finally, fic
This fic may contain triggers. Highlight below for potential spoilers.
Warning: attempted/implied actual rape, stalkerish behavior, creepy and deeply uncool behavior on the part of a baseball player
Because god forbid I write something normal and, y'know, not fucked up in some mildly disturbing way.
Daisuke Matsuzaka/Jason Varitek, Daisuke Matsuzaka/Tim Wakefield. Rated adult, or hard R, or something like that. Took some very slight liberties in advancing the season and makin' up game shit. Oh and I'm pretty sure Matsuzaka's wife is IRL in Boston with him, but for the purposes of this story, well, you'll see.
There are still parts of this that I'm really not happy with, but, as usual, I've been working on it for long enough and I no longer give enough of a shit. Woo! Enjoy!
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. It is in no way a reflection on the actual life, behavior, or character of any of the people featured, and there is no connection or affiliation between this fictional story and the people or organizations it mentions. It was not written with any intent to slander or defame any of the people featured. No profit has been or ever will be made as a result of this story: it is solely for entertainment. And again, it is entirely fictional, i.e. not true.
awesome cover image by offspeed!
Same as the city.
The only thing that startles him, at first, is how deeply unstartling it is.
They skim low over water to land, the plane dropping down and down again until it seems as though it could lower its wheels right into the ocean, choppy black with twisting white highlights and red gleaming from the ends of the wings. Water, and suddenly land, rushing up all in a second and followed a second later by a gently gut-wrenching bump. It’s the controlled chaos of landing on an island, and it’s all right and familiar.
Boston, then, first impression: you come into it just like you come into Japan, with exactly the same reckless hurtle over foamy seas.
He files that away in his mind.
The night is pinkish yellow, the horizon tinged with a low-glow haze, brighter in one direction; Boras nudges him and nods. Boston.
Second impression: Boston is a smear that you can barely see as you blink past cold-wind tears and camera flashbulbs.
The wind whipping off the water is cold enough to make him glad of the jacket, shiny black and puffy with a fur-trimmed hood. He hunches his shoulders a little to bunch the hood up protectively. The tarmac is filled with poorly controlled clots of photographers and over-eager reporters, but he’s not afraid of them. It’s a simple gesture of comfort, this hunching, keeping the back of his neck from the cold.
The photographers, Japanese and American, snap away, camera-white flash coming at them ankle-high, knee-high, waist-high, higher. Airport security stand by, yelling when a camera or a microphone edges over some invisible fluctuating line only they can see. They look tired and harassed in the harsh light.
He thinks, fleetingly, of Tomoyo, back home in Tokorozawa, maybe leaning out the window while their daughter tugs at her pant legs, maybe thinking of him rushing over this foreign water, landing on this foreign asphalt.
When he looks their way, some of the American photographers start yelling. “Dice Kay! Dice Kay!” They accent his name nasally, swallowing the wrong parts of it and emphasizing at random. They holler, wave at him, cajole him with fingers and a shouted jumble of words he can’t even begin to understand. They are rude and brash and they shove each other over to better position their own cameras.
They are all looking at him.
Third impression: in Boston, as in Japan, he once again will find himself in the Middle of Things.
-------------------
It’s easier to think in Florida than in Boston. It’s sunnier, and warmer, and Boras isn’t always at his elbow. When he’s not warming up or talking to reporters, Daisuke sits on a folding chair in the open area that passes for a bullpen. He looks out at the field as though he’s deeply interested in understanding the exercises going on there, chin in hand, elbow on knee. He’s counting on his sunglasses, though, because he has more important things to do than to watch baseball played at its most basic. He’s thinking.
There’s this idea, this concept, and it’s the same in Boston and in Japan. It’s the concept of the superstar. In America it is, so far as he can tell, every man for himself. Every man should strive to improve his lot in life as much as he can, as fast as he can, and by any means necessary. When Daisuke thinks about this, he doesn’t think of it as good or bad. It is just how things are, a kind of essential Americanness.
In Japan, you are not supposed to care more for yourself than for others, not in that American way. His parents had always been very clear on that. “What kind of pride would you have in your country, if you would just leave your kin to rot in the street?” his father always said, and Daisuke always nodded seriously, because his father often spoke to him as a man and not as a child. “It is a virtue to be more capable than the strongest lion, and yet more humble than the smallest mouse,” his father always said, and Daisuke always nodded.
And yet both Boston and Japan have these superstars. They are people who go above and beyond even usual American individual-centrism.
In every place where there are people paying attention, there are Middles of Things. A Middle of Things, Daisuke has long since decided, is where people most want to pay attention. It’s where the excitement is. It’s where people wish they were, if they aren’t there. Middles of Things happen all over, just as a result of living and, he supposes, of humans being naturally curious and generally attentive.
A superstar, Daisuke thinks, and he has thought long and hard about this, is someone who creates their own Middle of Things, and who walks around in it always, as though it’s a kind of rainbow-sheened soap bubble encasing them.
They have called him a superstar in Japanese and in English, but Daisuke has never thought of himself as a superstar, because when people say he creates his own Middle of Things, he thinks otherwise. He just happens along into Middles of Things that are already there.
He stares out at the casually loping outfielders, his ear nearly canceling out the white noise of English and Spanish in the middle distance. He wonders if there is a Middle of Things here that he’ll find himself in the middle of, or if he’ll finally make his own and deserve the title of superstar.
-------------------
He is mostly used to the Seibu Dome, the Tokyo Dome. Enclosed ballparks vibrating with fans, recycled air stripped aseptically clean. The infields are all artificial turf. In high school, the infields were pure dirt, no green in them at all, and the dirt was a grayed-out brown. Nothing like these orange-and-green-striped American infields, these outdoor spring training games that are more exercises in nonchalance and boredom management than anything else.
Doug Mirabelli teaches him how to say “suck my nuts” in English. Wily Mo Pena teaches him how to say “get your lazy ass off the cooler, I want a drink”. Mike Lowell teaches him how to say “everyone is helping me feel comfortable.”
David Ortiz wants to learn how to bow, but he gets the nuances all wrong and bows to Daisuke like he’s a 5 year old, then bows to Okajima like he’s a wise ancient scholar, then gives up and hugs everyone anyways.
Daisuke is learning a lot. Soon it will be April.
-------------------
Everyone tells him that he’s going to love his new catcher. Varitek, they say, is one of the best of the best. You couldn’t ask for anyone better to come into the American Major Leagues with.
On the Mariners, he knows, is Kenji Johjima. Johjima played for the Fukuoka Hawks, league rivals of the Lions. Daisuke used to worry about the Hawks whenever he played them, because they were managed by Sadaharu Oh, and Sadaharu Oh is someone he always thinks about when he thinks about people who take their own Middles of Things around with them. Sadaharu Oh’s Middle of Things is so big and so shiny that it captures the Middles of Things belonging to everyone around him.
Johjima is familiar, then, in a background-noise kind of way. Always a tough at-bat, he was, young and eager and Daisuke used to see him handling the Hawks pitchers masterfully, something he had appreciated. Still. Always aware of his rivals, but it had been hard to come into the Fukuoka Dome and see anything other than Sadaharu Oh perched alertly on the bench.
Daisuke thinks he might like to start out pitching to Johjima, familiar and respected, because one of the very first things Jason Varitek says to him is,
“Hi. I’m Jason Varitek. I can’t make any promises about how much Japanese I’m going to learn.”
Varitek does not try to bow. He reaches out and grabs Daisuke’s hand with a firmness that is a little unsettling. It immediately feels like he’s standing too close, closer than Tomoyo stands when she hands in a cup of tea, almost breathing on Daisuke. He’s still getting used to shaking hands, though, so he thinks maybe it’s just that. Maybe it is just the way that shaking hands seems so much more immediately intimate than bowing ever has. Bowing is about respect and politeness. Shaking hands is about getting a feel for someone else, getting a grab at their body before you even say hello, sometimes.
Varitek’s eyes are small and round and seem too close-set for Daisuke’s comfort. This is xenophobic thinking, though, something he can recognize and suppress.
“I am very glad to meet you,” he says, words careful and overenunciated.
“Good.” Varitek’s expression is unreadable, which worries Daisuke. He can’t afford to have a catcher he can barely understand and barely read physically, not this season, not with what he’s heard about how the Boston fans and media will treat him if he doesn’t live up to his contract right away. He’s got to figure Varitek out, get inside his Middle of Things and see what it’s like in there, if he wants to make it here.
-------------------
It is easier, thankfully, to understand Varitek during games than out of them. The unreadable flatness to him, so strange off the field, makes perfect sense on it, because it makes him a better catcher. Less extraneous gesture to muddle up the signs, eyes focused always on Daisuke and then, if needed, on the runner, flicking up to the batter to make sure he’s not cheating in but always drawn back to the mound like an iron filing to a magnet.
Spring training game, and Varitek drops down a sign that Daisuke doesn’t recognize. Instead of flashing his fingers like usual, he lets one hang down between his legs and rotates it slowly. Daisuke cocks his head. Varitek rotates his finger again. His eyes, behind the mask, are mostly invisible.
Daisuke stares down the center of the plate. Varitek rotates his finger again, slower, and suddenly Daisuke gets it.
He thinks very carefully about his muscles, fiber-twitch here, slow build of tension there, carefully engineered motion studied in Japanese labs until it had been perfected. He thinks most carefully about his legs, because they’re the most important part if he’s going to do this right.
He rears back, teeters forward, rotates his arm away from his body instead of in towards it. He knows he’s got it right when Varitek comes up out of his crouch in slight surprise, his glove wavering uncertainly. He cannot, Daisuke knows, see the ball properly, because it’s flying at him not with backspin like a fastball or frontspin like a curveball. It’s spiraling like a football. It’ll look like a white blob floating towards homeplate, with no way for those there to judge its speed.
The batter swings wildly, Varitek flails at the air to barely catch the ball, the umpire blinks, slices his fist downwards. Out.
Impression: Boston is not ready for the gyroball, even when they ask for it.
-------------------
Thursday, and Daisuke is tightening the laces of his glove, a careful and soothing activity that he repeats exactly the same way every time. His locker is near the manager’s office, the sort of high-traffic spot given to a newcomer who isn’t quite a rookie, which is fine with him. He understands.
He hears voices coming from the room. Francona is in there. He doesn’t mean to eavesdrop, but Daisuke is always looking for opportunities to listen to English without having to participate in the conversation; learning without the stress of responding.
“I think he might be throwing it,” Varitek’s voice says, heated.
“Think?” Francona, gruff and annoyed. “Thinking won’t win games in this town. I want you to know if he can throw it.”
“I don’t know. He throws… something. Weird.”
“Weird how?”
“The seams disappear.”
Francona sighs. “Can he throw it regularly? Can he control it? Do you have any fucking idea what it is or how it’s spinning?”
Silence, during which Daisuke thinks, with no small amount of annoyance, might be throwing it?
