|| Chapter Twenty-Two || Sebastian – “Stay tonight?”
|| Chapter Twenty-Two ||
Sebastian – “Stay tonight?”
Sebastian’s apartment was silent, aside from the buzz of the fridge and the low hum of traffic below.
The bar had still been loud when he left. Music, voices, the dull clink of glasses being knocked together too hard. Outside, the cold had cut through all of it, making Sebastian tuck his hands into his jacket pockets as he walked.
The apartment had held the chill of the night too well, colder somehow than the street outside. He felt it the second he stepped over the threshold. It moved under his jacket, across the back of his neck, and down through the thin layer of heat still left in his body from the match and the pub.
A shiver ran through him. Sebastian pulled his arms closer around himself and walked straight over to turn the heater on, then glanced back toward the door.
He shook his head at himself before heading for his bedroom, pulling his jacket off as he went.
He dropped it over the chair near the wardrobe, then pushed his jeans down and kicked them across the floor.
He dragged open a drawer and pulled out sweatpants and an oversized hoodie, changing quickly before the room could settle too coldly around him.
A buzz came through against his leg.
Sebastian’s hand went to his pocket and pulled his phone out, expecting to see Marcos’ name.
It wasn’t Marcos.
It was Loren.
Still haven’t called dad.
That was it.
No “hello.” No easing into it. No question mark to soften the accusation into something he could pretend wasn’t one. Just the truth staring back at him from the screen.
Sebastian sighed. He had told Loren he would try harder. With her. With their parents. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t thought about calling his father. He had. Several times. His finger had hovered over the name more than once.
It would probably be fine. It was mostly always fine now. His father would answer. His mother might call out from somewhere in the background. There would be the usual questions at the start, the ones that sounded simple.
How was football? Was he eating properly? Had he spoken to his grandparents? Had he called Loren? Had he thought about coming down soon?
Then, eventually, one of them would bring up the past.
Sebastian’s parents always seemed to think things had been different when he was a kid. Not as bad. Not as angry. Not as full of slammed doors, muttered comments, long silences, and Sebastian learning which parts of himself to hide.
He had stopped trying to argue about it a long time ago.
The thought settled uncomfortably in his stomach.
He didn’t respond.
Instead, he placed his phone on charge beside his bed and walked back to the living room. The heater had started to work by then, warmth pushing through the room, softening the air around the couch and the windows. Sebastian stood near it briefly, shoulders loosening.
His mind returned to the pub. To what he had said in Marcos’ ear.
Massage.
The lie was that he was good at them.
He had received enough through recovery and injury management to have an idea of what he was doing. That was hopefully enough.
And with how he had treated Marcos recently, he needed to make it up to him.
The thought made his jaw tighten.
He had not been easy. He knew that. The worst part was that he had seen himself doing it and still hadn’t always been able to stop.
Pulling back at training when Marcos looked too comfortable.
Getting sharp when Marcos asked questions that were reasonable.
Letting fear sit in his mouth until it turned into something cruel and spilled out as anger.
The comments had been worse lately, or maybe Sebastian had stopped being able to push them aside. A shout from the boundary. A reply under a match clip. A teammate laughing over a harmless line until harmless stopped sounding harmless.
That was the other reason he didn’t want to call his father.
The online stuff would mean nothing to him, probably.
Or it would mean something in the wrong direction.
He would see the comments, the stupid edits, the weird half-joking posts about Marcos and Sebastian being too obsessed with each other, and say something careless enough to prove Sebastian had been right not to call.
Comments thrown his way when he was a kid had wedged themselves under his ribs and refused to let go. His father had probably never meant anything by them. Just words thrown in anger when Sebastian didn’t act the way he wanted.
Still, the possibility of facing it again made Sebastian’s skin feel too tight.
He looked down and realised he had started picking at the edge of his thumbnail. He stopped.
His eyes wandered to the window, out over the cityscape. The lights filled the night, stretching outward in lines and clusters. Roads, buildings, little squares of other people’s lives stacked high above the streets.
Sebastian forced the thoughts of his family out of his head, the world outside moving below him, indifferent to how he felt.
He turned his focus to Marcos, and a grin spread across his face before he could stop it.
He had just the idea.
