Too Close To Home for Queeniegalore
Recipient: queeniegalore
Author: kitsunejin
Title: Too Close To Home
Pairing: brad colbert/ray person
Word Count: 3368
Rating: r
Summary:and doesn’t that sound familiar? the one where brad plays for the saints and ray listens to triple j. yeah, I went there. Glossary at the bottom.
Warnings: explicit language
The team pours out onto the oval and Brad is in the middle of them, feet pounding down against the grass in a sea of red, white, black. The lights are blinding, the night air so cold against his bare skin. Brad’s still not used to living so far south. He never knew how cold the nights could get, how it could burn him like this, sting so sharp.
He runs through it. Breathes out a thick cloud of white steam.
Above him the crowd is on their feet and roaring. Tier after tier - only a fraction of the stadium is full and yet there must be twenty thousand of them, thirty. He is down here, exposed, caught in the centre of their gaze. And the cameras are rolling, his face flashing up for a second across the middle of all the screens. Adrenaline is a sickening rush in his stomach, dizzying.
Nothing feels better.
The buzzer blares out noise, and Brad forgets everything: the crowd, the cold, the lingering bruises and deep muscle aches in his shoulder and thighs. It’s April, Brad’s first season. It’s the MCG.
Game on.
They play hard. They play hard, and sometimes, lately, that hasn’t been enough - but tonight they’re on, and it’s so fucking good. Brad leaps high, runs, passes in neat clean movements. Hasser kicks their first goal and they all rush in and crowd around him, laughing.
In the third quarter, they’re only two points ahead when Brad takes the sweetest mark, leaping so high. He’s just barely close enough to the goalposts to make a try at the goal worthwhile. There’s no-one else in a better place to pass to, and he’s pretty sure he can make it - pretty sure. Maybe somewhere there’s a world where he hesitates. Makes the other choice and passes the ball on, lets someone else take the risk.
Instead he aims and kicks and watches the ball soar up between the centre posts, sweet and true.
That night they end up in a pub in the heart of the city, a roaring crowd of players and hangers-on, still buoyed up by their latest win. Brad’s not sure how it happened, not even really sure where they are. After all of these months Melbourne’s geography is still confusing, a sprawl he can’t make sense of. Nothing like home.
He hesitates in the doorway. The pub looked reasonable from a distance, but up close it’s expensive, trendy, gentrified. Not to Brad’s taste. But from inside the door Poke cocks his head at him, raises an eyebrow, and Brad can read every word he isn’t saying.
It’s a challenge, and Brad’s not backing down. Sighing, he steps inside.
He’s right; it’s expensive in here, overpriced. He makes his way over to the bar, through the thick eddying crowd.
One of the bartenders is free, standing with his elbows resting on the edge of the bar. He looks up when Brad stops in front of him. Typical hipster, Brad thinks, dismissive; floppy hair, glasses, skinny jeans.
“Pint of VB,” Brad says. The bartender looks Brad up and down and grins.
“You sure about that? We’ve got a special on Rekorderlig tonight. Apple, pear or strawberry-lime.” He gestures towards a handwritten sign; his grin has widened, just a little bit mocking. He has dimples, Brad notices absently.
Brad leans in; disbelieving, amused.
“You can take your bottle of Rekorderlig, and you can shove it right up your arsehole.” Brad’s voice is deliberate and slow. “Take a fruity little ride all the way up to Oxford Street. You’re too late for Mardi Gras, but I’m sure you can still find a friend up there somewhere.”
The bartender throws his head back, laughing; Brad feels the corner of his own mouth turn up in answer.
“Jesus, mate. Overcompensating for anything?” the bartender says, still grinning. “You need to live a little. Expand your horizons.”
Brad snorts. “I like my life the way it is. And I’d like my bloody beer.”
The bartender grins and finally gets to it, sliding a glass under the tap.
“I’m serious, though,” the bartender says after a moment, as he slides the brimming glass over. “You’re overcompensating, mate, and it’s sad.” He looks up at Brad, meets his eyes. His gaze is steady and amused.
“Look at you. I should write a fucking essay about you, up in here in jeans and thongs in April with that nice middle-class accent. You’re trying too hard. VB? Yeah, right. You’re a city kid, through and through. I reckon you grew up drinking sauvignon blanc and having serious conversations with your parents about factional politics in the Labor Party. Bet you went to a private school and everything, you look the type.”
Brad frowns, impressed despite himself. “Completely wrong,” he says sadly, shaking his head. “My mum and dad prefer cab sav, and my high school was selective.” He grins, showing teeth, when the bartender laughs and pumps his fist. “Anyway, what the hell are you even on about, you bastard. I thought you green-voting wankers were all about self-improvement and free choice. Let me be the person I want to be.”
The bartender shakes his head. “And I am a complete bogan through and through, and I’m telling you mate, you’re not trying hard enough. I’m from Wagga, I should know.”
Brad snorts. “The fuck are you doing here, then? In skinny jeans in a bar in Carlton? You are bloody lost, mate.”
The bartender grins. “Didn’t you just hear? I’m from bloody Wagga. Moving down here was absolutely on purpose. It was getting the fuck out to somewhere civilised, or it was spending the next three years at Charles Sturt, sharing a house with my loser cousins and playing goon of fortune every weekend.”
Brad winces. “You know, I’ve never actually played that?”
The bartender cackles. “And there we go. Authenticity! If you wanna be a full on, true blue bogan, you’ve got to do it right.” The corner of his mouth turns up. “Tell you what. What’s your number? Next time me and my housemates are cashed up and feeling really grossly nostalgic, I’ll ring you up and you can come round and get your bogan on.”
