catching up, 7
Verlander was tall, and a little awkward, just like Beckett had been back in ‘03. He had thick dark hair like Beckett, but Beckett had never been able to control his and mostly didn’t try, while Verlander had some elaborate, involved scheme in place to ruthlessly gel his hair into submission when he wasn’t pitching.
He had a wicked, heavy popping fastball, but that was all he had in common with Ryan. He had absolutely nothing in common with Maribel, which was, well, gracias a Dios.
He was just another one of the kids on the team, pitching so incredibly that it had to be well above his means, just waiting for his fall back to earth. That was all Pudge ever intended him to be, and he could tell himself that it probably would have stayed that way if not for the night he got dragged out to a club with Verlander and his little rookie friends in Chicago.
At that point in his life he was more a bar guy than a club guy, but the rookies were still green enough to get excited by extremely loud music and strobing light, dance floors so crowded that you could barely move on your own. Going out with the kids was not exactly a habit, but every so often they could coax him into tagging along, and Chicago was a good city for it.
It was not a club that played his kind of music. Certainly nothing he knew well enough to dance to, so he was leaning on the bar, taking up valuable real estate and attracting glares from club kids who had no idea who he was, kids who probably had never seen a baseball game the whole way through. There was a hint of pain under his kneecaps, post-game soreness that should have dissipated by now but hadn’t, and maybe that was keeping him off the dance floor too. If any of the rookies had asked, he would have said it was the music.
The crowd immediately in front of him rippled with some disturbance, then parted just enough to admit Verlander, who shimmied between club kids, palming every ass that came within reach. It was possible that with all the skin-tight jeans around, he couldn’t even tell male from female. Pudge rolled his eyes at him, real wide and obvious so that Verlander would be sure to see even in the crappy light.
“Awesome, you’re holding a spot, so smart, thanks dude,” Verlander said, breathlessly crashing down next to him and sticking his long arm out over the bar to get the attention of the bartender. Pudge rolled his eyes again, but just for himself this time.
“Where’s your little buddies?”
“What? You mean, Zoom’n Grandy? I dunno, somewhere, dancing. There was this girl, and Zoom was grindin’ on her from the back, and Grandy was grindin’ on her from the front, and I was just like, wow, I need another drink.” The bartender came over and Verlander shouted something at him, leaning way over, his whole torso sprawled across the bar. Pudge shifted his beer to his other hand and grabbed the back of Verlander’s belt, visions of Verlander tumbling, heels up, in front of the whole club.
A girl-- woman, Pudge revised in his mind, looking her over more carefully-- in an eye-popping zebra print dress bellied up to the bar next to Verlander. He turned to look at her, raking his eyes up and down her body so obviously that even Pudge, on his opposite side, could feel it. That was all right, normally; but even as Verlander was straightening up and angling his shoulders towards ZebraPrint, a huge guy, neck like a football player, was coming up behind her, resting a possessive hand on her hip and giving Verlander a clear fuck off glare.
Verlander tilted his head towards the woman, a slow sloppy grin on his face. “Hey baby.”
The guy with the hand on her hip stepped closer, eyes going tiny and threatening. Verlander licked his lips, all his attention locked on the way the busy pattern curved over the front of ZebraPrint’s dress.
Pudge tugged hard on the side of Verlander’s belt. “C’mon kid.” Verlander looked at him crookedly, one eyebrow up. The big guy moved swiftly to insert his considerable bulk between Verlander and ZebraPrint. “Let’s go.”
“Uh, why?”
“Because I say so.” Because he was not going to stand there and watch Verlander get his ass kicked for being drunk and horny and oblivious; for being, in essence, every young baseball player in the league.
“Say it again,” Verlander demanded. Pudge stared at him. Verlander licked his lips, fingers squeaking around his beer bottle. “Say that. What you just said. Say it again.”
He was not looking at ZebraPrint any longer, and that was a good thing, that was the direction Pudge wanted him going, so, OK, whatever. Fine. “We go, because I fuckin’ say so.”
“Yeeeeeaaaaaaah,” Verlander said, all drawn out on the same breath. He curled his arm, drawing his beer up against his stomach. “Let’s. OK. Let’s go.”
“What the fuck is wit’ you?” Pudge muttered, but he tucked a finger into the nearest of Verlander’s belt loops and started the long slow trek to the door anyways. Verlander had agreed to go, even if he was being a weirdo about it, and it wouldn’t do to lose the kid in the crowd at the last moment.
Outside the club was almost as crowded as inside, the line to get in stretching far down the street to the left. He tugged Verlander to the right, where there was a darkened shop, closed up for the night. Its huge glass windowed facade doubled Chicago, dizzying, except for the spot where it reflected Verlander’s black silhouette as Pudge swung him around in front of it.
“Tell me, tell me again.”
“Seriously, what is wit’ you?” He tapped Verlander’s shoulder with the heel of his bottle. They probably were not supposed to have open beer bottles out on the street, but he could not bring himself to care. The cops would know who they were anyways, this was an AL Central city; it wasn’t like anyone was going to arrest them.
Verlander leaned back, putting his weight on the window. “Nothing. Just. Make me do something.”
“What? I don’t… what? I do not want you to do anything, I want you to jus’ tell me what the fuck is goin’ on wit’ you!”
“Yeah. That’s.” Verlander’s eyes slid closed. He tipped his head up until the back of his skull tapped the glass. His beer bottle dangled from his hand, fingers loose around the neck. He was clearly drunk as hell, but there was not really any way for Pudge to plausibly deny what was going on any longer.
“Are you gettin’ off on this? On when I tell you to do shit?” he demanded, unaccountably mad. Verlander shivered. Pudge moved closer; just to keep his voice down, just so that the long snaking line of hopeful club-goers wouldn’t hear. “What the fuck, kid?”
There was no immediate response. He grabbed the front of Verlander’s shirt. Verlander’s eyes flew open, and his pupils were so wide, so black, so glossy that they reflected the myriad pinpoint lights of Chicago at night just as well as the window behind him.
