you quit whining.” Adam says, but he’s kissing Jordan’s knee now, and upwards, upwards, and Jordan thinks fifth metatarsal, inanely, reckons there’s no bone he won’t be willing to break for this. Which is stupid, he thinks again, later. He didn’t need to break anything to get this. Not a bone, anyway.
Adam says, “8 weeks, yeah.”
Jordan thinks about all the space they cannot fill. The missing pieces and the wrong edges on the pitch, out of sync with each other. Liverpool run ragged, fraying at the edges, out of ideas. All their time running out in spools of hours and days and weeks and months, all that time he was going to spend staying still, mending. Jordan’s never felt so stuck in his life.
“You’ll be alright.” Adam tells him.
He’s very still when he’s sleeping, even his eyelashes which swept downwards in perfect curves. Not perfect, maybe. Jordan looks at Adam's face, again, asymmetric jawline and that triangle snub of a nose. Jordan kisses his cheek. The light, the heart, the hand, and it’s not like running a fever at all, but like- just running, maybe. Heart expanding and contracting, thinking, not forever, no, but right now. He pulls himself closer to Adam, lets his eyes slide shut.