Chapter Fourteen #2
He didn’t push. He stared at Marcos for another second, long enough that Marcos wondered if something had shown on his face, then stepped across the room and joined a few of the other guys by the door.
The last of them spilled out together, voices bouncing off the corridor walls until the door cut them away.
Silence didn’t arrive at once.
The distant crowd was still there, and the stadium still held its late-night thrum, but the room itself had gone quiet.
The benches looked longer without bodies in front of them.
The lockers stood open in uneven lines. The floor was marked with studs, tape, discarded grass, and little dark patches where water had dripped from hair and towels.
A few footballs had been left near the wall, and two stretch bands were twisted together in front of the whiteboard.
Marcos stowed his phone back into his bag before sliding his socks off and getting to his feet. He dropped his shorts and packed them up. His hand found the back of his neck and rubbed it.
The quietness sat oddly heavy around him.
With his underwear hanging low on his hips, Marcos walked around the changing room, feet dragging slightly, hand running across the wall as he passed.
The paint was cool beneath his fingers. He followed the edge of it from one locker bay to the next, then turned without deciding to and crossed toward the loose footballs.
He picked up the first one and put it back in the rack.
Then the second. Then the third, even though none of them were his responsibility.
The stretch bands came next. He untangled them slowly, working one loop free, then another, until they hung properly from the hook where they should have been in the first place.
He found a roll of tape under the bench and threw it into the supply box.
He nudged a towel with his foot, then picked it up and dropped it into the laundry bin.
He moved without pace or direction, circling the room once, then half of it again.
Every task lasted a few seconds. None of them gave him the space he needed.
The win should have settled something in him. Cleared his mind. He had done what he was meant to do, and the team had won. The supporters had roared. The room had sung itself hoarse.
Marcos pressed his knuckles against his sternum and exhaled hard. His heart had climbed too high and refused to come down.
A door closed behind him, and he turned.
Sebastian returned alone. He stopped just inside the doorway, eyes sweeping the room first, taking in the empty benches, the open lockers, the wet marks on the floor, then landing on Marcos.
Sebastian furrowed his brow. “Thought everyone would be gone by now.”
“Got kind of distracted,” Marcos admitted, keeping his gaze on Sebastian.
He wasn’t bleeding anymore. But dried blood had settled against the edge of his mouth, along the line of his jaw, and down the side of his neck, smeared and stubborn.
“Fair.” Sebastian stepped further into the room. “You good?”
“Yeah, yeah. Was just texting Becca for a while.”
“Becca?”
Marcos nodded, heading back toward his bag. “My sister.”
“Oh. I didn’t know you had a sister.”
“I have two.”
Marcos reached down and shoved a pair of socks further into his bag and tried to make his hands behave. His fingers didn’t shake much, but he felt the start of it in his wrists.
“Oh, cool,” Sebastian mumbled.
Marcos heard him shuffle behind him before letting out a low groan.
Marcos turned, seeing Sebastian touching his face, scrunching it up as he did. He had caught the edge of dried blood near his cheekbone and pulled at it too hard.
“In pain?” Marcos asked.
Sebastian shook his head quickly. “Nah. Not really. I’ve already popped some pills.”
“Guess the pills don’t help with you looking like shit.”
Sebastian snorted. “Yeah. The blood isn’t really coming off. And I think some got on my nipple.” He pulled the collar of his jersey out and looked down at his chest.
Marcos almost laughed at the comment. “Warm water and soap. Gotta let it kinda soak for a bit before you scrub it.”
“What?” Sebastian raised his eyebrow.
Marcos sighed. “To get the blood off. I can give you a hand if you want?”
“Are you sure?”
The question landed too softly. Sebastian was still holding the collar of his jersey, still watching him with blood dried at the corner of his mouth and something guarded behind his eyes.
Marcos’ pulse pounded hard through his throat. “Just come to the showers.”
He grabbed his towel and stepped past Sebastian before his body could decide anything else.
The corridor into the showers was cooler, the tiles marked with water from everyone who had already passed through.
Marcos stopped near the wall without turning any of the showers on and leaned back against it, towel gripped in one hand, and listened to the ringing in his ears.
This isn’t a good idea.
The thought came in plainly. It was the same thought that had been sitting with him for weeks, only now there was no training drill, no team meeting, no full changing room, and no match pressure to put between him and it.
