Page 29 of Unwritten Rules
Eugenio’s shirt is rucked up, and his face is flushed, his mouth distractingly red, incongruous among the stacks of equipment. Zach doesn’t know how long he stands there, letting himself look. Eugenio’s face begins to flush even further, and Zach realizes that, if he wanted to, he could suck a mark on one of Eugenio’s tattoos and have it not be noticeable.
“This is a bad idea,” Zach says, again. Something he knows, objectively. Because they shouldn’t be doing this here or at all. But his feet carry him across the room, his hands move to Eugenio’s sides, pressing their hips together, a slow demanding rhythm punctuated by Eugenio’s mouth on his, the slide of his tongue against the skin of where Zach’s shirt collar meets his neck.
“Don’t give me a hickey,” Zach says. “Someone’ll say something.”
“I won’t.” Eugenio’s hands come up under his shirt, and Zach tugs it off, shedding it, and then motions for Eugenio to do the same. Up close, his chest is smooth, maybe an artifact of swimming, tattoos curling in dark distracting shapes, one across a pectoral, another circling his ribs. A line of hair traces down his belly to the waistband of his shorts; Zach runs his hand through it, feeling the intake of Eugenio’s breathing, his eagerness as he bucks up into the touch.
“I could,” Zach offers, making the familiar hand gesture, and Eugenio nods, before encouraging Zach’s hand into the confines of his compression tights, Zach’s face buried in the muscle of where his neck meets his shoulder.
He’s hard, wet, leaking; he pants when Zach moves his hand, at the friction from Zach’s calluses. Zach withdraws his hand, spitting into his palm, returning, wrist cramping with the angle. Eugenio smells like sweat and the coffee Zach brought for him, and grasps at Zach’s hip, his ass, making little noises.
“Fuck.” He thrusts up into Zach’s fist a few times before stilling, and then Zach withdraws his wet hand, smearing it on a towel sitting nearby, one he’ll need to throw into a laundry bin.
Eugenio’s leaning against the shelf, a little dazed, eyelids darkened, lips bearing the imprint of his own teeth. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” he admits, in a rush, making Zach pause. “Show me what you like.”
And he reaches for Zach’s shorts, careful but not hesitant, pushing them down, along with Zach’s compression tights, halfway to his knees, shorts sliding beyond.
“Here.” Zach reaches for one of Eugenio’s hands, running his tongue over his palm, getting spit between his fingers. He gasps when Eugenio touches him. He curls his hand over Eugenio’s; their fingers overlap. Zach’s hand is still wet enough to be sloppy, movements loud, their breath in rhythm together. Eugenio leans to kiss him and bite at his lips and says something Zach can’t quite discern as he comes, spilling over their combined fingers.
Eugenio wipes his hand on the mess of the towel, before sliding down to sit on the floor, where Zach joins him, shorts and tights pulled back up. “I didn’t mean for that to happen,” Eugenio says.
It hurts, a stinging kind of hurt, to hear that out loud even before his breathing has calmed. Zach should get up, haul himself off the floor, unlock the door into the long narrow hallway to the training complex. Go scald himself in the shower. Do something other than sit here, his dick still wet in his tights.
“I mean,” Eugenio says, “I was working up to it. I don’t know.”
“You were working up to it?”
“I didn’t think I was being subtle.” He taps his shoulder amusedly against Zach’s.
And Zach rewinds their interactions over the previous weeks, Eugenio sitting by him on the couch in Zach’s living room, next to him in the early-morning bullpen, trading breakfast for his cup of coffee, their hands brushing. Things that Zach hoped, futilely, meant something beyond what they did. And now a dawn of a realization, enough of one that when he brushes a finger against his mouth to see if his lips are swollen, he finds that he’s smiling. “Oh,” he says, belatedly, which makes Eugenio laugh.
“This is kind of new for me,” Eugenio says. “It was just my ex, really. Off and on from high school. I’ve dated a little since her but no one serious.”
Serious, and the word sticks in Zach’s mind. Like this is more than a hookup. He studies the shelves of equipment around them, the windowless walls, wondering how long they could be here and not be missed. Wondering if this is something he could just have with all the simplicity that’s afforded to other guys. A hope that will probably blow away in the dry desert air, the denied possibility worse than if Eugenio never kissed him at all.
Outside, there’s noise in the hallway, a reminder that they’re not alone in the training complex. That someone will eventually come looking for an unengraved bat, a roll of tape—and can’t find them sitting there, staring at one another, Eugenio’s lips swollen from Zach’s mouth.
“I didn’t, um, realize,” Zach says. “You know we can’t do this. For about a hundred reasons.”
“Can’t? Or shouldn’t?”
“Can’t. It’s not a good idea.”
“It could be a good idea.” And Eugenio is smiling that persuasive smile of his, one that makes Zach want to say fuck it and barricade the door against reality.
They can’t, though, even if Zach is the only one thinking clearly. “If anyone finds out about it, it’ll tank your career.”
Eugenio gets up. His clothing is mussed, and he neatens his shorts and tights, and straightens the stretched-out collar of his T-shirt. His shoulders are tense, mouth a line.
“You don’t know what it’s like, okay?” Zach says. “If this is your first time.”
“It’s not the first time I’ve thought about it.” His voice sounds tight.
“Look, I’m sorry,” Zach says, though everything within him is screaming not to. To instead tell Eugenio how much he wants the same thing. The words feel stuck in his throat; he swallows around them. “I didn’t mean to give you the impression that we could do this. I’m sorry if I did.”
Eugenio takes out his phone and examines himself in the camera before shutting it off and returning it to his pocket. He walks to the door, hand on the knob, then says, “Wait a few minutes before you come out of here, okay? I wouldn’t want anyone getting the wrong idea.”
And Zach waits there among the equipment, the coils of belts and unworn batting gloves and blank jerseys, like something also hidden away. Eventually, he gets up and goes and finishes the rest of what he needs to do.
