Page 28 of The Fullback
CHAPTER EIGHT
Hunter
“Have you seen my lucky pants?”Bailey asked, throwing things randomly out of his bag and searching through his locker with a worried frown on his face. It was the end of September, which meant the new Premiership season was finally kicking off and Bailey was deep in his pre-match superstitions, which meant he wanted the pair of pants he’d decided were his current luckiest pair.
If he hadn’t been so wound up, I’d have laughed because we’d already played a couple of matches in a knockout competition this season, and he hadn’t given a shit what pants he’d been wearing.
For our match against Leeds last weekend, he’d even worn some of mine.
Luckily, nobody in the dressing room had noticed.
Or if they had, then they hadn’t said anything, which I appreciated. Mind you, with how entwined our lives were, maybe it didn’t even register to our teammates as weird. I wasn’t going to ask anyone about it, though. Not right now,when we were all focused on getting ready and finding the right headspace.
“Which ones? With the bananas on?” I asked as I pulled my shorts on, my eyes scanning my own locker in case I had them.
“Those are the lucky spare ones,” Bailey said. “I want the actual lucky ones. With the rubber ducks.”
“Can’t you wear the banana ones?”
“I guess, but it’s not the same.”
“Stand here, let me look,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder and steering him into my spot so I could step behind him and get a better look at his locker. It was a mess, but that wasn’t new. Neither of us was very tidy. The only thing that forced us to sort our shit out at home was that we’d realised neither of us wanted to look our cleaner, Paul, in the face when the house was trashed.
“You washed them, right? And put them in your bag? I thought I saw them in the washing basket,” I continued as I carefully rummaged through Bailey’s bag, taking out his phone, sports tape, other pants, spare phone charger, socks, headphones, and several empty protein bar wrappers.
“Yeah, I think so. I don’t even wear them that much, so I don’t see why they’d be dirty. I don’t want to waste the luck on random shit.”
“Makes sense.” I moved his match kit, which Niall, the kit man, had left carefully folded for him to wear in his locker, and sighed as I saw a familiar scrap of bright blue and yellow fabric. “You mean these pants?”
Bailey flushed as I handed them to him. “Oh… where were they?”
“Under your kit.”
“I looked there.”
“Well, that’s where they were.” I wasn’t going to give him shit for not looking properly now. I could do it later, when he was less wound up about the match.
We swapped places again and Bailey began to strip at speed, stuffing his clothes into his bag before pulling on his rubber duck underwear, and I tried not to look at the way they got caught under his arse cheeks or the way his arse bounced as he tugged them into place. Staring at my best friend’s arse was not something I was supposed to do in public.
In private, that was different.
“This is a very cosy conversation. How’re you two not ready yet?” Mason asked as he strolled past, pausing to look at us carefully. He was one of the props and responsible for lifting me during the lineouts. I was very comfortable having his hands on my arse and my thighs, which was something that could only be said about rugby.
For a game which could be very bloody and brutal, there was a surprising amount of intimacy between players. It always felt ironic that some of the guys I’d grown up playing with were homophobic dickheads when they regularly had their heads between other men’s thighs, but none of them liked it when I’d pointed that out. Apparently, it wasn’t gay if you were all doing it.
I did not have the energy to unpack all of that bullshit with them.
“I couldn’t find my lucky pants,” Bailey said, gesturing at his underwear as he grabbed his shorts. “I can’t play without them.”
“Why not? It’s not like you have to do much. You just stand there and look pretty,” Mason said with a shit-eating grin.
“Bite me, wanker!”
“Ask nicely and I might say yes.”
“Fuck you,” Bailey said, laughing.
“Again, you’ve gotta ask nicely. Say please first. And maybe buy me a drink.” He winked. “Then again, I don’t think you’d be able to handle me.”
