oh funny baseball fic, I've missed you
Prompt from unlovablehands: Grady Sizemore/Curtis Granderson and their secret illicit affair.
It was the "secret illicit affair" bit that set the evil hamster wheels turning. Also, I wanted to use last names for this one, like I usually do for slash, but I just couldn't make myself write a slash fic where one of the guys was called "Sizemore" over and over again without cackling like a crazy person and completely losing it. I'm sorry Grady Sizemore: maybe if you didn't have such a porn star name this wouldn't be an issue. First names it is.
Uh, not that this is a particularly serious story, but yeah.
Grady Sizemore/Curtis Granderson. NC-17.
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.
not exactly by the book
"Got it!" Curtis says, hefting the thick, untidy binder over his head. "I told Skip I wanted to look over the regulations to make sure all my behavior was league-appropriate and he just handed it over. Said nobody ever looked at the damn thing anyways. Didn't even have to lie!"
Grady can't stop himself from grinning back at him. Of course Jim Leyland wouldn't think twice about Curtis claiming to want to check the regulations. He probably expected it. Grady had once caught Curtis measuring up from the knob of his bat with a little ruler and a pencil, marking off the height above which pine tar was not technically allowed. Sometimes he has to remind himself that Curtis is only sort of completely crazy.
The binder is a dull faded blue, its front cover broken and repaired with duct tape. Curtis sits on the bed next to him, shuffling so that the binder can rest across his knees. He lays a hand reverently on the center of the busted cover, like he's swearing on a stack of fucking Bibles. Grady rolls his eyes, because seriously, only this guy. He reaches around and flips the binder open, dislodging Curtis' hand in the process. Curtis, being Curtis, doesn't get mad and just angles a gently chastising smile at him.
The first page has a pale tan ring in the upper righthand corner, like someone left a coffee cup sitting on it years and years ago. In the center of the page, in old-fashioned typewriter-esque font, are the words 'MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL RULEBOOK'. The stack of papers underneath the front page is yellowing and intimidating.
"You know where it is?"
"Somewhere in the threes," Curtis says, tentatively turning chunks of pages. One of the binder rings doesn't close properly anymore, and each section of paper has to be babied through. Curtis takes his time, being careful with the pages even though it's obvious he's the first person to bother being careful with this particular rulebook in years. Possibly decades. It's pretty stupid, but Grady amuses himself by watching Curtis' hands. Curtis has very long fingers that make very precise movements, and Grady could probably watch him turn pages all day if he had to.
Curtis makes a soft aha! noise and tracks his finger down a page. Grady leans in. Sure enough, it was in the threes: Rule 3.09.
Players in uniform shall not address or mingle with spectators, nor sit in the stands before, during, or after a game. No manager, coach or player shall address any spectator before or during a game. Players of opposing teams shall not fraternize at any time while in uniform.
Someone has penned in, next to this, "Stargell Rule." A tidier, brighter, more recent pen has written, underneath that, "Sean Casey Rule." The game's greatest fraternizers, apparently. Grady's heard it called The Stargell Rule before, after old Willie Stargell, who couldn't resist chatting with a fellow ballplayer no matter what team the guy was on or how tense the game was. The Sean Casey Rule is new to him, but he assumes it's just a local variant. He can see how it'd fit.
"While. In. Uniform," Curtis says, still looking down at the rulebook. Then he looks up at Grady, the very start of a smile playing about his mouth. "I think we're OK! I mean, this clearly just restricts in-game behavior, there's nothing at all about anything that might happen off the field!"
"Right, yeah." Grady scans Rule 3.09 again, looking for a loophole that could get them in trouble, because he knows full well by now that Curtis is a stickler for the rules in a way that Grady hasn't seen since he left elementary school and Timmy Markler, the biggest little brown-noser in the world, behind him. What had inspired a 10-year-old Grady Sizemore to beat someone up now makes him smile fondly. Maybe he's mellowed out. Or maybe Curtis just does the whole "in love with rules" thing a lot more gracefully than Timmy Markler ever did.
Some of the rules have commentaries under them, or multiple parts, but Rule 3.09 doesn't. It is exactly what it says it is. He checks the rules above and below it, just to be safe, but Rule 3.08 is about subbing players in during a game, and Rule 3.10 is about who gets to cancel a game when the weather's bad.
"Why d'you think we're not allowed to, uh, 'address or mingle with spectators'?" He nudges Curtis with his shoulder. "So we don't get pissed when they say stupid shit and beat them up? So we don't corrupt them with our rowdy ballplayer ways?"
