sigh. fluff.
So, I was never really going to post this. It was dumb and self-indulgent and pointless, and I was just writing it as something lightweight to poke at when I was getting a little stuck on the other, more intensive stuff I was working on at the time.
Then Matt Joyce rescued a kitten in the Tigers clubhouse, and it was decided that it was a Sign that I had to post this.
So, here ya go. 3,107 words, very light Beckett/Varitek, various other Sox appearances, PG (only because ballplayers sometimes say bad words), warning for extreme, unrelenting fluff.
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.
stray
He’s been in the majors for a long time. Baseball players are weird and superstitious; he’s well aware of that, and if he’d been asked he would have probably said that nothing would surprise him anymore.
He’s played with guys who brought their girlfriends around as good luck tokens, guys who had to have their kids in the clubhouse with them before games. He’s played with guys who had lucky hats and lucky cleats and lucky sliding shorts and lucky gloves and lucky jockstraps. He’s played with guys who brought dead fish into the clubhouse and guys who stuck action figures in their lockers. He’s seen locker shrines dedicated to wives, Jesus, Sandy Koufax, Spiderman.
So maybe he should have been prepared for the sight of Josh Beckett cradling a tiny kitten to his chest in the clubhouse, but he really, really wasn’t.
----
It’s gray, with white paws and a white streak down its nose. It has a fat little fuzzy tail and a fat little fuzzy body and ears too big for its head. It has big green eyes.
“What is that?” Varitek asks, refusing to believe what his brain claims it’s seeing.
Beckett cradles it more securely to his chest. His hand almost completely envelopes the entire thing. “It’s a kitten,” he says, a little defensively.
Varitek looks around, sure that there’s a joke or something going on here, that if he looks at someone else he’ll see them suppressing laughter, grinning at him, ready with the punchline. Nobody seems to be laughing, though. Manny is hovering over Beckett, peering over one shoulder and then the other and back again, trying to get a look at the kitten. A couple other guys are watching him curiously, but most everyone else seems to be trying very hard to ignore the scene.
Not that Varitek can blame them. It’s somehow distracting in the extreme to see Beckett with a kitten, like seeing a huge grizzly bear cuddling a… well, a tiny kitten. Varitek would like to turn right back around, march out of the clubhouse and just pretend he hasn’t seen this, but he’s the team captain, which means he’s obligated to ask about these things.
Beckett is still looking pretty defensive, so Varitek tries to smile as warmly and openly as he can. “Does it, uh, have a name?”
Beckett hikes the kitten up a little higher, towards his shoulder. “Not yet.” Manny reaches over Beckett’s shoulder and pets the top of the kitten’s head, where it pokes out over Beckett’s hand, with a single fingertip. Varitek closes his eyes briefly and takes a deep breath.
“Where did you, uh. Get it?”
“He was hidin’ behind a case of baseballs. Coach Mills went to move ‘em and he startled and got scared.” Skurred is what it sounds like, with Beckett’s accent.
“What was a kitten…” Varitek has to stop to pinch the bridge of his nose and squeeze his eyes shut again, because, god, a kitten. “What was a kitten doing in the clubhouse in the first place?”
“Dunno. He musta just wandered in.” Beckett shifts the kitten against his chest. Manny makes a cooing noise over his shoulder. Varitek pinches the bridge of his nose more tightly.
It makes sense, in a way. They do occasionally get mice in the clubhouse, and if a mouse can sneak in he guesses a stray kitten could too. It makes sense that Beckett, one of the most keenly alert hunters on the team, would be the first to spot and catch a frightened stray kitten, if one should happen to trap itself in the clubhouse. It does not make sense that Beckett is treating the kitten like… like a person who really likes kittens would treat a kitten, because so far as Varitek knows Beckett is more the type to see a small furry animal and wonder which knife would be best for skinning it.
So far as he used to know, anyways. Beckett turns around to let Manny pet the kitten more easily, and it’s clear that Beckett’s stance on deer and squirrels is, somehow, very different from his stance on kittens.
