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Omar tells himself it means nothing. It can’t ever mean anything. He tells himself this: there is a door inside your heart and you must remember to lock it every time you leave.
Hugo’s hand slides across Omar’s back. He holds on tight for just a moment the practise kit crinkled up between his fingers. When he lets go, the unnecessary but still passed on instruction lingering on the cold air, Omar can feel his shirt slowly release. He can feel the spooked horse look on his face, eyes too wide, breath too fast. To obviously puffed out into the frigid air.
A snow storm has stalled over the city. White mounds gather and stack themselves. When Omar drives past them it’s with the premonition they are going to unbalance, they are going to tip onto the road in front of him. They don’t. They grow higher, stained around the base with salt and the dirt of the roads. The game tomorrow might be postponed.
Omar had felt Hugo walk away, his body breaking through the waves of snowflakes, for a moment the space is empty of everything until new snow rushes down to fill the gap where his body was.
The city might lose power and one of the younger player complains his girlfriend has filled the apartment with candles. “It’s romantic you dick,” their captain calls out. “If she lights them you are definitely getting some.”
There are public announcements about how the unhoused can find shelter and to stay off the streets. They round up the stray dogs, better to be kept in slightly too little space than left to battle the elements packless. In the gloom there are children using cardboard to toboggan down the hills.
One of the agents at the club gives the sober presentation the city council has prepared. Their coach ignores it, scribbling formations and moving them around on his tablet. “Body heat” Hugo murmurs in his ear.
It works, the memory of his breath keeps Omar warm all the way to his apartment. He jerks off in a shower he has steaming hot, the intrusive recollection of the snow on the training ground following him. He feels Hugo’s breath across the side of his face, his hand a fist at the small of Omar’s back.
They make the game, the roads are miraculously cleared. It’s a victory and so Hugo follows him home. His coat swings out in the dim grey of the parking garage where he hasn’t buttoned it.
His neck is cold under Omar’s teeth. He shouldn’t leave marks - their bodies are barely their own - but Hugo is warmer the lower he goes. His cock is almost a brand inside Omar’s mouth.
He’ll remember that, when he’s swallowing snowflakes, as Hugo’s gloved hand pauses on his shoulder. His words are snatched by the wind before Omar can catch them. “I’ll tell you later,” Hugo yells.
Later is in Omar’s bed. Hugo tells him all kinds of things, he leaves a bruise low on Omar’s hip where it’s most obvious, on his palest skin but impossible to reveal without stripping naked at the ground. It’s like a window left cracked open for the breeze, fresh air that won’t last, only his imagination making it something greater than it is. It will have faded to a smudge by tomorrow morning.
There are other places Hugo could leave a mark, the back of Omar’s knees, the arch of his foot. He won’t. The door remains firmly shut.
They don’t quite line up, Hugo too awkwardly lanky, sprawled slightly too far over the bed. He insists on sleeping there, sulks when Omar leaves his bed in the darkest part of midnight. “I want to fuck you in front of a mirror,” Hugo had said one night, he’d dragged all of them in to his hotel room to marvel at the classless wall of mirrors in the room he’d had. He mistakes Omar’s shiver for pleasure.
Omar doesn’t want to see his own face, it’s easier to pretend they don’t do this, telling himself after he’s been to the mosque it was just a fantasy that skittered into his mind jerking off. Carefully phrased telephone calls with his mother when he truthfully tells her he is not dating any girls.
It’s bad enough to imagine how he looks, his eyes glassy with desire, the left over flush of his face as Hugo tenderly brushes sweat slicked hair off his forehead. He won't remember it is snowing when he remembers these nights, the heat between them trapped by the sheets that Hugo always tries to push away.
They make it to their away game. Team shirts and sweats covered by hastily arranged jackets sloppily screen printed with the club crest. They rest in fluffy fake fur on their faces. It makes them all look younger and elfin, like they are on a school trip not a game that counts toward the title. Hugo’s cheeks shine from the cold and his eyes are bright with mischief, stalking with iced snowy hands behind their team photographer.
His eyes and cheeks shine like when he is on his knees gazing up.
Omar pretends not to notice him in the hallway, or against the lockers, or in the breathed out humidity of the physio room, until he is allowed to stare his fill at him on the pitch.
The dunes of snow creep upwards. Their bases rock solid, scythed sheer side iced over, the tops looking creamy like soft shaved ice.
Last night is still stained across both their knees, across the palms of their hands. The away ground is all ghosts, no one is prepared to run too hard, the yelling of the crowd distant in the drifts.
In Omar’s bedroom the cheap jacket looks like a knock off against Hugo’s rich skin. It’s as perfect as scoring the winning goal, the thrill of a medal around his neck, to have Hugo’s total attention, his mouth slightly open, offering little puffed out gasps as Omar’s slick warm finger slide inside him. They shouldn’t do anything more than this, they shouldn’t do anything else or even this at all. The flight was late leaving and uncertain of landing, the worry line between the assistant coaches eyes not smoothing even as they taxied to a stop. The muted promised all the players made to him leaving on the icy metal steps to drive extra carefully this evening. They still have training tomorrow.
For a moment when Omar kisses Hugo, the wind picks up outside and tomorrow they will have messages on their phones with a workout plan that can be completed at home. Omar pushes Hugo’s leg up his knee bent and slides into him. Every movement is warm, as the ice creeps down from the upstairs balcony, tiny developing stalactites like silver wasps nests.
Tomorrow Hugo will curl both his hands around his coffee cup like he needs to warm them from the cold that doesn’t seep into this home. Omar will not tell him until the next day he has agreed at contact at Manchester. The door swings firmly shut and snow piles against it.