“I need you to find out if he can throw it, when, how, everything about it.”
“Is that a suggestion or an order?”
More silence. This time Daisuke can imagine Francona glaring. Suggestion or an order. He translates the words back to Japanese in his head (something he needs to stop doing, he knows), thinks carefully, decides Francona means for it to be an order.
“Fine. I’ll do some extra sessions with him, see if he can keep throwing it.”
The door to the manager’s office bangs open. Daisuke narrows his eyes as Varitek storms out. He’s not even going to pretend that he wasn’t listening.
Varitek marches right over. He looks Daisuke in the eyes, but for all Daisuke can read him he may as well have sunglasses on.
“We’re gonna need to do some work together.”
“You know that I throw it! You catched it yourself!”
“Caught,” Varitek corrects automatically, making Daisuke fume. He knows this, just a dumb little slip-up because he’s mad. Varitek knows, can’t have mistaken the gyroball for anything else; why would he pretend not to know? It makes Daisuke look bad in the eyes of the manager, and if this is Varitek’s weird American honor-stealing game, Daisuke is not willing to play along.
They glare at one another for a bit, up until Varitek’s goatee twitches, hinting at something like a smile.
“We’ll have you throw in the cages down here. Just need to see some things.”
“Fine.”
Varitek turns smartly on his heel and strides off, leaving Daisuke fuming and confused, staring at the retreating red sweatshirt until it blurs out into the rest of the clubhouse.
-------------------
Careful attention to his legs, powering his body forward, arm rotates out and away and
“Stop. Do that again.”
Daisuke grimaces. He goes through the motion again, more slowly. He could never actually throw the ball this slowed-down, but he’s hoping that if he does what Varitek says, they’ll be finished with this sooner and he can go home to his apartment, ignore the time difference and call home to Tokorozawa, maybe catch his daughter at home so he can sing to her over the phone, get into that space halfway between meditation and regular thinking so this strange stubbornness of Varitek’s can maybe start to make sense.
Varitek comes up to him and grabs his wrist. Daisuke starts, a kind of full-body twitch, but manages to not drop the baseball. He’s still not entirely used to this American ease of personal space invasion. He forces himself calm and cocks his head sideways at Varitek, who is staring at Daisuke’s fingers on the ball.
“How are you gripping this?”
“Just changeup grip.” Varitek looks skeptical, so Daisuke positions his fingers more clearly, trying to not be weirded out by the way his wrist feels, small bones moving over one another within the confines of Varitek’s encircling hand. “Grip is not important. Is all here,” he touches his thigh with his free hand, “and here,” tapping his shoulder.
“I still don’t see what you’re doing.” Varitek’s frowning, little vertical lines appearing between his heavy brows. Daisuke sighs. He can only guess that American pitchers work very differently, and Varitek has trouble understanding a pitch that isn’t based mostly on grip and the movement of the arm.
He goes through his motion again, as slowly and still smoothly as he can, his fingers surrounding the ball like a circle change, hoping Varitek will see how the outward swing of his arm will put the spin on the seams, how the particular trip-push of his legs powers it through.
Varitek stalks around behind Daisuke and moves in until he’s breathing on the back of Daisuke’s neck. Daisuke freezes, not quite in terror, but something very much like it.
Varitek puts his hands over both of Daisuke’s wrists so that their arms are almost perfectly in line. He presses his chest to Daisuke’s back and fits his knees into the hollows behind Daisuke’s own.
Varitek’s voice, low and directly in his ear, “Go through that motion again, nice and slow.” An order, not a suggestion.
Daisuke almost can’t breathe, not with Varitek wrapped around the entire back side of him like some kind of warm, heavy, breathing blanket. He thinks he understands what Varitek is doing. It’s another kind of lesson, though not one he’d ever seen in Japan, Presumably this kind of leeching onto him will allow Varitek to better understand the mechanics of his pitching motion, as though Varitek was himself pitching. He doesn’t know; maybe this is a normal thing between a catcher and a pitcher who aren’t familiar with one another yet, here in the West.
He takes a deep breath, trying to ignore the way Varitek does the same, stomach expanding with air and pressing up against Daisuke’s spine. He slowly maneuvers his feet, not letting the muscled push of Varitek’s legs behind his own upset his balance. His arms, and Varitek’s, swing out and up, then down.
“Again,” Varitek mutters, digging his chin momentarily into the dip between Daisuke’s trapezius and his deltoid. His goatee tickles the skin of Daisuke’s neck, sharp prickles behind his head, prickle and hot breath under his ear. “Again.”
-------------------
The Red Sox come to New York, a city bigger and brighter than Boston, louder and more brash. Still not as crazy as Tokyo, Daisuke thinks, looking out the windows of the bus that takes them from the airport to the hotel, irrational sense of pride.
Schedule carefully tailored so that Schilling can pitch the first game, take the sting of raw rivalry newly experienced off, and Daisuke pitches the second game. Varitek rotates his finger, Daisuke rotates his shoulder, and pinstripes flail.
In the hotel after the game he strips off his shirt so he can packs extra ice onto his shoulder. Sitting bare-backed and goose-pimpled in front of the TV, he watches Alex Rodriguez shake his head in front of the whitescreen backdrop of a press conference.
“Craziest thing,” Rodriguez says, a little tinny through the hotel TV speakers. “He throws that ball, you can’t even see it, it just comes out of his hand and flies in at you.”
Rodriguez listens to something a reporter asks, murmur not picked up by the mics. Daisuke shifts the ice bag pressed to his shoulder just to hear the comforting clanking rustle of ice cube against ice cube.
There’s a knock at the door, and he’s up to open it before he even has time to think about it. Automatic reaction, he realizes with his hand on the handle, he should probably check to see who it is first, but he’s already got the door half open.
The first thing he sees is the goatee, then the smile within it. The sight of Varitek smiling is starting to become an actual comfort, the kind of thing that Daisuke likes knowing he can make Varitek do. He is the one right now putting that expression on Varitek’s face, and good as he feels from his performance on the mound, this makes him feel better still.
He steps back to let Varitek in and the bag of ice starts to slide from his shoulder. Varitek reaches out and presses it back in place, moving his hand down to Daisuke’s waist. Even brief contact with the ice made his fingers cold, cold enough that Daisuke’s entire midsection feels like it’s burning in comparison.
“Did good today,” Varitek nods, fingers tapping at Daisuke’s side, “and I thought we could maybe talk about some of those at-bats, while they’re fresh in your mind.”
Daisuke nods. His stomach feels like it’s got a fire in the middle of it, and it’s confusing him, making it hard for him to think clearly. Varitek’s fingers are trailing down to Daisuke’s hip, to where the waistband of his pants rides low, something that Daisuke thinks must be absentmindedness, but.
Varitek’s palm presses up against the point of Daisuke’s hip. “Feel OK down here?”
Daisuke blinks. “What?”
“You pitch with your legs probably more than anyone else on our staff.”
Sure, sure, Daisuke is nodding, very true, that is what they tell you in high school in Japan, use your legs more and save your shoulder, save your elbow, pitch more and longer and more often so you can be better and better and better and better…
“Well I just now thought. Tito’d kill me if I let you get sore hips or legs because I didn’t think of it.” The grin on Varitek’s face is wide and supposed to be disarming, Daisuke thinks, although to him it’s a little too huge. “I mean, hey, it’s my job to worry about you guys, it’s my job to think about these things.”
Captain, catcher, yes, Daisuke understands this. He nods again. His legs aren’t particularly sore, but if Varitek thinks it’s best to make sure, well, Varitek is the one who knows how things are done over here, isn’t he?
“Better lie down on the bed,” Varitek says thoughtfully, like it’s only just occurred to him. “On your stomach.”
Careful to keep the ice in place, Daisuke arranges himself on the bed, folding his arms under his chin, facing towards the foot of the bed and the TV. Rodriguez is still talking, something about his defense in relation to Derek Jeter’s defense, and he can still watch like this. It’s not unusual. He lies down like this for trainers all the time.
Varitek crawls up onto the bed outside of Daisuke’s field of vision, which makes him tense, still that nervousness with casual physical contact of this sort. Varitek always acts like it’s completely natural, though, and this time is no different, his knees sinking into the bed on either side of Daisuke’s thighs and his hands settling on Daisuke’s hips like he does this every day, for every pitcher. Maybe he does. Daisuke doesn’t know, and everyone keeps telling him to listen to Varitek, Varitek will help you adjust to the league and the country and the city and Varitek will show you the way to your own Middle of Things.
Fingers no longer cold, tips warming back up to body temperature so all Daisuke can feel is gentle pressure on his hips, a slight relieving of it when Varitek lifts his fingers just enough to curl them around the edge of Daisuke’s pants. Just like the trainer, Daisuke thinks, and lifts his pelvis so that Varitek can slide them off.
“These too,” Varitek mutters, hands clutching at Daisuke’s boxers, a little faster, grabbing a little less smoothly. Daisuke swallows hard.
“It’s a funny pitch but, you know, I mean now our guys got tape of it, I think we’ll definitely be able to hit him better next time out,” Rodriguez is saying, blinking in the sharp media lights on the TV.
A new pressure behind him, slow and big, tectonic. Daisuke gasps just as the press conference goes to commercial.
“Now,” Varitek says, voice slow and triumphant, “how does that feel?”
-------------------
Boras calls when they’re in Kansas City. Daisuke is pitching tomorrow so he’s alone for the time being, because nobody will bother him the night before a start. He pitches with his legs more than anyone else on the staff. Varitek is always thinking of the team, certainly would never do anything to make it hard for Daisuke to move his legs properly right before his spot in the rotation comes up.
“How are you doing?” Boras asks, solicitous and calm.
Daisuke’s heard some things about Boras, since he came here. Heard some talk about his ruthlessness, how sometimes he pushes for money more than for the wellbeing of his own clients. But what he hasn’t heard is how Boras works to make every client (or, at least, Daisuke) feel like they can call on him for anything. How he makes sure they’re feeling good and that they’re happy and if they’re not, he’ll talk to them for hours to settle them down and smooth things over.
“OK.” Daisuke stretches, side to side, his hips aching. Varitek assures him that it’s normal, his body will adjust soon enough. As in so many things these days, Daisuke has to take his word for it.
“You sure?”
For a moment, Daisuke considers it. Thinks about just telling Boras everything. Just laying it all out. He’s not sure he can say it all in English but he knows Boras has a trusted Japanese translator close at hand, someone who can get on the line in a second. He knows Boras is discreet, knows that Boras wants him in the best mental space possible. He knows that this is partly because he, as a client, brings Boras a lot of money, but that doesn’t even matter. The opportunity to get this out, to stop it, he thinks for a moment, is there.
It’s only another moment before he remembers that Varitek is one of Boras’ clients too.