“You can’t bring him up to the dugout,” Varitek says, because someone has to be some sort of adult here.
Beckett nods in a distracted way, more interested in making sure that Manny doesn’t pet too hard. Other guys start edging over, drawn by the sight, and Varitek realizes that they were probably waiting to see what he would do. Since he didn’t ban kittens from the ballpark, it’s apparently now OK to evince an interest in kittens.
“Oooooh, he yawned at me!” Pedroia says. The growing crowd around Beckett makes happy awww noises.
Varitek shakes his head and goes to dig his cleats out of the bottom of his locker.
----
When Varitek walks in the next day, there’s an argument going on over the name of the kitten. Francona is sitting in his office, leaning way back in his chair so he can watch, grinning enormously. His eyes flick up to Varitek when he walks in, and Varitek shakes his head, hell no, because dealing with arguments like this was not something he signed on for when he agreed to be the team captain. He has opposing batters to go over, pitching strategies to work out, and he absolutely does not want to know anything about it.
He still can’t help overhearing the conversation.
“Cy,” Timlin says. “He was a Sox and he was Cy fuckin’ Young.”
“Nah, I think we should call him Yaz.” Pedroia raises his chin at Timlin’s disgusted look. “Yaz was great! And it’s a good cat name.”
“Shou’ call him Pedro,” Manny says, nodding with deep conviction.
Timlin shakes his head. “Too soon, too soon.”
Papelbon wanders over and leans down to look at the kitten, who is fast asleep in a Red Sox-print cat bed that appeared overnight from god knows where. “How ‘bout Jimmie Foxx?”
Manny perks up. “Pedro Fox! ‘Cause he pitch like one!”
Everyone else groans.
Beckett saunters into the clubhouse with his usual assured stride, ignoring everyone, equipment bag slung over his shoulder. He drops it in front of his locker, unzips the top, and rummages around in it, eventually emerging with a tiny red collar. Varitek keeps one eye on him, just to make sure he’s not going to pull another kitten out of his bag or something, and one eye on his laptop screen, where he’s been staring at the same hitting statistics for ten minutes.
“Tris Speaker?” Pedroia offers. He, Timlin, Papelbon, and Manny all peer thoughtfully down at the kitten.
Beckett shoulders them out of the way, dropping to a knee in front of the cat bed. He gives the kitten’s head a vigorous rub, much to its delight, and carefully buckles the collar on. He straightens up, taking the kitten with him. It snuggles up to his chest immediately, and Varitek can hear it purring from halfway across the room.
“His name’s Nolan.”
A chorus of aw c’mon Joshes breaks out. “He didn’t even play for the Sox!” Pedroia protests.
“His name’s Nolan.” Beckett focuses a glare on Pedroia, who holds up both his hands and backs up a step. “You gotta problem with that?”
“Shou’ be Pedro,” Manny mutters. Beckett turns to aim his glare in Manny’s direction, but the effort is wasted, because turning brings the kitten into Manny’s frame of vision, which means that the rest of the clubhouse more or less ceases to exist. Beckett puffs up his chest, taking in air so that he can tell Manny how stupid his idea is in great detail, but Varitek manages to catch his eye and give him his very best Stern Captainly Glower. Beckett slowly deflates.
“Fine. His name’s Nolan Pedro Beckett.” He narrows his eyes, rotating on his heel to glare at every corner of the clubhouse. “Any o’ you fuckers gotta problem with that?”
Most of the clubhouse imitates Pedroia, raising their hands soothingly. Beckett glares at Varitek, who rolls his eyes and nods. It’s an acceptable compromise, and he’s sure Manny will agree as soon as Manny stops making meowing noises at the kitten.
As he turns back to his computer, he hears someone mumble, “That cat’s gonna be a helluva pitcher,” and it’s all he can do to keep from dissolving into a bout of hysterical snickers.
