Excerpt: Fast Breaks

The new gay sportsy story!

I talked about this story last week, so I thought I’d share the first half of the first chapter that went out on my Patreon last week. As I’m actually working on the section of the craft book that deals with introducing characters right now also, it was instructional to see what I did here that followed my advice and what I could still do to improve this (I like the physical description introduction; I think Seb could be more active, although that might mean changing where I start the story).

Anyway, I hope y’all enjoy it!

“With the sixth pick in the 2024 BBL draft, the Cuyahoga Gorgons select…Delvon Martinez.”

At the small round table some twenty feet from Seb, a tall rabbit in a slick maroon pinstriped suit got up, slipping his phone into his pocket. The other rabbit at the table, older and shorter, hugged him, and the two of them held the hug for a moment.

The third person, a fox in an understated grey suit, touched the rabbit’s arm and pointed him toward the stage. “I got it,” the rabbit said with a big smile, and he walked out to shake the bear’s paw, smile for the cameras, and accept the ceremonial jersey of the Cuyahoga Gorgons.

“I’m better than that guy,” Seb muttered, and though he was sure he’d kept it quiet, the fox—Martinez’s agent—flicked his ears back toward him. But he didn’t turn, just walked with the other rabbit—Martinez’s dad—to join their client and son backstage, where team representatives would be greeting him and beginning arrangements for his new professional basketball career.

Here in the green room that had been set aside for the guys anticipated to be top ten picks, the ones who were most likely to be the future superstars of the league, there were only three other guys left, each at his own table with parents, friends, agents. Seb picked up his phone to text Jack, but there were already two messages from the coyote.

Cuya going different direction

Working on a couple things

Seb typed back, I was player of the month!

That was a year and a half ago. He could almost hear the coyote’s calm voice. I’m working on it.

Seb set the phone down and stared out at the stage, his tail twitching. And then his ears and whiskers caught motion behind him and to his left. He turned and met the beaming, awkward smile of a snow leopard in a bright teal blazer and navy blue slacks and tie. “Hey,” the snow leopard said. “Seb Sato, right?”

Seb knew him too, vaguely. Cox Ngata hadn’t played against him in college, but they’d been part of the same world for the last six months, going to camps and combines and pre-draft workouts. “Yeah,” he said. “I saw you in, uh.”

“Cuyahoga.” Cox folded his ears back and couldn’t help glancing at the stage. “I remember ‘cause my mom said, ‘who’s that fox?’ and I said, ‘that’s Seb Sato, he’s a maned wolf and he’s really good.’ I thought if you were there, there was no chance they were gonna take me.” He chuckled and then stopped himself, looking away from Seb. “Ah, so anyway, uh, there’s not many of us left, want to come sit with us for a bit?”

Seb pressed his fingers flat against the table. He didn’t want to sit with anyone just now—or, more accurately, he wanted to be sitting with Jack, but the coyote wasn’t here and that was Seb’s fault. So his default would be to sit here feeling worse, channeling his disappointment into anger at himself for fucking up something that might not have been his fault (but probably was). He would have declined the offer if the snow leopard hadn’t seemed so nice, and if he didn’t remember his moms telling him to “get out and make friends.” Also, Cox’s compliment had landed. “Thanks,” he said, and got up. “My agent’s working on some stuff. Hopefully I’ll be out of here in the next ten or fifteen minutes.”

The snow leopard stood about four inches below Seb’s 6’11” when they were both standing. But as Seb recalled, he had a smooth jumper and a great handle. As a pure scorer, he was better than Seb, but Seb was a better defender and better in the paint. “Yeah,” Cox said. “We thought I might go tenth, but now my agent’s pretty sure I’m going to Port City at twelve. I’m sure you’ll be gone by then.”

“Yeah.” Seb ran through the teams. He’d been counting on Cuyahoga, and with them off the board, there was…who? Not Gateway at seven, probably not Bautista at eight—neither of those workouts had gone very well, and neither of those teams needed a forward particularly—but then there was Crystal City at nine and Chevali at eleven, both of whom did need forwards. He’d worked out at Chevali, and the Crystal City reps had talked to him at the combine. At least, he was pretty sure they had. He’d met with ten teams in a day.

