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I'm with you | ghost!wally clark x human!male!reader

a/n — I started writing this before season 3 so I do apologize if any of this is inaccurate to information that comes out within the next couple weeks

summary — The reader wants to hone their skills for an upcoming lacrosse game, but gets distracted by the resident ghost jock.

warnings — The Author Has Never Played Lacrosse, fingering, rimming, anal sex, unprotected anal sex (wrap it gang), public sex (fucking on the football field), breeding, bad analogies between sex and lacrosse, build-up to sex, plot-into-smut, smut, 18+! not beta'd

words — 12,750

~~~

Trying to find a good place to exist peacefully at Split River was harder than it looked; every room in the building felt crowded. Both mentally and physically—some rooms felt like you were shoulder-to-shoulder with other students sitting at their desks, even if that person sat approximately two feet away, in their own world, and some rooms felt like you couldn’t focus mentally with all of their noise. A few of the rooms just had this certain air about them, like the cafeteria and the green house, which lacked any sort of emptiness even when you were the only one in the room. It wasn’t anything specific about them that was distracting, but the palpable shift when you passed through the door and entered each room was enough to remind you that something was there, and that thought alone was enough to distract you.

The only thing that could take your mind off of it was lacrosse, a sport you could get effortlessly lost in. Even during practice, when it was just yourself, the presence of that ineffable feeling seemed to slip away and you were left to focus on only throwing balls and catching them in your net. The last bell of the school day had rung about three hours ago, and it wasn’t quite near daylight savings time yet, so the sun was setting as you finished up practice. You were already exasperated, but the thought of not being good enough rang through just when you were about to call it a day, so you needed to make sure you were scholarship-ready for any scouts that would come to your games. Such as the big one tomorrow. You needed to be exceptional—no, better than that. But that could only happen if you found a place to lose yourself, which you couldn’t do when it never really felt like you were the only person in a room. Playing helped, but it was never the perfect distraction. Practicing drills at the end of the soccer field would bring that noise back, and it would only go away when you moved closer in to the center.

An official lacrosse team didn’t form until a few years back, when the school finally had funding to add it to their repertoire, another flashy thing to show year-round next to the football and cheerleading teams. While it wasn’t the biggest sport to hit the school, as it still had considerably less funding than the aforementioned sports teams, it was the safest of them all, if only because it had been around for the shortest amount of time. There was that guy who died back in the eighties—the name slipping your mind until you passed the mausolea scattered around the campus—and some girl who died after being flung into the air at a cheer rally, cracking her head on the pavement where her cohorts failed to catch her. That one happened during your freshman year, and you can still remember the macabre gossip being spread around about how she died in the ambulance, exactly twenty-three minutes after she hit the floor.

In your mind, the basketball court was no place to practice—not when that image came to your head during every perpetual assembly as it was. Plus, you were still in your workout gear: a blue tank-top and matching shorts with the Bandits logo sewn into them, which seemed regrettable in the cold if you hadn’t been giving it your all, working overtime to make sure you were the best, and a pair of cleats that wouldn’t do you much favors against linoleum flooring and probably get you suspended for being so reckless to use the wrong shoes on the wrong surface. Even if it wasn’t that severe of a punishment, the janitor would loathe you for undoing his hard work. Your regular shoes were all the way back in the trunk of your car, and you might have wanted to keep practicing, but walking all the way over there to get a pair of shoes to go into a room that you certainly didn’t want to be in sounded like a waste of time.

You could have just stayed on the field that you were practicing on now, but a few stragglers from the team had already claimed corners of the field to practice, leaving you in the clamoring sector. You could just join them, they were your teammates after all. A few of them worked together, but you wanted to be able to focus on specifically the areas that you were performing poorly in. Plus, it would have been too competitive, too many of your teammates were known to prioritize a way of playing the game that made them look good rather than actually doing their part within the team. Besides, playing with others while trying to fix what you’re bad at while they could be good in that area could lead to a few unfavorable scenarios where they think you’re not as good as you are, so playing the sport with you and only yourself felt like the right idea for the sake of your own confidence. There were a few rebounders standing tall on the outskirts of the field, so you planned to take one, but you still needed a place to polish your skills. You picked up your stuff from the few bags remaining on the sidelines of the field and walked in a straight line down to the practice equipment laid out, thinking about a place where you could practice without distractions.

Then, you got a good idea: practice down on the football field. Not only was the sport made for it out of season, so the chance of a crowd being there to bother you would be slim to none, but it would also foster an easy environment to practice in. The turf was smoother than the soccer-turned-lacrosse field, which had way too many holes in the dirt from the many cleats trampling it almost every day. And your sport didn’t rely as much as needed the perfect ground to run on like soccer would, so the football field, empty and devoid of anyone else, was the perfect place to practice. It had a nice, reanimating quality to it where the ground would sink with the press of a spike from a cleat into it, then rise back up in a moments notice. If it could handle big, sweaty footballers planting their feet into it to run the course of the whole field, it could handle your fast, light movements in one small area of it. Your only concern was that the noise was there, too. All over the field. But it was warmer, like the empty rows of seating would be filled with commendations for you. And you only tonight. Maybe, for once, you wouldn’t have to play to tune the noise out. They could exist, together.

Then, your concerns doubled.

There was only one guy—but it was still one too many—in the stadium when you got there with your equipment in hand. Only one, unless you counted the long shadow he cast on the field. He had a varsity jacket on and was dressed more appropriately for the colder weather, better than the cold biting your exposed legs and arms. It stung more as the sun set but it wasn’t anything close to making you feel lethargic—just more hyped up to move around and get your blood pumping. The guy on the field had the right idea, as he was playing with a football, tossing it around and playing an embezzled version of fetch with himself. The ball would be thrown in a direction and he would follow, and when he caught it, he slammed it to the ground like he scored a touchdown. The way he ran was careless and free, like he had nothing to lose, no embarrassment to operate on in the same way you questioned how you looked while running with a stick in your hands and a ball to cradle, let alone how your body looked while running without those things forcing you into a specific pose. At least he was making his own fun, and you were honing your skills, which gave you a reason to care about those kinds of things. Performance, you needed to perform well and play even better.

It was a bit of a hike to carry down one of the netted rebounders to practice with; it was collapsible enough to hold with two hands but was still a bit too clunky to comfortably carry down the steps leading to the football field without having a few near-death trips on the cement steps. You almost considered calling out to the jock on the field, but it would be rude of you to expect the help. Thankfully, you made it down safe with the rebounder intact.