----
Nolan Pedro Beckett likes to chase baseballs, even though they’re almost the same size as him. Varitek quickly learns to lift his foot out of the path of a ball rolling rapidly across the floor, and to keep his foot in the air after he sees one so that he won’t accidentally step on the kitten that inevitably follows it. When Nolan catches a baseball, he tries to curl around it and bite the stitches, stretching his tiny kitten mouth wide, digging his little fangs into the red threading as he holds the ball in place with all four of his paws.
It is, Varitek has to admit, ridiculously cute.
Even more ridiculously cute, though, is the sight of Beckett sitting cross-legged on the clubhouse carpet, playing with the kitten. He can palm a baseball easily, which means he can palm Nolan’s entire body just as well, and he often does, rolling Nolan onto his back with his non-pitching hand and letting Nolan go at him with his needley claws.
Josh Beckett, sitting on the floor with his hand waggling just above the ground, a fat gray tail and two tiny clenched white paws the only sign that something’s going on under his palm. Varitek is pretty sure that normal people cannot survive seeing something like that, and he supposes he’s still alive only because he’s a professional athlete with a carefully honed athlete’s body.
Sometimes Beckett will pick Nolan up and bring him up to his face, the better to speak to him (the rest of the team is capable of producing a surprising variety of noises when faced with Nolan, but Beckett never coos or meows or says nonsense words, just talks to him in his normal tone of voice), and Nolan will put both his little forepaws on the small patch of hair just under Beckett’s lip. Beckett will say Hey in a quiet voice and Nolan will pushpushpush with his paws, his back wriggling around in ecstasy against Beckett’s palms, until he decides that he’s had enough.
Then he’ll flop over and butt his head up against Beckett’s chin, his big ears getting pushed straight out to the sides.
Varitek takes to reviewing stats on his laptop in the trainer’s room. Nolan isn’t allowed in there, not with all the bits of gauze and tape and needles and who-knows-what that he might get into, so he can work without distraction.
He doesn’t even think of banning Nolan from the clubhouse, though. Part of being a good captain is knowing which battles you can win.
----
He’s been sick a lot this year. It’s not age (he tells himself over and over that it’s not age), just stupid bad luck and when he’s sick of course it’s easier for him to get sick again right after. It isn’t anything serious either, just a long string of bad colds and the ubiquitous flu-like symptoms. Sometimes it keeps him out of the lineup; sometimes it doesn’t.
He always tries to make it in to the park, even days when he wakes up obviously sick. He doesn’t have to be in the lineup to help Cash prepare for an opposing lineup, and Cash does need the help: Varitek has been dealing with these hitters for many more years than Cash has, knows their tendencies and the holes in their swings much better than Cash does. He doesn’t have to be catching to help calm Lester down before a big start, or to commiserate with Timlin about these stupid goddamn kids.
When everyone else goes up to play the game, if he’s particularly bad-- and today he is, running a low-grade fever that makes his head feel like it’s a million miles away from the entire world, along with his scratchy throat and stuffy nose-he lies down on one of the clubhouse couches and tries to nap a little. There’s no sense in going home, not when they might conceivably need him for emergency catching duties or something.
The couch is a little bit too small for him (or maybe he’s a little bit too big for the couch), so he has to kind of half-curl to fit on it, lying on his side, his spine pressed up against the back of the couch and his non-throwing shoulder going slowly numb under his weight. It’s not the most comfortable thing in the world, but he can be horizontal and still keep an eye on the TV monitor that has the game on, which is something he can’t do on the floor or in one of the big lounge chairs.
Nothing too exciting happens in the game. Lester is a little off in the first inning, too jumpy with his offspeed stuff, but Cash gentles him through it and they both seem to have settled down from the second on. Lowell homers in the third, and a few runs manage to make it around during an interminable fifth. Uncomfortable as he is, Varitek still starts to fall asleep during the top of the sixth.