Brad grins.
“It’s a date,” he says. Ignores the way his stomach flutters.
The bartender’s name is Ray, it turns out, and he’s just as funny when Brad’s sober. It’s awkward, the first time Brad texts him, but that doesn’t last long.
They meet up for coffee, sometimes, in the mornings; Brad orders plain scrambled eggs, multigrain toast, watches wistfully as Ray crams egg and bacon rolls into his mouth in enormous, messy, greasy bites. It’s - Ray’s smart, and he’s funny. It’s good to have a friend.
Brad gets on well with the rest of the team. They play well together, trust each other.
Brad’s liked, he thinks; but he doesn’t exactly have a lot of friends. Somehow, off the field, it’s never the same. Except with Poke, of course.
The first time they met, he shook Tony’s hand, introduced himself. And then he took a step back, taking Tony in - stocky build, wide shoulders, thighs like tree trunks. Brad raised an eyebrow.
“You lost or something, mate? Pretty sure the NRL’s that way.” Casually he pointed his thumb north.
Poke’s eyes went wide. “For real? You telling me I’m not in New South Wales anymore? Shit, I knew I shouldn’t have turned left on the Hume Highway.”
Brad shook his head sadly. “Amateur mistake. You’re in Melbourne now. Nothing but artsy European wankers and bad weather, as far as the eye can see.”
They grinned at each other. Poke’s smile turned sly.
“By the way, mate? North’s that way, no wonder your bloody mob kept on dying in the desert when my people weren’t around to save you.” His finger waved, pointing in almost the opposite direction from where Brad had aimed.
The corners of Brad’s mouth turned down. “Bloody hell. The ocean’s in the wrong fucking place, alright? I bloody hate Melbourne.”
Poke nodded. “I hear you,” he said, and in his slow warm smile Brad could see what he really meant to say.
It’s good having someone else who comes from up north, who understands what it’s like. Brad’s mother was born in Geelong, raised him up to the rhythm of the AFL seasons; where he is now is the place he’s always dreamed of being.
But most of his school friends, his dad’s family - most of them don’t get it. Poke understands.
And now - now it’s Poke on the field, at training, at the pub at nights; Ray during the week, during the day, late at night after a game. Ray’s at uni, but it’s still surprising how well it works out, how often they end up seeing each other.
It’s good, though. Brad likes it. It’s nice.
Ray comes to one of his games for the first time in June. He’s rugged up, wearing a stupid baggy jumper over his stupid skinny hipster jeans, and an oversized scarf. He looks ridiculous, and Brad tells him so.
Ray grins. “So you’re going to enjoy running around the oval in the middle of winter in what is basically your underwear, then? Have fun, Brad.”
Brad scowls - once he’s out on the field it will be okay, but right now he’s basically dying.
He’d rather sit naked inside a walk-in freezer than admit it, though.
He shakes his head at Ray, leans in to punch him on the shoulder. “It’s fine, I’m not a weak cunt like you. Harden the fuck up,” he says, glaring. Ray doesn’t flinch.
The game’s against GWS, and it’s an easy, easy win. Too easy, almost; Brad’s a bit embarrassed that this was what Ray saw on his first ever game.
Brad played well, though. Took some beautiful marks. It’s just - he’s just happy Ray saw him play well.
He comes out of the change rooms to find Ray waiting outside. He’s telling an all-too-amused Poke about his sudden and passionate support for Greater Western Sydney, apparently fuelled entirely by the fact that their orange uniforms are the exact same shade as the Your Rights at Work campaign.
Brad can’t help himself; he grins. Turns his face away to hide it.
“You disgust me, both of you,” he says, loftily. “You little commie ratbags.”
In front of him, Poke and Ray grin, fistbump. In a minute, he knows, Ray is going to start singing Solidarity Forever, out of tune and at the top of his lungs. And Poke will absolutely join in; it’s going to be horrible.
It’s - Brad hates that neither of them are on his side, politically speaking, it disgusts him.
(He’s so happy that the two of them get along.)
The first time he comes to visit Ray, it’s a cold Tuesday night, raining. Brad’s so exhausted. They flew to Brisbane over the weekend; the warmth was nice, but now Melbourne feels so much colder in comparison. He’s so fucking tired.
He drifts off on the train. Ray’s got his ipod on, sharing with Brad; there’s something horrible and modern coming out of the earphone in his left ear. Brad doesn’t understand why they can’t just listen to Cold Chisel, but he’s also too tired to have this argument again.
Actually, he’s pretty sure he’ll never win an argument about music with Ray again, after Ray had been poking around in his iTunes and noticed just how many times You’re the Voice had been played. It’s - whatever, Brad has no shame. It’s sad that Ray just can’t appreciate a classic.
And anyway, right now Ray has the sound turned down low. They’re sitting pretty close together, and he feels so warm.
Brad wakes with a start when Ray nudges him.
“We’re here,” Ray says quietly. Brad stretches til his back cracks, yawns; he wants nothing more than sleep, right now, but instead there’s just rain and dim streetlights, a fifteen-minute walk to the house Ray shares.
Inside, Ray’s house is absolutely freezing, but at least it’s dry. Brad kind of wishes he could borrow a hoodie or something, but Ray’s such a little midget; there’s no chance anything he owns would ever fit. Ray just looks at him and makes him a mug of milo, hot and sweet with a thick biscuity lid from the microwave. Part of Brad wants to snap at him for babying; but in the end he wants the milo even more.