You didn’t speak to the guy as you looked in his direction, and he looked too lost in his own world to give the impression that he would care much whether you did or didn’t strike up a conversation. You didn’t mind an observer watching you practice in your element, especially one you couldn’t recognize from the silhouette and indiscernible features. The sun going down prompted the lights to come on, but it was only the ones from the concession stand and bleachers that lit up, not the stadium lights. They must have been on an automatic timer, and the stadium lights must have been manually controlled in the announcer’s box. So, you went to the other end of the field and set up the rebounder there where the light illuminated enough to see. Just as you expected, the turf had a little bounce to it. Not as hard as the real ground you would be playing on, but still solid enough to not lull you into a false sense of security, to give you an advantage that wouldn’t make your training futile. Maybe the stadium lights being off was a good thing—they distracted you and the warmer lighting emanating from twenty yards away makes you feel comforted. Not like the operating-room lighting being cast down from above, where you felt under scrutiny. Without shadows, it would highlight all your mistakes, and you were too deep into your own head to pile any more doubts on. The lacrosse-aka-soccer field doesn’t have huge fancy lights shining down to highlight your big, game-winning moments, so this was perfect to pretend like you were actually on the right field.

Quickly, you got to work using the rebounder to practice a few different throws from different angles. When that seemed too easy, you practiced a few other drills, like marching on your tippy-toes to give your calves the appropriate burn and pairing knee-highs with it for some quad-tensing strength, dropping the ball to the ground and scooping it up with your lacrosse stick, and several other drills you did with the rest of the team to try and pick up some of your slack. Some of them weren’t as effective with one person, but the main struggle you found yourself having was your aim while moving.

You had gone back to practicing with the rebounder, swinging your stick in a way that sent the ball in its grasp out and over to one of the pockets in the rebounder. You were aiming for the top left corner—most goalies overlook their own shoulder—and you rushed towards the net as it hit the markings on it and bounced back in your direction. You were just about to catch it when you heard a thud, then another thud, and suddenly, a ball was rolling between your line of action. You stopped, letting it block your way and your own lacrosse ball hit the ground with another unceremonious thud, looking more sad than the football next to it.

With only one other person on the field, you knew exactly who it belonged to. You turned around to see the guy jogging over in your direction, a look of dejection spreading over his face. It looked to be that he was running over to intercept his own throw, but the ball got to you before he could, and he must have slowed down since he wasn’t in a rush to stop it from nearly causing you to trip over it. He muttered something to himself that only he was meant to hear as he got close, something along the lines of, “Aw, man.”

You looked back over to your setup, bending down to pick up his rudely misplaced football. He was standing behind you by the time you retrieved his football and turned back around to face him, holding it out to him with one hand. You spoke, out of breath, but you only needed a quick draw in to release a singular word, “Here.”

He took it from your hands. His face quickly shifted, showing a look of confusion before a big dopey smile cracked his lips open. He looked way too happy for a guy who almost made you twist your ankle before your big game. Then, he seemed to correct himself and returned back to a confusive state.

You had to be the one to break the ice, to shatter whatever delusion he was feeding himself. You assumed that he was trying to find a way to spin it into somehow being your fault, like most jocks chose to do. “Wow, not even an apology? If you almost kill someone, I think you’re supposed to say sorry.”

His voice didn’t match the tone you expected though. He almost sounded worried. “I didn’t think it would—”

“Also, football is definitely out of season.” You cut him off in an attempt to just make the best out of it, taking the comedic approach with him. You were going to continue about needing one moment of serendipity to just exist, to play your sport without something pulling you back to reality, but he cut you off by stating an obvious fact. Only fair since you had done it to him first.

“I haven’t seen you around here.”

It was only obvious because you had never seen this guy, in all of your four-hundred class members and the collective twelve-hundred underclassmen, he had been a ghost to you. Even at his height, you had never seen him in the hall peeking above the rest or filling a chair in class—and likely, with your luck, all of that extra height would have blocked your view of the whiteboard when a fated seating chart sat this epitome of jock simpletons in front of you. You had never seen him on this field, and the number on his letterman was one you had never heard over the announcements when they were giving their flowers to the football team or in those mandatory pep-rallies for the past four years of homecoming games. You returned with the only reasonable response that came to mind, “I could say the same about you. You transfer?”

“If you mean from living to dead, then yeah. Basically.” He extended his hand out. “Wally Clark.”

Your head turned to the scoreboard to your left and then back to him. It couldn’t be, the whole reason his name is up there is because he’s dead… just like that strange comment he lead his introduction with, confirming that you weren’t misremembering or misreading the sign from a distance. Or maybe some overweight footballer did somehow kill you or you over-exerted yourself and collapsed during practice and now you were seeing ghosts. But that definitely didn’t happen and there was no way it was him. You knocked his hand away with the back of yours and cracked a smile at how ridiculous it sounded. His dropped with defeat, but yours returned to your side with a tense feeling. This guy could be seriously mental. “Shut up, no it’s not.”

He looked sure of himself. “If you don’t want to believe me, check the trophy case by the cafeteria. There’s a picture of me in there with this jacket.”

Wally pulled on the sides of his jacket for emphasis, nearing you to test your perception. You backed up, and he was sure you could see him. You never payed much attention to the trophy case there, always too concerned with meeting up with your friends and leaving to get lunch off-campus. He could have been right, but in the same beat, you reminded yourself that it was impossible. “I’m not doing all of that, not-Wally.”

Wally closed his eyes, dropped his head and spoke in frustration, his lips pressing together in a flat line by the end of his sentence, “And that’s what you’re calling me. Okay.”

“It’s like the opposite of Sam-I-Am. You-are-not-Wally, because he’s, like, so dead that his body is just bones at this point.” You said it with such a lack of care that it almost sounded like a meteor could come crashing down on the school and you wouldn’t care to help anyone out of the wreckage. It sounded as real as the sun blowing up, it had happened. Or it will happen.

“Ouch.” He took offense to it like you had made a comment about him, still keeping up the act.

“I saw you throwing that ball around to yourself,” You moved past the whole name thing, choosing to just drop it to tease him about the next silly thing you had seen him do. “Don’t you need two people to play football?”

“You don’t know how to have fun, do you? Never heard of challenging yourself?” The truth is that Wally needed a place to exist for a little bit. The only caveat is that he didn’t like to exist without someone else to share his existence with. Chasing around a football he was throwing from and to himself made him feel like a dog playing fetch by themselves, throwing the stick as far as they could with their mouth. He needed someone with hands, someone to rebound off of. But he wasn’t going to tell you any of that, keeping up a cool face through his red and sweaty one. “I would know, I’m a pretty good opponent, like Clubber Lang. And I will beat your ass if you take me on in anything.”

“Yeah, because that looked very challenging. What move were you practicing, the idiot’s run?” You knew he couldn’t be practicing without some kind of resistance, something to actually challenge him more than his own self-determined skill ceiling. It was probably set high by his ego, exceeding far beyond his actual skill level, and every time he fumbled throwing the ball to himself, he probably didn’t beat himself up much about it. “Or was it the—uh, golden retriever handoff?”

