Chapter Text
The walk from the pitch to Alexander's house was twenty minutes, and Elias spent most of it trying not to look at Alexander's feet.
This was not a thought he examined. It sat in the back of his head alongside the other things he didn't examine, the way he'd been tracking Alexander's movements on the field since the first training session three weeks ago, the way his attention kept snagging on him in the locker room, the way he found himself listening for his voice in conversations happening across the room. These were all in the same category: noted, filed, not opened.
"You should've cut left at the corner," Alexander said, beside him.
"I know."
"Like, I was right there. Wide open."
"I know, Alex."
"I'm just saying."
"You scored twice," Elias said. "What are you complaining about?"
Alexander grinned. He had a particular grin, wide and a little crooked, that he deployed when he'd made a point and knew it. "I scored twice because I made the right calls. You could've scored too."
"I'll live."
"That's a very farm-boy attitude toward missed opportunities."
Elias looked over at him. "What does that mean."
"It means city boys optimize." Alexander tapped his temple. "Every play. Maximum efficiency."
"You literally tripped over your own feet in the second half."
"That was tactical."
"You fell down."
"Tactically." He bumped Elias's shoulder, easy and without ceremony, the way he did everything. "I'm just saying, you've got good instincts. You should trust them more."
Elias didn't answer. He watched his own shoes on the pavement and thought about instincts and trusted none of them.
He knew which house it was. He'd been looking at it from his bedroom window for three weeks, the front door directly opposite his own, the upstairs window that he'd worked out was Alexander's room visible from the desk where he was supposed to be doing homework. He'd watched the light in it come on at night and go off late. He had not thought about this at the time.
Alexander turned up the short path and Elias followed.
The house was the same from the outside as it had always been from his window, medium-sized, well-kept, a bike leaning against the side wall that was sometimes there and sometimes not. From the inside it would be different. Alexander said, as they reached the door: "Father's got a work thing. Won't be back until late." He said it without emphasis, the way you'd note the weather, and found his key in his bag without looking.
The cleats were by the door.
Not the pair he'd worn in; he was still wearing those. Another pair, older, a spare set by the look of them. Battered leather, the studs worn down, the laces frayed and retied at some point with a different color. They were sitting at an angle against the wall, toes pointing outward, and Elias noticed the particular smell of them even over the general smell of the hallway, old leather and dried mud and something sharp underneath.
He looked at them for a moment longer than he needed to.
"Come on," Alexander said, already past him into the kitchen.
The kitchen was ordinary and lived-in. A pile of unopened post on the counter, a half-empty cafetière, a dish drying rack with two mugs and a plate. A magnetic board on the fridge with a training schedule pinned to it and a shopping list in handwriting that wasn't Alexander's. Elias stood in the doorway and took it in while Alexander pulled two bottles of water from the fridge and tossed one to him without turning around.
"You want anything else? There's juice somewhere."
"Water's fine."
"There might be biscuits." He was already checking the cupboard above the kettle. "Yeah, there are biscuits. You want biscuits?"
"I want to sit down," Elias said honestly. Two hours of football was in his legs.
Alexander laughed and gave up on the cupboard. "Living room."
The living room was comfortable in the way of rooms that are actually used. A large couch, a coffee table with a football magazine on it and a remote and a pair of socks that were clearly not from today, a television, a bookshelf that seemed to be more decorative than functional. Alexander dropped onto the couch with the particular ease of someone entirely at home in their own furniture, legs stretched out, and put his feet up on the coffee table with a thud that suggested he'd been doing this his whole life.
Elias sat on the other end. He drank his water. He looked at the magazine on the table and didn't read it.
"Good session though," Alexander said. "Bakker's going to start rotating us in next month if we keep this up."
"You think?"
"He told me." He tipped his bottle toward Elias. "He said, and I'm quoting, 'the Belgian kid with the hair can play.' Which I think was about you, except I also have hair."
"You have more hair than anyone on the squad."