-------------------
Schilling has always tried to be Daisuke’s friend in the clubhouse. Schilling talks too fast for Daisuke, though. He tries to keep up out of politeness but he ends up getting headaches a lot, pitchingpoliticsnewsbaseballpitchingopinion chatter becoming a painful throb of white noise behind his eye sockets.
Beckett scares Daisuke a little, something slightly too intense in him, something just a little bit fractured and incorrectly offset. Tavarez is the same, although at times he’s just friendly enough to make Daisuke smile.
His favorite starter to spend time with is Wakefield. Wakefield doesn’t talk too much or too fast, and he seems to understand how to talk to someone who doesn’t really know the language. Schilling responds to Daisuke’s confusion by just talking louder, as though he’s trying to hammer the words in through Daisuke’s ears. Wakefield will talk more slowly, enunciating each word clearly, gesturing with his hands when he’s able to, “and then David put the peanut butter in his jockstrap, if you can imagine that,” each action an elegant sweep of his neatly manicured nails. Daisuke could watch Wakefield talk all day, sometimes. English makes sense when he’s talking.
Coco Crisp sees them sitting together a lot and starts referring to the two of them as “The Trick Pitch Kids,” knuckleball and gyroball, old and young, American and Japanese.
Francona will jerk a thumb over his shoulder and yell down the bench, “Hey, Trick Pitch Kids, go throw some extras in the bullpen, willya?” because they’re both the kind of pitchers who don’t really suffer from overuse; Wakefield needs as much work as he can get to keep his feel for the knuckleball, and Daisuke has been trained from his earliest youth for pitching stamina. Daisuke will stand up with Wakefield at his side and they’ll jog out to the bullpen together, nice and slow because Wakefield doesn’t like to hurry when he doesn’t have to, grass turning over in flashing shades of spring beneath their cleats.
They throw side by side, slow floating pitch and fast spinning floater. Varitek’s out in the batting cage, which seems a hundred miles away from the bullpen. The ballpark is quiet, stands ringing with the absence of fan sound, gates still hours away from opening. All Daisuke can hear is the swishthump of his pitches and Wakefield’s cutting through the air and slamming into round catcher’s mitts. The dull slam of taut leather on soft leather, Wakefield’s even breathing next to him, undisturbed by the exertionless pitch he throws, these surround Daisuke as warmly as the sunlight does. This is baseball at the highest level. This is what he came to America for.
Boston is baseball, and baseball in Boston is its own Middle of Things.
-------------------
Minnesota is a comfort. For the first time since coming to the Major Leagues, Daisuke feels right at home. The air isn’t quite as scrubbed as it should be, but the artificial turf feels good under his feet and the roof over his head is a fine comfort. He can hardly keep his head in the dugout when he gets out of the clubhouse. He gets out and runs on the turf.
This is good. Minnesota, he can pitch here.
Seventh inning and he’s staring in at Joe Mauer, who he could have sworn was listed at 6’4 or 6’5, but who looks much closer to 6’7. Mauer’s almost tall enough to negate the height difference Daisuke gets from the raised mound on which he stands. This should be scary, but Daisuke is serene, untouchable.
In outdoor stadiums, the basepaths are dirt. This means orange, bright orange slashes all around the edges of Daisuke’s vision. In most domes, only the bases themselves are surrounded by dirt, the basepaths kept turf-green. In Minnesota, those distracting orange lines are gone and it doesn’t matter a bit how big the batter is, because Daisuke can see, no little sideways tics of his eyes towards distracting and still-new-seeming color.
Curveball, fastball, fastball barely fouled off, Mauer’s mouth pursing in an impressed whistle for a moment before he remembers himself. Slider, called just out of the strikezone. Fastball again, high and tight and Mauer’s sense of speed is all destroyed. Mauer’s long arms just mean that he looks all that more impressive when he flails, fully extended, and strikes out.
The crowd sounds different in America than it ever did in Japan, but the particularly echo-ey near-muffle of a crowd in a big dome is familiar music to Daisuke’s ears. They may be in Minnesota, but there are still large numbers of Red Sox fans in the crowd, if the happy noises coming from the stands can be taken as any kind of indication.
Daisuke’s riding high on this. He feels centered, peaceful, completely in charge of himself. Varitek pats him on the ass as he comes off the mound, and he barely even notices. He doesn’t need to. Domeball, Japanball, this is his turf. For the first time in a long time he doesn’t feel dependent on anyone at all.
-------------------
The knock on his hotel door isn’t entirely unexpected by now. This time, though, he gets up and opens the door only part way, keeping the chain on and peering through the crack.
Varitek tries on that disarming grin again. “Hey, pitched real well today.”
Daisuke nods. He makes no move to take the chain off. Varitek’s eyes travel back and forth between the chain and Daisuke’s face. His eyes narrow so much that for a second Daisuke steps back, like looking in some kind of twisted and coarsened mirror.
“Dice. C’mon. What’s this?”
Daisuke shrugs. He doesn’t quite trust himself to talk.
“Dice.” A little more forcefully. “How ‘bout you open this door and we can talk?”
A wry twist of his mouth. “Won’t be talk.”
“Yeah, well… that’s OK.” The goatee twists around a small smile. “You like that.”
“No. You like that.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake… Dice, don’t be fuckin’ ridiculous.” Varitek sticks his hand in the door gap, fingers curling around the edge in towards Daisuke, and it’s all he can do to stop himself from slamming the door shut. He still wants to win, cares about this team, and that’s the only thing that stops him. Something of this must come across in his face, because Varitek immediately steps back and holds up both of his hands, palms out, stepping away from the door. “Hey, woah. Calm down. C’mon. We’re not like that.”
“We not like what?” Daisuke laughs bitterly. “There is no we. We are not like nothing.”
Varitek looks side to side down the hall, stepping back up to the gap gingerly. “C’mon, Dice, please just let me in so we can talk. We can’t be having this… this conversation out in the hall.” His eyes are earnest and his shoulders are lowered, his entire posture contrite.
All Daisuke can think, looking at Varitek through the door, is everything that anyone ever told him about the catcher:
You’ll want to lean on Varitek, he’ll tell you everything you need to know, and
Just watch what Varitek calls because he knows the hitters best, and
Oh, how lucky you are, couldn’t be going to a better catcher to start off in a whole new country and a whole new league, and
Trust Varitek, he knows, and
Trust Varitek, he’s a great catcher and a great guy, and
Trust Varitek…
Daisuke takes the chain off the door. Steps back.
Varitek steps in gently. “Hey, look. I’m sorry. I don’t.” He looks down at his feet. “I guess I’m not very good at this, huh?” The nervous little huffing laugh, the hand on the back of his own neck, it’s all very convincing. Daisuke takes a deep breath and closes his eyes momentarily to hold onto the feeling he had in the Metrodome earlier in the night, contained and secure in himself, the way he used to feel all the time back in Japan.
“There is never a we,” he says, choosing his words as carefully as he can. “There is only ever a you and a you wanting. The first time, I only thought… you were tricking me, I thought it was to be trainer, checking soreness, and you…. and you….”
“Hey, Dice, don’t be crazy. You make it sound like you didn’t want it.”
“I didn’t.”
“Uh uh, don’t try to backtrack on it. You… you fuckin’ got off just as good as I ever did.”
Daisuke turns bright red and looks to the side, at the wall, at anything but Varitek. Softly. “Doesn’t mean I was wanting it.”
“The hell it doesn’t.”
This is not the sort of thing that Daisuke automatically has the words for, and he can only glare balefully at Varitek for a minute. Varitek’s a guy, he should know this. “Just because… just because my body is not to be objecting, does not mean I am wanting it! You… you have penis, you know!” He knows his grammar is falling apart, nowhere near his usual carefully overenunciated wording, but he’s so red he thinks his face may never pale again and he can’t stop himself.
“If you didn’t… you could have just said…” Varitek steps forward and gets both arms around Daisuke’s waist, both hands gripping Daisuke’s ass. Daisuke stiffens up, but he’s been doing that since the first day, he realizes, Varitek probably doesn’t even notice anymore.
“You… my catcher… I am supposed to have trusting of you…”
“You can, Dice, man, you can, you can,” and Varitek is nuzzling his neck, breathing down his collar hot and humid, “just…. just relax and trust me on this… gonna make you feel good…”
“No,” Daisuke says, as firmly and clearly as he can. Varitek presses a thigh between Daisuke’s legs and licks his throat. Daisuke gets both his hands on Varitek’s shoulders and pushes but he doesn’t have any leverage, can’t get his feet under him right, can’t get into his pitching stance to get the power from his legs, of course, of course, Varitek has felt every line of him in his stance, Varitek knows exactly how he moves and can anticipate it, keep him secured. “No!”
“Jason.”
They both freeze. No one bothered to close the door properly, and Daisuke stares over Varitek’s stiff back directly into the shock-wide eyes of Wakefield.
-------------------
“Getting a day off” is how Francona describes it to the media. Daisuke doesn’t know what Wakefield told to whom; all he knows is that they’re back in Boston and he’s pitching to Mirabelli today. Afraid of being alone and having to talk to Varitek, afraid of anyone noticing he’s afraid of anything, Daisuke shadows Mirabelli and peppers him with questions about English, baseball, the Blue Jays lineup, anything and everything to keep him talking.
He even sits down and lets Schilling talk at him for a half hour before the game, he’s so desperate to look occupied at all times. Schilling still isn’t very good at reading his face, it’s easy enough for Daisuke to pretend to understand everything and look accordingly interested.
Mirabelli isn’t as good a catcher as Varitek, that much is obvious. He calls for the fastball too often for Daisuke’s tastes and he’s a lot slower out of his crouch, making Daisuke a little afraid to throw anything with too much spin on it, a little too likely that it’ll hit the dirt and escape to the backstop.
The Blue Jays hit him pretty hard, but he doesn’t care, not even when Vernon Wells hits a towering fly ball that towers and flies right on out over the Monster and into the street. Mirabelli doubles in a couple runs, and Daisuke practically hugs him when he gets back to the dugout at the end of the inning. Varitek is all the way down at the other end of the bench, and he knows this won’t last forever, Francona isn’t going to keep Varitek out of the lineup every time Daisuke pitches, but for right now, right now he’s pathetically grateful to Mirabelli just for existing.
They win the game late, the W going to JC Romero, and Daisuke closes his eyes. Exhales. Wishes for the millionth time to Tomoyo was here in Boston, not a phone call and thousands of miles away. Still. One game at a time.
-------------------
It’s another two weeks before Wakefield sits down next to Daisuke on the plane ride to Anaheim. Extra inning game behind them, it’s an overnight flight and most of the team is asleep, or at least wearing headphones and willfully pretending. Wakefield fiddles with the latch on the tray in the seatback in front of him, and Daisuke can’t pretend that he hasn’t been waiting for this.
“So. Jason.” Wakefield looks sidelong at Daisuke, speaking even more slowly than usual to compensate, Daisuke assumes, for his low voice. “You and he, uh. Was that. Uh. A first… a first time… thing?”