Curtis snorts and nudges him back. "No, jeez. Actually it was originally to keep gambling in check, I think. Fans used to try to pay off players during the games and stuff."
"Huh," Grady says, thinking. "Damn, no one ever offers me any cash on the field. And hey, don't we break that rule anyways every time we sign for fans before the games? Or when we talk during warmups?"
"Yeah. I guess that's what Skip meant when he said no one reads this thing." Curtis closes the binder, jimmying the pages back through the faulty binder ring. He taps his fingers on the cover anxiously. "That's probably OK, though, right? I mean, what are we supposed to do, turn away from some guy who comes up and says hi? Tell some little kid you can't sign his baseball 'cause it's in the rules?"
It's the worst of all Grandersonian dilemmas: Following the Rules versus Being a Nice Guy. Grady watches him waver agonizingly between the two before he takes pity on him. "It's fine, Curtis. Shit, everyone does it. If the coaches hadda problem with it, we would've heard about it by now. Hell, they write nice stories about guys who talk to the fans." He grins and pushes Curtis' shoulder again. "I don't hafta tell you that."
Curtis ducks his head modestly. Then he looks up again, the worry back on his face. "If it was so superfluous, though, wouldn't they have taken it off the books? Jeez, it's probably one of those rules that they keep around and don't enforce for little things, but as soon as someone steps too far out of line they can just pull out the book and say, 'See here, this is illegal, you're in big trouble now, son.'"
"Calm down, calm down. Superfluous, sheesh, what is this, a fucking real-life crossword?" Grady tugs the rulebook away from him and starts paging through it. "This is Major League Baseball, dude... they're just fucking lazy, OK? It's still in here 'cause they're too lazy to take it out. Like..." He flips through more pages at random. "OK, here. Rule 8.04. When the bases are unoccupied, the pitcher shall deliver the ball to the batter within 20 seconds after he receives the ball. Each time the pitcher delays the game by violating this rule, the umpire shall call 'Ball.' Have you ever, in the history of your entire big league career, seen that rule enforced? Twenty seconds? I think I've hit against some guys, it takes them practically that long just to go through their fucking windup!"
"Yeah. OK. OK." Curtis breathes deeply a few times. Grady closes the rulebook again and watches, amused. "I'm good. I just. Wow! I thought for sure there was some kind of rule against it, but there isn't, there really isn't, we can really do this!" Curtis turns and flashes him that megawatt smile, the one that the fans all go crazy for, and Grady can't breathe for a second, remembering all over again why he's here, putting up with this absurdity.
He reaches out and rubs his thumb over Curtis' lower lip. "We can keep on doing this, you mean," he says, because Curtis the Worrier was one thing, but he was Grady Sizemore, and he had never been one for sitting around waiting to check the regulations before jumping in with both feet flying.
Curtis' face downgrades itself from brilliantly grinning to a guilty, sheepish look. Grady laughs out loud and swings a knee over, straddling Curtis' lap. He tosses the rulebook onto the floor. It lands with a thud and Curtis winces, his legs twitching like he wants to go pick it up and stick it in a box with foam peanuts or something.
"Oh no you don't," Grady says, grabbing Curtis' face in both hands. "The rulebook doesn't matter. The rulebook is a piece of shit." He means to smother Curtis with an extremely hot and overwhelming kiss, totally in control and making Curtis forget all about The Rules, but when he disses the rulebook Curtis gets this fucking pout on his face. And that. That is just not fair.
So instead of being very cool and very in charge, Grady makes a tiny whimpering noise and mashes his face into Curtis'. He ends up kind of sucking on Curtis' lips while Curtis gets with the program and realizes they're kissing now, which is embarrassing and messy and wet, but he can't make himself stop. Eventually Curtis opens his mouth and the kiss evens out, except for when Grady gets too excited and surges forward, knocking their front teeth together and giving them both low-grade headaches.
He pulls back far enough to look at Curtis properly. "Hi. Sorry. Ow."
"Ow," Curtis agrees, leaning in again, resting his forehead against Grady's. "Careful. End up looking like a hockey player."
Grady snorts out a laugh, the kind of braying, honking laugh that's terribly mortifying and inspires his teammates to do spirited imitations on the bus back to the hotel after away games. Curtis just grins that great big grin, though, and Grady gets the feeling that when Curtis says he's laughing with him, not at him, he really means it.