He sits down with Ray and a couple of his housemates; they’re both students, like Ray, Arts-Law and Biological Sciences. They’re sharing a box of wine, arguing about some incomprehensible twist in a student election campaign. After a minute, Brad closes his eyes, lets it all wash over him.
Brad wakes up again when Ray pokes his side. He’s so fucking cold, shivering, and so tired.
“You wanna just crash here?” Ray’s voice is slow and warm, eyes steady on Brad’s face.
They were meant to be heading out to a party, later. That was the whole point of the train trip down here. But - “Yeah,” Brad says, hearing his voice come out husky, sleepy. “Do you have a couch or something?”
Ray has a couch. It’s old and worn, and Brad can feel springs digging into his spine; it’s a three-seater, and he’s still almost doubled in half to fit on it. It’ll do.
He wraps himself up in every spare blanket Ray can find for him, and sleeps.
Brad wakes up again a few hours later. The others have left the kitchen; the house is dark now, and quiet. He can’t believe how cold it is, how cold he is. He’s mostly covered his face with a blanket, but his nose is exposed to get some air, and it hurts with the cold. His feet are numb.
He’d lie here and take it, except - except he can’t get sick. Not in the middle of the season. He can’t let his team down like that.
Still wearing a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, he picks his way carefully over to Ray’s room. He’s pretty sure it’s Ray’s room, anyway.
He’s right. Ray’s in his bed, a tightly-curled lump under the blankets.
“Ray,” he says, hoarsely. “Wake up, you fucker. I’m dying. Wake up.”
Finally Ray moans unintelligibly, rolls over. “Bullshit,” he says, voice thick with sleep.
“I’m fucking freezing, alright? The fuck’s wrong with you, we’re in Melbourne. Where’s your heater?”
Ray laughs. “We’re students, in case you haven’t noticed. You think we’re gonna spend our Centrelink on our electricity bill when we could be spending it on goon?”
Brad groans. “Whatever, I don’t care. Move over.”
He can see the motion, barely, as Ray sits up. “Seriously? You pass out on me, you crash my house, then you want to crash my bed?”
“Shut the fuck up and move over,” Brad says, already pushing his way in. Yeah, he’s made up his mind. It’s not weird, or anything. Ray’s just being a shit.
“I’m pretty sure this counts as assault, Brad. You should be careful, you’re a footy player. You lot haven’t exactly got a good track record there.”
Brad snorts. “Do I look like I play for the NRL?”
Ray laughs.
Under the covers, it’s blissfully warm. Ray is radiating heat, furnace warm even from the other side of the bed. Brad can’t resist -
Ray yelps, kicks him. “Cold feet, you cunt! Bloody fucking hell. That’s not on, Brad, that’s just not on.”
“Whatever,” Brad says, not moving. Ray is quiet beside him, and finally he lets himself fall asleep.
When Brad wakes up again it’s morning, bright light streaming down around the edges of the blanket Ray’s using as a curtain, and he’s so warm.
At first he just lies there unmoving, luxuriating in the warmth. It feels so good, the warmth and the sleep, his whole body relaxing. Even his bruises and his healing shoulder don’t hurt so badly.
And then, with a start, he feels Ray shift against him -
He can feel Ray because he’s spooned against him, limbs tangling. Too close.
Brad breathes in, breathes out. Doesn’t panic. It’s fine, it’s normal. Guys sleep in the same bed together all the time, there’s nothing weird about it. And Ray’s probably just a restless sleeper.
It’s fine.
“Morning,” Ray says, after a long moment where Brad just lies still and absolutely does not panic. He doesn’t sound like he’s just woken up. His voice is clear and steady.
Brad’s silent. He can feel Ray’s chest moving every time he breathes.
“So are we gonna talk about this?” Ray asks him, and his voice sounds light, casual.
There’s nothing to talk about, Brad thinks. You just need to get up. Leave.
He doesn’t move.
“I mean, I don’t have any problems with keeping this conversation going on my own for a while, we both know how much I’m into the sound of my own voice. But it would be nice if you contributed too, Brad. I’m just letting you know.”
“What are we talking about?” Brad says, casual and dismissive, like he doesn’t have a clue. He’s proud of how composed he sounds. He - he’s just not doing this. He’s not.
“Where do you wanna start?” Ray snorts. “I know you’re a footy player and denial is a beautiful thing, but come on. Ever since we met you’ve been spending all your time around me. We meet all the time, we text all the time, we hang out - you play for the fucking Saints, Brad, and I’m a second-year uni student. You don’t think that’s a little odd? Oh, yeah, and what was that other thing - we’re cuddling. In case you’d missed that part.”
Brad bites his lip, hard. He feels dizzy, sick -
“Hey,” Ray says, rolling over. Oh god, Ray can see him now. See the look on his face, warm and open, concerned. “Hey, Brad, it’s okay. It really is.”
He grins. Fucking dimples, Brad thinks, through the haze.
“Hey, Brad. You know I’m stupidly into you too, right? It is really, completely, unbelievably okay.” Ray pauses; Brad still can’t look at him, but he feels Ray’s shaky breath. “Unless, like. If you’re going to have a homophobic freakout, could you not punch me? Just… leave. If you’re going to.”
Brad sighs. Breathes in, and out.
“I’m not going to have a homophobic freakout,” he says, finally. His heart is pounding triple-time, like the last minutes of the game before the buzzer, and he knows Ray must be able to feel it. “It’s - I know what I am. I don’t really talk about it.”
“Yeah,” Ray says. “I know why you can’t, Brad. I’m not asking you to come out to the whole world, jesus.”
Brad swallows, hard. “I mean - I’ve never really talked about it. To anyone.”