Daisuke looks down and shakes his head. There’s no point in pretending that he doesn’t know what Wakefield is referring to.
“And you. Didn’t want to?”
Just barely above a whisper. “No…”
Wakefield sighs and looks tired, older in the weak spot-yellow of the airplane reading light over his head. “Why?”
“He is… everyone told me to, to trust my catcher.”
“If you didn’t feel comfortable with something… Daisuke, you should have come to someone else. Jason isn’t the only person on this team you can trust. You could have come to Curt,” Daisuke snorts a little, and a thin smile breaks out over Wakefield’s face, “you could have come to Doug, or Tito, or Farrell, or… well, me.”
“Didn’t know how. How to say.”
“I guess you wouldn’t.” Wakefield looks at Daisuke with just the corners of his eyes again, a kindly sort of glance that sends Daisuke’s stomach dropping down, straight out of the bottom of the plane and into the dirt miles and miles below.
-------------------
He wakes up to a sharp poke on his shoulder, head swimming up from sleep and pain from a neck bent over wrong-way slowly marching up into his consciousness. His mouth is cottonydry and he reaches up to rub his eyes with the back of his hand, sleepily.
Soft chuckle. Daisuke sits up, embarrassed.
“It’s OK,” Wakefield says, the smile still crinkling up the corners of his eyes. “I don’t mind being a pillow every so often.”
The smile, the gently wise eyes, the airplane-rumpled clothing, all of it hits Daisuke at once and he realizes, yes. Terrible, strange, no reason for it and he doesn’t understand why, Wakefield looks nothing like Tomoyo but yes, he somehow reminds Daisuke of her. The sense of quiet around them both, maybe. The comfort and safety he feels with them.
Comfort, he thinks. Warmth. He yawns again and doesn’t hesitate before laying his head on Wakefield’s shoulder again to go back to sleep.
-------------------
With Seibu, his pregame routine was never a problem. He could pitch when he liked, however much he liked, and nobody would say anything to him. The trainers liked it when he pitched more, actually, getting down the repeatability of his motion, nobody tracking pitch counts. Boras assured him when he signed that it would be the same here, and the coaching staff agrees, yes, of course, do what you think you need to do, you know yourself best.
He gets looks, though. Five hours before a game when the ballpark is silent and the sky high afternoon blue he’s out there throwing and running, wearing himself down to pitching strength. If he goes into a game too strong, too hyped up, he’ll overthrow everything. He’s heard that they’ve had sinkerball pitchers here in Boston before, guys who have to wear themselves the same way to be effective, none of this should be strange, but the coaches still give him odd looks as he comes into the clubhouse after his running.
Three bad starts. That’s all it takes before Francona pulls him aside a day before his next time up in the rotation.
“You get here two hours before gametime tomorrow,” Francona says.
“No, five.” Daisuke is a little startled, didn’t pitch today and not sure why Francona is talking to him, or why he’d be so wrong about when Daisuke usually gets to the park on his start days.
Francona shakes his head. “Two. I know you’ve been doin’ five, but tomorrow make it two. We think you’re overdoing it before starts.”
“I need five! There is no overdoing!”
“Two. And if I hear you’ve been out somewhere else throwin’ or runnin’ before the game, you’ll hear it from me later.”
An order, not a suggestion. Daisuke can feel panic rising up, his stomach dropping out at the bottom. He needs the time, needs the work, needs something or he won’t be able to pitch, he’s going to get destroyed tomorrow, and besides, didn’t they tell him…
“You were saying to me, I could be making my own schedule! Setting my own times! I know what I need doing!”
“Two, kid.” Francona’s face is set. “Stop havin’ those bad innings and maybe we’ll talk about it.”
He’s being treated like a child, like he doesn’t know how to handle himself as a pitcher, this is ridiculous, he’s been pitching for years and years and years with some of the best trainers and the best medical baseball minds in Japan focused on him, he knows what he has to do, he knows that without anything to tire him before the game he’s not going to pitch well, he knows that this is an important game, they have to beat the Yankees at home, he can’t afford this, not now, not now.
-------------------
The carpet, he thinks, is sure to wear thin with all the pacing he’s doing, but it’s the night before his start and he can’t sleep. He can’t believe he’s going to have to get ready with only two hours tomorrow. He’s already called Boras, but there’s nothing anyone can do, it’s not explicitly stated in his contract that he gets to set his own work schedule. Boras suggests he just wear himself down with something else before gametime, but Daisuke thinks about Francona’s stern face when he told him not to run or throw, and he can’t think of anything else he could do.
He finds himself wishing, again, that his wife was here, in Boston, not back in Japan with their daughter. Tomoyo had insisted, though, the girl is only two, Daisuke, she needs to grow up learning Japanese as well as English and she should do that in Japan. Sometimes Daisuke thinks his wife just prefers the shopping in Tokyo, just a short ride away from Tokorozawa, to the shopping in Boston. Normally he doesn’t mind this, glad she wasn’t around to deal with Varitek, bad enough that he has to, but now it’s driving him mad, not having anyone else around to stop him from pacing.
Back and forth, back and forth. Maybe if he paces enough he’ll be sufficiently worn out to pitch. Even as he thinks it he knows it doesn’t work like that. He needs something more.
Back and forth and. The buzzing of his cell phone.
“Hello?”
“Daisuke, hi, this is Tim. Uh. Wakefield,” as though his voice alone wasn’t familiar. Daisuke has to smile. “I couldn’t help, um. Overhearing, a little, today, when you and… well, when Tito was talking to you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You seemed. Upset.”
Daisuke nods, then remembers that of course Wakefield can’t see him. “Yeah. Is just… I know how I pitch. How I can pitch. I need to be, need not to have full strengths, is too much. I cannot be facing Yankees with only two hours.”
Wakefield makes a sympathetic noise, and Daisuke can’t stop himself from issuing a frustrated growl, the sort of thing that needs no translation.
“Hey,” Wakefield says, voice slow and soothing, “how ‘bout I come over? Could use some company?”
“Yeah.”
Daisuke starts pacing again even before Wakefield hangs up. Back and forth, back and forth.
-------------------
The bottle of vodka that Wakefield brought with him is cold against Daisuke’s fingers. It’s stronger than sake and the freeze helps it go down easier, fingertips turning numbly burning, same as his stomach and throat.
“Too fast,” Wakefield murmurs, and takes the bottle from him. Daisuke glares. “Didn’t come here to be responsible for you having a hangover on the mound tomorrow.”
The burn in his stomach settles down to a pleasant low heat. Daisuke leans back on his couch and stares at the ceiling, the whitish surface throbbing at him, his mind still pacing even if his legs aren’t.
Wakefield takes a controlled, practiced sip from the vodka bottle and glances sidewise at Daisuke, his eyes comically large with concern and Daisuke knows he’s being a little xenophobic again, some days it seems like everyone around him has enormous staring eyes, living in some fucked up baseball-themed anime cartoon, but tonight he can’t bring himself to care. “It’s only this bad because you’re worrying about it.”
Daisuke closes his eyes. Thinks about Boston. What baseball means here. Thinks about his wife, running his fingers through her long black hair. Wakefield’s wife and children, his quiet, intense devotion to them. Thinks about his mouth on the mouth of the bottle, Wakefield’s mouth there soon after. Thinks about Varitek and gets a dull unwanted spike of heat in his stomach that he can’t help having, he really can’t.
Daisuke has been thinking a lot. Soon it will be August.
Fuck it. Fuck it. He takes a deep breath and gathers his Middle of Things around himself, wrapping it up like a blanket, thick and secure.
Wakefield’s eyes fly even further open when Daisuke slides a hand up his stomach, chilled fingertips sneaking up under Wakefield’s shirt, skimming over skin.
“Need to do something, if no running, no pitching, I can’t be going into pitching with full strengths, can’t…”
“Daisuke, you. You said. You and, and Jason, you, didn’t want…”
“Don’t. Didn’t,” Daisuke murmurs, hand sliding higher and starting to warm up again, transferring the cold to Wakefield’s chest. Wakefield’s heart is jackhammering under his palm, scared-rabbit fast, but Wakefield isn’t moving away. “Not Varitek.”
“I’m.” Daisuke presses his nose to Wakefield’s throat, can feel when Wakefield swallows hard. “I’m married.”
“Also me. Tomoyo is not here. Is nobody here. Me. You.”
“I know,” Wakefield says, swallows hard again, and tips his head back.
-------------------
The couch is a little too small for the both of them to be laid out sideways, one on top of the other. One of Wakefield’s arms is bent back over the arm of the couch, the other wrapped tightly over Daisuke’s back.
Hips pressed together, it’s more heat than Daisuke can take, almost, more heat even than the vodka. His hand between them is cramped and uncomfortable, trying to hold them together in his palm, fingers awkward, not fitting all the way around his dick and Wakefield’s, but he doesn’t care, doesn’t care, it feels good. Better than Varitek in every way, better than anything. It’s not his pitching hand anyways.
Varitek never did anything like this. Always had to be in Daisuke. He would never have aligned himself with one of his pitchers, perfectly equal, content to rub, slide.
Trick Pitch Kids, Daisuke thinks, squeezing his thighs around Wakefield as much as he can, and he realizes he’s smiling, a ridiculous wide grin. Panting and sweating, getting in the workout he needs, and smiling. Somehow, it’s nothing at all like Varitek.
He closes his eyes tightly. Concentrates on breathing, on moving his hand and his hips, on the sweat he can smell and the tiny wet sounds he can hear.
Wakefield groans “Stacy” when he comes, jerking hard up against Daisuke, but it’s OK, it’s perfect, because Daisuke’s hips slam down and buries his nose in the hollow of Wakefield’s throat, breathes out without any thought at all, “Tomoyo.”
Whatever it was with Varitek, it’s not this. This is about baseball, and need, and even as Daisuke lies panting on top of Wakefield, non-pitching-hand fingers stretching against his side, even before Wakefield strokes a hand down Daisuke’s back from his neck to the base of his spine, following a drop of sweat, he knows it’ll be OK.
It’s just the same as the city, he thinks. His needs in Boston are the same as they were in Japan, and it’s only the shape of the impression that’s changed.
-------------------
Boston after dark is about as quiet as Tokorozawa was, a kind of bustling white noise just under the surface, jewel-lights in a light-pollution-pink night. Walking down Newbury Street at night he could almost be walking down Prope Street back home, all the shoppers more concerned with fashion than with baseball.
Of course it’s not the same. The Charles River smell of Boston is different from the Lake Sayama smell of Tokorozawa, and the Green Line to Fenway Park is clattering, dirty, old compared to the sleek white Yamaguchi Line to the Seibu Dome. But they both lead to baseball fields, ball size maybe different but lines between the bases just the same, no different city to city, country to country, and at night, sometimes, Daisuke can half-close his eyes, forget, and be anywhere.
