He has been carrying this team for eleven years. He does not know how to put it down.
Sebastián Mora is a trans man and one of Las Brasas' founding players. He knows every corner of this club: the founding years, the bad fields, the seasons they almost didn't survive. He protects the people around him by absorbing strain alone. It has always worked. It is no longer working.
Fen Okafor is nonbinary and crossed an ocean to play for this club. They don't need a mentor or a project manager. They need the team to feel like somewhere they belong, and the quiet defender assigned to orient them is not making that easier.
Except he is. Slowly, without either of them planning it.
Fen watches Sebastián's movement on the pitch the way a good midfielder watches everything: tracking the pattern, noting what's wrong, calculating the cost of saying nothing. The knee has been bad for months. The playoffs are close. And Sebastián has made it very clear he does not want help.
Some things are more important than what someone wants.
A grumpy sunshine transgender and nonbinary sports romance about the particular stubbornness of people who have been carrying things alone too long, and learning the difference between protecting someone and letting them in.
Clean romance. Second in the Las Brasas Romance series.
Genre: Gay Romance
Sebastián Mora is a trans man and one of Las Brasas' founding players. He knows every corner of this club: the founding years, the bad fields, the seasons they almost didn't survive. He protects the people around him by absorbing strain alone. It has always worked. It is no longer working.
Fen Okafor is nonbinary and crossed an ocean to play for this club. They don't need a mentor or a project manager. They need the team to feel like somewhere they belong, and the quiet defender assigned to orient them is not making that easier.
Except he is. Slowly, without either of them planning it.
Fen watches Sebastián's movement on the pitch the way a good midfielder watches everything: tracking the pattern, noting what's wrong, calculating the cost of saying nothing. The knee has been bad for months. The playoffs are close. And Sebastián has made it very clear he does not want help.
Some things are more important than what someone wants.
A grumpy sunshine transgender and nonbinary sports romance about the particular stubbornness of people who have been carrying things alone too long, and learning the difference between protecting someone and letting them in.
Clean romance. Second in the Las Brasas Romance series.
Genre: Gay Romance
Used availability for Ash Mercer's Advantage