His parents know, he thinks. His mum, at least. Poke’s said some things too, once - he’s pretty sure that all of them know. He’s pretty sure.
(And then there’s that guy from high school, that party, when he was dumb and seventeen and they’d kissed til Brad’s lips stung - but he’s not thinking about that now.)
Ray reaches out, and - that’s his hand, squeezing Brad’s shoulder. His grip is firm and hard, the same as how one of the boys might grab him in practice or during a game, and somehow it’s so comforting. Brad relaxes, just a tiny bit.
“It’s going to be okay,” Ray says again. “We don’t - we don’t have to do anything now.”
Brad takes another moment, just to breathe. But he thinks - he thinks that actually, Ray might be right.
It’s going to be okay.
Finally, he meets Ray’s gaze. Watches the corner of Ray’s mouth turn up into a tiny smirk.
“That’s sweet, Ray,” he drawls finally, low and rough and warm. “I think I’d rather make out.” Ray’s smiling; he knows he’s smiling too, ridiculous, and he doesn’t even care. And then - they’re kissing, soft and warm and so sweet.
Brad wouldn’t say that it feels better than winning a game in front of fifty thousand people, but maybe it’s just as good.
-
Glossary and Context
AFL & NRL: Depending on where you are in the country, footy can mean either Aussie Rules (AFL), the most popular winter sport in the south-western states (Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia… look, my country never claimed to be imaginative when it comes to names) or rugby league (NRL), the most popular winter sport in the north-eastern states of New South Wales and Queensland. There’s also rugby union (the most internationally popular rugby code) but that’s not really relevant to this story at all.
Technically, the sport Brad plays is called Australian (Aussie) Rules, but a lot of people call it AFL (if they don’t just call it footy). It’s a faster-paced sport than rugby, with less of an emphasis on tackling (though it’s still a rough, contact sport, and unlike American Football, players wear no padding). There’s lots of leaping high in the air to catch balls (catching a kicked ball on the full from more than 15 metres away is called a mark and gets the player a free kick; it’s dramatic and can look spectacular) and sprinting up and down the field. Players tend to be tall and rangy, and, well, built like Brad Colbert.
(Rugby players tend to be built like brick walls.)
Both sports are massively, massively popular in their home states, and while there is some crossover (it’s completely plausible that Brad could grow up an AFL fan in New South Wales), there’s also a massive rivalry between the two, linked to the general rivalry between New South Wales (capital: Sydney) and Victoria (capital: Melbourne). A lot of AFL fans hate/dismiss/look down on league fans, and vice versa.
Brad and Poke wear red, white and black: they play for St Kilda, the Saints. Like about half of the teams in the AFL, they’re based in Melbourne. The MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground, confusingly) isn’t their home oval, but it’s the biggest in Victoria, where Grand Finals are held. It seats something like 100,000 people, it is massive.
Of course every sport has its scandals, but the NRL seems to have a lot of particularly nasty ones: Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs players accused of an awful, awful rape in 2004, some nasty racial vilification incidents, and what seems like a constant stream of domestic violence cases. It might be that because I live in an NRL state I just miss the AFL scandals, but I don't really think so.
Bogan: Basically, Australian for redneck, or chav. The connotations aren’t exactly the same, but that gives you a rough idea of what the word means.
Centrelink: The government agency that provides welfare payments. The relevant one here is Youth Allowance, which is for full-time students. You can be eligible for it in a lot of different ways (age, parental income, family history, proven ability to support yourself), and a lot of students rely on it to get through uni; it’s not much, especially not if you’re trying to rent in the kind of inner-city area where a lot of Australia’s universities are found, but it's better than nothing.
It is absolutely believable that a student sharehouse, in a city that sometimes gets below freezing overnight during winter, would have no heating, or only have a cheap space heater or two that no-one runs because they’re afraid of their electricity bill. AUGH.
Clothes: A jumper is a sweater, not a dress for children. (? America, I don’t understand you at all.) Thongs are flip-flops, and you wear them on your feet.
Goon: Cheap and nasty cask (box) wine, the favoured drink of students nation-wide, and anyone else who wants to get as pissed as possible as cheaply as possible. Goon of fortune is a drinking game that… aaaargh no this is too embarrassing. Google it if you absolutely have to know. D:
(Other drinks that appear in this story: VB, Victoria Bitter, is beer. It’s a cheap, popular lager; Brad would absolutely drink it to try and appear more authentic. It’s kind of gross though. Rekorderlig is sweet, expensive, wanky imported Swedish cider. Yes, there are really Australians who refer to cabernet sauvignon as ‘cab sav’, and I would like to pretend that I am not one of them, but that would be a lie.)
Music: You’re the Voice: The only song that could come close to the true horror of what Brad listens to in canon.
Cold Chisel are a classic Australian pub rock band; they’re not too bad, if you’re into that kind of thing. Khe Sanh;
Flame Trees (psst, the Sarah Blasko cover is so much better though)
Your Rights At Work: In 2005, the then Prime Minister John Howard (leader of the large-l Liberal Party, who are in fact Australia’s conservative party) introduced a series of workplace relations reforms called Work Choices, which… shat all over workers’ rights, basically. It was massively unpopular and is widely cited as one of the reasons Howard lost so catastrophically to Kevin Rudd in the 2007 election. The union-sponsored campaign against it was called Your Rights At Work, and, yes, was an extremely classy shade of orange.
Brad is almost certainly a large-l Liberal voter in this story, but the thought is so upsetting, I couldn’t even make jokes about it. He probably doesn’t like Tony Abbott very much, of course, but then again, who does?
The most important question raised by this issue, though: Does Ray vote Socialist Alliance or Sex Party??