----
When the Tigers come to Cleveland for their first series, Grady spends a week getting ready. He calls in a reservation at one of the nicer restaurants in town. He goes through his apartment with an actual vacuum cleaner, not just sweeping the dust into corners and under furniture. He gets a haircut. He buys a new shirt. He absolutely cleans his local drug store out of condoms.
It's only the last errand that keeps him from feeling like a total girl about the whole thing. The cashier is a pimply high school kid whose eyes go wide when he recognizes Grady, and they go even wider when he sees the amount of latex on his counter. Grady gives him a slow smile and a conspiratorial wink. He feels like this should be a public service announcement: see, even the major leaguer, who gets all this amazing tail, is a fan of safe sex!
If he leaves the kid with an erroneous impression of the kind of tail he's getting, well, that's the kid's fault for making assumptions.
----
"Oh, jeez," Curtis groans, hands balling into fists. Grady inches his hips forwards, knowing that this is a bad idea, because they're both going to have terrible carpet burn in terrible places by game-time tomorrow, but with Curtis flattened on the floor in front of him, back arched and ass raised up like some kind of fucking big cat, he can see himself sinking in on each stroke, and there's no way in hell he's stopping now.
He pulls most of the way out and grabs Curtis' ass with both hands, holding him open. He pushes back in as slow as he can stand. He gets to watch Curtis stretch around his dick. Watch Curtis take it.
"Nnnngh," Curtis says, cheek smashed into the carpet. "Yeeah, Grady, c'mon, fuck... give me... oh, hey, ngh, wow, your carpet's really. Ungh. Really clean."
"I hate you," Grady says. He lets go of Curtis' ass and returns his hands to Curtis' sides, although not before slapping each cheek for good measure, because, seriously. He speeds up the pace, snapping his hips. "I'm never vacuuming again. I'm, gnnnn, I'm giving you the fucking ride of your, mm, life, and you're looking at the carpet? I'm going to kill you."
"It's, it's, oh god yes yes right there Grady! it's good that it's clean! I'm oh fuck oh fuck nnngggh enjoying the cleanliness of, shit, yes, Grady, of your carpet!"
"Seriously. Going. To kill you."
Curtis makes a strangled, keening noise in response. He tenses and comes, spattering the (formerly clean) carpet. He collapses all the way, legs sprawling and bringing his ass back onto a level with the rest of him. Grady slips out at the motion and humps Curtis' ass for a full minute before he can calm down enough to work his way back inside. It's worth it, though, because Curtis is warm and boneless and he just lets Grady fuck him as crazily as he wants, which happens to be pretty damn crazily.
After a while Curtis groans and awkwardly bends his neck to look back at Grady. "You gonna finish up any time soon? Jeez, Grady, did you pop a greenie or something?" His eyes are bleary, and half his face is imprinted with little carpet-dents.
"I think I, nrrgh, cooled down some when you brought up my carpet."
Curtis closes his eyes and sets his head back down on the carpet. "Messed it up. Got your nice clean carpet all dirty. Sorry."
"Stop talking! About my carpet!" Grady pants and drives his hips harder, faster. "Seriously! You're a dead man!" He comes hard, jaw clenching, making a tiny involuntary squeak. He slumps down onto Curtis' sweaty back, his heart jackhammering.
"Worst assassin ever," Curtis says.
"Mmm."
----
During batting practice, he trots over to Curtis and drags him out to the warning track so that they can pretend to catch long fly balls and so that he can actually examine Curtis' face and see how bad the rug burn is. Visible but not terrible, he decides. He's in less immediately observable trouble himself; the worst carpet burns he has are on his knees.
"Verlander's going down," he says, stretching out one of his quads and using the one-footed maneuver as an excuse to rest a hand on Curtis' shoulder. "I'm gonna take him yard today. I can feel it."
"You are so full of shit," Curtis says. He also pulls up one leg, wrapping an arm over Grady's shoulders to balance himself. Together they have two whole feet on the ground, so it works, shakily.
"Hey!" one of the Tigers yells; an anonymous white guy, so probably one of their relief pitchers, Grady thinks. He points at them and laughs. "Quit fraternizin'!"
"Oh, my god," Curtis moans, trying to duck away. Grady tightens his hold on Curtis' shoulder, though, and flips the guy off with his hand held low and close to his body. This minimizes the number of fans who can see it, or so he's been told. The probably-relief-pitcher laughs again, echoes Grady's gesture, and turns away to talk to a Tigers coach.
"Quit being so uptight," Grady says, giving Curtis' shoulder a little squeeze, because, see? They can totally do this.
