Breakout Year

by K.D. Casey

This kiss was a brief, appropriate press of their mouths, if not for the rub of Eitan’s thumb against his neck, stroking his pulse.

But no, they wouldn’t be dating in the offseason. They weren’t even dating now, no matter how many times they’d kissed. No matter what look Akiva gave him after they did: something hot and inviting. But that invitation never came, and it wasn’t Eitan’s place to ask for more.

“What’d your parents say?” Akiva asked. “Haven’t told ’em yet.” Akiva knew his most tri-state-area feature was forgetting the specifics of other parts of the country. Ohio was…an hour behind? Two? “’Cause of the time difference?” he asked. Eitan shook his head. “Cleveland’s on Eastern Time. I just wanted to tell you—to see if you wanted to celebrate.” He called me first.

know you wouldn’t say this in public—that maybe you’re too nice to say it at all. But fuck Cleveland. They didn’t know what they had, or if they did, they didn’t value you the way they should have. Either way, they shouldn’t have traded you like that.” Eitan’s mouth—the part of his face Akiva had spent the past few weeks both obsessed with and studiously avoiding—curved up. Akiva wanted to kiss him there, to learn the exact topography of his smile, something real, something lingering.

“You in the mood for anything in particular tonight?” Eitan asked. You.

Trains were good for clearing his head. Unlike standing next to Eitan on the sidewalk, in the shade of his building’s awning, watched by the doorman, the security cameras, and the pale city moon. I should kiss him.

So he cupped Eitan’s neck, brushed the short hairs there, the skin tanned from hours in the sun. “How come you don’t wear a necklace?” Akiva asked, because most players rocked elaborate chains and pendants. Eitan’s laugh vibrated Akiva’s fingers. It was hard to keep business as business when Akiva knew how that felt.

Briefly, Akiva tightened his hand on Eitan’s neck. Eitan’s eyes widened. Akiva pressed his fingers ever so slightly and watched a puff of air exit Eitan’s mouth. Surprise, possibly. Do you like when people do that? A question Akiva couldn’t ask standing out on the sidewalk. Do you like when I do that?

He stretched up to kiss Akiva, and Eitan was the least shy person Akiva had ever met, but there was something almost hesitant in that kiss, like a question mark sitting on the end of Eitan’s tongue that stayed firmly, appropriately, infuriatingly in his own mouth.

“Because you’re a man?” Because this isn’t real. Even if the reality of it felt as unavoidable as the door behind Akiva’s back. “Because you don’t need to go out of your way.” “I know. But I want to.” Flirting was easy when you didn’t mean it or when you really, really did. “Is that all you want?” Akiva asked. Eitan didn’t answer, not directly, just clasped the front of Akiva’s shirt between his fingers and tugged him down.

Kissing Eitan, he was reminded of that rain, of how everything in his body condensed to the next step, the pleasurable burn in his lungs, the work of his muscles. His hand found the back of Eitan’s neck. A distraction except for how Eitan looked up at him, dark brown eyes wide and focused. When he smiled, Akiva bit his mouth just to hear him moan.

Eitan’s tongue slid back into his mouth; his hands wrapped the span of Akiva’s ribs. “You’re too thin,” he muttered. Akiva laughed. “You gonna take care of me?” He wanted another kiss, for Eitan to pull him into the backseat of his vehicle and do just that. Not what he actually got: Eitan’s blink. His adamant, “Yes.”

“You should…” Akiva pulled together the remnants of his good judgment. “Take me home.” “Upstairs is closer,” Eitan said.

Akiva had twenty-five minutes to catalog all the ways that Eitan drove and fielded third base and kissed and draped his hand, casually but meaningfully, on Akiva’s knee for a fleeting second before he had to shift gears again.

“I’m sure that’s not true.” Eitan shook his head. “No, I know it’s not true.” He slowly turned, perusing the room as if there was something interesting to be found in Akiva’s secondhand couch and slightly warped floorboards. “I want to know everything there is to know about you.”