Even if he was being a dick by using a dead man’s name, he was cute, you had to give him that. Maybe with a few apologies and if he told you his actual, can’t-break-the-rule-of-using-a-dead-man’s-name-to-speak-ill-of-him name, then you would forgive him for it, but he didn’t seem like the apologetic type given that he almost took you out for the rest of the lacrosse season. Right before your big game… that you were supposed to be practicing for instead of standing around talking to some red-faced lying douchebag.

“Those are both very hurtful,” he accepted them in a sense of defeat, placing both hands on his chest near his heart, taking a few steps back as if he had been struck there. Then, he feigned recovery and came closer. Still real, as your eyes followed him over the distance. “But I’ll take it for messing up your game. Who even trips over a ball, anyways?”

You crossed your arms. He was wasting your time, and you needed to just put the conversation to bed. “Almost tripped over a ball, I stopped myself before I could.”

His eyes lifted and looked past you, focusing on your setup. “What are you practicing for? I don’t recognize it.”

“Lacrosse.”

“Oh, yeah, makes sense. When you don’t have the equipment to play it for nearly forty years, you almost forget what it looks like, right?” He tapped your shoulder, confirming that not-Wally was very real and that you didn’t conjure him up in your head. You half-expected the football to have been here the whole time and your exercised mind was crafting a fleeting fantasy of anything that it could focus on that wasn’t your sport. Maybe someone spiked the water fountain.

Your hallucination—or, by some chance, totally real person—talked about as much sense as he looked. Who even dressed in sweat-tanks anymore? And more importantly, who wore shorts over their sweatpants and thought it looked good? “You lost me.”

Wally titled his head, taking a pause to think before he confidently spoke again. “Dude, what rock around here is your house and can we have a party? Haven’t been to one in ages.”

“One of them’s gonna have to be soon.” You commented, alluding to the fact that the sun had set and all that was left was the lighting emanating from little pockets in the bleachers and the concession stand as a whole. So now Wally blended more into the enigmatic presence he already formed. It reminded you that this was his turf, his playground where he was free to do whatever dumbassery football jocks got up to. But not you, not on this field. That meant that he would probably ask you to leave since he was here first and this was his domain; so if he wasn’t going to leave you alone, you had to extend him the offer to join you. That much you could do, but putting up with his behavior would either be the push for you to not practice at all for the rest of the night, or he would show you just how athletic he was. You turned and spoke over your shoulder as you returned to you setup. “I think I’m gonna get back to practicing. You’re free to join, I have an extra stick in my bag. Show me how sorry you are for nearly killing me, not-Wally.”

“What?” His brain had to have been on autopilot. That, or he was a little too invested in something else when your backside faced him. Whatever the answer was, you stopped in your tracks.

You sighed and dug the lacrosse stick into the faux-ground. It didn’t give into where dirt should be, but buried itself in the thick turf, and you held your balance on it. “I have to practice.”

“Why? Doesn’t look like you’re good at it.”

“Seriously?”

“I was getting scouted for colleges for the… one game that I played, but still.” Wally raised an arm and flashed his armpit, putting it behind his head as he averted your gaze. Not that your were looking at his eyes. The hair looked matted and soaked in sweat—his skin glistened, too—but when he had touched you, it was obvious that his body ran cold. It could have been the temperature outside, though, making the ends of his body not warm up as much as his core.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. I think I’ll be able to better myself with a partner. And you don’t look busy.”

The next hour, give or take, was spent trying—and failing—to teach Wally the basics. He seemed to be able to hold the stick okay, a little too high for your liking but you didn’t factor in his wingspan or height causing it to look imbalanced in his larger frame.

You tried moving past that and getting him warmed up on some drills, like running a few laps around the field with him with the stick in hand so he got used to the feeling of it—assuming that he wasn’t used to it because footballers just ran. No extra gear was really needed that affected how they ran, except the possible interference of extra weight with their chest guards and helmets, but it couldn’t have been that heavy. They could still swing their arms and get a certain momentum going that was harder with a stick that you had to hold and be ready to use the right way at a moment’s notice. You tried to walk him through your scooping technique, but he could hardly get the ball off the ground and complained about it being stupid that he couldn’t use his hands.

You even tried tossing the ball to him with your stick, but he couldn’t catch it on time and it hit him against the shoulder, falling to the ground. He just didn’t have the right coordination with a lacrosse stick that you had. There was an objective difference between the heft of a football and the thick, hard feeling of a rubber lacrosse ball smacking your skin. One could easily be caught and the other required to be grasped by the netting of a lacrosse stick, and that couldn’t happen until Wally understood how to use his arms more than his hands.

So, you went back to square one. You told him to sit on the metal bench that challenged him in how dense something could be, and you tried to channel into what he most likely knew best—the direction of a coach. And you had the advantage of being his age, so you knew the perfect way to explain the sport as someone who played and practiced many games and could use terms that made sense to a peer. The perfect blend of descending from above with your knowledge to meet him at his level, if a little more than halfway.

Then, you graduated him to a standing position and accoladed him by placing a stick in both of his hands once again for him to try and reuse. You stood and faced him, trying to explain to him how to handle it. But words could only take you so far compared to actually moving his hands to the right spots. His hands were still cold, and his grip on the stick softened when your warmer palms covered the backs of his hands, scooting them slightly further apart. When you corrected him, he just let out a soft ‘Oh,’ as if he understood it better.

“You want to hold it to cradle the ball, yeah, like that.” Initially, you stood a few feet back because people who aren’t used to handling long sticks are prone to whacking people when they move around, but Wally couldn’t seem to get the position of his hands right on the stick. You closed the distance between you and him and grabbed his upper arms, scaling down his lightly toned muscles to raise his elbows. You weren’t sure if it was the leather sleeves of his letterman or the cool air, but Wally wasn’t exuding any warmth when you held him there either. You tried focusing on something else, though, because you didn’t want to scare away the one fool who could actually learn something from you. “Keep your arms wide, you don’t want to let it roll off your cup.”

The exact thing you warned him about happened a few moments later when you gave him the ball, and Wally bent down to pick the ball up from the fake grass. He still couldn’t believe this was real, and he certainly wasn’t dreaming with how much trouble the lacrosse stick gave him. No sex-fueled dream spawned from his head would have this much hellish foreplay. “Why are the cups so open? Wouldn’t they make it harder to fall out?”

You explained it to him since it was an honest question and not the jock-brained type you expected to come out of his mouth. “It’s so you can pass it easily. If you’re stuck standing there and the ball isn’t leaving your stick, how can you make the pass? It’s not as easy as handing off the ball.”

“Uh, yeah, it’s easy because that makes sense. This doesn’t.” The ball fell again and he picked it up off the ground. As he did, you tried to further your explanation of it with something he could understand. Something more oriented to his rampant hormones.