"It's a gift." He shook it slightly, the long dark fall of it still damp from the sweat of the afternoon. "Also a nightmare in a high wind. Last week I literally could not see for thirty seconds."
"I noticed."
"And you didn't say anything."
"You seemed to be managing."
"I was managing by instinct, Elias. Pure instinct." He settled back further into the couch. "I need a hairband. Do you have a hairband."
"I'm a man."
"Men can have hairbands. It's allowed now. The rules changed." He glanced at Elias. "You've got short hair. What do you do when it gets in your face?"
"It doesn't."
"Because it's short."
"Yes, Alex."
"Right. Very insightful." He was quiet for a moment, rolling his water bottle between his palms. Outside a car went past. The house settled into its particular late-afternoon silence, warm and close, the smell of two boys who'd been playing football for two hours soaking gently into the air.
Elias became aware of his own feet inside his trainers. The particular heat of them. The ache across the top of his right foot where he'd taken a kick in the first half that he hadn't mentioned to anyone.
"Your ankles sore?" he said.
Alexander looked over at him. "Always after." He flexed his feet, both of them, and the joints cracked audibly. "My right one especially. I rolled it in the last ten minutes, did you see?"
"A little."
"Thought I'd twisted it properly for a second. It's fine." He rotated the ankle slowly, watching it. "Just the usual."
Elias looked at his water bottle. He turned it once in his hands.
"I can help with that," he said.
"What, my ankle?"
"I used to do this for my brother. After his games." He kept his eyes on the bottle. "Massage. It helps."
There was a brief pause. Elias felt the back of his neck get warm and didn't know why, precisely, except that he did know why and didn't want to look at it.
"Yeah?" Alexander said. Not skeptical. Interested.
"Just the ankles. Tendons."
"Like a physio thing?"
"Sort of. My brother showed me. He picked it up from the team physio."
Alexander considered this for a moment. Elias was aware of him looking, the particular focused quality of his attention, and kept his eyes on the coffee table.
"Sure," Alexander said, and swung his feet across to rest on the cushion between them.
Elias put his hand around Alexander's right ankle.
The heat of it came through the sock immediately. The fabric was thin and damp, and beneath his palm Elias could feel the bone and the tendon and the tight give of muscle that had been working for two hours. He pressed his thumb along the Achilles, feeling the tension there, and Alexander made a small sound and let his head drop back against the cushion.
He was good at this. His hands knew the work, and he let them do it, his thumbs moving in slow deliberate circles around the ankle joint, working into the tissue on either side of the tendon, feeling Alexander's foot gradually relax in his grip. Alexander was quiet, his eyes closed, his breathing slower.
"That's actually really good," he said, to the ceiling.
"I know."
"Humble."
"I'm accurate."
Alexander made a sound that was almost a laugh. "Fine. You're accurate. That's very good, please continue."
Elias continued. He worked down from the ankle to the heel, his thumb finding the spots where the day's work had settled hardest, and Alexander's foot went progressively more boneless in his hands. The heat coming off it was remarkable. The fabric of the sock was thin enough that he could feel the shape of everything through it, the arch, the ball, the individual width of the toes.
He did not think about what he was noticing. He filed it in the same place as everything else and kept working.
"My other one's jealous," Alexander said.
"I'll get to it."
"It feels abandoned."
"It's been thirty seconds."
"It's very sensitive."
"I'm sure it is." Elias shifted his grip to the left ankle and worked his thumbs in. Alexander made an undignified sound.
"Okay that one's actually worse."
"I can tell."
"Is that bad?"
"It's tight. You should stretch more after sessions."
"I know, I know. Bakker says the same thing." He paused. "I do sometimes."
"After the important games."
"...yes."
"The others you just walk to your car."
"How do you know that?"
"I've seen you."
Alexander lifted his head to look at him. "You watch me after games?"
Elias kept his eyes on the ankle in his hands. "I watch everyone. I'm observant."
"Sure." He put his head back down. There was a smile in his voice that Elias chose not to look at. "Very observant. Very farm-boy-surveillance."
