Exotic

~ deep heat ~

The Roman Senior change rooms were beige like their uniforms, though I suspected the match wasn't intentional. The team had scattered, the parents had demanded assurances that their children's records wouldn't be blemished by the incident and the referee had finally told everyone to get off his field. Max was having his nose reset by a random father who swore he had a first-aid certificate. Aaron was pacing the communal space, on the phone to Maya.

I was washing Max's blood off my elbow.

"That should do you until you can get to the ER," the father informed him, covering the bridge of Max's nose with tape. "You're going to have some swelling."

Max ran his finger down the length of his nose self-consciously. I could tell he was more worried about the long-term damage. Aaron's ear piercing or a haircut was one thing. Permanent facial, however slight, disfigurement? Based on how Max saw the importance of being identical, it was sure to throw him through a loop.

The door swung open, and I turned to see Caleb feeling his way through the door, with a hand against his face.

He paused to take in the scene, lingering on me with my sleeve rolled up, and my forearms splattered in blood. "Sorry... ice pack?"

"Sure," I turned off the tap and moved to the medkit. There was a small fridge unit below it, and I grappled around until I found a frozen Ziplock bag. I tossed it lazily across the room to him, and he had to dive a little to catch it, taking his hand off his face in the process. I winched at the mess of purple and yellow swirling below his eye.

He slapped the pack against it with a tiny grumble of pain. The random father left unceremoniously, and Aaron followed when Maya started yelling; giving me the universal hand gesture for this will be messy before exiting through the swinging door.

Max stood, approaching Caleb in a slow stagger. I tensed up automatically, but Max just offered him a hand and they bumped shoulders.

"Thanks, man," he said, voice slightly nasal from his injury. "Trout would have let it slide again if you didn't say what you did."

Caleb frowned. "Don't thank me. He's been getting away with shit like that on my watch for years. I'm sorry."

Max waved his apology off. "You spoke up when it mattered, dude. We're cool. Captain."

"Don't," Caleb warned him. "You'll make it sound pre-meditated."

Max snorted and instantly grunted in pain. He touched a thumb to his nose again and wandered off in the direction of the mirrors. Leaving me and Caleb and the ice pack on Caleb's cheek alone in the communal area. I shuffled my way over to the bench across from him, sitting down tentatively.

Caleb leaned back, pressing the pack flush against his skin. "This is where lying to my mother gets me."

I grinned at the tiles. "Is she pissed?"

"Her anger's been temporarily transferred to Aidan," he said quietly. "I'm sure it'll come back to me, but for now I'm in the clear."

"That kind of makes it sound pre-meditated too," I advised him.

Caleb's hair was still plastered to his forehead, and his eyelashes were dashed with rain. Behind the intoxicating blue of his eyes was something extremely sad. It sobered me up in an instant.

He dropped the ice pack into his lap. The bruise was swelling already, pushing his eye closed ever so slightly. It looked like the kind of thing you would sustain in a car crash; Aidan hadn't pulled any punches for his best friend, literally.