He wakes with a start, feeling a sharp twinge in his ribs that makes him jerk and almost fall off the couch. His eyes immediately seek out the TV, sure that something there must have woken him, but the score’s the same and the Royals are in the middle of a pitching change. He takes a slow, careful breath, and feels the sharpness in his ribs again, the side not squashed against the couch. Cramp, probably, so he reaches down to rub it out and almost falls off the couch again when his hand instead encounters something round and… furry?
Varitek cranes his neck awkwardly to look over his own shoulder and, sure enough, there’s Nolan Pedro Beckett, perched on his side, riding up and down a little as Varitek inhales and exhales. “Hey,” Varitek says, trying to speak softly but normally, like Beckett does. Nolan scrunches his eyes up into little happy slits, purrs, and makes kneading motions with his tiny paws. The sharp sensation prickles up Varitek’s side again, and he realizes that it’s Nolan’s claws.
Sighing, he carefully lifts Nolan, just enough so that he can sit up properly on the couch. His nasal passages make all kinds of objections to this, and his head swims dangerously, but his arm immediately starts tingling with the distant sensation of arriving pins and needles, which is a good sign that he probably shouldn’t have been lying on it for much longer anyways.
He looks down at Nolan, who fits in his hand nearly as easily as he does in Beckett’s. He’s not entirely sure what to do with him, but Nolan is still purring, so he does what he’s seen Beckett do, curling his arm in so that Nolan is trapped between his palm and his chest. Nolan snuggles up to him immediately, apparently not that picky about his ballplayers.
They watch the bottom of the seventh and the top of the eighth like that. Varitek keeps up a low constant patter of one-sided conversation, dissecting the failings of the Royals relievers and pointing out the way Youkilis is choking up on the bat higher than usual and wondering aloud when he’d last seen a member of the Sox as fast as Jacoby, because Nolan seems to purr more steadily when Varitek’s talking to him. He’s not sure if it’s the sound of his voice or the vibration Nolan must be able to feel in his chest, but it doesn’t really matter.
Someone, in this clubhouse, has to be the adult, and as team captain that role most often falls to him. He hasn’t exactly avoided Nolan, but he also hasn’t spent all that much time with him, because… well, there’s always plenty to do in the clubhouse. People to talk to, numbers to examine, strategies to work out, video to watch, equipment to check. If all else fails, there are always things to autograph. Plenty to do, in short, that does not involve spending all his time flailing around over a kitten.
So it should be surprising that he’s actually finding himself a little invested in whether the damn cat is purring or not. It should be surprising, but it isn’t, not really. He’s seen the effect Nolan has on the other guys.
There’s a clatter of cleats on the concrete steps leading down from the dugout. Varitek doesn’t turn to see who it is. If they need him, they’ll let him know.
The cleats make clickclickclick noises that recede as they head into the bathroom. After a bit they come back and click until they hit the carpeting by the lockers, where they make a scratchy shushing noise instead. They scratch over to a locker, then down to the far side of the clubhouse, then back again, with lots of pauses. Varitek finds himself listening out of sheer annoyance.
Eventually the cleats scratch their way over to him. “Hey, ‘Tek. You seen….?” Beckett edges around the couch, catching sight of Nolan halfway. “Ah. He ain’t buggin’ you none?”
“No, he’s fine.” Varitek hates the way his voice gets all high and clogged-sounding when he’s sick, but there isn’t exactly anything he can do about it.
Beckett hooks his thumbs into the back of his belt. He glances at the TV screen, above and behind his shoulder, but his head drifts back around almost helplessly. He’s looking down at Varitek and Nolan like… like…
Like Varitek suspects he sometimes looks at Beckett with Nolan.
“I thought you didn’t like him none too much,” Beckett says. His voice is very, very neutral.
Varitek blinks. His head still feels like it’s stuffed full of hot cotton and he keeps getting caught on the dumbest things, like the way Beckett’s thumbs are tugging his belt tight and low on his waist, or the way Nolan’s back feels when it shakes with purrs under his fingers.
“He’s fine,” he says again. “He’s. I guess he’s pretty great.”
Beckett beams down at him. Varitek’s head is, suddenly and improbably, the clearest it’s been all week.
