Unwritten Rules

by KD Casey

  “I figured we could order delivery or something.” Zach pulls away reluctantly. “What’re you in the mood for?”

  And Eugenio laughs and says, “Zach, get in the truck,” and they drive out of the lot together, Zach’s windows unsealed to the night breeze.

  It’s a short drive back to Zach’s apartment. They’re almost there when he turns off the main road, up through his neighborhood and into the parking lot of one of the marinas lining Biscayne Bay. There’s a park across the street, walking paths and manicured trees, the bay lapping beyond it, streetlights spilling on the dark water.

  “Everything okay?” Eugenio asks.

  “I was gonna call that counselor. If I don’t do it now, I’m afraid I won’t.” Zach’s hands shake as he pulls out his phone, which for once doesn’t complain as he connects it to his truck’s Bluetooth system. He scrolls through his contacts, finding the number and pressing Call.

  It rings once and then an after-hours message comes on, saying that the office is closed for the day. To call 9-1-1 if you are experiencing a medical emergency. Offering a number for an LGBTQ+ crisis hotline. A promise to return all messages promptly.

  There’s a pause and then a beep. “Uh, hi. My name is Zach Glasser. I was hoping to make an appointment for, um, the next few days. My number is—” and he reads off his number and recites his email address, then clicks one to hear the message played back and again to submit it.

  It takes less than a minute in total, and he ends the call and sits, breathing, in his truck, warm Miami night coming through his windows, Eugenio next to him, hand on Zach’s center console, then on his arm, then around his shoulders, half out of his seat.

  Zach’s seatbelt is too tight across his chest, and he undoes it, breathing in through his nose, holding it, and counting as he exhales.

  “Hey,” Eugenio says, “it’s all right.”

  Zach leans forward, head on his steering wheel, knuckles pulling into ridges. “I just thought about it for days. And it’s stupid—it’s just a stupid fucking voice mail.”

  “It’s not stupid.”

  “It feels pretty small.”

  Eugenio pats down his jeans, pulling out a blister pack of nicotine gum, dispensing and then chewing a piece. “When I told my parents that I’m bi, I think I practiced for a solid week. Just to random stuff in my apartment. In the mirror, but also to the plants. The dishes. Whatever felt like it would listen. And then it took five minutes.”

  “They, um, they weren’t at the All-Star Classic.”

  “My grandmother moved to Colombia a few years ago. They visit her in the summers, and I told them not to fly back.”

  “I thought maybe they didn’t take it well.” Though it’s hard for Zach to reconcile Eugenio’s parents, who were unfailingly kind to him whenever they came to Elephants games, with people who could reject their own son. Even if Zach’s brain pulses with what ifs about his own parents.

  “It took a while for them to understand. Longer than I expected. But you’ve met them. They process a little differently.”

  “I’m sorry you had to do that alone.”

  “I wasn’t alone. They wanted me to know that, even if they didn’t really get it at first.”

  “I just feel like, I don’t know, it’s hard to explain.” Zach searches for the right words, before arriving on, “I feel like I want to cry or panic or go and jump in the ocean or all those things.”

  “It’s a little late to go to the beach, but we could if you want.”

  “I meant metaphorically.”

  “Metaphorically,” Eugenio says, a little teasing, rolling the word around in his mouth. “Metaphorically, I had to catch nine innings of shitty baseball, and I want someone to bring me some pork and plantains.”

  “So the real Miami experience then. Here, pick something.” Zach starts the truck and hands Eugenio his phone, the delivery app open. “I trust your judgment.”

  Back at Zach’s apartment, they sit on his balcony overlooking the water, Eugenio eating pork, plantains, rice, a few forkfuls of ropa vieja he scooped from Zach’s plate without asking.

  “Your apartment is freezing,” Eugenio says.

  “At least the plants like it.”

  Eugenio reaches over to pet one of Zach’s aloe plants sitting on the balcony in a terracotta pot. The one he planted with Eugenio their first day together in Oakland. It needed to be repotted twice, and is now threatening to exceed its container: a plant that grew, stubbornly, unkillably, no matter if Zach watered it once a week or once a year. “I was wondering what happened to them.”