“What. The fuck,” Pudge repeated. Verlander flattened both hands on the window behind him. His bottle, forgotten, dropped to the ground and shattered, a loud noise mostly swallowed up in the music bleeding from the club and the traffic whizzing by not five feet away from Pudge’s back. When Pudge stepped in closer, drawn by the upward cant of Verlander’s goatee to the sky, wet glass crunched under the soles of his shoes.
“You, you c-can tell me t’do anything,” Verlander rasped, rough voice barely above a whisper, aimed at the skyscrapers.
Pudge drew in a careful breath. Anything. Dios, he wanted to tear Verlander’s pants open right here on the street, jack him off against that expanse of glass. He wanted to punch through the window, drag Verlander into the store through jagged shards, fuck him on the dirty shop floor. He wanted to push Verlander to his knees, look down on the kid for once.
He raised his own bottle and tilted it, sending an amber spout of beer down the front of Verlander’s shirt. Verlander gasped, sucking in his stomach to get away from the wet, but otherwise stayed put.
“Oops. Look at that. I think you need to take a shower,” Pudge said. “Should get you back to the hotel.”
“I’m. Pretty drunk. I might fall. I could… get hurt.”
So fucking cheesy. He gathered the front of Verlander’s shirt up into a fist, pulling it out of his pants, squeezing to make the beer run out-- and what a dork Verlander was, going out to a nightclub with his shirt tucked in like he was going to church. “Maybe I can be persuade to help out.”
“Oh god.” Verlander shuddered so hard that the glass at his back squealed. His fingers stuttered across it, leaving dull little streaks. “Pudge, please--“
“Shut up,” he growled, tugging sharply on Verlander’s shirt until he came forward, away from the window, stumbling a little, hand coming up to steady himself on Pudge’s shoulder. He absolutely could not listen to Verlander beg out here in the street. Not when he was game-tired and halfway to drunk and Verlander was all long lean lines, dripping with beer (admittedly Pudge’s own fault, that) and, despite Pudge’s many months of determined denial, incredibly, stupidly hot.
“I am going to fuck you t’rough the floor when we get back,” he added, having just decided on that as appropriate revenge for Verlander doing this to him in public. He raised an arm for a cab. Verlander made a tiny whimpering sound and clutched his shoulder harder. He had a strong enough grip to make it painful and all Pudge could think about was how he was going to pay Verlander back for that, make him hurt in precisely the way that Verlander wanted.
**
After the next game, on the bus ride back to the hotel, Verlander flopped down next to Pudge without hesitation, limbs immediately gone loose like a sock monkey. Zumaya, standing by a pair of seats several rows in front of them, looked shocked and betrayed. Rogers shot Pudge a Significant Glare before sitting down next to Zumaya and saying something funny about Ozzie Guillen. It was very obviously just something to draw Zumaya’s mind away from wherever it had been going, but Zumaya was a rookie and stuff like that still worked on him.
“What’s the plan for tonight?” Verlander asked.
Pudge frowned. “No plan wit’ you. Kenny wants to go out, I am going wit’ him.”
“Oh.” Verlander glanced at him, moving just his eyes. “Well, if you already got plans.”
He actually did not have plans with Rogers, but he had not missed the Glare. Rogers would have things to say, things he would not want to say with the rest of the team around; that was, in essence, what the Glare meant.
Rogers didn’t even let him get into the hotel, pulling him right from the bus steps to a cab idling at the curb. He gave the driver the name of a bar and sat back, watching with some satisfaction as the travel secretary realized two equipment bags were still on the bus and realized at the same time that the owners of said bags were pulling away into traffic.
“So, the star rookie. Tell me you didn’t.”
Pudge shrugged, looking away. No point in pretending he did not know what Rogers was talking about. “You want me to lie?”
Rogers sighed and shook his head. “Pudge.”
“Don’ even start--“
“It’s such a bad idea, what you’re doin’, I don’t think I even can.”
They rode the rest of the way in silence. Rogers disappeared from Pudge’s side as soon as they got in the door of the bar, returning almost immediately with two girls, nearly too pretty to be real groupies. Rogers’ was blonde with big, bouncy tits, and claimed her name was Ashley; the girl he had brought over for Pudge had dark brown hair and an ass like something out of a magazine. She said her name was Maria and that she was a lawyer, although she could have said she was a garbage collector for all Pudge cared once he laid eyes on her skirt. Rogers knew his tastes far too well.
Some number of drinks later they all crowded into the back of a taxi, messily making out, bumping elbows and accidentally grabbing handfuls of the wrong people, all four of them laughing. When they made it up to the floor where most of the Tigers were staying, somehow it made sense for all of them to bundle into Pudge’s room, Rogers pinning Ashley to the wall next to the door, big hand roaming up her thigh while Pudge fumbled one-handedly with the keycard, his other hand too full of Maria to be any help.
He was on top of her, on the bed, before the door even had time to swing shut. Her mouth was sticky under his, waxy lipstick and something sweet from the mixed drinks she’d been putting away. He slid a hand up the inside of her leg until he could curl his fingers around some thin strand of lace there, whatever tiny unseen bit of lingerie she had on under her skirt.
From there it was easy, although the sounds he could hear from the floor-- breathy, high-pitched gasps, Rogers’ lower grunts-- gave a slightly new dimension to the same old baseball groupie dance. It was not the first time he had done this with teammates around, and it certainly was nothing unusual, not for pros (easy way to tell a kid had just been called up-- tell him a story like this one, see if he acted shocked), but it was the first time in their long, long history that he’d fucked a girl with Rogers right there alongside. For all the things he already knew about Rogers, this-- the specific intakes of breath, the way Rogers groaned several octaves lower than his usual speaking voice-- was something brand new.