Elias worked his way down to the heel, the arch, the ball of the foot. He pressed his thumb into the center of the arch and felt Alexander's whole leg go slack.
"Where'd you learn that."
"My brother."
"You keep saying your brother. How good is your brother at football?"
"He's on a regional team."
"Okay he's better than me."
"He's older."
"Still. Regional. That's respectable." He flexed his foot against Elias's hands, a slow push. "You come from a football family?"
"Not particularly. He just liked it. I liked watching him play." Elias moved his thumb in a slow circle at the highest point of the arch and felt Alexander's breathing change slightly. He told himself it was the pressure point. "My grandfather coached me a bit when I was small. Just basics."
"Where are you from originally?"
"Near Liège. Small town."
"Countryside."
"Farm, yes. Before you make the joke."
"I wasn't going to make a joke." A pause. "I was going to ask if you had animals."
"Cows. Chickens. Some other things."
"Cows." Alexander seemed to turn this over. "Did you ever name them?"
"My grandfather named them. After saints."
"The cows are named after saints."
"Yes."
"Belgian farmers are wild." He was quiet a moment. "I grew up two streets from here. Never left Brussels. Never been on a farm. My most rural experience is the park near my primary school, which has a duck pond."
"I know," Elias said. "You move like someone who's never had to navigate uneven ground."
"Excuse me."
"You're very good on a flat pitch. Put you in a field and you'd struggle."
"I would not."
"You trip on nothing."
"That's tactical," Alexander said, with great dignity. "We've been over this."
Elias allowed himself a small smile at the ankle in his hands. He moved his thumbs again, and Alexander's leg shifted against him, settling heavier.
His fingers found the edge of the sock.
It was not a decision, exactly. He was working the tissue along the line of the foot, and the sock was in the way, and his fingers were already at the edge of it. He lifted it, turned it back, and began to peel it off.
Alexander didn't say anything.
Elias pulled the sock free and set it aside.
The smell came up immediately, warm and close and sharp, the accumulated warmth of the afternoon, grass and leather and sweat and underneath it something that was just Alexander, specific and close, and something contracted in Elias's chest that was not about the massage at all.
The foot in his hands was bare now. The skin was slightly pale at the arch, flushed at the heel, the toes long and the nails cut short. He could see the faint print of the sock elastic around the ankle. He could feel the warmth of it against his palms.
"Cold?" he said. His voice came out normal.
"No," Alexander said. He hadn't moved his head from the back of the couch.
Elias pressed his thumb into the arch. The contact was different without the fabric between them, more direct, and he felt Alexander's breath shift in response. He worked slowly, thorough, his eyes on his hands, the ball of the foot and the heel and the spaces between the toes where the tension of two hours had compacted itself.
"That's," Alexander said, and then didn't finish the sentence.
"Hm?"
"Nothing. It's good. Keep going."
Elias kept going. He was aware of the specific quality of the silence now, different from the easy silence of before, something in it that was paying attention. He turned the foot slightly and pressed along the outside edge, and Alexander made a sound that had nothing in it to do with ankles or tendons.
He didn't plan what came next. He did it because the alternative was to stop, and stopping felt impossible, and because he'd been filing things away for three weeks and something had apparently reached capacity.
He pressed his mouth to the arch.
Alexander went very still.
Elias held there, lips against the warm skin, his own heartbeat too loud, his thumbs still on the heel. He felt Alexander's other foot shift against the cushion. The room was entirely silent except for the refrigerator hum from the kitchen and the sound of both of them not breathing.
Neither of them said anything.
He moved his mouth up, slow. The salt of it was on his tongue, the particular warmth of skin that had been inside a boot all afternoon, sun and exertion trapped in the leather and transferred here, and he pressed a kiss to the ball of the foot and then to the base of the toes, his lips dragging slightly over the dry patches of skin at the edges. Something in his chest had gone very quiet and very focused. He turned his face against the sole and inhaled, and the sound that came out of him was involuntary and very small, and he could not have stopped it.
"Elias."