Curtis sniffs with an air of injured dignity. Grady laughs with him, not at him.
It was the "secret illicit affair" bit that set the evil hamster wheels turning. Also, I wanted to use last names for this one, like I usually do for slash, but I just couldn't make myself write a slash fic where one of the guys was called "Sizemore" over and over again without cackling like a crazy person and completely losing it. I'm sorry Grady Sizemore: maybe if you didn't have such a porn star name this wouldn't be an issue. First names it is.
Uh, not that this is a particularly serious story, but yeah.
Grady Sizemore/Curtis Granderson. NC-17.
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.
not exactly by the book
"Got it!" Curtis says, hefting the thick, untidy binder over his head. "I told Skip I wanted to look over the regulations to make sure all my behavior was league-appropriate and he just handed it over. Said nobody ever looked at the damn thing anyways. Didn't even have to lie!"
Grady can't stop himself from grinning back at him. Of course Jim Leyland wouldn't think twice about Curtis claiming to want to check the regulations. He probably expected it. Grady had once caught Curtis measuring up from the knob of his bat with a little ruler and a pencil, marking off the height above which pine tar was not technically allowed. Sometimes he has to remind himself that Curtis is only sort of completely crazy.
The binder is a dull faded blue, its front cover broken and repaired with duct tape. Curtis sits on the bed next to him, shuffling so that the binder can rest across his knees. He lays a hand reverently on the center of the busted cover, like he's swearing on a stack of fucking Bibles. Grady rolls his eyes, because seriously, only this guy. He reaches around and flips the binder open, dislodging Curtis' hand in the process. Curtis, being Curtis, doesn't get mad and just angles a gently chastising smile at him.
The first page has a pale tan ring in the upper righthand corner, like someone left a coffee cup sitting on it years and years ago. In the center of the page, in old-fashioned typewriter-esque font, are the words 'MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL RULEBOOK'. The stack of papers underneath the front page is yellowing and intimidating.
"You know where it is?"
"Somewhere in the threes," Curtis says, tentatively turning chunks of pages. One of the binder rings doesn't close properly anymore, and each section of paper has to be babied through. Curtis takes his time, being careful with the pages even though it's obvious he's the first person to bother being careful with this particular rulebook in years. Possibly decades. It's pretty stupid, but Grady amuses himself by watching Curtis' hands. Curtis has very long fingers that make very precise movements, and Grady could probably watch him turn pages all day if he had to.
Curtis makes a soft aha! noise and tracks his finger down a page. Grady leans in. Sure enough, it was in the threes: Rule 3.09.
Players in uniform shall not address or mingle with spectators, nor sit in the stands before, during, or after a game. No manager, coach or player shall address any spectator before or during a game. Players of opposing teams shall not fraternize at any time while in uniform.
Someone has penned in, next to this, "Stargell Rule." A tidier, brighter, more recent pen has written, underneath that, "Sean Casey Rule." The game's greatest fraternizers, apparently. Grady's heard it called The Stargell Rule before, after old Willie Stargell, who couldn't resist chatting with a fellow ballplayer no matter what team the guy was on or how tense the game was. The Sean Casey Rule is new to him, but he assumes it's just a local variant. He can see how it'd fit.
"While. In. Uniform," Curtis says, still looking down at the rulebook. Then he looks up at Grady, the very start of a smile playing about his mouth. "I think we're OK! I mean, this clearly just restricts in-game behavior, there's nothing at all about anything that might happen off the field!"
"Right, yeah." Grady scans Rule 3.09 again, looking for a loophole that could get them in trouble, because he knows full well by now that Curtis is a stickler for the rules in a way that Grady hasn't seen since he left elementary school and Timmy Markler, the biggest little brown-noser in the world, behind him. What had inspired a 10-year-old Grady Sizemore to beat someone up now makes him smile fondly. Maybe he's mellowed out. Or maybe Curtis just does the whole "in love with rules" thing a lot more gracefully than Timmy Markler ever did.
Some of the rules have commentaries under them, or multiple parts, but Rule 3.09 doesn't. It is exactly what it says it is. He checks the rules above and below it, just to be safe, but Rule 3.08 is about subbing players in during a game, and Rule 3.10 is about who gets to cancel a game when the weather's bad.
"Why d'you think we're not allowed to, uh, 'address or mingle with spectators'?" He nudges Curtis with his shoulder. "So we don't get pissed when they say stupid shit and beat them up? So we don't corrupt them with our rowdy ballplayer ways?"