But Maria was gorgeous, and willing, and very able, and when Pudge bent to growl in her ear, “I wanna do you from behind, let me jus’--“, she raked her nails down his back and said, “Yes, yes, baby, please,” and only got noisier from there.
It was quiet after he came; Rogers and his girl must have finished before and he’d missed it. He lay back, feeling pleased with himself: nine innings caught, no errors, two White Sox gunned down trying to steal bases, beautiful woman soundly fucked; all in a good night’s work. Maria stretched her whole body, back bowing gymnastically, then dipped an arm over the side of the bed. “I know, I know,” said Ashley’s disembodied voice. “Mmm. Give me five.”
Pudge cocked his head at her. Maria sat up and smiled back at him, skating a hand over the muscles of his chest, light over the worst of his catching bruises. “We’ll wash up, and then we better get going. It gets harder to get cabs as it gets later.”
“Sure,” he said. “Whatever you want. Shouldn’ have any trouble here though, they have a cab stand.” He rested a hand on her thigh. The season had tanned his hands so dark, she almost seemed to glow under his fingers.
“All the same.” She picked his hand up, kissed it carefully on the knuckles, and rose gracefully from the bed, weaving around some invisible obstacle that must have been Rogers and Ashley before padding into the bathroom. Presently there was the sound of running water. A low murmur started up from the floor; Rogers taking the opportunity to say something to Ashley. Pudge let his eyes fall closed.
He was startled by the sound of the hotel room door closing. He had not meant to fall asleep. He normally never would with girls he didn’t know wandering around his hotel room; that was a bad habit to get into, a good way to get yourself robbed blind. But this time he hadn’t been alone and had somehow let himself relax just that much more than usual, just enough to cross the slender line between post-sex doziness and true sleep.
He stared at the ceiling. Rogers was still down on the floor; Pudge could hear him breathing.
“How you holdin’ up, viejo?”
“Ah, cram it,” Rogers said, but he didn’t sound mad.
“You wanna come up off that floor?”
“M’fine for now. Floor’s good for my back.”
“Ol’ man.” He could hear Rogers huff indignantly in response. He folded his hands behind his head and smiled up at the ceiling, clucking his tongue softly. It occurred to him that he was still naked, and for all he knew Rogers was too. Maybe Rogers had misinterpreted his invitation. But Rogers had known him for long enough, surely, to realize what Pudge had meant.
After a while he started to wonder what Verlander was up to, if he was at the hotel or still out, if he was with someone or not. Verlander would not have liked Maria or Ashley; so far as Pudge could tell, his taste in women tended towards the small and delicate. “What’re you thinkin’ ‘bout?” Rogers asked, still invisible on the floor.
“Nothin’. Nobody.”
Rogers sighed. “I didn’t set this up just so you could go right back to thinkin’ ‘bout him.”
“Oh, excuse me, I thought you set this up because you want to do it.”
“Settle down. Like it was such a terrible fuckin’ hardship. But you need to not… you need to just, not. And a little redirection of, whatever, energy, that ain’t a bad thing.”
“I feel so used,” Pudge sighed, slapping a hand down over his heart. Rogers’ head popped up over the edge of the bed at the sound. His hair was a mess of short gray and brown spikes, just like it was when he took his hat off at the end of a long hot game, something tired in the set of his eyes to go along with it. Rogers’ eyes were grayish blue, but there was a big brown spot in the left one that had always been there, or at least it had been for as long as Pudge had known him. He wondered how many of the other guys ever noticed it. They were always wearing hats with brims that kept everyone’s eyes in shadow.
Rogers folded his arms on the edge of the bed, rested his chin on the spot where they crossed. “They keep gettin’ younger for you, don’t they?”
“That is not what this is about.”
“OK. So explain it to me. What’s it about? ‘Cause I can’t see this goin’ anywhere but bad places.”
“It’s not about anything.” He sighed, frustrated. “It is jus’… he wants to do it, he wants it a very lot.”
“At least admit that you had somethin’ to do with it, jeez.”
“Of course.” He looked away. Rogers had never seen Verlander lean eagerly forward over a scouting report, begging Pudge every silent way he could to tell him firmly to get back to studying. He wouldn’t understand.
“I just don’t think this is a good idea,” Rogers said eventually. “I think it’s a real fuckin’ shitpile of an idea. And if I don’t tell you, there’s nobody on this team that will.”
Pudge flinched a little. His good-day high had pretty much disappeared; a kind of frantic foreboding was settling over him. Suddenly the fact that he was on the bed and Rogers was on the floor was simply intolerable. “Get up here. I. Kenny.”
Rogers sighed, but planted his palms on the bed and pushed himself upright, the bones in his back crackling softly. He came around to the side and sat. Pudge rolled over onto his stomach and put a hand on Rogers’ bare back, which was warm and just a little roughed up with something that would probably blossom into carpet burn by gametime tomorrow.
“I’m not gonna do anyt’ing to fuck up the team,” he said.
Rogers shook his head slowly. “It’s not the team I’m worried about.”
Pudge traced a K on his lower back, then a backwards K next to it. Rogers sighed again, this one dredged up from somewhere way down deep in his trunk. Pudge doodled a W with his fingernail in the soft indentation at the base of Rogers’ spine. It was the only way he really knew how to promise that things would be all right.
**
Their third road trip to Minnesota came in early September. It was the first time Verlander’s spot in the rotation had come up while they were in the dome, and Pudge was a little bit nervous, because young pitchers in the dome always made him a little bit nervous.
But Verlander struck out the first Twin he faced, spinning a fastball past Luis Castillo so effortlessly that Castillo did not even seem to realize he had swung and missed until the umpire’s raised fist was up in his face. The second batter, Nick Punto, tried to bunt to third. Inge come up the line with footwork that Pudge knew was near-impossible, but looked effortless on him. He fielded the ball cleanly and flipped it to Casey at first, nothing to it. The third batter was Joe Mauer, the catcher, easily the best player on the team.