  “You thought I left them to die?” Zach says. “I took them when I drove out here.”

  “You drove to Miami? You hate driving.”

  “I needed, I don’t know, the time alone. I got drunk in a bunch of sad hotels. Now that I say it out loud, it was kind of melodramatic.”

  “I got that tattoo—the California one—right after the trade. It took twice as long as it should have, because I kept getting up to go walk it off. I might have moped for a while.”

  “The first few months in Miami were pretty rough. And the second few months. And honestly, all the ones since then.”

  Eugenio leans in, kissing him, a brush of lips against Zach’s mouth. “I didn’t think you were allowed to be sad in Miami.” He looks out at the city lit up with distant parties, boats glittering on the water.

  “I mean, tell that to the Swordfish.”

  “You could probably get them to trade you. Considering.”

  “Considering we’re forty-four and sixty-two,” Zach says. “Is that what you did in Oakland? Stormed into someone’s office and told ’em to send you somewhere else?”

  Eugenio looks at him for a minute, then reaches for his beer, finishing it in a long swig. “That’s not what happened. Do you have something stronger than this?”

  Inside his apartment, it’s cold, Eugenio rubbing his arms. Zach finds him a long-sleeve shirt, a bottle of bourbon, a heavy-bottomed tumbler to pour it into, then pours one for himself.

  Eugenio drinks, doing a lap at the perimeter of the room, looking at the pictures Zach hung, the ones Eugenio got for him, the ones they picked out together. “I can’t believe you kept all this stuff. When I moved out to New York, I think I brought two suitcases and told someone from the team to sell the rest of my shit and send me the money.”

  “I remember.” A clubbie called Zach, asking for his help since the team knew they were friends. And Zach spent an awful morning walking through the mausoleum of Eugenio’s old apartment, telling them what to keep and what to sell, feeling like one more piece of abandoned furniture.

  “They were already going to trade me,” Eugenio says. “I was going into my arbitration year, and I told them how much I was going to ask for. That I had a case, a good case, and if they weren’t going to pay me, then they should call up other teams and see what they could get back in return.”

  “They didn’t get anything back. Nothing even close to what you’re worth.”

  “Yeah, well, by then I knew my value.” And Eugenio says it lightly, like he’s only talking about the team, and not about how things ended between them, or how they were for a long time before then. It hurts to hear anyway.

  “I’m sorry,” Zach says.

  “Zach—”

  “No, I am. Sorry. For everything. It doesn’t fix anything but it’s important that you know that. That I am. That I’m trying. That I want to make things right between us.”

  “I know. But it’s going to take some time.”

  Zach watches the bourbon in his glass, the way the ice melts, sending out little plumes of water, shimmering. “If there’s anything I can do to, uh, accelerate that. Since you’re here.”

  “I could think of a few things,” Eugenio says, a smile edging his lips, “if, you know, you were looking to put
in some work.” He puts his empty glass down on the coffee table, then walks over to where Zach is standing. He takes the tumbler from his hands and sets it down.

  Up close, Eugenio smells like ballpark shampoo and the bourbon Zach bought knowing it’s a brand he likes. He crowds Zach against the balcony door, cold against his back. His fingers slide below the hem of Zach’s shirt, two of them, hooking into his waistband, tugging, his knuckles rough against the skin of Zach’s stomach.

  “The, uh, orange really suits you.” Zach nods to where Eugenio’s nails are still painted.

  “I thought you might like those.” Eugenio leans in, mouth close but not touching. “Take off your shirt.”

  And Zach does, throwing it in the vague direction of his living room. Eugenio rubs the hair on Zach’s stomach with the pads of his fingers and then scratches him right below his navel, hard enough to leave lines, the kind that’ll be as obvious in the clubhouse tomorrow as Eugenio’s nails.

  “So, when you said ‘work’...” Zach says.

  “I meant work.” Eugenio kisses him, a hard, unsubtle kiss, tongue an intrusion, the sharp points of his teeth and pressure of his palm against the muscle of Zach’s abdomen. He pulls back, picking up Zach’s unfinished bourbon and drinking it. “Touch yourself.”

