Page 74 of Contested

“I could eat,” Marcos said, following Sebastian as he walked toward the kitchen.

“Alright, sit back and relax. I’m gonna blow your mind.”

Marcos raised his eyebrow, taking a seat at the counter as Sebastian glided around the kitchen.

The movement helped. It gave Sebastian somewhere to put his hands and enough distance to breathe without making it feel like he was running from the couch. Marcos stayed on the stool, elbows near the counter but not fully resting, eyes following Sebastian through the room. He still looked a little uneasy, even with the smile pulling faintly at his mouth.

Sebastian didn’t know where the night was heading. He didn’t know how Marcos was feeling or what he was thinking, and the question of why Marcos had really come over sat between them, waiting for a braver moment than this one.

Sebastian reached for the pan and set it on the stove.

Whatever this was, he was going to enjoy it while it lasted.

|| Chapter Seventeen ||

Sebastian – “Take control”

“Can I be honest?” Marcos asked, looking down at the plate Sebastian had slid across the counter to rest in front of him.

Sebastian glanced at him, then at the sandwich on the plate, already knowing exactly where the question was going by the way Marcos’ mouth had pulled slightly to one side. He slid onto the chair beside him and dragged his own plate closer.

“Go for it,” Sebastian said.

“When you said you were going to ‘blow my mind,’ I thought you were going to cook some Vietnamese food that I’d never heard of.”

Sebastian let his eyes drop to the grilled cheese sandwiches sitting on their plates, golden and slightly too flattened in the middle because he had pressed it down with the spatula more than it needed. The cheese had melted out at one edge and crisped against the bread.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Is this not to your satisfaction?” Sebastian placed his elbow on the counter and angled himself toward Marcos.

“No, no. It looks great.” Marcos chortled.

“I’ll have you know that grilled cheese sandwiches may as well have been a Vietnamese dish when I was growing up.”

“You had them a lot?”

Sebastian took a bite of his sandwich. “After training and my grandparents weren’t home? Grilled cheese. After school? Grilled cheese. Midnight snack? Grilled cheese.”

“Your poor stomach,” Marcos said, and Sebastian shrugged.

“My stomach is great. Thrilled with my dietary decisions.”

Marcos smiled down at his plate, but there was still that careful edge to him. Sebastian noticed it now in the way Marcos picked up half of his sandwich, paused, then set it back down before lifting it again. The way his thumb rubbed against the side of his plate. The way his shoulders stayed loose only because he seemed to be forcing them.

They ate for a while without speaking. The silence settled into the little sounds of the apartment: Marcos chewing, the soft scrape of Sebastian’s plate when he shifted it closer, and the low hum of the game still playing in the background.

Marcos was the first to break it. “Were your grandparents not home a lot?”

Sebastian let the question sit.

It came gently enough, but that didn’t make it easier. Marcos wasn’t prying in a careless way. He had heard the gap in what Sebastian had said and followed it because he was trying. He wanted to get to know Sebastian.

Sebastian inhaled deeply before he answered, “They were busy. Did a lot to pay for a lot of things for me, you know.”

Marcos nodded slowly, his eyes still lowered toward his plate. “So, you sort of looked after yourself a lot?”

“Yeah. I guess. I don’t know. I never really thought about it growing up.”

He hadn’t thought about it at the time because it was normal. He would come home, make food, do homework when he could force himself to care about it, pack his own gear, wash training clothes badly enough that his grandmother sometimes sighed over them the next morning and redid them while Sebastian was asleep. He had learned which bus got him closest to training. He had learned that if he forgot something, no one was coming to fix it in time.