Pudge stood up. The Twins would probably be upset that he had called time so early in the game, but that was an acceptable risk.
“I’m fine,” Verlander said, almost before Pudge had reached the mound. Pudge continued up the hard little slope like he hadn’t heard, curled his ungloved hand around Verlander’s side, resting his hand at the small of Verlander’s back. “I’m fine,” Verlander repeated, bringing his glove up to hide his mouth this time.
“This guy, he will foul some balls off. Don’ get impaciente, stick to the gameplan, jus’ like we discuss before. He’s not gonna go one-two-three, so don’t get surprised when he is still up five, six, seven pitches in. OK?”
“OK,” Verlander said into the glove. If Pudge let his hand slide three inches south he would be groping Verlander’s ass, something he could easily get away with in the context of a game. Verlander watched him with big eyes over the fingers of his glove, just one perfect little moment where Pudge could have done it, and Verlander knew he could have, and maybe Verlander wanted him to, but what Pudge wanted, mostly, was just to make Verlander want him to.
He pulled his hand away and walked back to the plate.
It took them six pitches, but Mauer struck out swinging. Verlander punched his glove on the mound, because it would have been a dick move to pump his fist in the air, but it was still his first clean inning at the Metrodome, and that was worthy of celebration.
**
The most important thing in the world-- or, OK, not the entire world; his world, anyways-- was winning. It was everything. If they were winning, the guys would be happy and everyone would be feeling good. The coaches would be less annoying than usual and all their suggestions would seem helpful and wise instead of instrusive and bone-headed. If a guy came in the day of a game with a massive hangover it would be funny instead of irresponsible, and if a guy got fucked up on greenies and banged an ugly groupie to work off the energy, it would be a good story instead of pathetic. When they were winning, everyone’s kids were happy, big shots in their classrooms, and all the wives were in better moods. The crowds at the ballpark were bigger and louder and more forgiving, as likely to laugh at a bad play as boo. Even the grounds crew seemed to get into it, and the outfield would be more neatly trimmed, the basepaths groomed to silky perfection.
They were winning: barreling towards the end of the regular season in first place, and maybe the Twins were riding up behind them fast, but the wild card was coming out of the Central this year, no question. It would be nice to win the division title, but it wasn’t strictly necessary. The most important thing was making it through to the playoffs, where it was all short series and anything could happen. All they had to do to make that happen was just avoid complete collapse.
He was almost batting .300. So was Polanco; so was Ordonez. Carlos Guillen was batting over .300. Inge had the lowest batting average of all the regulars, but he was absolutely shining on defense and the pitchers all loved him. They had only one starting pitcher with less than thirteen wins and only one regular reliever with an ERA over 4.00. It was difficult to imagine a collapse so complete that it would take them out of the postseason.
As the season ticked down day by day, closer and closer to October, it became harder to remember that there were things in the world that were not baseball or Justin Verlander, even though he knew that there were, he really did. He went to the ballpark; he went over the lineup with the starting pitcher for that day, guys he knew like the back of his hand by now; he caught nine innings, stood at the plate four or five or six times, soothed frayed tempers and buffered Leyland’s comments; he showered; he threw some food down his throat; he had insane amounts of sex with Verlander; he slept like the dead; he woke up with the sun and his industrial-volume alarm clock and did it all over again.
It should have been exhausting. He wasn’t a kid anymore; it wasn’t like his first couple of years in Texas, where he could spend half the night at a bar and half the night at a party and get up the next day and leg out a couple of doubles. But it didn’t matter, because they were winning. He had the energy for anything.
**
“Vance said he thinks I’ve got a shot at Rookie of the Year.”
“Mmmhm.”
“Well, you think so?”
“Sure,” Pudge said. “Why not? Top of my brain, I cannot think of another rookie who does what you do this year.”
“I just. Wow. I mean, Rookie of the Year, can you even imagine?” Verlander sprawled on the side of Pudge’s bed that he had claimed as his own, stretching his arms over his head. “You didn’t win it your year, did you?”
Pudge rolled his eyes. “No, I did not. Chuck Knoblauch did.”
“Oh my God. Really? Chuck Knoblauch? He was retired before I was even drafted. What the hell year was that?”
“Ninety-one.” Pudge propped himself up on an elbow, pushing a hand over Verlander’s stomach, shoving his shirt up to expose his furry belly.
“You were a rookie in 1991.” Verlander awkwardly shoved his chin down to his chest to watch Pudge’s hand. “I was… um, eight. Little League. I remember they wouldn’t let me throw a curveball ‘cause they said it’d wreck my arm if I tried.”
He shoved Verlander’s shirt up higher, all the way to his collarbones, then bent to lick the closest nipple. Verlander made a happy humming noise and let his head fall back. Pudge grinned. “That I would like to see. I bet you were a real bitch at Little League.” He lowered his mouth to Verlander’s chest again and sucked hard on his nipple, the hand on Verlander’s belly dropping as Verlander drew his stomach in, pressed his chest higher.
“God,” Verlander said, once Pudge had stopped sucking and started kissing down the center of his chest. “Yeah. The other parents hated me. I threw too hard. Sometimes there’d be a kid in the on deck circle crying ‘cause he saw how hard I was throwing.”
“I think I see the Royals do the same thing last time you pitch.” He was laying a line of kisses down Verlander’s stomach, detouring momentarily to nip at the small amount of soft flesh at his side. Verlander only had boxers on, no hiding the fact that he was fully hard already.
“Let’s not. I don’t wanna think about-- ah-- about the Royals right now.”
“Mmm,” Pudge agreed. He pulled the boxers off easily and nosed down to Verlander’s balls, which were as fuzzy as the rest of him. Verlander had offered to shave with a sort of pathetically desperate sheepishness months ago, but Pudge had told him not to bother. Sharp stubble was no fun for anybody, and the truth was that he rather enjoyed Verlander’s hairiness; it was impossible to forget how very male Verlander was. Anyways, the entire team was used to how he looked naked in the clubhouse. If he’d suddenly started showing up with his nuts shaved clean, the teasing would have been brutal.
