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You're pinned on your back beneath him, pants halfway down, stupid NBA dress-code shirt that you'd never wear otherwise thrown in the corner somewhere. There's just enough room between the two of you for his hand to wander around, palm pressing against your hipbone at an odd angle, trying to decide where to go next. That's sort of uncomfortable, funny, more like funny-weird than funny-haha. For some reason, though, it makes you laugh, laugh around his kiss, even though he's having as difficult a time as ever and this probably won't make it any easier.
He breaks away momentarily to look down at you, and of course he's amused too. He's attempting to hide it, keep his composure, trying, trying. And he almost succeeds, but you can make out the corners of his lips turning up into a smile before it becomes a full-out smirk. You continue grinning back at him, double-daring him to finish what he started, fuck if you'll tell him what to do.
He hesitates, reaches up to brush his hand through your hair. You close your eyes for a split-second kiss, and when they pop open, his hand’s gone, disappeared. But there it is again, skimming up your leg, across your thigh, and over, working into the opening of your boxers. Twist up, squeeze down, and again, and againandagain and your entire body feels as if it's about to snap apart. You grit your teeth, feet shuffling, socked toes curling into the sheets.
"Not yet," he mutters warm into the curve of your neck, other hand locking around your knee and steadying your twitching leg. But it doesn't matter what he says. In fact, him whispering anything right now doesn't help things. Your eyes squint shut and all you can think at that instant is that you hope to God the series goes seven games.
A week later, no sooner are you in the door than you're leaning over him, kissing him all frantic, hands racing to unfasten his belt. You shove him down on the bed, awkwardly trying to get him out of that hideous shirt that makes him look more like a waiter than an NBA player, fucking NBA star, that just scored fifty points in a decidedly pivotal playoff game. You never even get it removed; it's shrugged halfway off, buttons haphazardly undone. He grips you hard on either shoulder, rolling you over under him. Your free hand flies to behind his head, fingers twining and tugging in sweaty golden curls, and before you know it, tongues and limbs and thoughts, everything, are all tangled.
"Not yet," he says it again. He's been saying that for a while now, and you don't know what he means by it. Well, not really. Sometimes it makes sense but other times it's probably just his mind in overdrive and his mouth following through, because it's not as if you plan in advance what you're gonna say when you're jerking off your best friend. He's been saying this for years now, and you figure he's just saying it because he heard it in some porno somewhere years ago when he didn't have a grasp on the language and thought it sounded right, even though he had little idea what it meant, when it was just like, Dirk, just shut up, and stop babbling random English and put your tongue to better use.
You never really notice exactly what he says after all that, but he's not saying "Steve", or "St-St..." or something like that, and you've heard him enough to know he says that. He’s clearly mumbling "Nash". He used to call you that when you were playing together in Dallas, executing the pick-and-roll. For a while, even, when you'd go out after the game, it'd be "What’s good to eat here, Nash?" or "Did I sign my check right, Nash?" He really doesn't call you that off the court anymore, but maybe he's confused as to where he is, maybe he thinks that you two are in the middle of the Whatever-Airlines-It-Is-Today Arena.
They win. You don't. That's all you've processed right now, as the seconds tick away, that they've won and you have to wait yet another year. You're already scripting what you're going to say the media, all those inevitable questions that don't have a specific answer: "Steve, do you think it was the fatigue? Steve, would things've been different had Raja not been injured? Steve, how do you feel about your best friend going to the NBA Finals without you?" To an extent. Perhaps. Move the fuck on, next question, please. Please.
You wait around for him afterwards; you don't even know if he'll show up. He's got that whole celebrating-being-a-Western-Conference-Champion thing to attend to. So it'sunderstandable if he doesn't show; he has to fly back to Dallas, where all the "Nowitzness"es and whatever else are waiting for their Golden Boy, their franchise player, your ...him... at 3 A.M.
He walks over to you, still rubbing at his forearm absentmindedly, where he got the magic-marker streaked across it, and it's all red-raw and smudgy because he's been doing it since the press conference and that was a good hour ago. Dirk, he needs something to do with his hands, you know that, or else they'd be plucking at your shirt and fiddling with your belt and soon enough they'd be woven in your hair and pushing your head forward in the middle of a fucking parking garage.
He says hi and you grab at him immediately and reel him over to you, a handful of cotton t-shirt knotted up in your fist, and you suddenly feel awful knotty yourself. Not only down in your back from game after game of breakneck-pace basketball, but building in the pit of your stomach and pushing up into your throat, words and thoughts and fuckingemotions all caught and convoluted because you want to say congratulations, but you can't. It's not that you don't want to, you just can't. You don't know what the right words are, the way to phrase them, not right now anyway, without that edge of jealousy covering them. So you stare. Out-of-focus, straight ahead at the neckline of his shirt, that's stretched down, revealing that little hollow above his collarbone, and God, maybe you could just lick him there, right there below and on and over his Adam's apple and then you wouldn't have to think of something ridiculous like words.
He gazes down at you, sees you staring, and supposes you're staring, not at the way the stubble fades down his jaw, but at the cloth balled up in your hand, that says "Western Conference Champions" with the last word written in huge block all-capital letters. And you don't even realize you're paying it so much attention.
"If you want one so bad, they‘re pretty cheap," he tells you, humored.
You sort of-hum affirmatively. Right. Because a fifteen-dollar screen-print tee is way up there, just behind the Larry O’Brien Trophy.
"You could’ve won one for free," and you're not looking at him but you can feel him smiling down at you. That aw-shucks grin that all the girls squeal over, with the perfect, movie star teeth. It normally makes you all flip-floppy too, but right now you kind of want to knock those teeth down his throat.
"Clever," you reply dryly. "Hasselhoff help you with that?" You're bouncing up on the balls of your feet, nearer his eye level, and thisclose to just biting down, sucking, on his bottom lip, so it swells and bruises so badly that it's still there in a week and he can feel it while he's sipping down margaritas in those South Beach hangouts. Which you're not really betting on him doing anyway but it's kind of an amusing visual nonetheless.
He makes some sort of giggly-gasp because somehow in all that mulling about his lip, your fingers started creeping along his waistband and only Dirk would fucking giggle or whatever-the-hell at that.
"No, all by myself this time." His eyes are lit all proud and delighted at the same time like you've never seen and your heart just rips the fuck out of your chest. He didn't mean it like that, like that, but fuck if it didn't sound like it in your brain. You sway your head just so, to get a stray wisp of hair out away from your eyes and Dirk, he must've been thinking that you're leaning up to kiss him, fucking idiot, like you're going to after he says shit like that. He takes a half-step away and pries your hand off his t-shirt, mouth moving silently, then he finally, finally says something.
"Not..." he manages, his grip on your wrist is still firm, wants to stay until the last second possible. "Yet." His arm swings down to the side and your arm does the same and your ears are just ringing, but you swear you hear him stutter out "Nash" before turning and walking away.
And now it finally makes sense. Not yet. Nash.