Page 18 of Caught Running

“Ooh, I got it,” Jonathan cried excitedly, practically climbing over Brandon to get off the couch.

Brandon grunted and gasped as he was for all intents and purposes kneed. “Goddamn, Jonathan, be careful!” he hissed, smacking the back of the younger man’s thigh as Jonathan trotted to the hall that led to the front door. He rolled his eyes and shifted, glaring at Troy, who was snickering. “Watch it, limey boy,” Brandon growled.

“What?” Troy asked in confusion, and the look on his face was enough to have Jake smirking as he walked out of the room back toward the kitchen for plates.

Sighing, Brandon leaned his head back onto the edge of the couch, pretty much sprawling out. He was tired enough to not care much for propriety at this point. And since it wascertainthat Troy wouldn’t even know propriety if it walked up and bit him on the ass, why should Brandon care? If it pissed Jake off, he wouldn’t hesitate to say something. “Blech,” he finally muttered, looking at the ceiling, thinking about the next day.

“We’ll post the teams on the main boards,” Jake responded to Brandon’s expression of distaste, taking it as a declaration of his thoughts on the cuts. “They’ll announce that they’re up in the morning report and we don’t have to watch the kids be crushed. Coward’s way out,” he admitted as Jonathan came back in with two large pizzas. Jake laid out a stack of plates and handed everyone a fresh beer.

Brandon eyed the beer, really tempted. But if he stayed here tonight—not that it was really that much longer, it was pushing 9 p.m. now—he’d have to get up that much earlier to drive home, change clothes, and drive back into town for tutoringbefore school. He sighed and set the bottle on the coffee table and pulled a few pieces of pizza onto his plate, sitting back and munching, listening to Troy and Jonathan chatter about plans for their teams.

Jake flopped onto the ground in front of the coffee table, grabbing a piece of pizza out of the box and eating without bothering with the plates. “You done drinking, man?” he asked Brandon with a glance at the untouched beer. “I’ve got four bedrooms and couches to spare,” he joked, half serious. Sometimes Troy slept on the floor just to feel like he was roughing it.

“I really need to drive home tonight,” Brandon said through a mouthful of sausage and pepperoni. “I’d have to get up a hell of a lot earlier if I stayed here, had to go home, and then turn around and come back into town.”

“Man, there’s no early that’s early enough to keep me from crashing here instead of home,” Troy declared with a sort of childish glee. “How long’s your drive?” he asked with a frown.

“It’s a little under 40 minutes to Mountain Park. Longer if it’s after dark, lots of deer,” Brandon answered, leaning forward to snag a piece of supreme. “If I stayed, I’d have to leave here about 3 a.m. to make school on time.”

“What?” Jonathan asked in horror.

“What time do you get to school every morning?” Jake asked, telling himself even as he questioned it that he didn’t want to know, it was none of his business, and stop staring at Brandon’s throat!

“Little before six,” the science teacher murmured. His eyes sliding from side to side, he saw the other three men looking at him with varying degrees of horror. He wasnotgoing to say it, he wasn’t ... “What?” he blurted.

“Why?” Troy demanded in a slightly higher voice than usual. He sounded outraged for humanity.

Brandon swallowed his pizza. “I tutor,” he said shortly, shifting to pull a leg up under himself.

“On purpose?” Troy asked in the same disbelieving tone.

“Yes, on purpose,” Brandon said defensively, withdrawing a little at what he perceived to be an attack.

Jonathan was frowning. “Didn’t I read in the district memo that they hired somebody to do that full time?” Brandon shrugged awkwardly. He wasn’t about to tell them it was an unpaid position.

Jake watched the man closely and saw him begin to pull back into his shell a little. There was no reason for him to, and Jake wondered what he must think of all of them to be embarrassed over the fact that he helped kids study in the mornings. For some reason it irked him a little, but it worried him more that Brandon was uncomfortable. “Not much different than the weekends we were taking with the team last fall,” he pointed out to Troy softly.

“Well, yeah, but 6 a.m.?” Troy said. “That’s torture! At least we worked after high noon.”

Jonathan looked between Brandon and Troy, seeing the discomfort there. “Shut up, Troy. Brandon, are you still going to do this tutoring now that you’re coaching? That’s going to make for twelve, fourteen hour days, just on practice days. For games—away games, fuck—we don’t get home until 1 a.m. sometimes.”

Brandon looked up again to see them waiting for his answer. “The kids need me. For the tutoring, for the coaching, doesn’t matter. I’ll be there,” he said quietly. But his voice was firm.

Jake watched the man for a moment longer. He was still wavering between trying to decide whether he liked the guy. He liked him when they were alone, but the awkward way he clammed up when someone else was around—or hell, he’d even done it to Jake—Jake didn’t know how to take that. He was used to people being at ease with him when he wanted them to be.“If you start burning out, let us know. You can skip the away games,” Jake offered quietly as he opened a third beer and gave it a long pull. The pills and beer were hitting him now, just not quickly enough.

Although the thought of shirking his commitment like that really bothered him, Brandon was already concerned enough about it that he wasn’t going to argue. At least not right now. “I’ll keep it in mind,” he said. “Thanks.”

Troy and Jonathan looked at each other significantly. Then the freshman coach piped up. “I can help grade papers,” he offered. Brandon glanced to him, a brow raised. Troy grumbled a little under his breath and wrinkled his nose. “I’ll help, too,” he muttered. Then he brightened. “I can show you the best way to sleep on a school bus seat.”

Brandon was so surprised that he didn’t know what to say. He hardly knew these guys, but here they were, extending offers of assistance. It was damn humbling, is what it was. Was this what that camaraderie among team members was like? How the team always said they would stick together? Brandon had never experienced it before.

“And the boys would probably do some work if you gave them a little extra credit or something,” Jake added as he reached for another piece of pizza, oblivious to Brandon’s shell-shock.

“Uh.” Brandon was at a loss for something to say. “I appreciate it,” he settled on.

Jonathan leaned over and butted shoulders with him. “You’re part of the team now, Brandon. We look out for each other.”

“Or we hang your underwear from the flag pole,” Troy added with a grin.