purefractals

The effects of worrying too much for too long are like this. 

Kai starts to dream more vividly than he ever has before. At first the dreams are just laughably strange. A series of hunger-games-esque competitions where he has to win by running after something he can’t quite see, or swimming for miles while being perfectly able to breathe. The more minutes he gets, the more stressed he is, and the more realistic the dreams become. Trying to make a shot from the halfway line, in the middle of the night with no lights. Kai wakes up most nights in a cold sweat. A doomsday panic overcomes him, like any minute the quiet luxury mattress might erupt and plunge him into terrifying nothingness.

He turns and watches Martin’s back rising slowly in the other hotel bed, fighting the irrational desire to crawl over and curl up next to his captain’s warm body, like he used to do with his brother when he was little. Instead he lies awake and waits for his heart to stop pounding so painfully. He begins to dread home matches, where he shivers alone in the dark for hours before and after every game. 

After the last match, just before summer starts, Declan pulls him aside with serious eyes. He wants Kai to know that he sees all the hard work that he’s been putting in this season, he really does, and Kai come out with a few of us for a drink mate? The rest of the team is moving about quietly around them, trying not to intrude, sort of edgy though. Kai catches a glimpse of Martin and Mikel in the corner of the dressing room with their heads together, whispering. Martin steals a glance at Kai and Declan and lets his gaze skitter away, smiling over at Zubi who seems perpetually wide-eyed and excited. Kai says yes to drinks because fuck it, the season is over and this summer he is going to get so fucking drunk in Spain that he won’t even remember what insomnia is like. So might as well start now. 

The evening is marked by a familiar nausea rising and falling in his throat. Not enough sleep makes his stomach hurt and shot after shot of pure vodka isn’t helping either. But Kai likes that the lights are getting blurry and shaking again, that the bar is beginning to empty out as the team heads home, stumbling a little, that Declan is there with his arm around Kai’s shoulders, smelling strongly of beer and some woodsy body wash. Declan gets in the cab with him, puts his hand haphazardly on Kai’s thigh and Kai makes a sad little noise. Whatever Declan sees in his eyes when their gazes meet, it makes him walk Kai to his apartment. 

They stumble over to the couch. Kai brings their lips together and then it’s Declan palming at his dick through his sweatpants, Declan’s warm slick mouth up against his neck as he’s taking his clothes off. It’s all messy and uncoordinated and Kai’s hands shake horribly. He lets out desperate moans that begin to sound like actual crying, but whatever it takes to make Declan fuck him tonight. 

Declan grunts loudly and carries him to the bedroom. He bumps the back of Kai’s head on the doorframe and also on the headboard when he tosses him onto the bed. Kai looks up at him, naked, head pounding, limbs spread for Declan’s taking and then he can’t breathe. He claws at Declan’s back where he’s fallen on top of Kai, drunk and unbalanced on the slippery varnished floor. This can’t be it, he thinks deliriously, nausea pressing in his throat. Sweaty and trapped, he drifts off to the best sleep he’s had in a week. 

***

“You actually look awful.”

Sophia and Martin are standing next to each other in the kitchen of their summer home in Spain, staring at Kai. He palms at his unshaven face self-consciously. He showered twice before hopping on the red-eye but still feels unclean, unable to get Declan’s smell out of his cold pillows or off his own skin. Sophia fusses over him a little, dragging him upstairs with a glass of water and making him promise to get some rest. She closes the curtains against the daylight and leaves him there to go off with Helene. He hears them laughing downstairs, his oldest friend and the woman he is certain she’s in love with. Kai couldn’t bring himself to ask her to stay, not when he knows that she won’t understand. She’ll just worry. 

He lies still like a scared animal for a few hours, evading sleep. When everything is quiet he pads downstairs to grab a beer. Martin is sitting at the kitchen counter with a mug of tea, looking a bit lost. Kai rummages in the drawers for a bottle opener and just decides to pry off the cap with fingers and teeth. He lets the metal draw a little blood from his lips, thinking about Declan’s bruising kisses, how addictive it felt to be used that way again.