As if inspecting Akiva’s plants on the shelf was the equivalent of meeting his family. That liquid feeling in Akiva’s belly was back, softer than the urgency with which they’d kissed by Eitan’s car, but no less demanding. How impossibly generous Eitan was—with his money, with things beyond money.

“It looks like yours”—Eitan took an inhale—“it smells like you.” “I smell like wet socks?” “You know in Arizona right after it rained? That’s what you smell like.”

Akiva wasn’t sure how he was supposed to stand there in the privacy of his house and not kiss Eitan.

Sometimes, when Akiva got stuck writing and needed to get things going, he had a character jump from a moving train. That was what he felt like now—poised, breathless, about to leap.

Eitan stepped closer. Put one hand at his waist, another at Akiva’s jaw. “Is this all right?” Eitan asked, as if there was any wrong to be found in the curve of his hand at Akiva’s stubble. Akiva nodded into the safety of Eitan’s palm, not trusting himself to speak.

“Please,” Akiva said, a nonspecific sort of please, but Eitan heard him anyway, like there was nothing Akiva could ask for that Eitan wouldn’t give him. Eitan leaned up. Pressed their mouths together. It was just like all the other times they’d kissed, except for how it wasn’t. Eitan’s lips parted under his. He traced his tongue into Akiva’s mouth unshyly, and Akiva could taste Eitan’s laughter when he sucked his tongue.

He clung to Akiva like he wanted to possess him or possibly be possessed by him, something wholly distinct from the money Eitan kicked over to him after each date.

“I wasn’t sure I liked men.” Eitan said it all in a rush. Now Akiva leaned back. Blinked a few times to clear his mind, which could only flash one question. “What?” “You seem surprised.” “It’s because I am.” “If it helps,” Eitan said, “I didn’t know you liked men either.” “In Arizona, you didn’t notice how much I looked at you?”

Are you gay or something? Not to the press, but in the clubhouse sometimes. And all I could think was, So what if I am? What the fuck are you gonna do about it?” “Eitan,” Akiva said, “that is not a very straight thought.”

Akiva didn’t know if that was naivete or bravery, but he knew that in that moment if he didn’t kiss Eitan, he’d regret it. “Technically”—Akiva wound his hand around the back of Eitan’s neck—“we’re in New Jersey.” He pressed his mouth to Eitan’s. There was something joyful in this kiss, something that felt different than all the others. Eitan, perhaps settling into himself.

“I think I’m gay in any state.” His face lit with a grin. “Fuck, I’ve never said that before. But I think I am.” “Think?” Akiva asked, lightly teasing. “How can I be certain?” Eitan’s eyes were laughing. The creases beside them didn’t quite fade. Akiva pressed his mouth there, to the lines that would only deepen as Eitan got older, as he became more and more himself, someone who smiled because life was full of things to smile over.

I’m gay. What Eitan thought as he kissed Akiva again, feeling the breadth of his mouth, the strength in his shoulders.

I’m gay. He stroked the lean outline of Akiva’s waist—he wanted to hold him, to buy him everything, starting with another hundred dinners at gaudy New York prices. To see the bare expanse of his body laid out. On a bed ideally.

I’m gay. A revelation that seemed glaringly obvious in retrospect. Maybe that was how revelations were, really. He’d told Akiva he wasn’t certain he was gay, but as he tugged at the fabric bunched at Akiva’s waistband, desperate to see more, he didn’t know if he’d ever felt surer of anything.

“Do you?” Eitan asked. “Do I what?” Akiva’s mouth was doing that thing—that mischievous little tilt that made Eitan want to bite at the corner of his lips. He did and got Akiva’s gasp, so he did it again.

“I wanted to know if you’d fuck me,” Eitan said. Akiva’s eyes widened at that.

Nowhere near what Akiva deserved to hear. Eitan wanted to tell him every good thing about himself—that he had more courage than any other ten people Eitan knew. That he was funny, and smart, and fucking hot in a way Eitan didn’t really know how to put into words.