Alexander's voice was careful. Not startled. Careful.
Elias looked up.
Alexander was watching him from the other end of the couch, chin tilted down, his expression doing the thing it did when he was paying close attention to something. His other foot had gone still on the cushion. He didn't look alarmed. He looked like he was working something out.
"Sorry," Elias said. His voice came out flat. He didn't move.
"I didn't say stop."
A beat. Two.
"I didn't know you were into that," Alexander said. Observation, not judgment.
Elias looked down at the foot in his hands. "I didn't either," he said. Mostly true. "I mean, I didn't. I've never." He stopped. "Sorry. I don't know what that was."
"It was something," Alexander said.
Elias looked up at him. He was still watching him with that particular focused patience, and there was something in his face that Elias couldn't immediately read.
"Can I tell you something," Alexander said.
Elias waited.
"I had a thing. In school." He paused, choosing something. "There was a boy in my year, on the team. After training, when everyone was changing, I kept looking at his feet. Like, not even in a weird way. Just. I noticed them." He turned his water bottle in his hands. "I thought I was just tired or something. Like, your brain does weird things when you're tired."
"How long did you think that for," Elias said.
"About two years."
Elias looked at him.
Alexander met his eyes. "Yeah," he said. "I know."
The silence between them rearranged itself into something different.
"So," Elias said.
"So," Alexander said.
Neither of them moved for a moment. Then Alexander reached down and, slowly, with the deliberateness of a decision being made, peeled his other sock off. He held it out, dangling it between two fingers, his expression somewhere between careful and something warmer than that.
Elias took it out of his hand.
He spent a long time there. Both feet, working from the sole up to the arch, his mouth learning the shape of them, the rough patches at the heel and the softer skin of the arch and the warmth trapped between the toes. Alexander lay back and gave him the space to do it, his breathing audible now, his feet making their small involuntary movements against Elias's hands, pressing into the contact and then catching themselves. When Elias drew the toes into his mouth, slow, drawing them in one at a time, Alexander exhaled something that was not a word, and his hand moved to the back of the couch and gripped it.
"You're going to ruin me," Alexander said, at some point.
"Good," Elias said, against his sole.
"That's a very confident answer for someone who five minutes ago said he didn't know what he was doing."
"I figured it out."
"I can tell." His voice was fraying at the edges. "You're suspiciously good at this."
"I pay attention."
"To what, specifically."
"To what works." Elias pressed his thumb into the arch again, the spot that had made his leg go slack the first time, and felt the whole foot flex against his palm. "And what doesn't."
"And what are the results of your research."
"This works," Elias said simply, and drew the big toe into his mouth, and Alexander made a sound that he swallowed immediately and that Elias filed away with everything else.
"Come up here," Alexander said eventually. His voice had gone somewhere lower and more deliberate.
Elias looked up. His lips were wet. His face felt warm in a way that had nothing to do with the temperature of the room.
Alexander had moved to sit properly on the couch, one knee up, watching him with an expression that was legible in the way that mattered. He reached out and pulled Elias up by the front of his shirt, not hard, and kissed him. Unhurried. His thumb at Elias's jaw, his other hand finding the back of his neck. He tasted like water and effort and something warm underneath both.
Elias's hand went to his shoulder and held there.
When Alexander pulled back he looked at him for a moment.
"Your turn," he said.
"My turn for what," Elias said.
"Lie back."
The room had gone quieter, the afternoon light dropping toward evening. Elias lay back on the couch and felt Alexander move to the floor in front of him, and then his trainers were being unlaced and pulled off, the socks after them, and Alexander sat back on his heels and looked at his bare feet with the focused attention of someone who had been thinking about this for longer than tonight and was not embarrassed about it.
The back of Elias's neck went hot.
"You've been thinking about this," Elias said.
"Yes," Alexander said, without apology.
"For how long."
"A while."
"Since the first session?"
Alexander looked up at him. "Since the second session," he said. "First session I thought you were just a good player." A pause. "Then you took your boots off."
Elias looked at the ceiling. "Right."