DISCUSS.
Author: kitsunejin
Title: Too Close To Home
Pairing: brad colbert/ray person
Word Count: 3368
Rating: r
Summary:and doesn’t that sound familiar? the one where brad plays for the saints and ray listens to triple j. yeah, I went there. Glossary at the bottom.
Warnings: explicit language
The team pours out onto the oval and Brad is in the middle of them, feet pounding down against the grass in a sea of red, white, black. The lights are blinding, the night air so cold against his bare skin. Brad’s still not used to living so far south. He never knew how cold the nights could get, how it could burn him like this, sting so sharp.
He runs through it. Breathes out a thick cloud of white steam.
Above him the crowd is on their feet and roaring. Tier after tier - only a fraction of the stadium is full and yet there must be twenty thousand of them, thirty. He is down here, exposed, caught in the centre of their gaze. And the cameras are rolling, his face flashing up for a second across the middle of all the screens. Adrenaline is a sickening rush in his stomach, dizzying.
Nothing feels better.
The buzzer blares out noise, and Brad forgets everything: the crowd, the cold, the lingering bruises and deep muscle aches in his shoulder and thighs. It’s April, Brad’s first season. It’s the MCG.
Game on.
They play hard. They play hard, and sometimes, lately, that hasn’t been enough - but tonight they’re on, and it’s so fucking good. Brad leaps high, runs, passes in neat clean movements. Hasser kicks their first goal and they all rush in and crowd around him, laughing.
In the third quarter, they’re only two points ahead when Brad takes the sweetest mark, leaping so high. He’s just barely close enough to the goalposts to make a try at the goal worthwhile. There’s no-one else in a better place to pass to, and he’s pretty sure he can make it - pretty sure. Maybe somewhere there’s a world where he hesitates. Makes the other choice and passes the ball on, lets someone else take the risk.
Instead he aims and kicks and watches the ball soar up between the centre posts, sweet and true.
That night they end up in a pub in the heart of the city, a roaring crowd of players and hangers-on, still buoyed up by their latest win. Brad’s not sure how it happened, not even really sure where they are. After all of these months Melbourne’s geography is still confusing, a sprawl he can’t make sense of. Nothing like home.
He hesitates in the doorway. The pub looked reasonable from a distance, but up close it’s expensive, trendy, gentrified. Not to Brad’s taste. But from inside the door Poke cocks his head at him, raises an eyebrow, and Brad can read every word he isn’t saying.
It’s a challenge, and Brad’s not backing down. Sighing, he steps inside.
He’s right; it’s expensive in here, overpriced. He makes his way over to the bar, through the thick eddying crowd.
One of the bartenders is free, standing with his elbows resting on the edge of the bar. He looks up when Brad stops in front of him. Typical hipster, Brad thinks, dismissive; floppy hair, glasses, skinny jeans.
“Pint of VB,” Brad says. The bartender looks Brad up and down and grins.
“You sure about that? We’ve got a special on Rekorderlig tonight. Apple, pear or strawberry-lime.” He gestures towards a handwritten sign; his grin has widened, just a little bit mocking. He has dimples, Brad notices absently.
Brad leans in; disbelieving, amused.
“You can take your bottle of Rekorderlig, and you can shove it right up your arsehole.” Brad’s voice is deliberate and slow. “Take a fruity little ride all the way up to Oxford Street. You’re too late for Mardi Gras, but I’m sure you can still find a friend up there somewhere.”
The bartender throws his head back, laughing; Brad feels the corner of his own mouth turn up in answer.
“Jesus, mate. Overcompensating for anything?” the bartender says, still grinning. “You need to live a little. Expand your horizons.”
Brad snorts. “I like my life the way it is. And I’d like my bloody beer.”
The bartender grins and finally gets to it, sliding a glass under the tap.
“I’m serious, though,” the bartender says after a moment, as he slides the brimming glass over. “You’re overcompensating, mate, and it’s sad.” He looks up at Brad, meets his eyes. His gaze is steady and amused.
“Look at you. I should write a fucking essay about you, up in here in jeans and thongs in April with that nice middle-class accent. You’re trying too hard. VB? Yeah, right. You’re a city kid, through and through. I reckon you grew up drinking sauvignon blanc and having serious conversations with your parents about factional politics in the Labor Party. Bet you went to a private school and everything, you look the type.”
Brad frowns, impressed despite himself. “Completely wrong,” he says sadly, shaking his head. “My mum and dad prefer cab sav, and my high school was selective.” He grins, showing teeth, when the bartender laughs and pumps his fist. “Anyway, what the hell are you even on about, you bastard. I thought you green-voting wankers were all about self-improvement and free choice. Let me be the person I want to be.”
The bartender shakes his head. “And I am a complete bogan through and through, and I’m telling you mate, you’re not trying hard enough. I’m from Wagga, I should know.”
Brad snorts. “The fuck are you doing here, then? In skinny jeans in a bar in Carlton? You are bloody lost, mate.”
The bartender grins. “Didn’t you just hear? I’m from bloody Wagga. Moving down here was absolutely on purpose. It was getting the fuck out to somewhere civilised, or it was spending the next three years at Charles Sturt, sharing a house with my loser cousins and playing goon of fortune every weekend.”
Brad winces. “You know, I’ve never actually played that?”
The bartender cackles. “And there we go. Authenticity! If you wanna be a full on, true blue bogan, you’ve got to do it right.” The corner of his mouth turns up. “Tell you what. What’s your number? Next time me and my housemates are cashed up and feeling really grossly nostalgic, I’ll ring you up and you can come round and get your bogan on.”