Curtis snorts and nudges him back. "No, jeez. Actually it was originally to keep gambling in check, I think. Fans used to try to pay off players during the games and stuff."
"Huh," Grady says, thinking. "Damn, no one ever offers me any cash on the field. And hey, don't we break that rule anyways every time we sign for fans before the games? Or when we talk during warmups?"
"Yeah. I guess that's what Skip meant when he said no one reads this thing." Curtis closes the binder, jimmying the pages back through the faulty binder ring. He taps his fingers on the cover anxiously. "That's probably OK, though, right? I mean, what are we supposed to do, turn away from some guy who comes up and says hi? Tell some little kid you can't sign his baseball 'cause it's in the rules?"
It's the worst of all Grandersonian dilemmas: Following the Rules versus Being a Nice Guy. Grady watches him waver agonizingly between the two before he takes pity on him. "It's fine, Curtis. Shit, everyone does it. If the coaches hadda problem with it, we would've heard about it by now. Hell, they write nice stories about guys who talk to the fans." He grins and pushes Curtis' shoulder again. "I don't hafta tell you that."
Curtis ducks his head modestly. Then he looks up again, the worry back on his face. "If it was so superfluous, though, wouldn't they have taken it off the books? Jeez, it's probably one of those rules that they keep around and don't enforce for little things, but as soon as someone steps too far out of line they can just pull out the book and say, 'See here, this is illegal, you're in big trouble now, son.'"
"Calm down, calm down. Superfluous, sheesh, what is this, a fucking real-life crossword?" Grady tugs the rulebook away from him and starts paging through it. "This is Major League Baseball, dude... they're just fucking lazy, OK? It's still in here 'cause they're too lazy to take it out. Like..." He flips through more pages at random. "OK, here. Rule 8.04. When the bases are unoccupied, the pitcher shall deliver the ball to the batter within 20 seconds after he receives the ball. Each time the pitcher delays the game by violating this rule, the umpire shall call 'Ball.' Have you ever, in the history of your entire big league career, seen that rule enforced? Twenty seconds? I think I've hit against some guys, it takes them practically that long just to go through their fucking windup!"
"Yeah. OK. OK." Curtis breathes deeply a few times. Grady closes the rulebook again and watches, amused. "I'm good. I just. Wow! I thought for sure there was some kind of rule against it, but there isn't, there really isn't, we can really do this!" Curtis turns and flashes him that megawatt smile, the one that the fans all go crazy for, and Grady can't breathe for a second, remembering all over again why he's here, putting up with this absurdity.
He reaches out and rubs his thumb over Curtis' lower lip. "We can keep on doing this, you mean," he says, because Curtis the Worrier was one thing, but he was Grady Sizemore, and he had never been one for sitting around waiting to check the regulations before jumping in with both feet flying.
Curtis' face downgrades itself from brilliantly grinning to a guilty, sheepish look. Grady laughs out loud and swings a knee over, straddling Curtis' lap. He tosses the rulebook onto the floor. It lands with a thud and Curtis winces, his legs twitching like he wants to go pick it up and stick it in a box with foam peanuts or something.
"Oh no you don't," Grady says, grabbing Curtis' face in both hands. "The rulebook doesn't matter. The rulebook is a piece of shit." He means to smother Curtis with an extremely hot and overwhelming kiss, totally in control and making Curtis forget all about The Rules, but when he disses the rulebook Curtis gets this fucking pout on his face. And that. That is just not fair.
So instead of being very cool and very in charge, Grady makes a tiny whimpering noise and mashes his face into Curtis'. He ends up kind of sucking on Curtis' lips while Curtis gets with the program and realizes they're kissing now, which is embarrassing and messy and wet, but he can't make himself stop. Eventually Curtis opens his mouth and the kiss evens out, except for when Grady gets too excited and surges forward, knocking their front teeth together and giving them both low-grade headaches.
He pulls back far enough to look at Curtis properly. "Hi. Sorry. Ow."
"Ow," Curtis agrees, leaning in again, resting his forehead against Grady's. "Careful. End up looking like a hockey player."
Grady snorts out a laugh, the kind of braying, honking laugh that's terribly mortifying and inspires his teammates to do spirited imitations on the bus back to the hotel after away games. Curtis just grins that great big grin, though, and Grady gets the feeling that when Curtis says he's laughing with him, not at him, he really means it.
----
When the Tigers come to Cleveland for their first series, Grady spends a week getting ready. He calls in a reservation at one of the nicer restaurants in town. He goes through his apartment with an actual vacuum cleaner, not just sweeping the dust into corners and under furniture. He gets a haircut. He buys a new shirt. He absolutely cleans his local drug store out of condoms.