Warning: attempted/implied actual rape, stalkerish behavior, creepy and deeply uncool behavior on the part of a baseball player
Because god forbid I write something normal and, y'know, not fucked up in some mildly disturbing way.
Daisuke Matsuzaka/Jason Varitek, Daisuke Matsuzaka/Tim Wakefield. Rated adult, or hard R, or something like that. Took some very slight liberties in advancing the season and makin' up game shit. Oh and I'm pretty sure Matsuzaka's wife is IRL in Boston with him, but for the purposes of this story, well, you'll see.
There are still parts of this that I'm really not happy with, but, as usual, I've been working on it for long enough and I no longer give enough of a shit. Woo! Enjoy!
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. It is in no way a reflection on the actual life, behavior, or character of any of the people featured, and there is no connection or affiliation between this fictional story and the people or organizations it mentions. It was not written with any intent to slander or defame any of the people featured. No profit has been or ever will be made as a result of this story: it is solely for entertainment. And again, it is entirely fictional, i.e. not true.
awesome cover image by offspeed!
Same as the city.
The only thing that startles him, at first, is how deeply unstartling it is.
They skim low over water to land, the plane dropping down and down again until it seems as though it could lower its wheels right into the ocean, choppy black with twisting white highlights and red gleaming from the ends of the wings. Water, and suddenly land, rushing up all in a second and followed a second later by a gently gut-wrenching bump. It’s the controlled chaos of landing on an island, and it’s all right and familiar.
Boston, then, first impression: you come into it just like you come into Japan, with exactly the same reckless hurtle over foamy seas.
He files that away in his mind.
The night is pinkish yellow, the horizon tinged with a low-glow haze, brighter in one direction; Boras nudges him and nods. Boston.
Second impression: Boston is a smear that you can barely see as you blink past cold-wind tears and camera flashbulbs.
The wind whipping off the water is cold enough to make him glad of the jacket, shiny black and puffy with a fur-trimmed hood. He hunches his shoulders a little to bunch the hood up protectively. The tarmac is filled with poorly controlled clots of photographers and over-eager reporters, but he’s not afraid of them. It’s a simple gesture of comfort, this hunching, keeping the back of his neck from the cold.
The photographers, Japanese and American, snap away, camera-white flash coming at them ankle-high, knee-high, waist-high, higher. Airport security stand by, yelling when a camera or a microphone edges over some invisible fluctuating line only they can see. They look tired and harassed in the harsh light.
He thinks, fleetingly, of Tomoyo, back home in Tokorozawa, maybe leaning out the window while their daughter tugs at her pant legs, maybe thinking of him rushing over this foreign water, landing on this foreign asphalt.
When he looks their way, some of the American photographers start yelling. “Dice Kay! Dice Kay!” They accent his name nasally, swallowing the wrong parts of it and emphasizing at random. They holler, wave at him, cajole him with fingers and a shouted jumble of words he can’t even begin to understand. They are rude and brash and they shove each other over to better position their own cameras.
They are all looking at him.
Third impression: in Boston, as in Japan, he once again will find himself in the Middle of Things.
-------------------
It’s easier to think in Florida than in Boston. It’s sunnier, and warmer, and Boras isn’t always at his elbow. When he’s not warming up or talking to reporters, Daisuke sits on a folding chair in the open area that passes for a bullpen. He looks out at the field as though he’s deeply interested in understanding the exercises going on there, chin in hand, elbow on knee. He’s counting on his sunglasses, though, because he has more important things to do than to watch baseball played at its most basic. He’s thinking.
There’s this idea, this concept, and it’s the same in Boston and in Japan. It’s the concept of the superstar. In America it is, so far as he can tell, every man for himself. Every man should strive to improve his lot in life as much as he can, as fast as he can, and by any means necessary. When Daisuke thinks about this, he doesn’t think of it as good or bad. It is just how things are, a kind of essential Americanness.
In Japan, you are not supposed to care more for yourself than for others, not in that American way. His parents had always been very clear on that. “What kind of pride would you have in your country, if you would just leave your kin to rot in the street?” his father always said, and Daisuke always nodded seriously, because his father often spoke to him as a man and not as a child. “It is a virtue to be more capable than the strongest lion, and yet more humble than the smallest mouse,” his father always said, and Daisuke always nodded.
And yet both Boston and Japan have these superstars. They are people who go above and beyond even usual American individual-centrism.
In every place where there are people paying attention, there are Middles of Things. A Middle of Things, Daisuke has long since decided, is where people most want to pay attention. It’s where the excitement is. It’s where people wish they were, if they aren’t there. Middles of Things happen all over, just as a result of living and, he supposes, of humans being naturally curious and generally attentive.
A superstar, Daisuke thinks, and he has thought long and hard about this, is someone who creates their own Middle of Things, and who walks around in it always, as though it’s a kind of rainbow-sheened soap bubble encasing them.
They have called him a superstar in Japanese and in English, but Daisuke has never thought of himself as a superstar, because when people say he creates his own Middle of Things, he thinks otherwise. He just happens along into Middles of Things that are already there.
He stares out at the casually loping outfielders, his ear nearly canceling out the white noise of English and Spanish in the middle distance. He wonders if there is a Middle of Things here that he’ll find himself in the middle of, or if he’ll finally make his own and deserve the title of superstar.
-------------------
He is mostly used to the Seibu Dome, the Tokyo Dome. Enclosed ballparks vibrating with fans, recycled air stripped aseptically clean. The infields are all artificial turf. In high school, the infields were pure dirt, no green in them at all, and the dirt was a grayed-out brown. Nothing like these orange-and-green-striped American infields, these outdoor spring training games that are more exercises in nonchalance and boredom management than anything else.
Doug Mirabelli teaches him how to say “suck my nuts” in English. Wily Mo Pena teaches him how to say “get your lazy ass off the cooler, I want a drink”. Mike Lowell teaches him how to say “everyone is helping me feel comfortable.”
David Ortiz wants to learn how to bow, but he gets the nuances all wrong and bows to Daisuke like he’s a 5 year old, then bows to Okajima like he’s a wise ancient scholar, then gives up and hugs everyone anyways.
Daisuke is learning a lot. Soon it will be April.
-------------------
Everyone tells him that he’s going to love his new catcher. Varitek, they say, is one of the best of the best. You couldn’t ask for anyone better to come into the American Major Leagues with.
On the Mariners, he knows, is Kenji Johjima. Johjima played for the Fukuoka Hawks, league rivals of the Lions. Daisuke used to worry about the Hawks whenever he played them, because they were managed by Sadaharu Oh, and Sadaharu Oh is someone he always thinks about when he thinks about people who take their own Middles of Things around with them. Sadaharu Oh’s Middle of Things is so big and so shiny that it captures the Middles of Things belonging to everyone around him.
Johjima is familiar, then, in a background-noise kind of way. Always a tough at-bat, he was, young and eager and Daisuke used to see him handling the Hawks pitchers masterfully, something he had appreciated. Still. Always aware of his rivals, but it had been hard to come into the Fukuoka Dome and see anything other than Sadaharu Oh perched alertly on the bench.
Daisuke thinks he might like to start out pitching to Johjima, familiar and respected, because one of the very first things Jason Varitek says to him is,
“Hi. I’m Jason Varitek. I can’t make any promises about how much Japanese I’m going to learn.”
Varitek does not try to bow. He reaches out and grabs Daisuke’s hand with a firmness that is a little unsettling. It immediately feels like he’s standing too close, closer than Tomoyo stands when she hands in a cup of tea, almost breathing on Daisuke. He’s still getting used to shaking hands, though, so he thinks maybe it’s just that. Maybe it is just the way that shaking hands seems so much more immediately intimate than bowing ever has. Bowing is about respect and politeness. Shaking hands is about getting a feel for someone else, getting a grab at their body before you even say hello, sometimes.
Varitek’s eyes are small and round and seem too close-set for Daisuke’s comfort. This is xenophobic thinking, though, something he can recognize and suppress.
“I am very glad to meet you,” he says, words careful and overenunciated.
“Good.” Varitek’s expression is unreadable, which worries Daisuke. He can’t afford to have a catcher he can barely understand and barely read physically, not this season, not with what he’s heard about how the Boston fans and media will treat him if he doesn’t live up to his contract right away. He’s got to figure Varitek out, get inside his Middle of Things and see what it’s like in there, if he wants to make it here.
-------------------
It is easier, thankfully, to understand Varitek during games than out of them. The unreadable flatness to him, so strange off the field, makes perfect sense on it, because it makes him a better catcher. Less extraneous gesture to muddle up the signs, eyes focused always on Daisuke and then, if needed, on the runner, flicking up to the batter to make sure he’s not cheating in but always drawn back to the mound like an iron filing to a magnet.
Spring training game, and Varitek drops down a sign that Daisuke doesn’t recognize. Instead of flashing his fingers like usual, he lets one hang down between his legs and rotates it slowly. Daisuke cocks his head. Varitek rotates his finger again. His eyes, behind the mask, are mostly invisible.
Daisuke stares down the center of the plate. Varitek rotates his finger again, slower, and suddenly Daisuke gets it.
He thinks very carefully about his muscles, fiber-twitch here, slow build of tension there, carefully engineered motion studied in Japanese labs until it had been perfected. He thinks most carefully about his legs, because they’re the most important part if he’s going to do this right.
He rears back, teeters forward, rotates his arm away from his body instead of in towards it. He knows he’s got it right when Varitek comes up out of his crouch in slight surprise, his glove wavering uncertainly. He cannot, Daisuke knows, see the ball properly, because it’s flying at him not with backspin like a fastball or frontspin like a curveball. It’s spiraling like a football. It’ll look like a white blob floating towards homeplate, with no way for those there to judge its speed.
The batter swings wildly, Varitek flails at the air to barely catch the ball, the umpire blinks, slices his fist downwards. Out.
Impression: Boston is not ready for the gyroball, even when they ask for it.
-------------------
Thursday, and Daisuke is tightening the laces of his glove, a careful and soothing activity that he repeats exactly the same way every time. His locker is near the manager’s office, the sort of high-traffic spot given to a newcomer who isn’t quite a rookie, which is fine with him. He understands.
He hears voices coming from the room. Francona is in there. He doesn’t mean to eavesdrop, but Daisuke is always looking for opportunities to listen to English without having to participate in the conversation; learning without the stress of responding.
“I think he might be throwing it,” Varitek’s voice says, heated.
“Think?” Francona, gruff and annoyed. “Thinking won’t win games in this town. I want you to know if he can throw it.”
“I don’t know. He throws… something. Weird.”
“Weird how?”
“The seams disappear.”
Francona sighs. “Can he throw it regularly? Can he control it? Do you have any fucking idea what it is or how it’s spinning?”
Silence, during which Daisuke thinks, with no small amount of annoyance, might be throwing it?