Brad grins.
“It’s a date,” he says. Ignores the way his stomach flutters.
The bartender’s name is Ray, it turns out, and he’s just as funny when Brad’s sober. It’s awkward, the first time Brad texts him, but that doesn’t last long.
They meet up for coffee, sometimes, in the mornings; Brad orders plain scrambled eggs, multigrain toast, watches wistfully as Ray crams egg and bacon rolls into his mouth in enormous, messy, greasy bites. It’s - Ray’s smart, and he’s funny. It’s good to have a friend.
Brad gets on well with the rest of the team. They play well together, trust each other.
Brad’s liked, he thinks; but he doesn’t exactly have a lot of friends. Somehow, off the field, it’s never the same. Except with Poke, of course.
The first time they met, he shook Tony’s hand, introduced himself. And then he took a step back, taking Tony in - stocky build, wide shoulders, thighs like tree trunks. Brad raised an eyebrow.
“You lost or something, mate? Pretty sure the NRL’s that way.” Casually he pointed his thumb north.
Poke’s eyes went wide. “For real? You telling me I’m not in New South Wales anymore? Shit, I knew I shouldn’t have turned left on the Hume Highway.”
Brad shook his head sadly. “Amateur mistake. You’re in Melbourne now. Nothing but artsy European wankers and bad weather, as far as the eye can see.”
They grinned at each other. Poke’s smile turned sly.
“By the way, mate? North’s that way, no wonder your bloody mob kept on dying in the desert when my people weren’t around to save you.” His finger waved, pointing in almost the opposite direction from where Brad had aimed.
The corners of Brad’s mouth turned down. “Bloody hell. The ocean’s in the wrong fucking place, alright? I bloody hate Melbourne.”
Poke nodded. “I hear you,” he said, and in his slow warm smile Brad could see what he really meant to say.
It’s good having someone else who comes from up north, who understands what it’s like. Brad’s mother was born in Geelong, raised him up to the rhythm of the AFL seasons; where he is now is the place he’s always dreamed of being.
But most of his school friends, his dad’s family - most of them don’t get it. Poke understands.
And now - now it’s Poke on the field, at training, at the pub at nights; Ray during the week, during the day, late at night after a game. Ray’s at uni, but it’s still surprising how well it works out, how often they end up seeing each other.
It’s good, though. Brad likes it. It’s nice.
Ray comes to one of his games for the first time in June. He’s rugged up, wearing a stupid baggy jumper over his stupid skinny hipster jeans, and an oversized scarf. He looks ridiculous, and Brad tells him so.
Ray grins. “So you’re going to enjoy running around the oval in the middle of winter in what is basically your underwear, then? Have fun, Brad.”
Brad scowls - once he’s out on the field it will be okay, but right now he’s basically dying.
He’d rather sit naked inside a walk-in freezer than admit it, though.
He shakes his head at Ray, leans in to punch him on the shoulder. “It’s fine, I’m not a weak cunt like you. Harden the fuck up,” he says, glaring. Ray doesn’t flinch.
The game’s against GWS, and it’s an easy, easy win. Too easy, almost; Brad’s a bit embarrassed that this was what Ray saw on his first ever game.
Brad played well, though. Took some beautiful marks. It’s just - he’s just happy Ray saw him play well.
He comes out of the change rooms to find Ray waiting outside. He’s telling an all-too-amused Poke about his sudden and passionate support for Greater Western Sydney, apparently fuelled entirely by the fact that their orange uniforms are the exact same shade as the Your Rights at Work campaign.
Brad can’t help himself; he grins. Turns his face away to hide it.
“You disgust me, both of you,” he says, loftily. “You little commie ratbags.”
In front of him, Poke and Ray grin, fistbump. In a minute, he knows, Ray is going to start singing Solidarity Forever, out of tune and at the top of his lungs. And Poke will absolutely join in; it’s going to be horrible.
It’s - Brad hates that neither of them are on his side, politically speaking, it disgusts him.
(He’s so happy that the two of them get along.)
The first time he comes to visit Ray, it’s a cold Tuesday night, raining. Brad’s so exhausted. They flew to Brisbane over the weekend; the warmth was nice, but now Melbourne feels so much colder in comparison. He’s so fucking tired.
He drifts off on the train. Ray’s got his ipod on, sharing with Brad; there’s something horrible and modern coming out of the earphone in his left ear. Brad doesn’t understand why they can’t just listen to Cold Chisel, but he’s also too tired to have this argument again.
Actually, he’s pretty sure he’ll never win an argument about music with Ray again, after Ray had been poking around in his iTunes and noticed just how many times You’re the Voice had been played. It’s - whatever, Brad has no shame. It’s sad that Ray just can’t appreciate a classic.
And anyway, right now Ray has the sound turned down low. They’re sitting pretty close together, and he feels so warm.
Brad wakes with a start when Ray nudges him.
“We’re here,” Ray says quietly. Brad stretches til his back cracks, yawns; he wants nothing more than sleep, right now, but instead there’s just rain and dim streetlights, a fifteen-minute walk to the house Ray shares.
Inside, Ray’s house is absolutely freezing, but at least it’s dry. Brad kind of wishes he could borrow a hoodie or something, but Ray’s such a little midget; there’s no chance anything he owns would ever fit. Ray just looks at him and makes him a mug of milo, hot and sweet with a thick biscuity lid from the microwave. Part of Brad wants to snap at him for babying; but in the end he wants the milo even more.
He sits down with Ray and a couple of his housemates; they’re both students, like Ray, Arts-Law and Biological Sciences. They’re sharing a box of wine, arguing about some incomprehensible twist in a student election campaign. After a minute, Brad closes his eyes, lets it all wash over him.