“I hate to say it like this, but pretend the stick is your dick. You don’t want to be squeezing it to death when you—yeah. You know what I mean. But you don’t want it to be falling out of your hand when you’re in motion, either. There needs to be a balance. Enough freedom for it to glide between your fingers, but not enough that it isn’t—you know what? I’m going to stop before I make it worse.”

“And if I said that you already made it bad?” You watched his face when he said that, and he winced. It was only to add dramatic effect, though, because he wasn’t actually worried about your reaction.

“Then I might as well just leave.” Distance grew between the two of you with every step. Wally watched you take a direct path back to your stuff, and some part of you hoped, deep down, that he would fight against it. This whole thing had gone nowhere except becoming an hour-long distraction, but in an odd way, you needed him and he needed you.

That is something he should have worried about, but he was too gobsmacked by the fact that you could easily see him to realize that you could just as easily walk away . Wally couldn’t have you stepping into the parking lot and lose all connection with his new, alive bestie. He had to save his ass, and he had to do it fast. “I’m just trying to help you out, dude.”

“Help me with what?” You stopped and turned. Wally had taken the steps to meet you, so he was the only thing filling your view with how close he was. Close enough to see the sweat beading on his face again. At least you burned calories through all this.

“Your game! Teaching the freshmen taught me that when you have someone to mentor, it helps you understand the game better.” He spoke, and it’s like the energy was palpable on his exhaled breath. He couldn’t seem to lose energy or positivity, no matter how much was spent on you. But, in a single breath, his in-your-face and amped-up mood shifted. He looked down and kicked at the dirt, dragging his foot across the blades of grass to search for dirt that didn’t exist. “I didn’t always want to play football. I was—and still am damn good at it, but my mom wanted me to be a well-rounded athlete.”

“Let’s see what you got then, Clark.”

Wally wasn’t lying about being a well-rounded athlete. For one, he had curves in all the right places, which became something you had admired over your time with him. And as odd as it was to be practicing in nondescript, unbranded sweatpants—not like the distressed Nikes on his feet, you couldn’t help but watch his ass bounce as he stayed fast on his feet. Your passion for him also extended to your desire to beat him when you continued practicing. His height and wingspan gave you some trouble trying to keep up whenever you practiced passing the ball back and forth or tried scoring on the rebounder with his tall figure blocking you. Pressing back to back, eventually, he shucked off his jacket and was only in a grey sweat tank and his sweatpants and sneakers, his back and front showing just how much of a sweat he was working out. There, his small but visible muscle made it clear why he was the—supposedly—memorialized tight end.

And for the second point, he was pretty smooth with his moves. Playing football must have given him a defensive and evasive advantage over you and how you played your games. There were several times where he spun around you—and got overly proud of himself for doing it—and there were times where you were back to back, stick to stick, or shoulder to shoulder while running and he weaseled his way out of it and got the ball from you. He brought the energy too, hyping himself up for every scored point and whenever you caught the ball with your stick or outmaneuvered him, he was a good sport about it and stayed happy even when he was losing.

All of his challenges as an opponent added up to become more practice for you, for the team you had yet to see. Maybe they were as tall as him, and the payoff of this long and extensive practice would mean the difference between you being prepared for a college scout and looking like a total amateur on the field. None of them would be as distracting, though, and certainly not nearly as charming. By the end of it, Wally had proven himself to be somewhat formidable, enough to make you crave the relief of rest. Even if it was on a hard, metallic bench off to the side of the football field, where Wally told you that he had been benched at many years ago, right before his final run.

Despite the sturdy and firm material, the bench felt like comfort. Like your bed after being out all day, and yet, in your little moment with Wally, this day was only a few hours long yet felt like it could go on forever and you wouldn’t mind it. You reached for your bag that was haphazardly thrown next to some of the borrowed equipment you ended up not using—like your helmet, but you hoped a hard-hitting wakeup call would occur if you didn’t wear it. The first thing your hand hit was the water bottle resting on top of the clothes you wore to school earlier that day, and suddenly, it hit you just how dry your mouth was.

“I’m beat.” You sighed. The water in your hands went fast between you and Wally, with Wally being the main reason it was going so fast. You took a swig. It was one of those refillable plastic bottles with a nipple. The water came out into your mouth when you squeezed, and Wally watched intently. You watched him take it, and do the same as you.

His audible gulps as he tilted the bottle higher and higher only showed how much he was actually going through in just one drag. You looked at him in annoyance, knowing you would have to refill your bottle at the school-approved water fountains that made everything taste like metal. “Dude.”

Wally pulled off with a huff as he swallowed the last of what was in his mouth down. He handed the bottle back and it was about half empty. He would probably remark about leaving you with half of it, but he breezed past the small interaction, asking the big question instead.

“Do you think you’re ready?”

“I know I am, it’s just… it’s nothing. I’m ready.” Moments of your fumbles at previous games replayed in your head, every mistake feeling like they would somehow all reappear tomorrow, when it actually mattered the most.

“Let me rephrase.” Wally didn’t buy that answer. He repositioned himself from leaning back on his elbows onto the metal upholstery behind him to instead facing you, sitting with his shoes tucked under his legs in a criss-cross. His big form, even when folded in on itself, took up so much space on the bench. “Do you want this?”

“Was our hour-long practice not enough to prove that? Obviously, I want this.”

“No—it’s just. Football practice and the games and the whole shebang that all start before the school year, you know? I went to everything, and I made sure that I was the first in line for my uniform fittings, physicals, and was the first car on the lot before every event. I was ready. The only reason that I played in one game the entire season wasn’t just because I died on the field. It was because everyone else can tell when your head isn’t in the game. You can force yourself to do as much prep-work as possible before the game, but if you don’t really want it, you’re only tricking yourself into thinking that you do.”

“So you’re saying that I don’t want this?"

“No, not at all. Truth?” He asked, you nodded. “I think it’s stress. The way you’re handling that stick in your hands is too tight. But you’re also too sloppy, you’re…everything is tense. It’s just like you said. The reason I thought I was ready was because I didn’t take care of myself, I just made myself believe that I wanted to do this. You have skill, though.”

“I do?”

“I can’t see it in anyone else on that field, except you. If it makes you feel better, you’re the exception.” His lips quirked at the corners, finally breaking away from flashing his big dopey grin at the things he found even slightly amusing. He almost looked proud to be doling out so many compliments, to finally give a pep-talk that he hadn’t been able to do since the 80s. He could never corral anyone anymore, not to do anything positive. The field days he helped orchestrate never helped anyone move on, but you displayed a sense of processing—changing for the better, becoming a better user of your craft. Like the wise old man to your karate-kid.

“Is it bad to say that it scares me more?” You needed to know more about his opinion, because somehow, the approval of this man you had just met a couple hours ago both meant everything and nothing to you. If he had good things to say, then he didn’t know what he was talking about, and if he said something negative, you would probably just use that against yourself tomorrow. Another to add on the long—mostly self-made—list of insults you would replay in your head.