“I need you to find out if he can throw it, when, how, everything about it.”
“Is that a suggestion or an order?”
More silence. This time Daisuke can imagine Francona glaring. Suggestion or an order. He translates the words back to Japanese in his head (something he needs to stop doing, he knows), thinks carefully, decides Francona means for it to be an order.
“Fine. I’ll do some extra sessions with him, see if he can keep throwing it.”
The door to the manager’s office bangs open. Daisuke narrows his eyes as Varitek storms out. He’s not even going to pretend that he wasn’t listening.
Varitek marches right over. He looks Daisuke in the eyes, but for all Daisuke can read him he may as well have sunglasses on.
“We’re gonna need to do some work together.”
“You know that I throw it! You catched it yourself!”
“Caught,” Varitek corrects automatically, making Daisuke fume. He knows this, just a dumb little slip-up because he’s mad. Varitek knows, can’t have mistaken the gyroball for anything else; why would he pretend not to know? It makes Daisuke look bad in the eyes of the manager, and if this is Varitek’s weird American honor-stealing game, Daisuke is not willing to play along.
They glare at one another for a bit, up until Varitek’s goatee twitches, hinting at something like a smile.
“We’ll have you throw in the cages down here. Just need to see some things.”
“Fine.”
Varitek turns smartly on his heel and strides off, leaving Daisuke fuming and confused, staring at the retreating red sweatshirt until it blurs out into the rest of the clubhouse.
-------------------
Careful attention to his legs, powering his body forward, arm rotates out and away and
“Stop. Do that again.”
Daisuke grimaces. He goes through the motion again, more slowly. He could never actually throw the ball this slowed-down, but he’s hoping that if he does what Varitek says, they’ll be finished with this sooner and he can go home to his apartment, ignore the time difference and call home to Tokorozawa, maybe catch his daughter at home so he can sing to her over the phone, get into that space halfway between meditation and regular thinking so this strange stubbornness of Varitek’s can maybe start to make sense.
Varitek comes up to him and grabs his wrist. Daisuke starts, a kind of full-body twitch, but manages to not drop the baseball. He’s still not entirely used to this American ease of personal space invasion. He forces himself calm and cocks his head sideways at Varitek, who is staring at Daisuke’s fingers on the ball.
“How are you gripping this?”
“Just changeup grip.” Varitek looks skeptical, so Daisuke positions his fingers more clearly, trying to not be weirded out by the way his wrist feels, small bones moving over one another within the confines of Varitek’s encircling hand. “Grip is not important. Is all here,” he touches his thigh with his free hand, “and here,” tapping his shoulder.
“I still don’t see what you’re doing.” Varitek’s frowning, little vertical lines appearing between his heavy brows. Daisuke sighs. He can only guess that American pitchers work very differently, and Varitek has trouble understanding a pitch that isn’t based mostly on grip and the movement of the arm.
He goes through his motion again, as slowly and still smoothly as he can, his fingers surrounding the ball like a circle change, hoping Varitek will see how the outward swing of his arm will put the spin on the seams, how the particular trip-push of his legs powers it through.
Varitek stalks around behind Daisuke and moves in until he’s breathing on the back of Daisuke’s neck. Daisuke freezes, not quite in terror, but something very much like it.
Varitek puts his hands over both of Daisuke’s wrists so that their arms are almost perfectly in line. He presses his chest to Daisuke’s back and fits his knees into the hollows behind Daisuke’s own.
Varitek’s voice, low and directly in his ear, “Go through that motion again, nice and slow.” An order, not a suggestion.
Daisuke almost can’t breathe, not with Varitek wrapped around the entire back side of him like some kind of warm, heavy, breathing blanket. He thinks he understands what Varitek is doing. It’s another kind of lesson, though not one he’d ever seen in Japan, Presumably this kind of leeching onto him will allow Varitek to better understand the mechanics of his pitching motion, as though Varitek was himself pitching. He doesn’t know; maybe this is a normal thing between a catcher and a pitcher who aren’t familiar with one another yet, here in the West.
He takes a deep breath, trying to ignore the way Varitek does the same, stomach expanding with air and pressing up against Daisuke’s spine. He slowly maneuvers his feet, not letting the muscled push of Varitek’s legs behind his own upset his balance. His arms, and Varitek’s, swing out and up, then down.
“Again,” Varitek mutters, digging his chin momentarily into the dip between Daisuke’s trapezius and his deltoid. His goatee tickles the skin of Daisuke’s neck, sharp prickles behind his head, prickle and hot breath under his ear. “Again.”
-------------------
The Red Sox come to New York, a city bigger and brighter than Boston, louder and more brash. Still not as crazy as Tokyo, Daisuke thinks, looking out the windows of the bus that takes them from the airport to the hotel, irrational sense of pride.
Schedule carefully tailored so that Schilling can pitch the first game, take the sting of raw rivalry newly experienced off, and Daisuke pitches the second game. Varitek rotates his finger, Daisuke rotates his shoulder, and pinstripes flail.
In the hotel after the game he strips off his shirt so he can packs extra ice onto his shoulder. Sitting bare-backed and goose-pimpled in front of the TV, he watches Alex Rodriguez shake his head in front of the whitescreen backdrop of a press conference.
“Craziest thing,” Rodriguez says, a little tinny through the hotel TV speakers. “He throws that ball, you can’t even see it, it just comes out of his hand and flies in at you.”
Rodriguez listens to something a reporter asks, murmur not picked up by the mics. Daisuke shifts the ice bag pressed to his shoulder just to hear the comforting clanking rustle of ice cube against ice cube.
There’s a knock at the door, and he’s up to open it before he even has time to think about it. Automatic reaction, he realizes with his hand on the handle, he should probably check to see who it is first, but he’s already got the door half open.
The first thing he sees is the goatee, then the smile within it. The sight of Varitek smiling is starting to become an actual comfort, the kind of thing that Daisuke likes knowing he can make Varitek do. He is the one right now putting that expression on Varitek’s face, and good as he feels from his performance on the mound, this makes him feel better still.
He steps back to let Varitek in and the bag of ice starts to slide from his shoulder. Varitek reaches out and presses it back in place, moving his hand down to Daisuke’s waist. Even brief contact with the ice made his fingers cold, cold enough that Daisuke’s entire midsection feels like it’s burning in comparison.
“Did good today,” Varitek nods, fingers tapping at Daisuke’s side, “and I thought we could maybe talk about some of those at-bats, while they’re fresh in your mind.”
Daisuke nods. His stomach feels like it’s got a fire in the middle of it, and it’s confusing him, making it hard for him to think clearly. Varitek’s fingers are trailing down to Daisuke’s hip, to where the waistband of his pants rides low, something that Daisuke thinks must be absentmindedness, but.
Varitek’s palm presses up against the point of Daisuke’s hip. “Feel OK down here?”
Daisuke blinks. “What?”
“You pitch with your legs probably more than anyone else on our staff.”
Sure, sure, Daisuke is nodding, very true, that is what they tell you in high school in Japan, use your legs more and save your shoulder, save your elbow, pitch more and longer and more often so you can be better and better and better and better…
“Well I just now thought. Tito’d kill me if I let you get sore hips or legs because I didn’t think of it.” The grin on Varitek’s face is wide and supposed to be disarming, Daisuke thinks, although to him it’s a little too huge. “I mean, hey, it’s my job to worry about you guys, it’s my job to think about these things.”
Captain, catcher, yes, Daisuke understands this. He nods again. His legs aren’t particularly sore, but if Varitek thinks it’s best to make sure, well, Varitek is the one who knows how things are done over here, isn’t he?
“Better lie down on the bed,” Varitek says thoughtfully, like it’s only just occurred to him. “On your stomach.”
Careful to keep the ice in place, Daisuke arranges himself on the bed, folding his arms under his chin, facing towards the foot of the bed and the TV. Rodriguez is still talking, something about his defense in relation to Derek Jeter’s defense, and he can still watch like this. It’s not unusual. He lies down like this for trainers all the time.
Varitek crawls up onto the bed outside of Daisuke’s field of vision, which makes him tense, still that nervousness with casual physical contact of this sort. Varitek always acts like it’s completely natural, though, and this time is no different, his knees sinking into the bed on either side of Daisuke’s thighs and his hands settling on Daisuke’s hips like he does this every day, for every pitcher. Maybe he does. Daisuke doesn’t know, and everyone keeps telling him to listen to Varitek, Varitek will help you adjust to the league and the country and the city and Varitek will show you the way to your own Middle of Things.
Fingers no longer cold, tips warming back up to body temperature so all Daisuke can feel is gentle pressure on his hips, a slight relieving of it when Varitek lifts his fingers just enough to curl them around the edge of Daisuke’s pants. Just like the trainer, Daisuke thinks, and lifts his pelvis so that Varitek can slide them off.
“These too,” Varitek mutters, hands clutching at Daisuke’s boxers, a little faster, grabbing a little less smoothly. Daisuke swallows hard.
“It’s a funny pitch but, you know, I mean now our guys got tape of it, I think we’ll definitely be able to hit him better next time out,” Rodriguez is saying, blinking in the sharp media lights on the TV.
A new pressure behind him, slow and big, tectonic. Daisuke gasps just as the press conference goes to commercial.
“Now,” Varitek says, voice slow and triumphant, “how does that feel?”
-------------------
Boras calls when they’re in Kansas City. Daisuke is pitching tomorrow so he’s alone for the time being, because nobody will bother him the night before a start. He pitches with his legs more than anyone else on the staff. Varitek is always thinking of the team, certainly would never do anything to make it hard for Daisuke to move his legs properly right before his spot in the rotation comes up.
“How are you doing?” Boras asks, solicitous and calm.
Daisuke’s heard some things about Boras, since he came here. Heard some talk about his ruthlessness, how sometimes he pushes for money more than for the wellbeing of his own clients. But what he hasn’t heard is how Boras works to make every client (or, at least, Daisuke) feel like they can call on him for anything. How he makes sure they’re feeling good and that they’re happy and if they’re not, he’ll talk to them for hours to settle them down and smooth things over.
“OK.” Daisuke stretches, side to side, his hips aching. Varitek assures him that it’s normal, his body will adjust soon enough. As in so many things these days, Daisuke has to take his word for it.
“You sure?”
For a moment, Daisuke considers it. Thinks about just telling Boras everything. Just laying it all out. He’s not sure he can say it all in English but he knows Boras has a trusted Japanese translator close at hand, someone who can get on the line in a second. He knows Boras is discreet, knows that Boras wants him in the best mental space possible. He knows that this is partly because he, as a client, brings Boras a lot of money, but that doesn’t even matter. The opportunity to get this out, to stop it, he thinks for a moment, is there.
It’s only another moment before he remembers that Varitek is one of Boras’ clients too.