"Is that okay?"
"It's very okay," Elias said. "Please."
Alexander's hands closed around his left foot.
He started at the arch, his thumbs firm and knowing in a way that said this was not improvised, and Elias stared at the ceiling and concentrated on staying still and failed. Alexander's hands worked up his ankle, his calf, came back down to the heel, deliberate and unhurried, taking his time in a way that was clearly its own kind of intention. He pressed his thumb into the sole and Elias's toes curled.
"Too much?"
"No," Elias said. His voice was not entirely steady. "No, keep going."
Alexander pressed his mouth to the sole of his foot and Elias felt it travel from there to the base of his spine in one clean uninterrupted line, his whole body going briefly rigid.
"Good?" Alexander said, against his skin.
"Don't ask questions you know the answer to," Elias managed.
He felt Alexander smile against his foot.
He worked from the arch to the ankle, his mouth and his hands together, and then moved to the other foot and did it again, and Elias lay with his arm across his eyes and his jaw tight and his hips making small involuntary decisions that he tried to stop making. Alexander worked his way up from the feet to the ankles to the calves, his mouth pressing to the inside of his knee, the soft skin there, and Elias's breath stuttered.
"Alex."
"I know," Alexander said. "I see you."
Eventually Alexander moved up over him and looked down at him, one arm braced on the cushion above his shoulder. Elias looked back. The light in the room had gone golden and low; neither of them had thought to turn a lamp on.
"Still okay?" Alexander said.
"Ask me that one more time," Elias said.
"Fair enough."
That was the last thing either of them said that was a full sentence.
Alexander's mouth moved down from his jaw to his throat, his collar, and then he was pulling at the hem of his shirt. Elias helped him with it. Then his mouth was on his chest, his stomach, moving down, and Elias felt his shorts being pulled and then the cool air and then Alexander's mouth, and his head went back against the armrest and his hands went to Alexander's hair and he held on. Alexander's hands gripped the backs of his thighs, keeping him in place, his tongue working with a patience that was beyond unfair, learning what made Elias's hips shift and what made his breath break and pressing those spots again and again with the focused attention of someone who paid very close attention to results. His feet pressed against Elias's calves as he worked, the bare soles warm and deliberate against his skin, and the weight of that contact, simple and specific, traveled through Elias with everything else.
He came with his back arching off the cushion and his hands clenched hard in Alexander's hair, and made a sound he would have been embarrassed by in any other context.
He lay there afterward. The ceiling was still and white. Alexander moved back up and lay beside him in the narrow space of the couch, and his feet found Elias's at the far end, toes pressing against the top of his foot, warm and quiet.
Elias turned his head.
"You too," he said.
Alexander smiled. The real one, the one that didn't happen often. "I know," he said. "In a minute."
The minute passed. Then Elias moved. He reached for the waistband of Alexander's shorts and Alexander lifted his hips slightly, which was its own kind of answer.
He went slowly, the way Alexander had gone with him, without urgency. He worked his mouth down from his hip, feeling the muscle under the skin tense and then release, and when he finally took him in, his breath stuttered once and then settled. Alexander's hand rested in his hair, loose and not directing. His feet pressed against Elias's ribs, the soles warm, and his breathing came apart in slow increments above him. He said Elias's name once, near the end, with the specific quality of a word that means several things at once.
After, they lay without talking. Outside a car went past on the street. In the kitchen the refrigerator made its low mechanical sound. Elias felt the weight of Alexander's foot against his and the stillness of the house around them and thought about nothing at all.
"We should eat something," Alexander said eventually.
"Probably."
Neither of them moved.
"There's pasta," Alexander said. "I can make pasta. I'm very good at pasta. It's my one domestic skill."
"What are the others?"
"Those are all of them."
"Your pasta better be extraordinary."
"It's honestly pretty good." He paused. "I'll put extra cheese on."
"Then I can wait," Elias said.
Alexander's foot pressed against his, warm and still. Outside the evening was coming in. Neither of them moved for a while yet.