#look me in the eye and tell me charlos doesn't have the same vibe going rn

[chattahoochiecoochie]

Boyfriends!

Summary: The plotting had to start somewhere, right? 

Word Count:  1.2K

A/N: I got asks all through writing this so now I don’t even know what I think, but here you go. 

“How’s that quad doing, Joe?” She’s standing behind the leg press, looking down at where he’s splayed out. It’s fine, back to being comfortable the way it always is after she takes care of him—not that he’ll mention it.

“Manageable.” He winces as he pushes the press back into place, putting a hand over the quad in question, for added effect.

“Manageable? We’re on his third set.” Sam scoffs from where he’s standing, smirking at the trainer.

Joe narrows his eyes at Sam, setting his mouth in a hard line as he tries to get the message across without telling the other man to shut up, out right. Don’t fuck this up for me. The longer he draws out the issue with his quad, the more time he gets with her. In her exam room, chatting on the sidelines during scrimmages. More time with her hands on him, pretty little eyes looking at his.

He’s not doing a great job so far, he knows that. She’s probably only nice because she has to be, because she’s being polite. But she smiles at him when he sees her in the facility halls and checks in on him randomly, like she’s doing now. And that's something. It’s something.

“Really? That’s fantastic.” She’s got her hands on her hips now, standing over him with a wide smile on her face, eyes bright.

“Big mans pushing five fifty thanks to you.”

“You said this is the third set?”

“Was.” Says Joe, sighing. Five fifty is more than manageable weight, and she’s not an idiot. He’ll have to sprain an ankle before he has another excuse to take up her time. Fuck.

“Why don’t you swing by at the end of the day and we’ll do a workup.” She puts a hand on his shoulder, patting him gently. “Just to mark your progress. Make sure this is sustainable.”

The suggestion makes him do a double take. She’s smiling at him, hand lingering. Joe feels his heart skip a beat under her touch. Just to mark his progress. He’ll take what he can get.

“Yeah, uh yeah. I can do that.” He tilts his chin back to get a better look at her. “I’m supposed to watch some tape after this but I could come by after? If you don’t think you’ll be busy?”

Desperate. He sounds desperate. Fuck. He is, definitely—for anything she’ll give him—but that's no reason to make it so obvious.

“I’ll be around.” Her hand falls from his shoulder. “Don’t hurt anything else before then, okay?”

Joe nods at her, waving as she starts to walk away. When he finally brings his focus back to his workout, Sam is struggling to contain a smirk, fidgeting behind the machine as he watches Joe reengage the press.

“Someone’s got a crush on little miss trainer.”

“I do not.” Joe reps the machine, fighting through the weight to snap back at Sam.

“Do too.” His tone is flippant before making a dramatic drop. Feigning concern, Sam lets his face fall, looking hurt. “What’s she got that I don’t have?”

Joe feels himself falter, wind rushing out of him as he barely manages to catch the press on its backslide.

“What we have isn’t enough?” Sam presses the bit, sounding jealous.

They don’t have anything—technically. Yes, they do everything together, including but not limited to carpooling to work and spending meals together. Joe can’t really cook and Sam follows a similar diet, and knows his way around the kitchen. Well, a grill at least. And a takeout menu. And yes, they stay up late playing Madden and watching movies, and Sam’s got a spare key to his place—Joe’s got a hot tub and he doesn’t. But it doesn’t mean anything. Sam was his first friend on the team after Ja’Marr, they hit it off instantly. And just because they sometimes fall asleep on the couch together—like that one time—

Joe cuts the thought off. No they don’t have anything. But he and little miss trainer could. If he could grow a pair and stop pretending to give a shit about team rules. No fraternization.

“So what if I have a crush on her?” Joe grunts, voice gruff as he reps again.

“Relax, Joey boy. I do too.”

“You do too?” Why does he sound jealous?

“Everyone does.” Sam turns serious, leaning over the back of the machine. “She’s pretty, smart, innocent. Small enough to pick up and play with. All shy when she touches on us.” He rambles on, oblivious to the fact that Joe has lost himself in thought.

Everyone has a crush on her? Sam has a crush on her? Sam who he’d woken up holding only a morning ago? Sam who made them breakfast in just a towel after a morning dip in his pool? Not that the towel meant anything to him. And not that he’d noticed how nicely it sat on Sam’s hip—because he hadn’t. He had a crush on their trainer too?

“What, you thought you were the only one with an eye on her?” Sam cuts through his thoughts, leaning over the machine.

“No, no. It’s cute that you think you have a chance though.” Sitting up on the machine, he brings himself face to face with Sam, hands braced around the brunettes. His tone is playful, an attempt at teasing to disguise the jealousy he feels. Because that’s what it is. He knows it.

“Tell you what, why don’t we just ask her?” Sam smirks at him, nose almost touching his. “That’d make things easy, huh?”

“Yeah, why don’t we?” He sounds pathetic, he knows it.

“Of course, then she’d have to pick one of us.”

“Who knows, maybe we’re not her type.” Better that way at this rate, rejection from her wouldn’t jeopardize this—whatever this is.

“Be better if we could both have her. What's that saying? Threes better than two.”

“Two’s better than one.” The correction comes before the realization. If we could both have her.  Joe feels his mind catch.

“Same shit. Unless of course you’d rather risk losing to me.” Risk losing me, is all Joe hears.

“Yeah, lose, to you.” He counters, trying to cover.

“Think about it, Joey. We do everything else together anyways. Best friends, and all that.” He’s relaxed, standing back from the machine with a hand in the air, verbalizing the potential he sees. “Bet she’d love that hot tub of yours. You think she’s ever skinny dipped? Course we’d have to stop sleeping on your couch…”

Joe twitches at the suggestion, turning over the middle of the machine to put his knees together on one side, hands on his thighs. He can see it clear as day, the fantasy Sam’s spelling out. The three of them—the two of them—with her between them. Its a thousand things all at once. Her in his bed, on his couch, sitting in the passenger seat of his car. She’s in a jersey—numbers flashing from his back to Sam’s. He swallows, fighting through the thought of her and Sam in his pool, skinny dipping like the brunette had mentioned.

“You think she’d go for that?” He asks through gritted teeth, hardly recognizing his own voice.

“Worth a shot, right? I mean who knows. Sounds good though doesn’t it.” Sam’s beside him, a hand over the front of the shorts, palm pressed into the fabric. “I’m getting hard just thinking about it, fuck.”

“We’d have to—we’d have to be smart about it.” He speaks slowly, fighting through the haze of his own wave of nerves. “If it were to really work.”