When Sebastian had been signed with the Geelong Rams, he had taken a bad hit after a hard collision during training, going up for a mark and landing badly enough that his back had complained for weeks. It hadn’t been anything serious enough to stop him playing, but it was still annoying.
For a while, someone had come to his old apartment to work through the tightness when he couldn’t get enough time with the club staff. Sebastian had bought his own massage table because he had felt bad they had to carry theirs through the building.
His smirk grew as he went to the hallway cupboard and pulled it out.
The table was wedged behind a vacuum cleaner and a box of things he had brought with him from Geelong and never properly unpacked. Sebastian dragged it free, then carried it into the living room. Eventually, it stood in the middle of the space.
Sebastian stood back with his hands on his hips to take it in.
It was a little strange. A massage table in the middle of the living room did not exactly say casual late-night visit between teammates, but that ship had already sunk long ago when Sebastian’s face had been planted between Marcos’ thighs.
Sebastian went back to the cupboard and found a folded white towel, then another. He set one over the end of the table and placed the other on the coffee table beside the oil he found tucked behind a heating pack. The bottle was only half-full, but it would do.
He looked at the setup again. His stomach fluttered, expanding with a nervous, pleased sort of heat that made him bite his lower lip.
A knock came at his door.
His pulse hit hard enough that his whole body seemed to notice.
Sebastian spun on his heel, feeling each rush of blood through his chest as he headed down the hall and opened the door.
Marcos leaned against the doorframe, hair curling slightly messier from the wind outside, jacket zipped halfway, expression softer than it had been in the bar.
“Hi,” Marcos said quietly.
“Hi,” Sebastian murmured, stepping to the side.
Marcos didn’t move.
Sebastian stared at him for half a second, then frowned. “Get inside. What are you doing?”
Marcos stepped through the door with a chuckle. “What?”
“Jesus. What if someone saw you?” Sebastian closed the door quickly.
“It’s, like, one in the morning. No one was gonna—” Marcos paused as he toed his shoes off, gaze fixed on the living room. “What’s that?”
Heat climbed up the back of Sebastian’s neck, and his hand came up to meet it. “I’m a man of my word.”
“You have a whole table?” Marcos watched Sebastian, smiling.
“If you’re gonna make fun of me, you can go home—”
“No, no. It’s cool.” Marcos stepped into the living room, Sebastian behind him. “I’ve never had a proper massage before.”
“Really?” Sebastian questioned, circling the table.
“Yeah. Only on my knees when they’ve played up.”
Sebastian hummed. “I’ll give you the full experience then.”
“Which is?” Marcos walked to Sebastian, hand running up his arm.
The touch settled him more than it should have. Marcos’ palm shifted from his wrist to his elbow, then up to his shoulder, warm through the hoodie. It had been a while since he’d felt Marcos like that.
He placed his lips on Marcos’, gentle and quick. “Just trust me.”
Marcos groaned. “Fine.”
“You’ll have to take your clothes off, though.”
Marcos squinted. “All of them?”
Sebastian chuckled. “You can put a towel over your ass. Don’t worry.”
“What about you?” Marcos raised his eyebrow.
“Don’t worry about it. Just get ready and lie face down. I’m just gonna go check something.”
Marcos hummed again but didn’t say anything.
Sebastian turned and walked out of the living room to his bedroom, straight to his phone.
Another message from Loren stared back at him.
You need to do something.
Sebastian read it twice. His fingers tensed against the side of his phone. The words were worse than the first message because they were broader. Less specific. It reached past the phone, past his father, past whatever version of family Loren thought they could be.
He placed the phone back down. He would deal with it tomorrow.
“Ready,” Marcos called through the apartment.
Sebastian closed his eyes. He pulled a smile onto his face before he started back toward the living room. By the time he reached the hallway, it wasn’t quite forced anymore.
Marcos had done what he was told.
All of his clothes were tossed in a pile on the end of the couch, underwear and socks included.
He was lying face down on the table with a white towel draped across his ass, arms folded loosely near his head, one cheek resting against the padding.
The broad line of his back rose and fell with a slow breath.
His shoulders were heavy with muscle and fatigue, and his legs stretched long behind him.
Sebastian took in the sight as he walked closer, and the words came out before he had properly decided whether he should let them: “Good boy.”