At Cox’s table, two other snow leopards stood to greet him, both a few inches shorter than Cox. The short weasel remained seated, typing furiously on his phone. “This is my mom,” Cox said, “and my best friend Gavin. This is Seb Sato, out of Sequoyah State.”

Seb shook paws with both of them. Gavin’s paw was warm and his ears folded back when they shook, then he sat without a word. “So nice to meet you,” Cox’s mother said, her paw still in his. “Please, call me Jani. Where are your parents?”

“Oh, they’re in Kerina,” he said. “My, uh, my sister had a meet.”

They all sat, Cox on the end, and Seb took the seat next to Cox. “Oh, I see,” Jani said. “Well, it’s very nice that they’re supporting your sister.”

The weasel looked up. “You’re with Dillon, right?” he said.

Cox leaned over to Seb. “That’s Les, my agent.”

“I figured,” Seb said. “Yeah, Jack’s a family friend. I’ve known him for a year and a half.”

“Good agent.” Les returned his attention to his phone. “Good fit for you.”

Seb’s ears warmed, but he stopped himself from folding them back. Here it was. “Yeah,” he said. “He’s been great.”

And that could’ve, should’ve been the end of it, except that Jani wanted to know, “Why is he a good fit?”

It was an innocent enough question, with a sharpness behind it that gave Seb an idea of the depth of this mother he’d just met. She wanted to know what a good agent did for their client, so she could measure it against what Les was currently doing. He wondered if that bothered Cox, having his mother constantly poking at his life that way, but it didn’t seem to, at least not in this moment; Cox looked as curious as she did.

The problem was that only two people at the table knew what Les meant, and Seb wasn’t going to volunteer more than the weasel knew, so the whole table stared at Les until he looked up again and his typing stopped. “What?”

“Why is his agent a good fit?” Jani repeated.

“Oh.” Les frowned and then looked at Seb. “You’re public, right? I’m sure I heard it on Sports Wrap.”

“Public about what?” Jani looked at Seb.

Cox rested a paw on his mom’s arm. “Seb’s gay,” he said.

“Oh!” She turned back to the agent. “And this agent, he specializes in gay athletes?”

Les barked a laugh. “He wouldn’t have many clients if he did. Nah, he’s just always looked out for the long odds. Kata Buri, you know him?”

“Hell yeah.” Gavin spoke for the first time. “Who doesn’t?”

“Jack took a flier on him when he was just a skinny kid from Papaga and he went in the middle of the second round.” Les’s sharp eyes fixed Seb again. “You from Papaga?”

“My mom is,” he said. “She came here when she was two.”

“Yeah, figures.” Les grinned. “Jack picks up international cases, kids who had an injury, kids with, y’know, behavioral issues, and he marches ‘em through the draft process.”

“Being gay isn’t a behavioral issue,” Seb snapped.

Outside, the commissioner announced, “With the seventh pick in the 2024 BBL draft…”

Cox cleared his throat. “Oh, let’s hear who it is.”

Les looked surprised. “No, I didn’t mean it like that.”

“…the Gateway Spinners select Ha Xin.”

Two tables over, a Tibetan fox and three shorter Tibetan foxes got up and embraced, and then the tallest one hurried out to the stage. Only two other tables remained occupied. “It sure sounded like that,” Seb said.

The weasel put his phone on the table face down and leaned forward. “I’m really sorry,” he said. “Honestly didn’t mean that. What I meant was that teams look at a player’s off-court life and anything they can’t predict, they don’t like. Cox here, he’s got middling grades, but he’s not failing, he didn’t hire anyone else to write his papers, he has a stable family, he plays video games. That’s a kid teams understand. You?” He paused. “I dunno, didn’t really look into you, haven’t talked to teams about you at all, you understand, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some GM out there who was like, is he gonna come on to the other guys? Is he gonna fuck a trainer? A coach?”

“I—”

Les held up both paws. “These guys are livin’ in a bubble from when they were in college, which was thirty, forty years ago, some of them. You kids weren’t alive then, but look, it takes a while for modern sensibilities to get through to these guys. And it don’t even have to be all of them. Sometimes it just takes one asshole in a room.”

All the snow leopards stared at Seb. The maned wolf sank back in his chair. “Yeah,” he admitted. “Jack said that too. But the Cuyahoga guys seemed cool.”