Page 61 of Unwritten Rules
“It’s not Giordano I’m worried about. Gordon—he kept looking at us at the restaurant yesterday.”
“So what? He knows we’re friends.”
“You know it’s not like that.”
“I gotta spend today getting abuse from Houston fans. The least you could do is let me rub off on you.” He reaches for Zach’s shoulders, and Zach should absolutely tell him to get up, get his clothes and get out, get to his own room, to stop rolling his hips like that, and twisting his own nipple with his painted fingernails and pressing the scratch marks on his ribs.
Zach should and he doesn’t, instead lowering himself by increments until his chest is against Eugenio’s, mouth on his neck, the wet easy slide of their cocks together. “You should go back to your room.”
But he gasps when Eugenio spits in his hand, reaching between them, thumb against the head of his cock.
“I could stop,” Eugenio says, pausing, “you know, if that’s what you want.” And he whines when Zach pinches him, up the thin skin of his ribs, using his index and middle fingers, a few times, leaving a ladder of red marks. They move together like that, long enough that it starts to build.
“Don’t come yet,” Eugenio says.
“I wasn’t.”
“Sure, you weren’t. Hold still.”
Zach does, holding himself up, arms on either side of Eugenio’s shoulders. Long enough that he starts to feel it, tense with the effort of holding himself in one position. “Can I move?”
Eugenio shakes his head.
“Now?” It feels like an eternity later, tension mounting in his lower back, in his balls, like he’ll shoot off if Eugenio so much as breathes on him.
Eugenio waves a hand. “Get off me.”
Zach does, reluctantly, hissing when his cock rubs Eugenio’s stomach as he brushes by him. He walks across the room, like he’s making for the desk where he set his clothing in a neat pile. “I was just gonna go back to my room. Since you’re so insistent that I leave.”
“If that’s what you want to do, I guess I’m just gonna take care of this, then.” Zach reaches for his own cock, giving it a deliberate tug.
“What I want to do—” Eugenio walks back toward him “—is to not have to look over my shoulder every ten minutes about everything.”
“You know it’s not that simple.”
“Feels pretty simple to me.” He reaches down, bypassing Zach’s cock in favor of holding his balls, not gripping, but enough pressure that Zach can feel it.
“Yeah, okay, c’mon.”
And Eugenio straddles him, weight pinning him down. It doesn’t take much, just their bodies, moving together, Eugenio’s hand possessive at his jaw. The span of his shoulders blocks out the rest of the room, the light from the hallway and the inevitability of having to deal with the world for a few more minutes. And he kisses Zach through it as they both shake apart.
“I was gonna shower.” Eugenio rolls off of him. “I meant it about getting coffee.”
Zach cleans himself up, contemplating the relative dangers of going to the lobby and getting two cups of coffee versus ordering room service, and decides the former is less of one than the latter.
He doesn’t run into Giordano or Gordon in the hallway. Instead, he finds Braxton, looking un-showered, hair unbrushed, the stubble around his beard not yet shaved. He doesn’t say anything to Zach as they ride the elevator down to the lobby, just scrolls through his phone.
Zach doesn’t say anything to him either as they wait at the Starbucks. The line progresses slowly enough that he probably should, even just a “good morning” or something about the game later. But he doesn’t trust himself not to overexplain why he’s getting two cups of coffee—an early game-planning meeting, a bet he lost to Eugenio, whatever. He wonders if Braxton will say something or ask about who was up in his room. If Zach should go out when they get back to Oakland, be seen with someone he has no intention of sleeping with, just for plausibility. If Eugenio should do the same. And he pictures Eugenio sitting at a restaurant he picked out, having flirtatious dinner conversation with someone who won’t flinch their hand away if he reaches out to hold it, and feels an unadorned dread about a showy date turning into something real.
Ahead of him, Braxton orders three cups of coffee, not bothering to explain them. He grunts as he passes Zach on the way back to the elevator, drinks secured in a cardboard carrier.
When Zach gets back to his room, Eugenio is there, dressed in his dress pants, in one of Zach’s shirts, oversized and sufficient to contain his shoulders, one of the dozens of team-branded ones they all get without Zach’s name anywhere on it. His hair is already drying in the air conditioning, the ends going fluffy.
They drink coffee, and Zach goes, shaves, showers, dresses. When he looks out the window, the team bus is parked outside on the street below, ready to ferry the first wave of players and staff to the park.
“Bus is here if you want to head out,” Zach says.
“I might get the next one. Or walk. It’s not like it’s that far.”