“I lied before. I noticed,” Eitan said. “In Arizona. I noticed you looking at me. Mostly because I was looking at you too.” Akiva blinked once behind his glasses. His cheeks had more color than when they first reconnected: the summer sun, maybe, even if Akiva mostly spent his time inside. “What’d you see?” An invitation, then, one Eitan was grateful for.

“You have freckles,” Eitan said. “I wanted to know how far down they went. I was disappointed we never shared a clubhouse in Arizona. I wanted to see if your nipples were the same color as your mouth.”

“The curtains are open,” Eitan gasped. “People will see.” Akiva smiled at that, then kissed him, long, thorough, his tongue dipping into Eitan’s mouth. A kiss for no one but them. “If you’re so worried about an audience,” Akiva said, “come to bed.”

He was pale here, freckled down his chest, with a few curls of hair that grew denser under his arms and down his belly. Eitan had called him too skinny, but right now Akiva looked like the exact span of his hands.

Just angled his chin up as Eitan leaned down. Not every kiss was a prelude. This one was: mouths, tongues, teeth, the clamp of Akiva’s hand on the back of his neck. A thrum went through Eitan. “You like being held in place?” Akiva asked. I like being yours. Eitan nodded. “What else do you like?”

Akiva’s mouth did that thing again and Eitan kissed him there, at the edge of his lips, on his jaw, along the column of his neck. Kissed him, used his teeth, drawing Akiva’s gasp. Left a bite ringing his collarbone. He took a detour down his chest, pinched a nipple that was in fact the same flushed color as Akiva’s lips, then lapped at it with his tongue.

“I know what it’s like to be queer in a place that isn’t,” Akiva said. “You’re allowed to go at your own pace. You’re allowed to be scared.”

He watched Akiva, the little satisfied pull of his mouth, the way he was studying Eitan as if determined to take him apart. He was halfway there already, beyond that.

“I’m gonna come,” he gasped. “Good.” “Possibly a lot.” Akiva laughed and kissed his temple and whispered, “Good.” He did something with his wrist that brought them impossibly closer. “Me too,” he said, and that was enough to tip Eitan over.

“Do you think all your other freckles are jealous that this one’s my favorite?”

Normally, Akiva liked that he could see every emotion play out over Eitan’s face. But usually Eitan’s emotional range went from good-natured to aggressively good-natured. Not this blankness as if Akiva had slapped him. Not his visible swallow, his nod.

“Is it normal to have a fight that’s about one thing but really it’s about another thing, and you know you fucked something up but aren’t sure if apologizing will make it worse?” Eitan asked when he was at the clubhouse the next morning—when

Eitan stopped himself from asking about that and if Akiva had a favorite type of apple and what Akiva had done today and what he was planning to do tomorrow because the only thing his brain could supply was this is over.

I found out I was gay after everyone else in my life did. I found out I was dating someone a month into doing it. I found someone who I really like, and we can’t be together because I have too much money and he has too little.

“Eitan, your b—Akiva is here to see you,” Williams called. He didn’t move from the doorway like he might bounce Akiva at Eitan’s say-so. It both irritated Akiva and made him like Williams more. Eitan should have people in his corner, even if Akiva wasn’t one of them.

Eitan was in the middle of it all, on his couch, leg propped up with a massive ice pack over it, smiling up at Akiva with a dopey grin. So painkillers then. “Hey, you’re here!” He sounded both surprised and pleased. It was possible he’d forgotten he’d sent those texts to Akiva.

“Has Eitan been like this since yesterday?” Akiva asked Williams. “Yeah, the team sent a trainer to get him settled and to check on him today. We came over after the game to see if he was climbing the walls.” Williams paused, as if considering, then added, “He’s been asking for you.”

the veteran ballplayer You have to be fucking kidding me expression that made Akiva take an instinctive step back. “I’ll put the soup in the kitchen,” Akiva said. “Does he have other food?” “Team arranged for a few things, but it’s good you’re here—we’re going on a roadie tomorrow.” I’m not here like that. A statement that died on Akiva’s lips when Williams gave him another of those looks. “Good to know.”