“No, being scared is normal. Being scared means you care. I knew my limits but I wasn’t scared to push them.”

The questions slipped out, saying each one felt like intoxicating relief. Just to be able to say them to someone; someone who could understand that wasn’t on your team. Someone who saw your determination, you needed to know his opinion before the real people whose observations of how you played would dictate your future. “And that’s bad too?”

Wally would be lying if he said he didn’t love talking about his own experiences, too. But he wanted you to stop spiraling. And, like a good coach, redirection was always an option. “Dude, stop thinking too hard about it. It’s a game, not a science. I hated science.”

“Well, science is a practice, actually. Your best game—or experiment—is never your best, but it’s okay if it is, too. It’s weird.” Wally nodded, trying to follow along. “Before we move on to whatever comes next out of that impossible-to-read-mind. Do you have any tips for how to make the feeling go away?”

“Hell yes! Now you’re speaking my language. I always had a pre-practice ritual of banging the head-cheerleader. Loosened her and me up, if you know what I mean.”

If you hadn’t been mentally exhausted from school, and physically exhausted from practice, you might have questioned who exactly he was fucking at school. The head bitch in charge was also banging the team captain of the football team—so, they would have a very interesting time hearing about what this guy was up to. The gossip would have been perfect to distract you, but his insistence on ‘not being real or here but also being real and here’ was simply too big of a can of worms to unpack. Was he really talking about the past? How could a supposed ghost even have sex now? “I don’t think sex is the solution.”

“It’s not, but it’ll help you unwind. You’re playing with your whole body, not just your head.” Wally tapped the side of his head with his index finger to accentuate the point.

You knew what he was really trying to say: no matter how much you knew about the game and your technique, if you didn’t play fast with your body, you wouldn’t be good enough to win. Your head an body needed to be in sync. It was everything or nothing at all, and while it wasn’t your first choice at ‘unwinding,’ you knew how good it would feel to give yourself some kind of reward for working so hard. You scooted closer to him, feeling his hand cup your cheek. He waited for a response, and you desperately wanted to concede and give him the one he wanted to hear, because you wanted it just as, if not more, than him. But the cons outweighed the pros, and you tried to express that to him.

“I want to, I really want to. But it would just exhaust me more and I need to be at the top of my game.”

“I would say that’s what rest is for, but we’re gonna go all night.” Wally leaned forward and kissed you.

When the kiss broke, he looked over your face to find any hint of direction, a sign that you wanted this to continue. You couldn’t stomach the next day arriving, wanting to prolong this night for as long as it could go. The only words falling off your lips when they parted were: “Promise?”

The two of you ran towards the night—deeper into the middle of the football field, where only a distant light illuminated you. You didn’t need to see Wally at all to understand him, and he didn’t need to see you to know exactly what to do. You landed in a jumble with him, he sat on the turf, and you sat in his lap, facing him. Just the brief run to the middle of the field made your legs feel the same burn from hours of practice, so letting your legs extend past him as your ass got the best seat in the arena helped alleviate some of that pain.

His skin glistened with a thin layer of sweat. Your fingers brushed it, specifically, rounding his shoulders and triceps as you held them for support to stay upright, getting damp and sticky. Like trailing a hand through water, except more shallow, and it provided some resistance. His body had a certain type of flow to it, a way to make sense of it, being smooth all over with a few interruptions in his unending skin—eternal acne, scars from a past life, and birthmarks. It only proved how real he was, being under your grasp. Hell, you were sitting on him. Solidly raised from the ground. Surely, you weren’t just levitating.

“Even if you are a ghost…” You said it like you didn’t believe it, but you continued. “You lived long enough to leave with a beautiful body.”

You kissed him again, with more passion this time. His tried to lock his lips with yours, and it took a few attempts to succeed. Wally was rusty, and you were far too lively to stay in one spot. You pulled away and focused your attention downward to his body, his shirt clinging over his chest.

“You…” Wally spoke softly, trying to find the words. A pang of guilt pierced his heart, but he pushed past it. This could be your only night with him, so he needed to make it count. “You haven’t seen the rest of me. Do you want to?”

“I don’t need my head to tell me that.” In other words—fuck yes.Your body ached with the excitement of what was coming. Under your thin athletic shorts, you could feel the stirrings of your cock. You could feel the rush of blood from your ears—a thudding and pulsing so strong that you were hard in seconds.

When you did answer him, you felt his body tense. Preparing for movement.

Suddenly, the position switched, and you no longer had control. It only reminded you of the grand event upcoming. Impending. Ten hours from now, and two hours and fifty-four minutes from sunrise. By tackling one small challenge, you could be ready to face the big one coming in just thirteen shy hours. As Wally laid you back in the grass, his hands held your back, letting you settle against the hard ground. With how he made you feel, it was almost as surreal as an asteroid hitting earth, but as gentle and as smooth as a stone skipping over water. Surrounded by the sound and feeling of rustling fake grass, some of it grazed your back as Wally took your training gear off.

“I can’t wait any more.” He complained after a kiss, staying distant from your lips to make it easy to slide everything off. The realization hit you: he was looking too. For every time you eyed his form in the past few hours, he stole double the glances.

Most of what you were wearing was shape-wear—skimpy, showing enough bare skin to tantalize Wally over and over again all night. Enough that the grass was already a bother before he peeled these layers off, and not enough to match his over-dressed figure.

“My turn.” Your hands wandered over his body, tugging at the ends of his shirt until it was over his head and off, with his help to pull it over his neck. He had to stand to take off his high-tops and sweatpants. He did a silly, one-legged stand to remove both of his shoes, pulling them by the heel and barely loosening the laces to get them off. He pushed down his sweatpants and shorts, his hips swinging back so he could push them down the length of his long legs. When he stood up straight again, leaning forward with his hips, his cock bobbed, hard and sticking out at it’s full mast now. From how tall he was, his hard cock almost looked deceptively small. Orbiting around you, he came crashing down into your open meadow.

You almost got sad at the thought of no one being around to see this tree-falling experience—because did it even really happen? Is this really happening? Wally had proven himself enough to be real, and he was the only thing that made sense in your clouded mind. But then again, it felt entirely unreal. Unreasonable as to why you would ever let yourself succumb to him. But he was intoxicating, like you couldn’t deny whatever fate brought you to him—or, him to you.

His chest was pressed to yours with the help of his hands sliding under your back, narrowing down to the small of your back to bring you closer to him from off the ground. The backs of his hands were bristled by the faux grass, and he made sure to curse it out in his head for making him hold heaven on one side, while feeling the slight patchiness of the turf. It was soft, but it wasn’t blanket soft. He was kneeling during this, and you could feel his thighs pressing into your own.

“Come here,” You beckoned, finding Wally not to be close enough to your liking. A quick lean down lead to another kiss. With his shirt off, you could feel his golden charm necklace dragging across your exposed collarbones. You reached up to find the source of the feeling, only to have it bump into his dangling necklace.