Brad wakes up again when Ray pokes his side. He’s so fucking cold, shivering, and so tired.
“You wanna just crash here?” Ray’s voice is slow and warm, eyes steady on Brad’s face.
They were meant to be heading out to a party, later. That was the whole point of the train trip down here. But - “Yeah,” Brad says, hearing his voice come out husky, sleepy. “Do you have a couch or something?”
Ray has a couch. It’s old and worn, and Brad can feel springs digging into his spine; it’s a three-seater, and he’s still almost doubled in half to fit on it. It’ll do.
He wraps himself up in every spare blanket Ray can find for him, and sleeps.
Brad wakes up again a few hours later. The others have left the kitchen; the house is dark now, and quiet. He can’t believe how cold it is, how cold he is. He’s mostly covered his face with a blanket, but his nose is exposed to get some air, and it hurts with the cold. His feet are numb.
He’d lie here and take it, except - except he can’t get sick. Not in the middle of the season. He can’t let his team down like that.
Still wearing a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, he picks his way carefully over to Ray’s room. He’s pretty sure it’s Ray’s room, anyway.
He’s right. Ray’s in his bed, a tightly-curled lump under the blankets.
“Ray,” he says, hoarsely. “Wake up, you fucker. I’m dying. Wake up.”
Finally Ray moans unintelligibly, rolls over. “Bullshit,” he says, voice thick with sleep.
“I’m fucking freezing, alright? The fuck’s wrong with you, we’re in Melbourne. Where’s your heater?”
Ray laughs. “We’re students, in case you haven’t noticed. You think we’re gonna spend our Centrelink on our electricity bill when we could be spending it on goon?”
Brad groans. “Whatever, I don’t care. Move over.”
He can see the motion, barely, as Ray sits up. “Seriously? You pass out on me, you crash my house, then you want to crash my bed?”
“Shut the fuck up and move over,” Brad says, already pushing his way in. Yeah, he’s made up his mind. It’s not weird, or anything. Ray’s just being a shit.
“I’m pretty sure this counts as assault, Brad. You should be careful, you’re a footy player. You lot haven’t exactly got a good track record there.”
Brad snorts. “Do I look like I play for the NRL?”
Ray laughs.
Under the covers, it’s blissfully warm. Ray is radiating heat, furnace warm even from the other side of the bed. Brad can’t resist -
Ray yelps, kicks him. “Cold feet, you cunt! Bloody fucking hell. That’s not on, Brad, that’s just not on.”
“Whatever,” Brad says, not moving. Ray is quiet beside him, and finally he lets himself fall asleep.
When Brad wakes up again it’s morning, bright light streaming down around the edges of the blanket Ray’s using as a curtain, and he’s so warm.
At first he just lies there unmoving, luxuriating in the warmth. It feels so good, the warmth and the sleep, his whole body relaxing. Even his bruises and his healing shoulder don’t hurt so badly.
And then, with a start, he feels Ray shift against him -
He can feel Ray because he’s spooned against him, limbs tangling. Too close.
Brad breathes in, breathes out. Doesn’t panic. It’s fine, it’s normal. Guys sleep in the same bed together all the time, there’s nothing weird about it. And Ray’s probably just a restless sleeper.
It’s fine.
“Morning,” Ray says, after a long moment where Brad just lies still and absolutely does not panic. He doesn’t sound like he’s just woken up. His voice is clear and steady.
Brad’s silent. He can feel Ray’s chest moving every time he breathes.
“So are we gonna talk about this?” Ray asks him, and his voice sounds light, casual.
There’s nothing to talk about, Brad thinks. You just need to get up. Leave.
He doesn’t move.
“I mean, I don’t have any problems with keeping this conversation going on my own for a while, we both know how much I’m into the sound of my own voice. But it would be nice if you contributed too, Brad. I’m just letting you know.”
“What are we talking about?” Brad says, casual and dismissive, like he doesn’t have a clue. He’s proud of how composed he sounds. He - he’s just not doing this. He’s not.
“Where do you wanna start?” Ray snorts. “I know you’re a footy player and denial is a beautiful thing, but come on. Ever since we met you’ve been spending all your time around me. We meet all the time, we text all the time, we hang out - you play for the fucking Saints, Brad, and I’m a second-year uni student. You don’t think that’s a little odd? Oh, yeah, and what was that other thing - we’re cuddling. In case you’d missed that part.”
Brad bites his lip, hard. He feels dizzy, sick -
“Hey,” Ray says, rolling over. Oh god, Ray can see him now. See the look on his face, warm and open, concerned. “Hey, Brad, it’s okay. It really is.”
He grins. Fucking dimples, Brad thinks, through the haze.
“Hey, Brad. You know I’m stupidly into you too, right? It is really, completely, unbelievably okay.” Ray pauses; Brad still can’t look at him, but he feels Ray’s shaky breath. “Unless, like. If you’re going to have a homophobic freakout, could you not punch me? Just… leave. If you’re going to.”
Brad sighs. Breathes in, and out.
“I’m not going to have a homophobic freakout,” he says, finally. His heart is pounding triple-time, like the last minutes of the game before the buzzer, and he knows Ray must be able to feel it. “It’s - I know what I am. I don’t really talk about it.”
“Yeah,” Ray says. “I know why you can’t, Brad. I’m not asking you to come out to the whole world, jesus.”
Brad swallows, hard. “I mean - I’ve never really talked about it. To anyone.”
His parents know, he thinks. His mum, at least. Poke’s said some things too, once - he’s pretty sure that all of them know. He’s pretty sure.