Nolan, a little spot of warmth on the front of his shirt, makes a tiny contented sighing noise and falls asleep.
Then Matt Joyce rescued a kitten in the Tigers clubhouse, and it was decided that it was a Sign that I had to post this.
So, here ya go. 3,107 words, very light Beckett/Varitek, various other Sox appearances, PG (only because ballplayers sometimes say bad words), warning for extreme, unrelenting fluff.
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.
stray
He’s been in the majors for a long time. Baseball players are weird and superstitious; he’s well aware of that, and if he’d been asked he would have probably said that nothing would surprise him anymore.
He’s played with guys who brought their girlfriends around as good luck tokens, guys who had to have their kids in the clubhouse with them before games. He’s played with guys who had lucky hats and lucky cleats and lucky sliding shorts and lucky gloves and lucky jockstraps. He’s played with guys who brought dead fish into the clubhouse and guys who stuck action figures in their lockers. He’s seen locker shrines dedicated to wives, Jesus, Sandy Koufax, Spiderman.
So maybe he should have been prepared for the sight of Josh Beckett cradling a tiny kitten to his chest in the clubhouse, but he really, really wasn’t.
----
It’s gray, with white paws and a white streak down its nose. It has a fat little fuzzy tail and a fat little fuzzy body and ears too big for its head. It has big green eyes.
“What is that?” Varitek asks, refusing to believe what his brain claims it’s seeing.
Beckett cradles it more securely to his chest. His hand almost completely envelopes the entire thing. “It’s a kitten,” he says, a little defensively.
Varitek looks around, sure that there’s a joke or something going on here, that if he looks at someone else he’ll see them suppressing laughter, grinning at him, ready with the punchline. Nobody seems to be laughing, though. Manny is hovering over Beckett, peering over one shoulder and then the other and back again, trying to get a look at the kitten. A couple other guys are watching him curiously, but most everyone else seems to be trying very hard to ignore the scene.
Not that Varitek can blame them. It’s somehow distracting in the extreme to see Beckett with a kitten, like seeing a huge grizzly bear cuddling a… well, a tiny kitten. Varitek would like to turn right back around, march out of the clubhouse and just pretend he hasn’t seen this, but he’s the team captain, which means he’s obligated to ask about these things.
Beckett is still looking pretty defensive, so Varitek tries to smile as warmly and openly as he can. “Does it, uh, have a name?”
Beckett hikes the kitten up a little higher, towards his shoulder. “Not yet.” Manny reaches over Beckett’s shoulder and pets the top of the kitten’s head, where it pokes out over Beckett’s hand, with a single fingertip. Varitek closes his eyes briefly and takes a deep breath.
“Where did you, uh. Get it?”
“He was hidin’ behind a case of baseballs. Coach Mills went to move ‘em and he startled and got scared.” Skurred is what it sounds like, with Beckett’s accent.
“What was a kitten…” Varitek has to stop to pinch the bridge of his nose and squeeze his eyes shut again, because, god, a kitten. “What was a kitten doing in the clubhouse in the first place?”
“Dunno. He musta just wandered in.” Beckett shifts the kitten against his chest. Manny makes a cooing noise over his shoulder. Varitek pinches the bridge of his nose more tightly.
It makes sense, in a way. They do occasionally get mice in the clubhouse, and if a mouse can sneak in he guesses a stray kitten could too. It makes sense that Beckett, one of the most keenly alert hunters on the team, would be the first to spot and catch a frightened stray kitten, if one should happen to trap itself in the clubhouse. It does not make sense that Beckett is treating the kitten like… like a person who really likes kittens would treat a kitten, because so far as Varitek knows Beckett is more the type to see a small furry animal and wonder which knife would be best for skinning it.
So far as he used to know, anyways. Beckett turns around to let Manny pet the kitten more easily, and it’s clear that Beckett’s stance on deer and squirrels is, somehow, very different from his stance on kittens.
“You can’t bring him up to the dugout,” Varitek says, because someone has to be some sort of adult here.
