Chapter Twenty
Marcos – “Things are different now”
LATE APRIL
“If you don’t finish this set, I’m telling everyone I’m stronger than you,” Sebastian said, standing over Marcos as he bench-pressed another rep, air hissing from his lips.
The bar moved slower than Marcos wanted.
It had started cleanly enough. First rep, second, third, the weight heavy but manageable, his shoulders set properly against the bench and his feet planted wide on the rubber flooring.
By the sixth, his chest had started to burn.
By the eighth, the burn had turned sharp, and he could feel the rest of his body trying to help in ways it shouldn’t.
His shoulders wanted to roll forward. His back wanted to arch too much. His grip wanted to shift.
He forced everything back into place as he lowered the bar again.
Sebastian’s hands hovered close enough to take the weight if he needed to, though Marcos had no intention of him needing to.
He stood close to Marcos’ head, feet braced on either side of the bench, his thighs dangerously close.
Close enough that, if Marcos looked in the wrong direction, he could start seeing up the inseam.
That wasn’t helping.
Neither was the fact that Sebastian knew exactly where he was standing.
Marcos dragged in another breath and pushed the bar up.
One more.
Marcos lowered the bar again, slower this time, chest screaming enough that his jaw tightened around the breath he was holding. The metal touched down lightly against him before he drove upward. The lift dragged. His arms shook near the top, but he locked it out and guided the bar back into place.
Marcos sat up quickly, breathing hard, and turned to face Sebastian. “Looks like you’re still the weak one.”
Sebastian’s mouth twitched before he covered it with a flat look.
“Damn, fucking big, man,” Lachie said, walking by and slapping Marcos’ shoulder.
The contact made Marcos’ chest tighten, and he rolled one shoulder back as Lachie slowed near them. Lachie was a few years older than Marcos, smaller, leaner, dark hair down to his shoulders, and had a complexion darker than Marcos’.
His eyes darted between Marcos and Sebastian. “Making Seb look small.”
“Fuck you, dude,” Sebastian said, throwing him the finger. “Like you can talk.”
Lachie laughed, stepping around gym equipment and joining Harry deeper in the gym.
“He’s right. You got noodle arms,” Marcos said, standing up, breathing deeply.
“Fuck you, too.” Sebastian rolled his shoulders. “I can lift similar to you.”
“You could never tell.”
“You really just enjoy bullying me, don’t you?”
Marcos’ voice slipped into a bad impression of Sebastian. “It’s funny.”
“Really? You’re still on about that?”
Marcos smirked, then lifted his shoulder before moving onto the next exercise, Sebastian in tow behind him.
That was how it had been for the past few weeks.
Not normal, because normal wasn’t even close to what they were, but steady enough that Marcos had stopped feeling like the floor might shift underneath him every time Sebastian looked his way. They came to training, did the work, spoke when they had to, and sometimes when they didn’t.
They still followed the program set out for them by Jacob, running drills and spotting each other in the gym, sitting near enough in review that no one noticed, because everyone had stopped thinking it was strange for Marcos and Sebastian to close without looking like they were about to start swinging at each other.
But there was something underneath it all now that the others couldn’t see.
Sebastian’s hand could rest against his ribs while correcting his form, and no one would look twice if it lasted a second longer than it should have.
Marcos could lean over Sebastian during a set and talk low enough that only Sebastian heard him, and the rest of the room would take it as training noise.
Then there was the hand that lingered too long. The gaze that held through the locker room before one of them turned away. The smirk Sebastian gave when Marcos made a joke to the team and looked his way wanting to know whether Sebastian had laughed as well.
Those things mattered, though Marcos hated that he kept thinking about them.
He and Sebastian weren’t anything.
That was the cleanest version Marcos could give himself.
They were teammates who had slept together once, except even that was not clean because of the edges around it.
Sebastian’s apartment stayed with him in pieces: the couch, the kitchen counter, the grilled cheese, Paula staring at him later and telling him not to be stupid.
All of it came back at odd moments. While he was loading plates for a squat or when he was stretching his hamstrings against the wall.
While Jacob was talking through centre clearance structures and Sebastian stood across from him with his arms folded, looking exactly like himself and nothing like the person who had looked up from beneath Marcos with his tongue out, waiting.