“What does it mean?” You asked him, holding onto the thin pendant with your thumb and index finger. There was an engraving on it—Saint Michael. For a moment, the fact that Wally was naked and needy for you disappeared, just as the look of hunger on his face did. “You know so much about me, I want to know more about you.”

Wally didn’t speak, his face twisting like the question was a key turning something in his head and unlocking his mouth to say something, but it was dry. No words came out, and he shut his mouth to think it over again. He decided that he would explain it to you later, what it all meant, when he wasn’t so worked up. He wanted to say ‘Not right now’ or ‘I’ll tell you later’ with a hopeful promise—but either of those brought a feeling he didn’t like to wallow in for very long. Wally’s small beat of reflection lasted only a second before he found something smart to say, “It means you’re in the right hands.”

He backed off of you again, moving so that he could lift your bare legs. Wally was still kneeling, but had moved to be in-front of your legs when he lifted them. He held both of your ankles together with the width of just one hand. He would have asked you to roll onto your side or lift your legs up himself, but you had just burned holes through your muscles from using them so much. It wasn’t something you would feel now—only a slight sluggishness that would worsen after tomorrow’s game—and he wanted to still be able to talk to you. Like his Saint Michael pendant, he needed to be chivalrous. So, your feet were up in the air, suspended by him, and his other was free to grope and graze your ass.

That’s what he meant by the comment about his hands. It clicked with how his fingers teased and pinched you. With your legs lifted, he had easy access to your exposed hole. It was staring at him when he ducked his head down to watch his own actions. His hand, which had been resting palm-sided against your cheek, suddenly pulled away and curled into a fist. Wally used the knuckle of his middle finger to graze your hole bluntly, gauging just how much it responded to a small, knobby tip. You needed something deeper to go in, but he kept edging you on the promise of something that could only dilate your hole.

As he teased you, his head resurfaced, continuing the argument he supposedly dropped. “You know some stuff about me—”

“You like sports.” You grunted out at the pleasure. It wasn’t much, but Wally performing the action made your heart race. His everything was big. Height, dick, feet, and most importantly in this moment, hands.

“—and I told you about my greatest fumble ever!” He focused his attention back down to your ass, rubbing his two perfectly straightened index and middle finger around your hole. You could only imagine the same fingers stretched wide around the blunt of a football now being spread in your hole. He was so close to entering.

You leaned back into the soft-but-not-soft grass. “According to you, that’s public information I should already know.”

He raised his head up to look at you again. “You’re damn right it is.”

It brought a small laugh out of you for how serious he was about it.

“What else do you know about me?”

“That you’re not using your fingers yet.” You groaned.

Wally got a look on his face, a firm one. Confidence beamed off of him because he knew exactly what he had to do. Then, a sharp pain came as the blunt edge of his fingertip pushed past your entrance. At least he was nice enough to do one at first, despite teasing you with two.

“‘Fingers?’” He held the end of his question like a hissing snake, finding himself unable to not get hung up on the fact that you wanted more of him. Wally enjoyed watching you squirm with one finger inside, he could only imagine what the next one would do.

The answer quickly came to him when you moaned at his second finger. With two fingers in, he twisted and undid the spool of nerves spindling in your stomach about the much bigger thing swinging between his legs.

At first, Wally worked wonders. He had you moaning and writhing in the grass. Reaching for fistfuls of turf that stayed firmly planted to the ground, you bucked your hips at his touch.

There were attempts to shake it up, however, that didn’t evoke the same feeling. He tried to do the same scissoring motion that worked on the girls he used to bang. He couldn’t determine if they were the better audience or if it didn’t have as much of an impact on you. Different bodies, he tried to remind himself, and yet, a ghost and a human managed to have more similarities than two living people of different sexes. It took Wally an extra minute to find the right way to curve his finger, but eventually, he found it.

He could only work his magic for so long, though. A few more knuckle-deep thrusts, and you would have been shooting your load too early. Wally could have let that happen, but he wanted to give himself the pleasure of just having someone else around. Being inside of them was a good bonus, too.

The disappointment was felt on both sides when Wally pulled his fingers out, and you expected—and dreaded—the next logical step to be taken: his dick stretching you out much worse than his fingers could. It wasn’t something you felt ready for, but you were confident that you could handle it and come out the other end in one piece. And that was good enough. But, in what felt like an agonizingly slow retreat away from you, Wally had backed himself up enough to lean down and place his head where his arm and hand just were. Oh no.

“Hey, you don’t have to—it’s not…” You wanted to list off the reasons why he shouldn’t be doing what he’s doing. You were dirty, sweaty, and to put it mildly: it was bad etiquette. Wally knew any unfavorable taste on his tongue would be gone the second he pulled away though, so he didn’t mind. He spent his life around athletes—and permanently smelled of his last football game—so he was somewhat blind to the sweat. Only the musk permeated through. And Wally loved it.

He pulled away a second later, finding his tongue almost constricted by the area it roamed.

“Relax,” He said it more like a suggestion than any kind of command. Wally’s body did the intimidating for him, at least not when he gave off the impression that he only knew how to flail and flop with his limbs. But now, he was compressed. Hidden away in the thicket of your legs and torso. Sprouting from the ground to provide him cover. But his words couldn’t be any more confident. “It’s just sex.”

And then, the taste he loved—something he would never break away from—flooded his senses again. The first time his tongue pierced your hole, which came after he lapped over it a few times with a surprising wetness to it, he didn’t pull back out for a few moments. You could feel his tongue broaden, going flatter but stretching you wider than when it had been tensed. Somehow, it was worse than his two fingers, which had stretched wider than his tongue when inside you. He was able to do more stuff when tonguing you, able to curl and curve it faster and in more dynamically poised ways. All of them hit spots his fingers only dreamed of reaching. On top of that, his lips were locked around your hole. It was an added feeling around your bundle of nerves that hard boney knuckles hitting couldn’t replicate.

He could easily slide his tongue in and out, and did several times. Whenever it wasn’t buried in your ass, he was kissing and making out with your hole. Occasionally, he pulled back just a breath’s distance away to spit on it and resumed slicking it up.

When he felt that it had been going on for long enough—even though it would never actually be enough to sate him, not for a long time—Wally broke the connection. He watched your hole as it was shaking, shrinking, and aching from the work of all the tools in his arsenal. Except for one. The big one.

He couldn’t forget about it, and he simply never had. The longer he ignored it, the more the throbbing went from a sudden, painful ache to a numb understanding of what he needed to do. Occasionally, it would touch against the grass in this position—finding a way to rut in the space between how low his torso got to the ground. Wally rose to his knees, and the throbbing returned, mostly due to the motion of bucking his hips forward again. The familiar feeling, the one deep in his core telling him to do it again, made him work quickly to waddle on his knees back to you. One in front of the other, his cock swung, hard but still here. Still attached to him. Wally fought the urge to feel himself up and make sure this wasn’t some ghostly 40-years-in-the-making delusion. The sight of you before him was too perfect to be real.