Beckett nods in a distracted way, more interested in making sure that Manny doesn’t pet too hard. Other guys start edging over, drawn by the sight, and Varitek realizes that they were probably waiting to see what he would do. Since he didn’t ban kittens from the ballpark, it’s apparently now OK to evince an interest in kittens.
“Oooooh, he yawned at me!” Pedroia says. The growing crowd around Beckett makes happy awww noises.
Varitek shakes his head and goes to dig his cleats out of the bottom of his locker.
----
When Varitek walks in the next day, there’s an argument going on over the name of the kitten. Francona is sitting in his office, leaning way back in his chair so he can watch, grinning enormously. His eyes flick up to Varitek when he walks in, and Varitek shakes his head, hell no, because dealing with arguments like this was not something he signed on for when he agreed to be the team captain. He has opposing batters to go over, pitching strategies to work out, and he absolutely does not want to know anything about it.
He still can’t help overhearing the conversation.
“Cy,” Timlin says. “He was a Sox and he was Cy fuckin’ Young.”
“Nah, I think we should call him Yaz.” Pedroia raises his chin at Timlin’s disgusted look. “Yaz was great! And it’s a good cat name.”
“Shou’ call him Pedro,” Manny says, nodding with deep conviction.
Timlin shakes his head. “Too soon, too soon.”
Papelbon wanders over and leans down to look at the kitten, who is fast asleep in a Red Sox-print cat bed that appeared overnight from god knows where. “How ‘bout Jimmie Foxx?”
Manny perks up. “Pedro Fox! ‘Cause he pitch like one!”
Everyone else groans.
Beckett saunters into the clubhouse with his usual assured stride, ignoring everyone, equipment bag slung over his shoulder. He drops it in front of his locker, unzips the top, and rummages around in it, eventually emerging with a tiny red collar. Varitek keeps one eye on him, just to make sure he’s not going to pull another kitten out of his bag or something, and one eye on his laptop screen, where he’s been staring at the same hitting statistics for ten minutes.
“Tris Speaker?” Pedroia offers. He, Timlin, Papelbon, and Manny all peer thoughtfully down at the kitten.
Beckett shoulders them out of the way, dropping to a knee in front of the cat bed. He gives the kitten’s head a vigorous rub, much to its delight, and carefully buckles the collar on. He straightens up, taking the kitten with him. It snuggles up to his chest immediately, and Varitek can hear it purring from halfway across the room.
“His name’s Nolan.”
A chorus of aw c’mon Joshes breaks out. “He didn’t even play for the Sox!” Pedroia protests.
“His name’s Nolan.” Beckett focuses a glare on Pedroia, who holds up both his hands and backs up a step. “You gotta problem with that?”
“Shou’ be Pedro,” Manny mutters. Beckett turns to aim his glare in Manny’s direction, but the effort is wasted, because turning brings the kitten into Manny’s frame of vision, which means that the rest of the clubhouse more or less ceases to exist. Beckett puffs up his chest, taking in air so that he can tell Manny how stupid his idea is in great detail, but Varitek manages to catch his eye and give him his very best Stern Captainly Glower. Beckett slowly deflates.
“Fine. His name’s Nolan Pedro Beckett.” He narrows his eyes, rotating on his heel to glare at every corner of the clubhouse. “Any o’ you fuckers gotta problem with that?”
Most of the clubhouse imitates Pedroia, raising their hands soothingly. Beckett glares at Varitek, who rolls his eyes and nods. It’s an acceptable compromise, and he’s sure Manny will agree as soon as Manny stops making meowing noises at the kitten.
As he turns back to his computer, he hears someone mumble, “That cat’s gonna be a helluva pitcher,” and it’s all he can do to keep from dissolving into a bout of hysterical snickers.
