Page 60 of Unwritten Rules
Zach gets the nail polish remover, a box of Kleenex from the bathroom, a wastebasket. He’s about to tip the remover onto a wad of tissues, but stops himself, seeing the way Eugenio is looking at his own hands, admiring and a little regretful, teeth on his swollen lower lip. “I could take a picture of them,” Zach says, “if you wanted me to.”
Eugenio reaches for his phone where it’s face down on the nightstand. He types in his passcode and then hands it to Zach. “Um, just against the bedspread, I guess?”
“Maybe lie back?”
Eugenio is shirtless, pants still opened, though his boxers are a mess. He lies down, and Zach picks his hand up, positioning it against his chest, fingernails bright white on the dark field of his tattoo. The other in the line of hair down his stomach.
“I won’t get your face in it.” Though it could be an issue if the pictures get leaked, Eugenio identifiable by his tattoos. He clicks the camera, taking a handful of pictures, then shows them to Eugenio for his approval. “Send me that one.” A photo Zach will need to bury, somewhere, behind three different passwords. One he shouldn’t keep but will anyway.
“I should get cleaned up.” And Eugenio’s voice sounds like his throat is sore.
Zach motions for him to stay put. “Do you want some ice? Let me go get you some.”
“Maybe in a second. I can probably take the nail polish off.”
“It’ll take off the stuff on your other hand too. I’ve got it.” Zach dispenses some of the remover onto the Kleenex, then starts with Eugenio’s pinky.
“It’s cold,” Eugenio says. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
Zach works the wad of tissues, polish coming off, though it smears Eugenio’s fingers white at the tips. He gets a fresh sheet of Kleenex and tries to extract the stuff off Eugenio’s cuticles, until it’s finally mostly gone, like it wasn’t ever there.
“The rest’ll come off in the shower,” Zach says. “But you might want to go and wash your hands.”
Eugenio does and comes back, holding his pants and boxers, naked except for his still-painted right hand.
“You gonna sleep here?” Zach asks. He probably shouldn’t, though it would also be a problem if someone sees him coming out of Zach’s room looking wrecked. There are scratch marks on his side, ones Zach thought would be confined to his tattoo but aren’t. “I think I got some Neosporin or something for those if you want.”
Eugenio looks at the marks. “I’m good. You didn’t break the skin.”
“You might get shit for those tomorrow.”
Eugenio shrugs. “So what? Guys talk all the time. Most’ll assume I just snuck a girl up here. Maybe I should download Tinder or something as cover.”
“Don’t,” Zach says, and Eugenio laughs.
He sets his clothes on the desk, then pulls two water bottles out of the mini fridge, handing one to Zach. “I was gonna crash for a while.”
“Which bed do you want to sleep in?” Because Eugenio has preferences about the distance from the bed to the window, even if they’re high up, sealed off against the Houston streets. From the bed to the door, the rooms lining the hallway where their teammates are sleeping, unaware.
“Either is fine,” Eugenio says, though he amends it to “the one by the window” when Zach looks at him skeptically.
Up close, he smells like his cologne and a little like nail polish remover. He settles with his back to Zach’s chest. Different from how Zach’s slept next to people in the past, from the sudden drop of postcoital sleep or the hustled-out morning after. Especially when Eugenio says, “That was... I’ve never...Fuck. It was never like that.” Zach waits for him to elaborate. But his breathing evens as he slides toward sleep.
“I’ve never...” Zach says, a few minutes later, into the safety of Eugenio’s neck. Softly so as not to wake him. “It’s never been like this for me either.”
Light wakes him up in the morning, spilling in from the curtains they didn’t bother to close. Next to him, Eugenio’s sleeping, sheets kicked up around his legs. He has a bite mark on his shoulder Zach doesn’t remember leaving, scratches on his sides, a slight bruise around one of his wrists, not a full bracelet, just the impression of Zach’s thumb and forefinger.
And Zach should have insisted on ice, on Neosporin, on a shower, on Eugenio going back to his room, because there’s no way he can walk out of Zach’s room and not get noticed by their nosy-ass early-bird teammates.
“Morning,” Eugenio says, rolling up to kiss him, a lazy sort of kiss that deepens when Zach’s cock starts showing interest.
“You gotta go back to your room. Just, uh, maybe try to do it quietly. Someone might see.”
“You should go get me coffee.” Eugenio stretches out, arms out at his sides, though he leaves them there when he sees Zach looking at the weight of his shoulders, the movement of muscles in his chest. He examines the nails of his right hand. “These look good.”
“For real.” Zach attempts to slide out of bed but stops when Eugenio hooks one of his legs around him. “Get up.”
“Counteroffer,” Eugenio says. “I do something about that—” he glances down at where Zach is hard “—and then you go get me coffee and we tell Giordano to mind his own fucking business and stop snooping at peepholes.”