He stopped when he felt close enough, closer than where he stationed himself to finger you. You could feel the heat radiating off his dick. Both of your passions were colliding, but physically, Wally was a bit stuck. He still had your legs to figure out what to do with, and with a girl—like the head-cheerleader, it was as easy as having them wrapped around him. But your hole was further down, and it wasn’t an issue when he could use his hands or sink himself deeper to reach it. All fours—just like a retriever barking at the hide-y-hole of a mouse. Those were simple solutions, but now, he was faced with a challenge that could only make sense drawn out on the whiteboard like a football play. He had to convince himself that he wouldn’t blow this—or maybe he could just blow you. That would be easy. But it would be a let down. After all of his preparation?

Wally huffed, and then he decided. The image came to in his head, and he quickly fumbled to make it a reality.

Both of your legs were sprawled out on either side of him. His hand skimmed over your calf resting beside him, and lifted one into the air, slowly. His gaze flitted to your eyes, making sure that it was okay. That it didn’t hurt. You didn’t have to say anything to give him the signal that it was fine. He continued, lifting your leg with one hand until it was high in the air, resting on his should. He evened the feeling out by doing the same with the other one. You were lucky to do so many stretches—it made you pleasantly flexible and he could bend you however he pleased. It became another thing Wally takes note of, but the realization came too late to make any use of it now. He had no intention of pulling away or backing out to exchange for a different position, and he only stretched you more when he moved closer. His hips came closer, and his dick only had one place to go.

Wally felt just as he expected you to be: tight. The pressure around his cock felt better than anything in the past forty years of living that had come into contact with him. He began to speak, but failed. He spat out incoherent strings of syllables until he could form words. Something deep in his chest shook, making his lips sputter. He blew out a puff of air. “You can—Jesus—fuck.”

Wally didn’t speak when he bottomed out in you—which took almost several minutes after his tip grazed your hole. Landing in the in-between, Wally wasn’t quite at his nonverbal stage of how mind-blowing this sex would become, but he wasn’t exactly at the start. He was at this painful middle ground, where his shaft was being tightened and tugged on by your convulsing hole. It went in and glided smoothly inside you, but it was Wally’s shakiness making it a rough sensation. Your hips felt unsteady trying to fit his girth, but you had the support of the ground to lean back on. Wally was using you for support, and that made you shake nearly as much as him.

The position was more than he could normally fit into a pussy, and the tight sensation like the constant band of a ring running up and down his cock made him feel weak. The heat radiating off your body was another factor making him pant and moan. You had a growing concern for him, since he didn’t even get to finish his sentence from moments ago. Eventually, he got to it when he wasn’t overtaken by how good you felt. Warm. Real. A touch too close to the sun.

That’s how Wally finds his rhythm: through processing. Through understanding. His hips swung for the first time. And the words started spilling out because the pleasure was too much and he could only hold one feeling in at a time. The need to speak became more immediate, and he just had to say something. Too bad it was the only thing that could make you panic.

“You can tell by the fingers…” He said, his words turning into a groan. “Your grip wasn’t the only thing holding on too tight to a stick.”

“I can relax—”

“Don’t. Don’t!” He thrusted deeper into you. His hands scaled up the leg resting on his shoulder. Wally turned his head and leaned into the embrace of your skin, pressing a kiss against the side of your calf as he upheld his pace. Eyes closed, he breathed it all in for a moment. So many half-formed thoughts popped into his head, but quickly fizzled. There was only one thing he can focus on, and he returned his gaze back down to you to say it.

“God, you’re tight.” At least it sounded more like a compliment this time. He nearly folded over himself at how good your ass felt. He refused to do it for the sake of your legs resting on him, but he was close to losing all composure and not caring about it. His stretching didn’t work but maybe it was simply your nerves working twice as hard.

You could feel his balls slapping against your ass, and his motions almost mimic a bounce with how he thrusts in then out and in then out and in then out. He never stayed buried inside of you, and it was only because he couldn’t handle it. But every time he made you rock in the grass, and made your whole body shift, you erupted in a noise of pleasure. He went until the only thing you could do was speak.

“Wally,” you moan.

“What—hah—happened to calling me not-Wally?” It came out as a loose string of syllables. Wally’s mouth was too agape for the past minute to find a way to make his jaw tick again. His head was too occupied trying to withhold himself until you’re ready to cum; another thing he learned from his past experiences—partners should cum around the same time.

“Shut up.” Well, barely speak in your case.

“No.” He panted out, a look of mischief washing over him. “You’re taking me so well, I wouldn’t have this any other way.”

The words of encouragement were banal because his dick was doing all of the heavy lifting. You were able to tug your dick a few times and felt the tightening at your core every time, all from the way he fucked you alone. You kept your hand on your dick, but loosely, so that the friction wouldn’t cause you to cum before Wally did.

He moaned, and then realized he couldn’t keep fucking you for much longer. He asked one simple question, just to confirm: “Are you ready?”

“Yes!” You yelled into the night. It came out at a different pitch. The way you felt deep down started to slip out. Then, it started to spew out. All over your chest in hot, white ropes of cum. And suddenly, Wally shoved all of himself in you. It was sloppy, and Wally went quiet except for a few whimpers as his release shot out. You came at roughly the same time, your moans escaping and clashing with each other. Gradually, they slowly became weaker.

Wally had frozen inside of you, and he only regained some small bits of momentum to drag his cock back and forth again when his climax was ending. The final thrusts pumped more of his cum into you., milking his cock. Wally could feel and hear it gushing around his cock. This is real, he knew it now. Without a doubt.

Your hand did the same, coaxing out the rest of your mess in globs that ran down your hand. As you went to wipe it in the grass before it dried, knowing from experience that it would just become a sticky layer on your hand in a quick minute—and minutes went by fast with Wally around—he reached to grab your hand, bringing it to his mouth to clean it off. He gave a sloppy kiss to the back of your hand when it was all clean.

A small beat passed while he took a breather. Despite not having sex for so long, he recovered faster than you did—but he totally wasn’t trying to make it into a competition in his head as to who recompose themselves faster. Totally not. Wally pulled himself out when he felt that you could withstand the pain. He gingerly set your legs to his sides. It wouldn’t have been an experience with the Wally Clark if he hadn’t cleaned up the mess he was so eager to make, giving one long lick with his tongue flat against your sternum. All the cum was gone, leaving a broad stoke of saliva in its place that dried a bit faster.

His head rested at your chest for a second, and he looked up to you. Your hands combed through his hair, and you spoke softly to him. “Thank you.”