----
Nolan Pedro Beckett likes to chase baseballs, even though they’re almost the same size as him. Varitek quickly learns to lift his foot out of the path of a ball rolling rapidly across the floor, and to keep his foot in the air after he sees one so that he won’t accidentally step on the kitten that inevitably follows it. When Nolan catches a baseball, he tries to curl around it and bite the stitches, stretching his tiny kitten mouth wide, digging his little fangs into the red threading as he holds the ball in place with all four of his paws.
It is, Varitek has to admit, ridiculously cute.
Even more ridiculously cute, though, is the sight of Beckett sitting cross-legged on the clubhouse carpet, playing with the kitten. He can palm a baseball easily, which means he can palm Nolan’s entire body just as well, and he often does, rolling Nolan onto his back with his non-pitching hand and letting Nolan go at him with his needley claws.
Josh Beckett, sitting on the floor with his hand waggling just above the ground, a fat gray tail and two tiny clenched white paws the only sign that something’s going on under his palm. Varitek is pretty sure that normal people cannot survive seeing something like that, and he supposes he’s still alive only because he’s a professional athlete with a carefully honed athlete’s body.
Sometimes Beckett will pick Nolan up and bring him up to his face, the better to speak to him (the rest of the team is capable of producing a surprising variety of noises when faced with Nolan, but Beckett never coos or meows or says nonsense words, just talks to him in his normal tone of voice), and Nolan will put both his little forepaws on the small patch of hair just under Beckett’s lip. Beckett will say Hey in a quiet voice and Nolan will pushpushpush with his paws, his back wriggling around in ecstasy against Beckett’s palms, until he decides that he’s had enough.
Then he’ll flop over and butt his head up against Beckett’s chin, his big ears getting pushed straight out to the sides.
Varitek takes to reviewing stats on his laptop in the trainer’s room. Nolan isn’t allowed in there, not with all the bits of gauze and tape and needles and who-knows-what that he might get into, so he can work without distraction.
He doesn’t even think of banning Nolan from the clubhouse, though. Part of being a good captain is knowing which battles you can win.
----
He’s been sick a lot this year. It’s not age (he tells himself over and over that it’s not age), just stupid bad luck and when he’s sick of course it’s easier for him to get sick again right after. It isn’t anything serious either, just a long string of bad colds and the ubiquitous flu-like symptoms. Sometimes it keeps him out of the lineup; sometimes it doesn’t.
He always tries to make it in to the park, even days when he wakes up obviously sick. He doesn’t have to be in the lineup to help Cash prepare for an opposing lineup, and Cash does need the help: Varitek has been dealing with these hitters for many more years than Cash has, knows their tendencies and the holes in their swings much better than Cash does. He doesn’t have to be catching to help calm Lester down before a big start, or to commiserate with Timlin about these stupid goddamn kids.
When everyone else goes up to play the game, if he’s particularly bad-- and today he is, running a low-grade fever that makes his head feel like it’s a million miles away from the entire world, along with his scratchy throat and stuffy nose-he lies down on one of the clubhouse couches and tries to nap a little. There’s no sense in going home, not when they might conceivably need him for emergency catching duties or something.
The couch is a little bit too small for him (or maybe he’s a little bit too big for the couch), so he has to kind of half-curl to fit on it, lying on his side, his spine pressed up against the back of the couch and his non-throwing shoulder going slowly numb under his weight. It’s not the most comfortable thing in the world, but he can be horizontal and still keep an eye on the TV monitor that has the game on, which is something he can’t do on the floor or in one of the big lounge chairs.
Nothing too exciting happens in the game. Lester is a little off in the first inning, too jumpy with his offspeed stuff, but Cash gentles him through it and they both seem to have settled down from the second on. Lowell homers in the third, and a few runs manage to make it around during an interminable fifth. Uncomfortable as he is, Varitek still starts to fall asleep during the top of the sixth.
He wakes with a start, feeling a sharp twinge in his ribs that makes him jerk and almost fall off the couch. His eyes immediately seek out the TV, sure that something there must have woken him, but the score’s the same and the Royals are in the middle of a pitching change. He takes a slow, careful breath, and feels the sharpness in his ribs again, the side not squashed against the couch. Cramp, probably, so he reaches down to rub it out and almost falls off the couch again when his hand instead encounters something round and… furry?