  The button of Zach’s jeans is chilly when he goes to undo it; Eugenio shakes his head. “Leave those on.”

  Zach grips himself through the roughness of the fabric, adjusting himself like he did dozens of times that day, his cup in his uniform pants. It hurts a little, the texture of his boxers, the constriction of the denim, the unsatisfying movement of his own hand.

  Eugenio watches him, idly drinking, and there’s a chair across the room, an oversized one. He sits in it, flipping through one of the comic books on Zach’s table, ignoring him when his breath hisses or his elbow thumps on the glass door behind him. Enough that Zach wonders if he should just get off this way, head of his cock trapped in the waistband of his shorts, making a mess into his own hand, as Eugenio sits, looking everywhere but at him.

  “Should I finish?” Zach asks.

  “No. Stop. Come here.”

  The floorboards are cold under Zach’s knees, but Eugenio is warm when Zach unzips him, shoving his pants down his legs, rubbing his face on the fabric, sucking him through it, a little frantic. He threads a hand through Zach’s hair, tugging it back.

  Zach doesn’t move for a few seconds, just kneels there, breathing, and he puts his hands behind his back, testing how it feels, fingers of one hand circling the wrist of the other. Light from the city outside filters in through the glass doors. And he might be visible, to anyone in a neighboring building, the shape of his back, the bend in his neck, Eugenio holding him where he wants.

  “I could...” But Zach doesn’t know what he’s offering other than anything, his mouth, his hands, his cock. The prickles of tension at his temples, his knees complaining on the floorboards, a muscle in his hip beginning to bark at him. “But I don’t want to end up on the injured list, so if you could decide.”

  Eugenio laughs, releasing Zach’s hair, offering him a hand up. “You look good like that. Though maybe next time, you should bring home your leg guards. C’mon.”

  Zach strips when he gets to his bedroom, shucking his pants and shorts, his socks.

  “Go lie down,” Eugenio says.

  Zach has a bed frame with a real headboard, one he grasps, arms above his head, laying himself out. He curls his hands meaningfully around one of its wooden slats. “There’s a belt if you want.”

  “That’d probably leave marks.” Eugenio is standing in just his underwear, palming himself, tattoos across his chest, the vine tracing up his hip, an emptied outline of California on his ribs.

  “I can tape my wrists if there’s bruising.”

  “I thought we were trying to keep you off the IL.” He comes around to the side of the bed, encouraging Zach over, pulling out his cock. He rubs it on Zach’s cheek, on his chin, across his lips, his hand guiding him, pressing his cock into Zach’s mouth.

  It’s slow, the slide of it, messy, when Zach starts licking him, earning a yank of his hair. “Just let me,” Eugenio says. Eugenio moves him, pace unhurried, though he fucks deeper into Zach’s mouth, sinking and holding himself there until Zach has to breathe a little desperately through his nose, before retreating. Again, holding longer this time, the muscles in Zach’s throat working involuntarily around him. There’s spit down Zach’s face, on his lips and neck. His eyes start to water, especially when Eugenio punctuates it with a roll of his hips, head of his cock against Zach’s soft palette.

  He pulls back, cock slick against Zach’s face, and he slaps him with it, sudden and pornographic, a wet sting.

  “Don’t move.” Eugenio works himself, climbing on the bed, knees over Zach’s hips, hand and wrist working, thumb pressing into his foreskin. “I’m gonna come.” He does, over his own hand and Zach’s stomach, but mostly onto Zach’s cock where it’s hard against his belly, marking him with it.

  “Should I?” Zach looks down at himself, streaked, cock an unhappy red, sac tightening up against his body.

  “No.” Eugenio reaches, a little backhanded tap of him, then gripping his balls, pulling them down, away. “I have plans for this.”

  Zach motions to his nightstand. “Here.”

  Eugenio roots around in the nightstand drawer, retrieving a bottle of lube, pouring some in one of his hands and reaching behind himself.