They had not seen each other outside of the club since.
Marcos kept telling himself that wasn’t a bad thing. He also kept telling himself to stop thinking about it.
He’d had hookups before. This shouldn’t have been any different.
He didn’t need to know what it was, and Sebastian probably didn’t either.
Though, the past few weeks had gone by too quickly for him to work it out properly.
They had beaten the Geelong Rams the night after Sebastian’s apartment, then the Richmond Lions after that, which should have given everyone a chance to breathe and had instead done nothing but encourage Jacob to make training worse.
More drills. Harder skirmishes. More progressive overload in the gym. Longer days.
Three wins in a row had put the Mustangs back into the competition and dragged them up the ladder far enough for people outside the club to start paying attention again, but inside the club, the mood was different. No one wanted to be the player who let the run slip.
The team hadn’t started to complain properly yet. Everyone was still running on the high of momentum, and the strange relief of seeing them at a higher position on the ladder.
But there were grumbles now. Quiet ones. A few comments in the locker room about lives outside the club taking a hit. Someone missing a family dinner. Someone else forgetting to answer messages for a few days.
Marcos felt it, too. Less time at home. Less time with family. Less time to let his mind actually roll over what was happening in his life. A part of him didn’t mind, though, because it was afraid to examine it too closely
Sebastian slipped past Marcos and toward the cable machine, grabbing the attachment first and adjusting the pin, barely glancing at the weight.
“Kinda light,” Marcos pointed out, and Sebastian furrowed his brow.
“I’m not trying to go for a PR.”
“Still.” Marcos grinned.
Sebastian let go of the attachment, and the weight dropped with a loud clang. His expression didn’t change as he stepped toward Marcos, but something in his eyes did. A small, private flicker, that was there and gone before Marcos fully caught it.
Someone laughed behind Marcos before Parker’s voice cut through the gym. “You two gonna kiss or fight?”
Marcos turned to see a few heads snap in their direction, with a few muffled pockets of laughter coming through.
“Depends how much you’re gonna pay for one or the other,” Marcos joked, causing a few more people to join in on the laughter.
Marcos turned back to Sebastian and noticed he’d taken a step back, the space noticeable immediately. It had been a stupid joke, but something had shifted in Sebastian that Marcos couldn’t quite understand.
Sebastian started his set as Marcos eyed Parker, who had already shoved Corey, who was blocking some plates and moved on from what was said. Marcos’ brow furrowed, and he glanced at Sebastian, who finished his rep.
He set the handle back without a sound and stepped aside. “Your turn.”
| | | |
By the time April turned into May, the Mustangs had started to look like a team other clubs needed to plan for.
The Central Coast Sharks were their next win, ugly in the first half and sharp in the second. The wind off the coast made every high ball a problem, and Marcos spent most of the match adjusting under kicks that died or carried without warning.
Sebastian adapted quicker than everyone else. He stopped waiting for clean service and started reading the bounce instead, cutting through packs with his head low and his hands already out. Marcos found him twice from stoppages that should have gone nowhere. The second led to a goal through Andrew.
By then, people were starting to use the word ‘chemistry’.
Marcos heard it in the rooms after the match when one of the assistant coaches said it to Jacob, not quietly enough. Jacob only grunted and told them their defensive spread in the first quarter had been shit.
The Western Sydney Sentinels came to Melbourne the week after and left with a loss that felt cleaner than any of the ones before it.
The Mustangs controlled the middle for longer stretches.
Parker and Corey stayed wide enough to stretch the field, and every time Marcos got first hand to the ball, Sebastian seemed to appear where the tap wanted to go.
Their next game didn’t go as well. The Adelaide Devils were the first loss after the run had begun to feel like something they could hold.
It was a narrow loss in cold, ugly conditions, decided by a late clearance.
Marcos won the tap. Sebastian got caught half a step behind because Adelaide’s rover blocked him early, and by the time the ball spilled, the Devils had too many numbers moving.
Sebastian had bent over after the final siren sounded, and Marcos had walked over, pulling him up straight and wrapping his arm around Sebastian’s shoulder.
“Unlucky,” he whispered, and Sebastian had given a small grin in response.
That image hit social media harder than the news of the loss.
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