He flexed his fingers around the towel until the fabric bunched in his palm.
Sebastian soon walked in, only in his underwear, holding his towel. He walked slowly, eyes not leaving Marcos. His mouth twitched, then his brow furrowed.
“You don’t have to…do this,” Sebastian said, stopping a few steps short of Marcos, gaze flicking to the floor.
“Do what?” Marcos asked, arms folding across his chest, eyes fighting to stay on Sebastian’s face.
“You’ve barely said a word to me in, like, two months off the field.” Sebastian sighed. “And look, I get it. I do. But…if this is, like, an apology or whatever…we can just forget it. All of it. Nothing happened.”
Marcos watched Sebastian.
The waterless shower room amplified every small movement.
Sebastian’s fingers tightened around the towel at his leg, then loosened.
His chest rose and fell quicker with each breath, even though he had just played a full match and should have been too tired for nerves to find him this easily.
Dried blood sat at his lip, and his tongue touched near it once before he stopped himself.
His eyes kept shifting, landing on Marcos, dropping away, then coming back.
Sebastian was giving him an out.
After everything, after what happened in his apartment and the way Marcos had left, after two months of words cut short and eyes dragged away and bodies forced together when football made it impossible to avoid, Sebastian would still let him step back.
He would let Marcos call it nothing. He would let him leave it there.
Marcos gripped his bicep hard, fingers digging into muscle.
He couldn’t walk away from what happened. He had already tried that. He had tried silence. Tried going home to his family and being normal at the dinner table while Paula watched him for too long. Tried standing beside Sebastian in drills with a ball between them and pretending that fixed anything.
None of it had worked.
The heat stayed under his skin whenever he thought about it. The heaviness in his gut stayed too, dragging at him whenever he remembered Sebastian’s mouth on his, Sebastian’s hand on him, his own body answering before his head had caught up.
No. He had to face it.
“I didn’t know what to do,” Marcos finally said, his arms dropping back to his sides. “I just felt…wrong after.”
“I know.” Sebastian took a step forward. “I’ve been there.” He took in a deep breath. “I shouldn’t have kept going.”
“No.” Marcos pushed off the wall. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” Marcos stepped closer to Sebastian, his hand extending to rest on his shoulder, and he nodded toward the shower. “Go sit down there.”
Sebastian raised his eyebrow but didn’t argue. He stepped around Marcos and lowered himself to the floor beneath one of the showerheads, back resting against the tile.
Marcos turned the shower on.
The water came out cold for a few seconds, causing Sebastian to tense before it warmed. Steam began to rise softly around them.
“Is that okay?” Marcos asked, looking down at Sebastian.
“Yeah,” Sebastian said quietly.
Marcos’ lips drew tight, and he nodded. For a moment he watched the water fall onto Sebastian, landing on his lower stomach and legs. It ran over skin, catching on muscle, before spilling down into the waistband of his underwear.
Marcos leaned across the wall to get some bodywash, then came to kneel next to Sebastian. The tile was hard beneath his knees, and he felt it immediately because every part of him had already been worked through the match. He ignored it.
He took his towel and held it under the water, letting it soak all the way through, warmth running over his fingers and wrist.
“Uh, do you want to…?” Marcos held the bodywash in front of him.
Sebastian’s eyes flicked between the bottle and Marcos before he took the bottle with a restrained grin and started squeezing some into his hand.
He rubbed it carefully over the bloodstains on his chest first, then up along his neck and jaw.
It made the dried patches turn darker before they loosened, streaking faintly down with the water.
Marcos kept his gaze on Sebastian.
There was no need for Marcos to do this. To be here. Sebastian could clean himself up. He would have done it hundreds of times already in some form or another.
But here they were.
Both knowing the truth, yet neither saying it.
“So,” Marcos started, bringing his gaze to match Sebastian’s. “You wear contacts on the field, or have you been blind the whole time?”
Sebastian smirked, layers of bodywash now thick over his jaw and chest. “You think I’d be able to kick your ass on the field while being blind?”
“I don’t think you’ve ever kicked my ass on the field,” Marcos said, taking the towel out from under the water and resting it on Sebastian’s chest over the blood.
“Disagree. Remember that junior’s game in Ballarat when we were fifteen?”