-------------------
Schilling has always tried to be Daisuke’s friend in the clubhouse. Schilling talks too fast for Daisuke, though. He tries to keep up out of politeness but he ends up getting headaches a lot, pitchingpoliticsnewsbaseballpitchingopinion chatter becoming a painful throb of white noise behind his eye sockets.
Beckett scares Daisuke a little, something slightly too intense in him, something just a little bit fractured and incorrectly offset. Tavarez is the same, although at times he’s just friendly enough to make Daisuke smile.
His favorite starter to spend time with is Wakefield. Wakefield doesn’t talk too much or too fast, and he seems to understand how to talk to someone who doesn’t really know the language. Schilling responds to Daisuke’s confusion by just talking louder, as though he’s trying to hammer the words in through Daisuke’s ears. Wakefield will talk more slowly, enunciating each word clearly, gesturing with his hands when he’s able to, “and then David put the peanut butter in his jockstrap, if you can imagine that,” each action an elegant sweep of his neatly manicured nails. Daisuke could watch Wakefield talk all day, sometimes. English makes sense when he’s talking.
Coco Crisp sees them sitting together a lot and starts referring to the two of them as “The Trick Pitch Kids,” knuckleball and gyroball, old and young, American and Japanese.
Francona will jerk a thumb over his shoulder and yell down the bench, “Hey, Trick Pitch Kids, go throw some extras in the bullpen, willya?” because they’re both the kind of pitchers who don’t really suffer from overuse; Wakefield needs as much work as he can get to keep his feel for the knuckleball, and Daisuke has been trained from his earliest youth for pitching stamina. Daisuke will stand up with Wakefield at his side and they’ll jog out to the bullpen together, nice and slow because Wakefield doesn’t like to hurry when he doesn’t have to, grass turning over in flashing shades of spring beneath their cleats.
They throw side by side, slow floating pitch and fast spinning floater. Varitek’s out in the batting cage, which seems a hundred miles away from the bullpen. The ballpark is quiet, stands ringing with the absence of fan sound, gates still hours away from opening. All Daisuke can hear is the swishthump of his pitches and Wakefield’s cutting through the air and slamming into round catcher’s mitts. The dull slam of taut leather on soft leather, Wakefield’s even breathing next to him, undisturbed by the exertionless pitch he throws, these surround Daisuke as warmly as the sunlight does. This is baseball at the highest level. This is what he came to America for.
Boston is baseball, and baseball in Boston is its own Middle of Things.
-------------------
Minnesota is a comfort. For the first time since coming to the Major Leagues, Daisuke feels right at home. The air isn’t quite as scrubbed as it should be, but the artificial turf feels good under his feet and the roof over his head is a fine comfort. He can hardly keep his head in the dugout when he gets out of the clubhouse. He gets out and runs on the turf.
This is good. Minnesota, he can pitch here.
Seventh inning and he’s staring in at Joe Mauer, who he could have sworn was listed at 6’4 or 6’5, but who looks much closer to 6’7. Mauer’s almost tall enough to negate the height difference Daisuke gets from the raised mound on which he stands. This should be scary, but Daisuke is serene, untouchable.
In outdoor stadiums, the basepaths are dirt. This means orange, bright orange slashes all around the edges of Daisuke’s vision. In most domes, only the bases themselves are surrounded by dirt, the basepaths kept turf-green. In Minnesota, those distracting orange lines are gone and it doesn’t matter a bit how big the batter is, because Daisuke can see, no little sideways tics of his eyes towards distracting and still-new-seeming color.
Curveball, fastball, fastball barely fouled off, Mauer’s mouth pursing in an impressed whistle for a moment before he remembers himself. Slider, called just out of the strikezone. Fastball again, high and tight and Mauer’s sense of speed is all destroyed. Mauer’s long arms just mean that he looks all that more impressive when he flails, fully extended, and strikes out.
The crowd sounds different in America than it ever did in Japan, but the particularly echo-ey near-muffle of a crowd in a big dome is familiar music to Daisuke’s ears. They may be in Minnesota, but there are still large numbers of Red Sox fans in the crowd, if the happy noises coming from the stands can be taken as any kind of indication.
Daisuke’s riding high on this. He feels centered, peaceful, completely in charge of himself. Varitek pats him on the ass as he comes off the mound, and he barely even notices. He doesn’t need to. Domeball, Japanball, this is his turf. For the first time in a long time he doesn’t feel dependent on anyone at all.
-------------------
The knock on his hotel door isn’t entirely unexpected by now. This time, though, he gets up and opens the door only part way, keeping the chain on and peering through the crack.
Varitek tries on that disarming grin again. “Hey, pitched real well today.”
Daisuke nods. He makes no move to take the chain off. Varitek’s eyes travel back and forth between the chain and Daisuke’s face. His eyes narrow so much that for a second Daisuke steps back, like looking in some kind of twisted and coarsened mirror.
“Dice. C’mon. What’s this?”
Daisuke shrugs. He doesn’t quite trust himself to talk.
“Dice.” A little more forcefully. “How ‘bout you open this door and we can talk?”
A wry twist of his mouth. “Won’t be talk.”
“Yeah, well… that’s OK.” The goatee twists around a small smile. “You like that.”
“No. You like that.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake… Dice, don’t be fuckin’ ridiculous.” Varitek sticks his hand in the door gap, fingers curling around the edge in towards Daisuke, and it’s all he can do to stop himself from slamming the door shut. He still wants to win, cares about this team, and that’s the only thing that stops him. Something of this must come across in his face, because Varitek immediately steps back and holds up both of his hands, palms out, stepping away from the door. “Hey, woah. Calm down. C’mon. We’re not like that.”
“We not like what?” Daisuke laughs bitterly. “There is no we. We are not like nothing.”
Varitek looks side to side down the hall, stepping back up to the gap gingerly. “C’mon, Dice, please just let me in so we can talk. We can’t be having this… this conversation out in the hall.” His eyes are earnest and his shoulders are lowered, his entire posture contrite.
All Daisuke can think, looking at Varitek through the door, is everything that anyone ever told him about the catcher:
You’ll want to lean on Varitek, he’ll tell you everything you need to know, and
Just watch what Varitek calls because he knows the hitters best, and
Oh, how lucky you are, couldn’t be going to a better catcher to start off in a whole new country and a whole new league, and
Trust Varitek, he knows, and
Trust Varitek, he’s a great catcher and a great guy, and
Trust Varitek…
Daisuke takes the chain off the door. Steps back.
Varitek steps in gently. “Hey, look. I’m sorry. I don’t.” He looks down at his feet. “I guess I’m not very good at this, huh?” The nervous little huffing laugh, the hand on the back of his own neck, it’s all very convincing. Daisuke takes a deep breath and closes his eyes momentarily to hold onto the feeling he had in the Metrodome earlier in the night, contained and secure in himself, the way he used to feel all the time back in Japan.
“There is never a we,” he says, choosing his words as carefully as he can. “There is only ever a you and a you wanting. The first time, I only thought… you were tricking me, I thought it was to be trainer, checking soreness, and you…. and you….”
“Hey, Dice, don’t be crazy. You make it sound like you didn’t want it.”
“I didn’t.”
“Uh uh, don’t try to backtrack on it. You… you fuckin’ got off just as good as I ever did.”
Daisuke turns bright red and looks to the side, at the wall, at anything but Varitek. Softly. “Doesn’t mean I was wanting it.”
“The hell it doesn’t.”
This is not the sort of thing that Daisuke automatically has the words for, and he can only glare balefully at Varitek for a minute. Varitek’s a guy, he should know this. “Just because… just because my body is not to be objecting, does not mean I am wanting it! You… you have penis, you know!” He knows his grammar is falling apart, nowhere near his usual carefully overenunciated wording, but he’s so red he thinks his face may never pale again and he can’t stop himself.
“If you didn’t… you could have just said…” Varitek steps forward and gets both arms around Daisuke’s waist, both hands gripping Daisuke’s ass. Daisuke stiffens up, but he’s been doing that since the first day, he realizes, Varitek probably doesn’t even notice anymore.
“You… my catcher… I am supposed to have trusting of you…”
“You can, Dice, man, you can, you can,” and Varitek is nuzzling his neck, breathing down his collar hot and humid, “just…. just relax and trust me on this… gonna make you feel good…”
“No,” Daisuke says, as firmly and clearly as he can. Varitek presses a thigh between Daisuke’s legs and licks his throat. Daisuke gets both his hands on Varitek’s shoulders and pushes but he doesn’t have any leverage, can’t get his feet under him right, can’t get into his pitching stance to get the power from his legs, of course, of course, Varitek has felt every line of him in his stance, Varitek knows exactly how he moves and can anticipate it, keep him secured. “No!”
“Jason.”
They both freeze. No one bothered to close the door properly, and Daisuke stares over Varitek’s stiff back directly into the shock-wide eyes of Wakefield.
-------------------
“Getting a day off” is how Francona describes it to the media. Daisuke doesn’t know what Wakefield told to whom; all he knows is that they’re back in Boston and he’s pitching to Mirabelli today. Afraid of being alone and having to talk to Varitek, afraid of anyone noticing he’s afraid of anything, Daisuke shadows Mirabelli and peppers him with questions about English, baseball, the Blue Jays lineup, anything and everything to keep him talking.
He even sits down and lets Schilling talk at him for a half hour before the game, he’s so desperate to look occupied at all times. Schilling still isn’t very good at reading his face, it’s easy enough for Daisuke to pretend to understand everything and look accordingly interested.
Mirabelli isn’t as good a catcher as Varitek, that much is obvious. He calls for the fastball too often for Daisuke’s tastes and he’s a lot slower out of his crouch, making Daisuke a little afraid to throw anything with too much spin on it, a little too likely that it’ll hit the dirt and escape to the backstop.
The Blue Jays hit him pretty hard, but he doesn’t care, not even when Vernon Wells hits a towering fly ball that towers and flies right on out over the Monster and into the street. Mirabelli doubles in a couple runs, and Daisuke practically hugs him when he gets back to the dugout at the end of the inning. Varitek is all the way down at the other end of the bench, and he knows this won’t last forever, Francona isn’t going to keep Varitek out of the lineup every time Daisuke pitches, but for right now, right now he’s pathetically grateful to Mirabelli just for existing.
They win the game late, the W going to JC Romero, and Daisuke closes his eyes. Exhales. Wishes for the millionth time to Tomoyo was here in Boston, not a phone call and thousands of miles away. Still. One game at a time.
-------------------
It’s another two weeks before Wakefield sits down next to Daisuke on the plane ride to Anaheim. Extra inning game behind them, it’s an overnight flight and most of the team is asleep, or at least wearing headphones and willfully pretending. Wakefield fiddles with the latch on the tray in the seatback in front of him, and Daisuke can’t pretend that he hasn’t been waiting for this.
“So. Jason.” Wakefield looks sidelong at Daisuke, speaking even more slowly than usual to compensate, Daisuke assumes, for his low voice. “You and he, uh. Was that. Uh. A first… a first time… thing?”
