He made it as far as the corridor. The bar door hadn’t finished swinging shut before the footsteps started up behind him. He didn’t speed up. He wasn’t going to be chased down a hallway.
He hadn’t planned past this.
“Where are you going?”
Daniel didn’t turn. “Away from you.”
“Walk away? That’s it?”
“The match is over.”
“Bullshit.”
He should have kept walking. He stopped.
He turned around. Carter was closer than he should have been. Same colour up his neck he’d had on the mat, and breathing like he’d run.
“Forty seconds,” Alex said. “They timed it.”
“I’m aware.”
“And?”
“I won. That’s all that happened.”
“You know exactly what you did.”
Daniel didn’t give him the step back.
“You’re reading into it.”
“Am I?”
He was done. He turned for the elevators and got two steps before the hand closed on his shoulder.
He came round ready to say something. Alex put both hands in his chest and drove him back into the wall. His shoulders hit first. He hadn’t braced for any of it.
Then the hand didn’t come off. All of Alex’s weight came through it, hard, and the wall took the rest.
Alex held him there. Long enough that it stopped being a shove and turned into something he was doing on purpose.
“There.” Right up close, and his voice had gone rough with it. “Now you know what it fucking feels like.”
He got a hand on Alex’s wrist and pushed off the wall.
Alex leaned into it and he went nowhere. Heavier than he looked, and he’d set his feet for it.
Alex was too close. Forearm hard across his chest, his mouth inches off, breath warm along Daniel’s jaw. Whatever he’d been about to say went out of his head.
Green eyes, this close. He hadn’t known that.
“Not so easy when it’s you, is it?”
He dropped his hips and turned hard into the arm, the same escape Alex had been using on him all match, and the hold came apart.
He put Alex into the opposite wall hard enough to hear it.
His forearm was across Alex’s collarbone. He hadn’t decided to put it there.
Alex fought it immediately—hands on Daniel’s shoulders, shoving.
Daniel pressed down. His weight settled against Alex—chest to chest, his thigh braced between Alex’s legs for base, forearm solid across the collarbone.
Alex shoved again. Harder.
Daniel matched him. Pressure for pressure.
Then Alex’s grip on his shoulders changed. Still tight. Still holding. But the resistance stopped.
Alex had chosen to.
“Fuck.” Out loud. In the empty corridor.
Alex’s breath on his face. Warm. Coming fast.
His forearm still across Alex’s chest. He should have stepped back.
He didn’t.
He could feel every exhale in the chest against his, and the corridor carpet was the kind that ate sound, and nobody had come around the corner yet, which meant nothing except that nobody had come around the corner yet. The hands on his shoulders had stopped pushing.
He didn’t move his forearm back.
They tightened. Pulling him in.
Alex’s hips came off the wall. Into him.
His breath stopped.
One more second and he’d—
He stepped back hard enough that his shoulders hit the opposite wall.