Verlander’s cock was a pleasant weight against his palm. He loosely circled it with his fingers and brought them up to just under the head, thumb rubbing at the lip a little. “Ah, that’s, yeah,” Verlander groaned, trying to thrust up in his grip, but Pudge pinned him down with one arm across his hips. Despite all the weight training, Verlander was still skinny enough for Pudge to handle easily.
“Please?” Verlander tried. “Pudge, I. Pllleeeeeaaaaaase?” His voice curled up in a desperate whine.
Pudge gave him a slow, deliberate squeeze, then took pity on him and wrapped his lips around the head. He massaged it with his tongue, let the tips of his teeth just barely touch down. Verlander was leaking into his mouth; not a lot, but the taste was huge, salty and a little bit bitter.
He worked Verlander like that-- lots of tongue and a hint of teeth-- until Verlander was nearly sobbing with the frustration of not being allowed to move. That was his cue to sit up, stretch his own legs out across the bed. He patted one of his thighs. “OK, come on.”
“Jesus, thank you, finally.” Verlander surged up and over, scrambling, undignified, to transfer his sprawl to Pudge’s lap. He stuck his tongue out and dragged it all over Pudge’s cock, more enthusiastic than effective. Verlander loved sucking cock, especially if Pudge was willing to pull his hair a little and be bossy about it.
He pushed his hands into Verlander’s hair, watching the thick black strands divide around his fingers. He ran them up Verlander’s scalp like he was trying to mold his hair into a mohawk, curled them back down the sides, thumbs stroking behind Verlander’s ears. Verlander moaned and humped the bed a little, rubbing his face all over Pudge’s groin. Pudge grinned at nothing in particular and shifted his hands to the sides of Verlander’s head so that he could lift it, tilt Verlander’s face up until their eyes met.
Dios, he would never get over the thrill of doing this with someone who had a goatee.
“You better do a good job down there,” he said. He squeezed Verlander’s temples a little for emphasis. “Do it good or you get nothin’ later.”
Verlander’s eyes drifted shut. He smiled and nodded against the light pressure of Pudge’s hands. When Pudge slid his hands back up into his hair again, Verlander let out a happy sigh and bent to wetly kiss the tip of Pudge’s cock.
“This is the best year of my life,” he murmured. He tilted his head to let his tongue curl around the shaft.
Pudge pushed his fingers all the way through Verlander’s hair a couple of times, front to back, back to front, then halfway up so that he could push down. Verlander’s mouth was hot, so hot and wet around him; the goatee was scratching at him in unpredictable places, a spectacular sensory counterpoint.
“Glad to be here for it,” he said. Verlander opened his mouth wider, relaxed his tongue, and took Pudge straight down his throat. He rolled his eyes upwards, dark lashes fluttering. He was obviously incapable of talking at that moment, but his eyes were speaking, loud and clear: Oh, me too.
**
Kauffman Stadium was a nice enough park, although it was difficult to tease out the reasons why he liked it so much: was it because the park itself was nice, or just because it housed a team against which they almost always did well? In any event, their last road game of the season was in Kansas City, and that was good. Heading home on a high note and all that.
The game was in the late afternoon so that they could travel overnight, but it was so cloudy that the stadium lights were on full anyways. It was barely above 60 degrees. The guys on the bench were all bundled up in sweatshirts, and the relievers had their big team jackets on, hunched up in a row out in the bullpen like puffed-up navy blue birds huddling on a wire.
“Cold gonna bother you?” he asked, standing on the pitcher’s mound as Verlander popped the rosin bag against the back of his pitching hand a few times.
Verlander looked down at him in surprise, letting the bag drop to the back of the mound. Inge and Guillen both went after it, tussling briefly before Inge wrested it away and began superciliously powdering up his forearms. Guillen folded his arms and glared.
“Cold?” Verlander said. He glanced around, seeming to notice the long sleeves half the team was wearing for the first time. “Huh. No, I guess not.”
“Great,” Pudge said, flicking his glove out from the wrist, so that the tips of its leather fingers just swiped the slack of Verlander’s jersey.
It was barely even a game. They scored nine runs in the second inning, and there was no way the Royals could recover from that. In the top of the fifth Pudge hit a double to deep right, deep enough to score Omar Infante from first base, just for the hell of it; just because he could.
Leyland stopped him on his way out of the dugout to take their defensive half of the inning. “Last one for the kid,” he said, gesturing at Verlander, somehow, with his mustache. “No sense’n tiring him out with the playoffs comin’ up.”
“Sure, right,” Pudge said automatically, his mouth running ahead before he realized what Leyland had really said. If they hung on to win this game, they would be assured of a spot in the postseason, regardless of whether or not they kept ahead of the Twins in these last few weeks.
The rest of the team was gathering themselves and their equipment up for the bottom of the inning. There was a noise like a tinny stampede of buffalo from the direction of the clubhouse. “They’re bringin’ in champagne and shit down there!” Inge shouted, clattering up the clubhouse stairs in his spikes, closely tailed by Shelton.
Monroe smacked each one of them on the back of the head as they ran past. “Shut up, dweebs, it’s only the fifth!” Shelton ducked away scowling. Inge turned and ran backwards for a few feet, flipping Monroe two middle fingers. Monroe turned to Pudge, spread his hands in helpless appeal. “Dude. Do something.”
But Pudge only laughed and shook his head. Normally he would be the last person to encourage cockiness in the fifth inning (or second to last, after Leyland), but they were winning this game, they were going to win this game, and it would be the first time the Tigers had made the playoffs since 1987. He could practically taste the champagne already.
He snagged his mask by its straps and took the dugout steps two at a time, leaving Monroe grumbling behind. Kauffman Stadium opened up around him, green and blue, and on the mound Verlander was waiting.