Varitek cranes his neck awkwardly to look over his own shoulder and, sure enough, there’s Nolan Pedro Beckett, perched on his side, riding up and down a little as Varitek inhales and exhales. “Hey,” Varitek says, trying to speak softly but normally, like Beckett does. Nolan scrunches his eyes up into little happy slits, purrs, and makes kneading motions with his tiny paws. The sharp sensation prickles up Varitek’s side again, and he realizes that it’s Nolan’s claws.
Sighing, he carefully lifts Nolan, just enough so that he can sit up properly on the couch. His nasal passages make all kinds of objections to this, and his head swims dangerously, but his arm immediately starts tingling with the distant sensation of arriving pins and needles, which is a good sign that he probably shouldn’t have been lying on it for much longer anyways.
He looks down at Nolan, who fits in his hand nearly as easily as he does in Beckett’s. He’s not entirely sure what to do with him, but Nolan is still purring, so he does what he’s seen Beckett do, curling his arm in so that Nolan is trapped between his palm and his chest. Nolan snuggles up to him immediately, apparently not that picky about his ballplayers.
They watch the bottom of the seventh and the top of the eighth like that. Varitek keeps up a low constant patter of one-sided conversation, dissecting the failings of the Royals relievers and pointing out the way Youkilis is choking up on the bat higher than usual and wondering aloud when he’d last seen a member of the Sox as fast as Jacoby, because Nolan seems to purr more steadily when Varitek’s talking to him. He’s not sure if it’s the sound of his voice or the vibration Nolan must be able to feel in his chest, but it doesn’t really matter.
Someone, in this clubhouse, has to be the adult, and as team captain that role most often falls to him. He hasn’t exactly avoided Nolan, but he also hasn’t spent all that much time with him, because… well, there’s always plenty to do in the clubhouse. People to talk to, numbers to examine, strategies to work out, video to watch, equipment to check. If all else fails, there are always things to autograph. Plenty to do, in short, that does not involve spending all his time flailing around over a kitten.
So it should be surprising that he’s actually finding himself a little invested in whether the damn cat is purring or not. It should be surprising, but it isn’t, not really. He’s seen the effect Nolan has on the other guys.
There’s a clatter of cleats on the concrete steps leading down from the dugout. Varitek doesn’t turn to see who it is. If they need him, they’ll let him know.
The cleats make clickclickclick noises that recede as they head into the bathroom. After a bit they come back and click until they hit the carpeting by the lockers, where they make a scratchy shushing noise instead. They scratch over to a locker, then down to the far side of the clubhouse, then back again, with lots of pauses. Varitek finds himself listening out of sheer annoyance.
Eventually the cleats scratch their way over to him. “Hey, ‘Tek. You seen….?” Beckett edges around the couch, catching sight of Nolan halfway. “Ah. He ain’t buggin’ you none?”
“No, he’s fine.” Varitek hates the way his voice gets all high and clogged-sounding when he’s sick, but there isn’t exactly anything he can do about it.
Beckett hooks his thumbs into the back of his belt. He glances at the TV screen, above and behind his shoulder, but his head drifts back around almost helplessly. He’s looking down at Varitek and Nolan like… like…
Like Varitek suspects he sometimes looks at Beckett with Nolan.
“I thought you didn’t like him none too much,” Beckett says. His voice is very, very neutral.
Varitek blinks. His head still feels like it’s stuffed full of hot cotton and he keeps getting caught on the dumbest things, like the way Beckett’s thumbs are tugging his belt tight and low on his waist, or the way Nolan’s back feels when it shakes with purrs under his fingers.
“He’s fine,” he says again. “He’s. I guess he’s pretty great.”
Beckett beams down at him. Varitek’s head is, suddenly and improbably, the clearest it’s been all week.
Nolan, a little spot of warmth on the front of his shirt, makes a tiny contented sighing noise and falls asleep.