Breakout Year

by K.D. Casey

Hell, maybe he’d start a collection: owning books and reading books were two different hobbies, anyway.

You’re really into the technical aspects of structuring mystery books? Akiva countered. Eitan scribbled a response. No, but you are. Akiva didn’t deny it, and he didn’t glance to where he could practically feel Eitan radiating a smile.

Turned out, there was a certain vestigial power to being smiled at by a man you’d had a crush on in your early twenties, even years later. Akiva would not do anything about it. At most, he’d put it in a book.

“You ever do any writing?” “This feels like a press conference,” Akiva said. “Well, not one of mine, because you’re doing a good job. Including avoiding a question you don’t want to answer.” And Akiva couldn’t help it—he laughed.

“No, the team gave me this. It’s supposed to monitor my heart rate.” He looked up at Akiva, eyes bright. “Which is, uh, going pretty good right now.”

“Everyone is staring at us.” “Why, are you famous?”

Eitan smiled, subtly different from his smile at Akiva, not that Akiva was keeping track of that at all.

“If you wrote a book, I’d want to read it.” Eitan plucked a piece of bread from the basket on the table, ate it with a scatter of crumbs. Akiva’s heart did a thing. An entirely unwanted freeze-clench in his chest, the kind that came from someone saying something you didn’t know you wanted to hear.

Eitan’s smile reminded Akiva of that candle: warm, slightly flickering, genuine.

Eitan gave him another look, this one glowing and hopeful in a way Akiva didn’t have within him to extinguish. “No,” Eitan said. “No, I don’t regret a thing.”

If Eitan kissed him on the cheek, he’d feel his stubble. He’d smell the faint scent of his deodorant. His lips might accidentally brush Akiva’s mouth. He laid a kiss at Akiva’s jaw that was scarcely more than how he might kiss someone in greeting. I am kissing a man. A bare nothing of a kiss. Still, it counted. It had to count.

Mostly, Eitan wanted to know what was gonna happen next in his book, curiosity a sharp pull in his belly.

Except for the flush of heat up his neck, the same one he’d had when Akiva told him to kiss him. A feeling definitely not covered under contractual terms and conditions.

He didn’t move his hand immediately. Couldn’t seem to. He’d touched other guys’ hair before, he was sure of it. He just couldn’t think of when. He wanted to take strands of it between his fingers. He wanted to lean in and trace the tip of his nose up the tendon of Akiva’s neck to catch the scent of Akiva’s shampoo. He wanted to do a lot of things and sitting here, in the dark, it was impossible to tease those wants apart: if this was about Akiva or men in general or the loneliness he felt when other players flinched away from him.

Akiva adjusted his shirt, revealing a flash of his lower belly divided by a trail of hair a shade darker than what was on his head. I could kiss him there. Fuck. Eitan had either had too much to drink or not enough.

Something slotted in Eitan’s brain just then, a sense of things falling into place. How much he wanted to be here dancing. How much he wanted to feel the ripple of Akiva’s muscles under his fingers. How this felt right the way things hadn’t in a long time. Maybe ever.

Eitan couldn’t seem to stop looking at him. You can either do that or ask out Akiva for real, but you can’t do both. You can’t tell him this is just for show then try to kiss him. And fuck, for once, Eitan knew the good decision was also the right decision.

“You okay?” Akiva asked, like he could tell Eitan had gotten lost in his own head. “Yeah, just a little distracted.” By you. Akiva laughed.

Akiva’s eyebrows furrowed. Eitan wanted to kiss that little wrinkle between them or possibly the curve of his mouth. How did you not know?

“Akiva brought wine.” Rachel returned the chicken to the oven and skimmed her hands down her apron. “Which was unnecessary, because he already was bringing gossip.”

“You like him?” Years ago, Akiva had found out that could lie to himself, but lying to Mark was a much harder prospect. “Yes,” he said truthfully. “And he treats you well?” “Yes.” “Good.”

At least his tea had cooled down from boiling to perfect. When he’d left, Akiva had been drinking a cup of coffee. If we kissed, his mouth would taste like sugar. A thought Eitan should clear like steam but didn’t.

Especially when he hit a patch that was especially sensitized—shit, stubble burn from Akiva’s jaw against his, which was what happened when you drank and then decided that your friend’s face was the best thing you’d ever seen. Eitan didn’t groan. Or didn’t groan too loud, in case Isabel was still around.

Eitan had dropped Akiva into his guest bed and helped him kick off his shoes, then had a very normal night staring at his bedroom ceiling and not thinking about Akiva’s lips, or stomach, or the way Akiva had wound his arm around Eitan’s shoulders while dancing, or the strange urge he had to see the inside of Akiva’s house.

He loved the city; it still didn’t love him back, if social media was to be believed.

Akiva: This sounds like it’d be easier to explain in person. Having some sense of chill would mean not responding immediately. Eitan responded immediately. Eitan: I can come to you

He was wearing a hoodie—Eitan’s hoodie—and Eitan couldn’t see his own name on the sweatshirt, but he knew it was there, resting across the span of Akiva’s back. That swoop of…something he felt was not conducive to an amicable parting of ways.

Eitan couldn’t quite seem to look him in the eye, gaze caught on the slightly grayed tips of his fingers. If they held hands, Eitan’s fingers would look the same. Williams’s You got it bad replayed in his head for whatever reason.