**
The sound of the door buzzer in his apartment surprised him a little; he had not been expecting anyone today. If it was a pitcher freaking out about the upcoming playoffs he would have expected a phone call before a visit, and nobody in the front office would ever just show up at his door. The only people who really would were Verlander and Rogers. Verlander had been out with Granderson and Zumaya the night before and was probably using the day to sleep it off. Pudge had just seen Rogers last night.
“Hello?”
//It’s me,// said a familiar voice, crackling with the static of the building’s intercom system. //Let me up, we need to talk.//
//I… Maribel?//
//Yes. Iván, we need to--//
//Um, OK. I mean, of course, come on up.// He buzzed her in, his mind whirling with possibilities. What in the world could have induced her to come to Michigan? Did she want to have the family in town for a possible postseason run? But the school year had just started and she had never liked taking the kids out of classes unnecessarily. Was everything OK? What if something wasn’t OK, what if, God forbid, what if one of the kids…?
When he opened the door, though, she was standing alone in the hall, a small day bag hanging from a shoulder. She looked tired and a little red about the eyes, little lines on her forehead that he couldn’t remember ever seeing before.
//It’s just you? Where are the kids?// he asked, backing up to let her in.
Maribel slammed her bag down on the floor. Pudge backed up another step. //The kids! They are with a nanny, in Miami where they belong.//
//You left them alone with a nanny?//
//They are not infants anymore!// Maribel said, her voice rising. //They are not so young that they will die if I’m away for two days. And you! You have no place to talk, you who aren’t ever home anyways!//
//Woah, woah! Now that’s, that’s not fair, Maribel, I--//
//Not fair! Not fair?! You’re never around, and when you are you’re barely even their father, it’s all, oh, papa’s home, let’s eat candy and play video games! What kind of a way is that for children to know their father? Candy and video games, and staying up late, you are… you’re like some nice older friend who comes over sometimes! Not a father! They see more of you on TV than they do in the house!//
Pudge recoiled, physically recoiled, reeling backwards until he stopped up against the wall in the apartment kitchen. What the hell was this? It was, OK, it was true, all of it, but it was also completely unfair. This, baseball, it was his job. It was what he did to keep them all safe and happy with a big house and a private waterway, a golf course and all the toys they could ever want, clothes and jewelry for Maribel, multi-car garages and a luxury yacht and people to take care of it for him.
But Maribel had not finished with him yet. //And I thought, well, it is bad for us, without him around, but it is bad for him too, he must miss us terribly!// Yes, exactly, Pudge thought, vindicated. //And even when he told me… I thought, he’s mad at Iván for some reason, he is just saying this, it can’t be true, I know how he really feels. But now I see it was never like that at all!// Maribel started on a yell and finished on a moan, sinking down into a chair at the kitchen table and putting her face in her hands. Her shoulders started to shake.
//I don’t… I don’t know what you mean.// Pudge still felt blasted, unable to separate himself from the wall. He should go over and put his arms around Maribel, he knew that, but he just… he just couldn’t. Not yet.
//Don’t know what I mean. No, perfect innocent Iván, of course he doesn’t know,// Maribel said, slightly muffled by her hands. Something in her tone made Pudge’s blood run cold, pinprick goosebumps skittering up the skin of his arms and tightening his scalp.
//He told me,// Maribel said. //He called me and he told me what you, you d-did with him, and that… that Beckett boy, and now I ask around, I talk to the wives and girlfriends here and Zumaya’s girlfriend says… I hear it’s this Verlander boy now, and they’re practically children, Iván, these boys, and you… and you…// A sob racked her body, obscuring the rest of her accusation.
Pudge stopped. He simply stopped, as if time itself had frozen. He blinked more slowly, he couldn’t move his arms or his legs. It felt like the beats of his heart had slowed down to a sluggish crawl. He had told Maribel; who was that? It had to have been Urbina, it could only have been Urbina-- but at the same time his mind was saying, never as careful as he should have been, not around the team. He was never universally popular, and there were always going to be guys who hated him for any stupid reason, including what he was doing off the field, and did it matter? Maybe it was Urbina calling from jail in Venezuela, but maybe it was Zaun, or Penny, maybe it was some bit player who had lurked in the shadows, some fifth outfielder or middle reliever who had been beneath Pudge’s notice all along but had been watching, biding his time with gimlet eyes; did it really matter who had told her? Because Maribel had not said anything that was not true, and Pudge had frozen up in the time when he should have loudly scoffed and denied it all.
He swallowed, slow, throat clicking. He swallowed again. It was already too late, but he had to say something. //It doesn’t… they never meant. The same thing, they weren’t,// he managed, choking on his inability to deny it all, to say that Beckett had meant nothing, that Verlander was nothing, that Ryan had never meant anything at all. //Not like you.//
//Oh, oh, that’s what I used to tell myself,// Maribel said. She was crying hard now, her cheeks blotched with red. //I used to say to myself, it’s OK, when he, he, he sleeps with those girls, it’s just what men do, it is just h-h-his body and not his heart. His heart, that is all mine. And it hurt a little but I could push it away, because of that, because you didn’t mean it with them, those others, I thought you didn’t.
But you think I don’t know? You think I have been married to a baseball player this long, I don’t know anything about it? You are-- Iván, you are a catcher, a good catcher, you think you can tell me your pitchers mean the same as a g-groupie? You think you can tell me you don’t care at all about your pitchers, and you expect me to, to believe it? To think for one stupid second that could be true?//
Pudge shook his head, silent. It was all he could do.