(And then there’s that guy from high school, that party, when he was dumb and seventeen and they’d kissed til Brad’s lips stung - but he’s not thinking about that now.)
Ray reaches out, and - that’s his hand, squeezing Brad’s shoulder. His grip is firm and hard, the same as how one of the boys might grab him in practice or during a game, and somehow it’s so comforting. Brad relaxes, just a tiny bit.
“It’s going to be okay,” Ray says again. “We don’t - we don’t have to do anything now.”
Brad takes another moment, just to breathe. But he thinks - he thinks that actually, Ray might be right.
It’s going to be okay.
Finally, he meets Ray’s gaze. Watches the corner of Ray’s mouth turn up into a tiny smirk.
“That’s sweet, Ray,” he drawls finally, low and rough and warm. “I think I’d rather make out.” Ray’s smiling; he knows he’s smiling too, ridiculous, and he doesn’t even care. And then - they’re kissing, soft and warm and so sweet.
Brad wouldn’t say that it feels better than winning a game in front of fifty thousand people, but maybe it’s just as good.
-
Glossary and Context
AFL & NRL: Depending on where you are in the country, footy can mean either Aussie Rules (AFL), the most popular winter sport in the south-western states (Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia… look, my country never claimed to be imaginative when it comes to names) or rugby league (NRL), the most popular winter sport in the north-eastern states of New South Wales and Queensland. There’s also rugby union (the most internationally popular rugby code) but that’s not really relevant to this story at all.
Technically, the sport Brad plays is called Australian (Aussie) Rules, but a lot of people call it AFL (if they don’t just call it footy). It’s a faster-paced sport than rugby, with less of an emphasis on tackling (though it’s still a rough, contact sport, and unlike American Football, players wear no padding). There’s lots of leaping high in the air to catch balls (catching a kicked ball on the full from more than 15 metres away is called a mark and gets the player a free kick; it’s dramatic and can look spectacular) and sprinting up and down the field. Players tend to be tall and rangy, and, well, built like Brad Colbert.
(Rugby players tend to be built like brick walls.)
Both sports are massively, massively popular in their home states, and while there is some crossover (it’s completely plausible that Brad could grow up an AFL fan in New South Wales), there’s also a massive rivalry between the two, linked to the general rivalry between New South Wales (capital: Sydney) and Victoria (capital: Melbourne). A lot of AFL fans hate/dismiss/look down on league fans, and vice versa.
Brad and Poke wear red, white and black: they play for St Kilda, the Saints. Like about half of the teams in the AFL, they’re based in Melbourne. The MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground, confusingly) isn’t their home oval, but it’s the biggest in Victoria, where Grand Finals are held. It seats something like 100,000 people, it is massive.
Of course every sport has its scandals, but the NRL seems to have a lot of particularly nasty ones: Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs players accused of an awful, awful rape in 2004, some nasty racial vilification incidents, and what seems like a constant stream of domestic violence cases. It might be that because I live in an NRL state I just miss the AFL scandals, but I don't really think so.
Bogan: Basically, Australian for redneck, or chav. The connotations aren’t exactly the same, but that gives you a rough idea of what the word means.
Centrelink: The government agency that provides welfare payments. The relevant one here is Youth Allowance, which is for full-time students. You can be eligible for it in a lot of different ways (age, parental income, family history, proven ability to support yourself), and a lot of students rely on it to get through uni; it’s not much, especially not if you’re trying to rent in the kind of inner-city area where a lot of Australia’s universities are found, but it's better than nothing.
It is absolutely believable that a student sharehouse, in a city that sometimes gets below freezing overnight during winter, would have no heating, or only have a cheap space heater or two that no-one runs because they’re afraid of their electricity bill. AUGH.
Clothes: A jumper is a sweater, not a dress for children. (? America, I don’t understand you at all.) Thongs are flip-flops, and you wear them on your feet.
Goon: Cheap and nasty cask (box) wine, the favoured drink of students nation-wide, and anyone else who wants to get as pissed as possible as cheaply as possible. Goon of fortune is a drinking game that… aaaargh no this is too embarrassing. Google it if you absolutely have to know. D:
(Other drinks that appear in this story: VB, Victoria Bitter, is beer. It’s a cheap, popular lager; Brad would absolutely drink it to try and appear more authentic. It’s kind of gross though. Rekorderlig is sweet, expensive, wanky imported Swedish cider. Yes, there are really Australians who refer to cabernet sauvignon as ‘cab sav’, and I would like to pretend that I am not one of them, but that would be a lie.)
Music: You’re the Voice: The only song that could come close to the true horror of what Brad listens to in canon.
Cold Chisel are a classic Australian pub rock band; they’re not too bad, if you’re into that kind of thing. Khe Sanh;
Flame Trees (psst, the Sarah Blasko cover is so much better though)
Your Rights At Work: In 2005, the then Prime Minister John Howard (leader of the large-l Liberal Party, who are in fact Australia’s conservative party) introduced a series of workplace relations reforms called Work Choices, which… shat all over workers’ rights, basically. It was massively unpopular and is widely cited as one of the reasons Howard lost so catastrophically to Kevin Rudd in the 2007 election. The union-sponsored campaign against it was called Your Rights At Work, and, yes, was an extremely classy shade of orange.
Brad is almost certainly a large-l Liberal voter in this story, but the thought is so upsetting, I couldn’t even make jokes about it. He probably doesn’t like Tony Abbott very much, of course, but then again, who does?
The most important question raised by this issue, though: Does Ray vote Socialist Alliance or Sex Party??
DISCUSS.