Wally played dumb as he sat upright again. “For what?”

“You know…” You trailed off. “Everything.”

Wally looked down and then back up towards you again. The only time he ever did that was when sex and romantic feelings started to entangle themselves. Not even a dirty joke could save him from the sharp pang of guilt hitting him directly in his chest, the same one that arose earlier. Stupidly sickening and sweetly bleeding open from Cupid’s arrow, he could only project his questions onto you. The same ones he had to face himself, but couldn’t be brought to do. He just wanted to lay with you. In the grass. Forever. But he knew the truth: you would likely only get to be with him for one night only. One exceptionally different night. “Is this what you want?”

“Give me something.” You said, not as a demand or a promise he couldn’t fulfill. Just for a keepsake, and it was something that you thought might be reasonable.

“Anything.” He said without another thought to it.

You noted the way he was so eager. He could have said, ‘I already gave you something’ and his dirty mind would have been correct. But he kept it simple. “Really? Just like that?”

“You already took my after-life virginity. And it only took forty years.”

You laughed, “God, you’re so weird.”

“It’s true.”

“I want your jacket.”

“It’s yours.”

Wally stood up, extending his hand. You took it and stood up. For the first time, standing out in the open, it clicked that you were naked on school grounds. No less in the football field with anyone being able to watch from the bleachers—and it was too dark to pick out a face from the rows of seating if someone had seen you. But the world didn’t exist now. Only he did.

Your hand shifted to interlock with his, fingers folding over the backs of each other’s hands. Wally guided you towards the bench where some of his stuff remained. The rest was still in the middle of the field, but not his jacket. It was with your things already.

Wally handed the jacket to you. You watched his body twist and bend to grab it off the bench, and you had finally gotten to see the full scope of him being naked. No poses, no silly positions. Just him, standing. And he still looked fucking amazing.

You put the jacket on, enjoying the limited cover it could provide.

“As much as I love seeing you in that. You should put on some clothes.” Wally was annoyingly right—possibly for the first time that night. You were starting to feel cold and shivery in the weather. Almost as cold as him, but you didn’t want to pull away from him. Your hand found his again, like a kid too excited to touch their presents on Christmas Eve. But Wally was all yours and entirely unwrapped, and it took the world not to ask him to come home with you and stay up all night.

He walked you back to the center of the field and helped you get dressed. It took an extra moment because Wally held your shorts out of reach for a moment to give him the time to make a joke about how good you looked undressed for the second time, but he resigned them back to you so that you could leave.

Wally did his best to not hold you at the school—he wasn’t even sure that he could if he wanted to—but he tried not to drag his feet for so long. He could make you take care of returning the equipment you borrowed, but he promised that he would return it for you. Now he was worried about you overexerting yourself before the game. But you insisted that you had to leave, so you made your way to the football stadium’s exit. Wally followed a few paces behind, but it would be easy for him to catch up with his long legs.

“Where did you park?” You asked, figuring you could at least wait at his car while he returned the equipment to the proper spot, and then he could drive you back to your car from his to save you the walk. You always parked in the furthest parking lot from the school. It was easier to park farther away, as too many kids at school were comfortable winging their car doors open even if you were parked next to them. Hence the few dings in your hand-me-down car. Wally didn’t answer you, and instead, you heard a fast paced shuffling approach.

“You’re the one with a big game tomorrow—” Wally said, coming behind you, “—I’ll carry you!”

In one swift motion, he picked you up off your feet. And now, he was carrying you out of the arena.

Wally insisted it wasn’t a far walk to your car, and that he would drop you off first and go back for the equipment. The sweeter the night became, the more sour he felt about it ending. He almost didn’t want to put you down when he reached your car, but he was scared that he would phase out and drop you, so he set you on your own two feet before that could happen.

You didn’t want to leave any awkward space between you and him, so you blurted out the question you had been dreading to ask. And Wally was equally dreading to hear it. What if it was for a phone number? He didn’t have one of those! What if it was to get a ride back to the car he didn’t have? Wally grit his teeth and shushed his racing mind, trying to focus on what your actual question was.

“Can you come to my game? I think I’ll need some pre- and post-game stress relievers.”

He tilted his head to the side—feigning a thought, like he had a schedule and a life to worry about. Wally swiveled his head back to face you, choosing to feign the charming ‘I’ll drop everything for you’ persona instead. But you could see through it, something hiding deeper under the surface. His face could quirk into a smile, his words could be charming, but nothing could hide the softening of his eyes. His chocolate eyes melted, and the words he spoke were somber like the last glow of embers burning from a snuffed flame. He flashed a small smile, “I’ll always be here.”

✦

The next day came with the expected sunrise, resetting the previous day’s unpredictable events. It was a Saturday—those were easy and relaxing for everyone but you. Well, it would have been for everyone but you if you hadn’t had last night’s experiences under your belt. You would have been the exception as you did stretches on the field, but today, you were like everyone else. The pit in your stomach as game day approached dissipated with the help of someone who could reach in there and knock it out—both literally and metaphorically.

The hour of the game approached quickly, and practice on the sidelines blurred into the first quarter. The Split River Bandits were up 5-4. While it felt low for your team, you were closing in on scoring a sixth point with your team before the quarter was over. Three more to go—three more to win. You had been standing off to the side, trying desperately to work your way into the action unfolding: a cluster of your teammates going toe-to-toe with the opposing team. It was indiscernible as to who had the ball.

But somehow, the ball rose from the group of guys and arced in the air, coming down towards you. You caught it with your net, and you started running to the other team’s net.

As you crossed the field, you looked to the crowd surrounding the perimeter. There, by the frontlines where the white paint lined the box you ran through, the scouts sat. Taking photos and watching the game unfolding in front of them. Just above them, you saw Wally sitting on the bleachers among the parents from the home and away teams. It wasn’t hard to spot him—his face now unforgettable after your first and most perfect encounter—but his height allowed him to stand out next to the taller fathers around him to make it easy even if you weren’t looking for him.

You recentered your attention on the game. On the goalie. There were two guys standing in front of the goalie, and only one solution presented itself. Last night, there were a few steps you learned from Wally about how to fake someone out—something he learned it football, but it seemed applicable enough to lacrosse, too. So you did it. The man on the left flanked you with a stiff-arm to against your stick, and the ball almost rolled off the end of your stick. Then, the rightwing man tried to do the same. You took a fake step to the left, disorienting him as you pivoted to the right. The player on the right wasn’t expecting you to go for him, so he fumbled his prepared move, and you were able to pass him. Now, it was just you and the goalie. Your grip tightened on your stick, holding it straight in the air. You flung it forward, shooting it over the goalie’s shoulder.

You scored, throwing your hands up in victory. Your body twisted quickly, looking to see Wally’s reaction. When your eyes did land on him, he was cheering, and his voice stuck out louder than anyone else’s.

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