  “You’re not gonna let me do that?”

  “You can. After.” The lube is cold when he squirts some on Zach’s cock, when he adds his spit, and the friction of his hand, when he dips his fingers into his come, wetting Zach with it. “All right.”

  And he sits across Zach’s hips, positioning himself.

  “I don’t have a lot of leverage from this angle,” Zach says.

  “Use what you have, because I’m not going to help.” And Eugenio waits there, expectant, as Zach gathers the strength in his thighs and back and glutes, negotiating the limited space. As he pushes up and into him.

  It’s a hard angle, Eugenio seemingly impassive, even as Zach presses past his rim, as he works his hips. Zach’s sweating, pricks of it on his forehead and down his spine, doing the kind of breathing he normally reserves for deadlifts.

  “Does this feel good at all?” Zach asks, when Eugenio doesn’t move.

  “Keep going.” Eugenio leans, halving Zach’s range of motion to a few grinding centimeters.

  And Zach is panting, the muscles in his lower back burning, pressure building there, gathering, desperation beginning to mount.

  “Hold still,” Eugenio says.

  Zach’s hips are off the bed, the wooden headboard biting into his hands.

  “Don’t move.”

  Zach doesn’t, except for the fine trembling motions in his wrists, the automatic tense and roll of his hips. His arms start to shake with the effort, heat in his hands and face and back.

  “I thought about this,” Eugenio says, “in New York when I was out with other people.”

  “No offense—” Zach’s teeth are clenched, his breath short in his lungs “—but I don’t want to hear about you sleeping with someone else right now.”

  “Why?” Eugenio moves his hips, just enough to tease. “You worried they fucked me better than you can?”

  Zach pictures it: Eugenio in someone else’s bed. His easy laugh and all his opinions, his tattoos and his hands and his lower lip. Waking up and kissing some stranger, face an awful blank, parting in the doorway to their apartment, visible to his neighbors, promising to see each other that night. He pictures it, and doesn’t trust his voice, but he nods, his tongue a weight in his mouth.

  “Well, I tried, and they couldn’t.” Eugenio shifts, settling, hands on either side of Zach’s face, filling his entire field of vision. �
��So prove it to me.”

  Zach lets go of the bed frame, blood rushing back into his fingers, sitting up, back against it, Eugenio finally moving to match him, mouth at Zach’s neck, body answering. The stubborn clench of Eugenio’s arms around him as Zach presses up, as Eugenio laughs a little as if delighted, kissing him and kissing him.

  As Zach nearly comes, before stilling. “Can I?” And for a second, he worries Eugenio will make him hold himself there, will get up and walk out and leave him, alone.

  Until Eugenio breathes the words on Zach’s skin, a permission, and Zach buries his face in Eugenio’s shoulder and chest and doesn’t wait any longer.

  “Hey,” Eugenio says, a few minutes or possibly an hour later, “drink this.” He holds out a glass of water, cold from the fridge, and Zach drinks it, teeth hurting. He’s naked, leaning against the headboard, Zach’s face against his chest, ear pressed to his sternum.

  “Are you gonna stay here?” Zach glances at the clock; it’s nearly three in the morning, the blackout curtains he has on the window shielding them from ambient city light. “It’s an early game tomorrow.”

  “Do you want me to stay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I will.”

  Whatever tension is lingering in Zach’s wrists and shoulders eases, even more so than when Eugenio rubbed the spot on his back that was twinging. “I should shower. Or you should. Or if you’re hungry, I probably have something, or we could get someone to deliver.”

  “Zach.” It’s a little exasperated, a little fond, the contrast of it with his heartbeat, the familiar lub-dub of it, sound conducted through Zach’s jaw, his heart as only Zach hears it.

  “Yeah.” Zach yawns. “Okay.”

  When Zach wakes up, Eugenio is gone, but the other side of his bed is still warm, the smell of coffee drifting in from the kitchen. He finds Eugenio wearing a pair of his shorts, which are tight in the ass, and looking half-awake. He’s frowning at Zach’s pantry—which is mostly unopened jars and cans gathering dust—in disapproval.