It's only the last errand that keeps him from feeling like a total girl about the whole thing. The cashier is a pimply high school kid whose eyes go wide when he recognizes Grady, and they go even wider when he sees the amount of latex on his counter. Grady gives him a slow smile and a conspiratorial wink. He feels like this should be a public service announcement: see, even the major leaguer, who gets all this amazing tail, is a fan of safe sex!
If he leaves the kid with an erroneous impression of the kind of tail he's getting, well, that's the kid's fault for making assumptions.
----
"Oh, jeez," Curtis groans, hands balling into fists. Grady inches his hips forwards, knowing that this is a bad idea, because they're both going to have terrible carpet burn in terrible places by game-time tomorrow, but with Curtis flattened on the floor in front of him, back arched and ass raised up like some kind of fucking big cat, he can see himself sinking in on each stroke, and there's no way in hell he's stopping now.
He pulls most of the way out and grabs Curtis' ass with both hands, holding him open. He pushes back in as slow as he can stand. He gets to watch Curtis stretch around his dick. Watch Curtis take it.
"Nnnngh," Curtis says, cheek smashed into the carpet. "Yeeah, Grady, c'mon, fuck... give me... oh, hey, ngh, wow, your carpet's really. Ungh. Really clean."
"I hate you," Grady says. He lets go of Curtis' ass and returns his hands to Curtis' sides, although not before slapping each cheek for good measure, because, seriously. He speeds up the pace, snapping his hips. "I'm never vacuuming again. I'm, gnnnn, I'm giving you the fucking ride of your, mm, life, and you're looking at the carpet? I'm going to kill you."
"It's, it's, oh god yes yes right there Grady! it's good that it's clean! I'm oh fuck oh fuck nnngggh enjoying the cleanliness of, shit, yes, Grady, of your carpet!"
"Seriously. Going. To kill you."
Curtis makes a strangled, keening noise in response. He tenses and comes, spattering the (formerly clean) carpet. He collapses all the way, legs sprawling and bringing his ass back onto a level with the rest of him. Grady slips out at the motion and humps Curtis' ass for a full minute before he can calm down enough to work his way back inside. It's worth it, though, because Curtis is warm and boneless and he just lets Grady fuck him as crazily as he wants, which happens to be pretty damn crazily.
After a while Curtis groans and awkwardly bends his neck to look back at Grady. "You gonna finish up any time soon? Jeez, Grady, did you pop a greenie or something?" His eyes are bleary, and half his face is imprinted with little carpet-dents.
"I think I, nrrgh, cooled down some when you brought up my carpet."
Curtis closes his eyes and sets his head back down on the carpet. "Messed it up. Got your nice clean carpet all dirty. Sorry."
"Stop talking! About my carpet!" Grady pants and drives his hips harder, faster. "Seriously! You're a dead man!" He comes hard, jaw clenching, making a tiny involuntary squeak. He slumps down onto Curtis' sweaty back, his heart jackhammering.
"Worst assassin ever," Curtis says.
"Mmm."
----
During batting practice, he trots over to Curtis and drags him out to the warning track so that they can pretend to catch long fly balls and so that he can actually examine Curtis' face and see how bad the rug burn is. Visible but not terrible, he decides. He's in less immediately observable trouble himself; the worst carpet burns he has are on his knees.
"Verlander's going down," he says, stretching out one of his quads and using the one-footed maneuver as an excuse to rest a hand on Curtis' shoulder. "I'm gonna take him yard today. I can feel it."
"You are so full of shit," Curtis says. He also pulls up one leg, wrapping an arm over Grady's shoulders to balance himself. Together they have two whole feet on the ground, so it works, shakily.
"Hey!" one of the Tigers yells; an anonymous white guy, so probably one of their relief pitchers, Grady thinks. He points at them and laughs. "Quit fraternizin'!"
"Oh, my god," Curtis moans, trying to duck away. Grady tightens his hold on Curtis' shoulder, though, and flips the guy off with his hand held low and close to his body. This minimizes the number of fans who can see it, or so he's been told. The probably-relief-pitcher laughs again, echoes Grady's gesture, and turns away to talk to a Tigers coach.
"Quit being so uptight," Grady says, giving Curtis' shoulder a little squeeze, because, see? They can totally do this.
Curtis sniffs with an air of injured dignity. Grady laughs with him, not at him.