Maribel kept crying, the tears falling thick and fast between the fingers she held over her face. She was wearing jeans, and the tears were making dark spots on her thighs as they landed on the denim. //No. I know better, I know that you… that you… and I was such a fool! For so long I just thought… and the whole time you were, with them, and then you’d c-come home and do it with me, and I didn’t see because I didn’t want to see and now… now. It w-wasn’t supposed to end up l-like this.//
No, Pudge thought. No, it wasn’t. Because they had done everything right. Married to the teenage sweetheart, sticking together through the minors and years in the majors, through good teams and bad. Three children, conceived at decent intervals, their faces all unambiguous amalgams of Pudge and Maribel, not the least doubt about where they had come from. Pudge had gone off to play ball and Maribel had stayed home to raise them up right, yes, by herself much of the time, but not all the time, and the unspoken assumption was that eventually Pudge would retire, and then he would hang out around the house and they would have nothing but time together. As a family.
Maybe he would go to three or four charity events a year, and then there would be old-timers’ games even less frequently, and maybe he would set up an academy or something within easy driving distance of the house, teach baseball to rich little kids, or maybe he would give inspirational speeches to hopeful young men coming from places where Spanish was spoken. He would be around to attend the high school graduations of each child, and then, si Dios quiere, their college graduations. It was a good story. It was an expectation, a linked chain of expectations that he and Maribel had both shared.
But it had gone all wrong. Maribel had stuck to the script, done her part; it was Pudge who had fucked things up. It was not Beckett’s fault. Verlander had had nothing to do with it. It was him-- just him.
//I can’t do this anymore,// Maribel said. She gasped and sniffed, wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. //I can’t… I just can’t, Iván, it’s been so many years and for all of them it was lies, lies, lies. I knew some of it, going in, I know what baseball players are, but this is too much. This is… I can’t. Not anymore.//
//What… what are you…//
//I want a divorce. I’m getting a-- I’m divorcing you.// She stood, her mouth all twisted up, tear-tracks streaked down her cheeks. //And the children stay with me. God knows you couldn’t take care of them anyways. I only came out here because… because…// She turned her back to him then. Her shoulders were shaking harder. //Maybe it’s all been lies and you have used me in all the worst ways, but fifteen years. Fifteen years, and I, God help me but I was happy for some of them, and I could not just tell you over the, the phone…//
//Maribel. Maribel, I. No, you can’t. Please don’t--// He finally, finally moved, pushing off of the wall and going to her, what he should have done in the first place, what should have been his very first move. It always should have been his first move.
She shuddered when his hands landed on her shoulders. //Don’t. Don’t, don’t touch me,// but he was turning her around, taking her wet face in his hands, stupid rough catcher’s hands that had probably never been worthy of her skin. //Don’t, Iván, I have to. I will. Don’t make this worse than you already have.// He kissed her closed eyes with trembling lips. And then his arms were around her and her arms were around him, and she was crying into his shoulder, which was fine, because he was crying into her hair.
Once he started, though, he found that he could not stop, the sobs coming in huge ugly gasps from way down deep in his diaphragm. He was crying so hard he could hardly breathe, blinded with tears, his voice gone, crying so hard that his head ached with it, his chest screamed with pain, his back was spiked through with muscle spasms like he got after long, long games. This was his wife, the mother of his children, hurting so badly, and he had done it. This was his life, falling apart right here in his arms, with nobody in the whole wide world to blame but himself.
**
The road twisted before his eyes, the lines unreliable, seeming to march away of their own accord as he blinked through fear and horror and the rim of just-dried tears. Luckily it was late, and at this hour there were hardly any cars on the road this close to Detroit.
His tires made a grinding noise as he pulled up too close to the curb in front of Verlander’s building, but he did not care. Tires, what were tires, he could buy a million of them in an eyeblink and his bank account wouldn’t even notice. He staggered up the steps, somehow managed to press the button for Verlander’s apartment. There was a long, long moment where nothing happened; he leaned the heel of his hand against the button, a dulled buzz sounding somewhere high above him. Finally the door made a faint snicking sound as the lock disengaged and he was able to blunder through, grope his way to the elevator.
Thankfully there was nobody in the lobby of Verlander’s building. He must have looked like a wreck, must have looked drunk and beaten, like someone had dragged him behind a car and left him for dead. His whole face felt raw, his eyelids hot and swollen. His lip was numb where he had bitten it. The collar of his shirt was wet with shed tears, torn down the side where he’d fallen to the floor when Maribel had finally pushed him away and left. He could not even be sure that he had two socks on his feet.
He did not knock on Verlander’s door, just sort of collapsed against the frame, but Verlander must have heard him anyways. He opened the door and peered out into the hall, blinking blearily in the light, his hair all sticking up on the left side of his head. His hairy legs emerged awkwardly from a ratty-looking pair of blue plaid boxers with the Old Dominion logo on one leg.
“This, we got to stop,” Pudge croaked out.
Verlander turned a startled face towards him, eyes widening as they took in whatever details he was capable of processing at the moment. His mouth went slack with confusion. Even with the goatee he looked desperately young.
“Unh. What?”
Pudge fell into him, grabbing onto his hair with both hands to pull his head down, kissing him desperately. Verlander loosely wrapped his arms around Pudge’s back, muscles sleep-soft and apparently on autopilot. He stumbled backwards into the apartment, not with any obvious designs, but because Pudge’s weight and despairing lack of balance drove him that way.
Some minutes later he pulled back. His arms were a little firmer around Pudge now, which was good, because Pudge was dead on his feet, and probably would have fallen over again without Verlander’s support.
“What happened? Are you… are you OK?” Verlander cringed as soon as he had said it, probably aware of how incredibly stupid it sounded under the circumstances.
Pudge sniffled against the front of Verlander’s shirt. It was thin, warm from Verlander’s skin; he could feel the finely developed pitching muscles of Verlander’s chest through it. “No. No, not’ing is OK.”
Careful fingers stroked down the back of his neck. “OK. That’s… um, OK. You said… coming in? You said we… have to stop? Did I hear that right?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know, I--“
“Look, hey, do you want a drink?” Verlander asked. “’Cause, you know, I’m only sort of awake here, but I’m getting the feeling I’m gonna want a drink. And you really look like you could use one.”