Daisuke looks down and shakes his head. There’s no point in pretending that he doesn’t know what Wakefield is referring to.
“And you. Didn’t want to?”
Just barely above a whisper. “No…”
Wakefield sighs and looks tired, older in the weak spot-yellow of the airplane reading light over his head. “Why?”
“He is… everyone told me to, to trust my catcher.”
“If you didn’t feel comfortable with something… Daisuke, you should have come to someone else. Jason isn’t the only person on this team you can trust. You could have come to Curt,” Daisuke snorts a little, and a thin smile breaks out over Wakefield’s face, “you could have come to Doug, or Tito, or Farrell, or… well, me.”
“Didn’t know how. How to say.”
“I guess you wouldn’t.” Wakefield looks at Daisuke with just the corners of his eyes again, a kindly sort of glance that sends Daisuke’s stomach dropping down, straight out of the bottom of the plane and into the dirt miles and miles below.
-------------------
He wakes up to a sharp poke on his shoulder, head swimming up from sleep and pain from a neck bent over wrong-way slowly marching up into his consciousness. His mouth is cottonydry and he reaches up to rub his eyes with the back of his hand, sleepily.
Soft chuckle. Daisuke sits up, embarrassed.
“It’s OK,” Wakefield says, the smile still crinkling up the corners of his eyes. “I don’t mind being a pillow every so often.”
The smile, the gently wise eyes, the airplane-rumpled clothing, all of it hits Daisuke at once and he realizes, yes. Terrible, strange, no reason for it and he doesn’t understand why, Wakefield looks nothing like Tomoyo but yes, he somehow reminds Daisuke of her. The sense of quiet around them both, maybe. The comfort and safety he feels with them.
Comfort, he thinks. Warmth. He yawns again and doesn’t hesitate before laying his head on Wakefield’s shoulder again to go back to sleep.
-------------------
With Seibu, his pregame routine was never a problem. He could pitch when he liked, however much he liked, and nobody would say anything to him. The trainers liked it when he pitched more, actually, getting down the repeatability of his motion, nobody tracking pitch counts. Boras assured him when he signed that it would be the same here, and the coaching staff agrees, yes, of course, do what you think you need to do, you know yourself best.
He gets looks, though. Five hours before a game when the ballpark is silent and the sky high afternoon blue he’s out there throwing and running, wearing himself down to pitching strength. If he goes into a game too strong, too hyped up, he’ll overthrow everything. He’s heard that they’ve had sinkerball pitchers here in Boston before, guys who have to wear themselves the same way to be effective, none of this should be strange, but the coaches still give him odd looks as he comes into the clubhouse after his running.
Three bad starts. That’s all it takes before Francona pulls him aside a day before his next time up in the rotation.
“You get here two hours before gametime tomorrow,” Francona says.
“No, five.” Daisuke is a little startled, didn’t pitch today and not sure why Francona is talking to him, or why he’d be so wrong about when Daisuke usually gets to the park on his start days.
Francona shakes his head. “Two. I know you’ve been doin’ five, but tomorrow make it two. We think you’re overdoing it before starts.”
“I need five! There is no overdoing!”
“Two. And if I hear you’ve been out somewhere else throwin’ or runnin’ before the game, you’ll hear it from me later.”
An order, not a suggestion. Daisuke can feel panic rising up, his stomach dropping out at the bottom. He needs the time, needs the work, needs something or he won’t be able to pitch, he’s going to get destroyed tomorrow, and besides, didn’t they tell him…
“You were saying to me, I could be making my own schedule! Setting my own times! I know what I need doing!”
“Two, kid.” Francona’s face is set. “Stop havin’ those bad innings and maybe we’ll talk about it.”
He’s being treated like a child, like he doesn’t know how to handle himself as a pitcher, this is ridiculous, he’s been pitching for years and years and years with some of the best trainers and the best medical baseball minds in Japan focused on him, he knows what he has to do, he knows that without anything to tire him before the game he’s not going to pitch well, he knows that this is an important game, they have to beat the Yankees at home, he can’t afford this, not now, not now.
-------------------
The carpet, he thinks, is sure to wear thin with all the pacing he’s doing, but it’s the night before his start and he can’t sleep. He can’t believe he’s going to have to get ready with only two hours tomorrow. He’s already called Boras, but there’s nothing anyone can do, it’s not explicitly stated in his contract that he gets to set his own work schedule. Boras suggests he just wear himself down with something else before gametime, but Daisuke thinks about Francona’s stern face when he told him not to run or throw, and he can’t think of anything else he could do.
He finds himself wishing, again, that his wife was here, in Boston, not back in Japan with their daughter. Tomoyo had insisted, though, the girl is only two, Daisuke, she needs to grow up learning Japanese as well as English and she should do that in Japan. Sometimes Daisuke thinks his wife just prefers the shopping in Tokyo, just a short ride away from Tokorozawa, to the shopping in Boston. Normally he doesn’t mind this, glad she wasn’t around to deal with Varitek, bad enough that he has to, but now it’s driving him mad, not having anyone else around to stop him from pacing.
Back and forth, back and forth. Maybe if he paces enough he’ll be sufficiently worn out to pitch. Even as he thinks it he knows it doesn’t work like that. He needs something more.
Back and forth and. The buzzing of his cell phone.
“Hello?”
“Daisuke, hi, this is Tim. Uh. Wakefield,” as though his voice alone wasn’t familiar. Daisuke has to smile. “I couldn’t help, um. Overhearing, a little, today, when you and… well, when Tito was talking to you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. You seemed. Upset.”
Daisuke nods, then remembers that of course Wakefield can’t see him. “Yeah. Is just… I know how I pitch. How I can pitch. I need to be, need not to have full strengths, is too much. I cannot be facing Yankees with only two hours.”
Wakefield makes a sympathetic noise, and Daisuke can’t stop himself from issuing a frustrated growl, the sort of thing that needs no translation.
“Hey,” Wakefield says, voice slow and soothing, “how ‘bout I come over? Could use some company?”
“Yeah.”
Daisuke starts pacing again even before Wakefield hangs up. Back and forth, back and forth.
-------------------
The bottle of vodka that Wakefield brought with him is cold against Daisuke’s fingers. It’s stronger than sake and the freeze helps it go down easier, fingertips turning numbly burning, same as his stomach and throat.
“Too fast,” Wakefield murmurs, and takes the bottle from him. Daisuke glares. “Didn’t come here to be responsible for you having a hangover on the mound tomorrow.”
The burn in his stomach settles down to a pleasant low heat. Daisuke leans back on his couch and stares at the ceiling, the whitish surface throbbing at him, his mind still pacing even if his legs aren’t.
Wakefield takes a controlled, practiced sip from the vodka bottle and glances sidewise at Daisuke, his eyes comically large with concern and Daisuke knows he’s being a little xenophobic again, some days it seems like everyone around him has enormous staring eyes, living in some fucked up baseball-themed anime cartoon, but tonight he can’t bring himself to care. “It’s only this bad because you’re worrying about it.”
Daisuke closes his eyes. Thinks about Boston. What baseball means here. Thinks about his wife, running his fingers through her long black hair. Wakefield’s wife and children, his quiet, intense devotion to them. Thinks about his mouth on the mouth of the bottle, Wakefield’s mouth there soon after. Thinks about Varitek and gets a dull unwanted spike of heat in his stomach that he can’t help having, he really can’t.
Daisuke has been thinking a lot. Soon it will be August.
Fuck it. Fuck it. He takes a deep breath and gathers his Middle of Things around himself, wrapping it up like a blanket, thick and secure.
Wakefield’s eyes fly even further open when Daisuke slides a hand up his stomach, chilled fingertips sneaking up under Wakefield’s shirt, skimming over skin.
“Need to do something, if no running, no pitching, I can’t be going into pitching with full strengths, can’t…”
“Daisuke, you. You said. You and, and Jason, you, didn’t want…”
“Don’t. Didn’t,” Daisuke murmurs, hand sliding higher and starting to warm up again, transferring the cold to Wakefield’s chest. Wakefield’s heart is jackhammering under his palm, scared-rabbit fast, but Wakefield isn’t moving away. “Not Varitek.”
“I’m.” Daisuke presses his nose to Wakefield’s throat, can feel when Wakefield swallows hard. “I’m married.”
“Also me. Tomoyo is not here. Is nobody here. Me. You.”
“I know,” Wakefield says, swallows hard again, and tips his head back.
-------------------
The couch is a little too small for the both of them to be laid out sideways, one on top of the other. One of Wakefield’s arms is bent back over the arm of the couch, the other wrapped tightly over Daisuke’s back.
Hips pressed together, it’s more heat than Daisuke can take, almost, more heat even than the vodka. His hand between them is cramped and uncomfortable, trying to hold them together in his palm, fingers awkward, not fitting all the way around his dick and Wakefield’s, but he doesn’t care, doesn’t care, it feels good. Better than Varitek in every way, better than anything. It’s not his pitching hand anyways.
Varitek never did anything like this. Always had to be in Daisuke. He would never have aligned himself with one of his pitchers, perfectly equal, content to rub, slide.
Trick Pitch Kids, Daisuke thinks, squeezing his thighs around Wakefield as much as he can, and he realizes he’s smiling, a ridiculous wide grin. Panting and sweating, getting in the workout he needs, and smiling. Somehow, it’s nothing at all like Varitek.
He closes his eyes tightly. Concentrates on breathing, on moving his hand and his hips, on the sweat he can smell and the tiny wet sounds he can hear.
Wakefield groans “Stacy” when he comes, jerking hard up against Daisuke, but it’s OK, it’s perfect, because Daisuke’s hips slam down and buries his nose in the hollow of Wakefield’s throat, breathes out without any thought at all, “Tomoyo.”
Whatever it was with Varitek, it’s not this. This is about baseball, and need, and even as Daisuke lies panting on top of Wakefield, non-pitching-hand fingers stretching against his side, even before Wakefield strokes a hand down Daisuke’s back from his neck to the base of his spine, following a drop of sweat, he knows it’ll be OK.
It’s just the same as the city, he thinks. His needs in Boston are the same as they were in Japan, and it’s only the shape of the impression that’s changed.
-------------------
Boston after dark is about as quiet as Tokorozawa was, a kind of bustling white noise just under the surface, jewel-lights in a light-pollution-pink night. Walking down Newbury Street at night he could almost be walking down Prope Street back home, all the shoppers more concerned with fashion than with baseball.
Of course it’s not the same. The Charles River smell of Boston is different from the Lake Sayama smell of Tokorozawa, and the Green Line to Fenway Park is clattering, dirty, old compared to the sleek white Yamaguchi Line to the Seibu Dome. But they both lead to baseball fields, ball size maybe different but lines between the bases just the same, no different city to city, country to country, and at night, sometimes, Daisuke can half-close his eyes, forget, and be anywhere.