“You don’t have to open this now if you don’t want,” Eitan said. Akiva smiled. “Can I?” Eitan motioned that he should go ahead, and Akiva peeled back the tape, careful, like it wasn’t just a newspaper Eitan picked up at a bodega in a frantic rush that morning. “Eitan…” Akiva stared down at the package as if he was trying to find words.

“Hey.” Akiva reached for his hand, fingers dragging across Eitan’s. A nothing kind of touch, except for how it wasn’t. Eitan had thought his hands were desensitized from wearing batting gloves, from the callus-generating task of fielding baseballs for a living. Maybe no one had touched him right in that spot, in just that way, before. Certainly not in a way he could remember, and he was certain he’d remember that. He breathed purposefully.

Eitan looked at him: at the lines of his eyelashes, the strong set of his shoulders, the stubborn cut of his jaw. “You did all that on your own?” Akiva nodded slowly. “How could you possibly think you don’t have guts?” He didn’t have time to say much more, not when Akiva kissed him, a dart of a kiss, scarcely more than a press of his mouth against Eitan’s, quick enough that Eitan would miss it if he blinked, so he didn’t.

“Um.” Because that was easier than saying, Why are you apologizing? Easier than saying, Kiss me again. “It’s all right.”

Akiva’s voice came out breathy, and Eitan wanted to feel Akiva’s chest under his hands, to drink the word from his tongue, and either his car had gotten smaller in the past five seconds, or the world had gotten immeasurably wider, because all his thoughts turned into I could.

He was still wearing Eitan’s sweatshirt. “I can give this back.” Like he might just strip off standing in his driveway. “Keep it,” Eitan said. “Wear it next time.” “Okay, next time.” There was a hint of a promise in it, a faint but present smile.

Usually it’s all—” Miss Linda did an exaggerated huff that Akiva supposed was meant to be an impression of him. “But not today.” “Are you ganging up on me?” For that, Akiva got two almost instantaneous yeses and the final drop of Miss Linda’s candy into his hand.

Eitan: It’s rescue dog day at the park! Eitan, in a team-branded shirt, holding a puppy, who was licking his nose as Eitan laughed in delight. Eitan: They gave me the smallest one ’cause I’m short. Don’t you think he kinda looks like you? Because the puppy was a squirming labradoodle with a stern expression.

Eitan: I really thought I was gonna stay in Cleveland. Akiva pushed down his reaction. This wasn’t real, except for the ache in his chest. He could feel Sue and Miss Linda studying him. Whatever his face was doing, he’d hear about it as he drove Sue home. Akiva: For what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re in New York.

Mid-gesture, Eitan seemed to realize he was being observed. Slowly, he turned toward where Akiva was standing. Smiled impossibly wider.

So Akiva leaned into Eitan’s space and breathed in deeply. The ends of Eitan’s hair tickled his cheek, as fleeting as a kiss. “What?” Eitan asked, but he was smiling.

Eitan’s smile crinkled the corners of his eyes, and Akiva would not press his mouth there, not for all the money in Eitan’s bank account, not if this wasn’t real.

Eitan pressed his lips together as if in demonstration, and he had a wide mouth, as generous as the rest of him, and Akiva thought he’d left lusting for unattainable men in the Arizona desert, but it turned out unattainability was much worse when it was sitting right next to you and paying for you to kiss it goodnight.

His smile took on a teasing edge, and Akiva wanted to press his teeth to the corner of Eitan’s mouth. He drove his thumb into the side of his thigh instead.

“Should’ve seen that one coming,” Eitan said at the same moment Akiva whispered, “Kiss me.” Eitan blinked. “What?”

And it was possible Akiva had gone too far, because Eitan made a noise of disapproval at take advantage. “Get your money’s worth, at least,” Akiva added. “Right.” Eitan swallowed. “Good thinking.”

“I haven’t…” Eitan began, then shook his head, and Akiva was about to tell him not to self-censor when Eitan’s lips touched his. Eitan kissed him long and closed-mouthed, lips firm, breath a soft fall on Akiva’s cheek. Akiva was about to declare this a success, very realistic, entirely for the click of phone cameras, when Eitan made a noise somewhere between an approval and a groan, then slid his tongue past Akiva’s.

And for a single fluorescent minute, Akiva let himself be kissed.

“Hey.” Akiva pulled back and rested his forehead against Eitan’s. His cheeks were warm for reasons he’d like to chalk up to embarrassment—they really were being photographed—but he knew weren’t just attributable to that. He pitched his voice low. Some things were for performance and some were to be whispered in the space between them, something so new and uncertain that Akiva wasn’t sure if it could even make it across that bare distance. “Hey,” he said again, like that was the only word he knew.

“How was that?” Good, good, good, say it was good, some part of Akiva advocated. Another more sensible part told him that he shouldn’t want like this, openly, or as openly as their arrangement would allow. He told that part to shut the fuck up. “I could ask you the same thing.” Eitan’s grin broadened. “Like I just jumped off a high dive.”

“In a good way or—” Akiva didn’t have time to answer the question, not when Eitan closed the distance between them for a fraction of a second, then held off right as his lips were about to make contact with Akiva’s. “In a good way,” Eitan confirmed, but he forced himself back.

Eitan moved constantly; this time that restlessness manifested as minute strokes over Akiva’s knuckles with the pads of his fingers, leaving his skin sensitized.