He nodded. Verlander gingerly led him over to the couch, where he collapsed like he’d lost control of all his limbs at once. The springs squeaked under his weight, and Verlander’s head jogged minutely at the sound before he ducked into the kitchen.
He was so, so, so, so fucked. He was shattered, in ten thousand jagged-edged pieces that could never be put back together again. And it hadn’t even really sunk in yet. When he finally did get around to processing this-- when the fact that Maribel had left him became cold hard reality, instead of the foggy nightmare it was right now-- what would it do to him then? How could he possibly survive?
And the timing of it: just after the regular season had ended, right before the playoffs were set to begin. He should have been preparing himself for the upcoming games, which would be more important than any of the games they had played so far this season. He should have been making sure that he was in the absolute peak of physical and mental condition. There were a lot of young players on the Tigers, lots of kids who had never been in the playoffs; he was supposed to be the mentor, the Guy Who Had Been There Before. He was supposed to be able to show them how to deal with the pressure and the nagging fear of screwing it all up.
He didn’t know how he was going to make it through the night. How in the world could he make it through the playoffs? How was he supposed to support an entire team when he could barely support himself?
“Hey. Hey.” Verlander pressed a cup into his hands. Pudge brought it to his mouth without thinking, sharp whiskey smell drawing him; then he glanced down. Verlander had poured the drink into a big red plastic Solo cup. The kind of thing the rookies used to play beer pong.
He couldn’t help it. He burst out laughing.
“S’all I had,” Verlander muttered, sitting down next to him and taking a defensive sip from his own cup. “I mean, I got some shot glasses, but. They’re kinda, um, sitting in the sink from last weekend.”
Pudge shook his head and leaned into Verlander, laughing helplessly. He was verging on hysteria, he was aware enough to know that; it would be too easy to give himself up to uncontrollable laughter. He could keep going until he hyperventilated, and then he could pass out into a welcome darkness. It was sorely tempting. Instead he turned his face into Verlander’s shoulder and let the laughter wind down until it had subsided into a few sporadic giggles and hiccups. Maybe there were a few fresh tears too.
Verlander had slung an arm over his shoulders at some point and was absently stroking his side, his arm long enough for the task. He waited until Pudge was sniffling and jerking with the occasional hiccup before asking, “So, um. What’s going on?”
He was suddenly far, far too tired to dance around it. “I. Fuck. My wife found out. Now it will be a, a divorce.”
“Found out? About… you mean, about me?”
“You, me, everybody else.”
The arm around his shoulders tightened momentarily. “Everybody else?”
God. Pudge closed his eyes, blindly gulped down a mouthful of whiskey. “You’re not the first. You know that.”
There was a soft sound above him. Verlander blowing out a breath, maybe. “Yeah. I mean, obviously. I just… um, anyone I would know?”
Pudge squeezed his eyes shut harder, forced his eyelids together until colors exploded red and green behind them. “Does it matter?”
Silence. His head was still on Verlander’s shoulder and Verlander’s arm was still around him. Everything ached. He was somehow afraid to open his eyes.
“You know,” Verlander said, “I don’t think it really does.” He smoothed his hand up and down Pudge’s side. “But if you were having, like, hot sweaty catcher orgies and wanted to tell me about ‘em, that would be, you know, fine by me.”
“Yeah.” He shifted up to press his face into the side of Verlander’s neck, where the pulse beat hot and regular against his cheek.
“I’m, um. Real sorry about your wife,” Verlander added, awkward but sincere. He tilted his head so that it was resting on top of Pudge’s. “If, if you think it would help, to stop… I don’t wanna be more trouble or, like, cause you trouble with your family.”
“I should,” Pudge said. “But there is nothing that will help now. And I don’ want…”
“OK. So we’ll just--“
“You shouldn’t. This is, I am goin’ to be a mess, and you, you do not deserve to be dragged down wit’ me.”
“OK, no. I mean, yeah, no.” Verlander tipped his head back, shotgunned the rest of his whiskey fast, crumpled up the cup and threw it with a neat abbreviated fastball motion to the other side of the room. He nudged Pudge’s head with his nose, his recently freed hand coming up to cup the side of Pudge’s face. “I like… this. I like you. You, um, showed me lots of good stuff this year. I mean, baseball stuff, and… not baseball stuff. I don’t… it’s not a matter of, like, deserving or not deserving.”
“But it is. It is. And I don’ deserve shit.”
Verlander made a nervous little coughing noise, but when he spoke, his voice was weirdly firm. “You don’t get to decide that,” he said, and he did not sound anything like a rookie. He sounded like the pitcher he was going to become.
**
His life stopped, but baseball didn’t. All too soon the postseason was upon them, October baseball, the coldest and dreariest but most-coveted variety of the sport. He played on because he had to, because there was no alternative. Operating on the absolute dregs of his unconscious ability, relying on instincts accumulated over the course of his career, that was the best he could manage. It wasn’t fair to the team. But going to Leyland, saying he was in no fit state to play-- that was never even an option.
It worked for the first series, anyways. He bluffed his way through two games in Yankee Stadium, calling pitches by rote, seeing-not-seeing the pinstriped players in front of him. They won the first two games, but he went 0-for-8 at the plate. Leyland took him aside before the third game, back home in Detroit.
“I don’t know what your problem is, and I don’t care,” he growled. “Get your head back in this.”
I can’t, Pudge wanted to say. I don’t know if I ever can again. But that was not what Leyland wanted to hear, so he just nodded and muttered something placatory and went to see if he could cadge a greenie off of Rogers. He wasn’t going to be able to do it on his own, but maybe he could fake it. Better baseball through chemistry and all that.
They lost, but he went 2-for-3 with a double, a respectably solid outing. Leyland had nothing much to say to him after the game.
It was somehow easier after that. His body did remember how to play on its own, and, knowing that, he could put more trust in it to do what it knew best. They won the fourth game, to knock the Yankees out of the playoffs. They won four straight against Oakland to secure the American League Championship.
They were going to the World Series.
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