On the subject of Tigers and Pugs
For this prompt at bats_and_balls. Of course I didn't complete it in anything close to 48 hours, but I got it out there a lot faster than most of what I've been working on these days, so I'm counting it as a success in that sense.
The working title for this was 'tassel', which should tell you how I got it from the prompt.
Max Scherzer/Will Rhymes, Max Scherzer/other dude
NC-17
6057 words
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.
On the subject of Tigers and Pugs
A long time ago, far away from the self-contained universe of Major League Baseball, Max was a student. Really. A college student just like everyone else, trying to figure out his major, fighting with the online registration system, navigating the social minefield that was dorm life, staying out way too late and paying for it the next day because he was twenty years old and that was what you did when you were twenty years old. He was a student-athlete (or an athlete-student, as the joke went), which maybe made things a little different, but there were lots of student-athletes at Missouri; he was hardly unique.
He liked being a student. He had always done well in school, and in fact high school had been one easy A after another, his only regret a final 3.9 instead of a perfect 4.0. The summer after he graduated, the Cardinals drafted him. It was just a courtesy, since he was a local kid, and it was so late in the draft-- the 43rd round-- that it didn't mean anything. You only signed out of the 43rd round if you had absolutely no hope of doing anything else with your life. Max wasn't that kid. He was smart, he was going places. He told the Cardinals thanks but no thanks (no hard feelings on either side; the scouts knew he wasn't going to sign that low) and packed up for Mizzou. His mother cried when he moved into his dorm, and he felt very grown-up about it all: there was a whole new chapter of his life opening up now, a chapter where he got to write his own plotlines. He figured he was really cool at the time, thinking of something deep like that. He winces now when he remembers it, of course, but at the time: seriously, man. Deep.
Mizzou was invested in the success of its student-athletes, which meant he got some help. Not like the football or basketball players got, but his academic adviser was more accessible than the person who nominally held that position for his roommate (an engineer), so that was something. He-- the adviser-- had Max taking easy coasting classes his first semester, Geology 'Rocks for Jocks' 101 and all that, but before second semester started Max went in and explained that he was thinking about majoring in business, with half an eye on grad school if this whole baseball thing didn't work out, and what classes should he be taking to get himself on that track?
The adviser had been very surprised. Max had gotten the impression that there weren't too many athletes who came in asking to get placed in harder classes.
He'd been the most educated guy on all of his minor league teams, and it had been the same once he made it up, in Arizona. He got used to it. Guys came to him and asked questions about their finances, asked him to explain an unfamiliar word in an article. He split up the bill at restaurants and bars, figured out the right amount of tip. He was The Clubhouse Brain in whatever clubhouse he happened to be inhabiting at the time.
He assumed it would be the same in Detroit. Why not?
---
Dangling from the rear-view mirror of Will Rhymes' car is a tassel. It's golden yellow, with a little cheap plastic 05 hanging from the top. Max flicks it to make the strands fan out. Rhymes reaches over without taking his eyes off the road and bats Max's hand away.
"What's this from?" Max runs a finger along the underside of the tassel, letting the strands fall over one by one. "College?"
"Uh huh," Rhymes says.
"So you graduated." Max makes it a statement, not a question, because duh. They don't just give out the tassels for shits and giggles, he knows that, he's just saying it because... he just is, that's all. Rhymes nods anyways and shoots a quick glance over, risky on the highway. Max leans back in his seat. "So, what'd you... the colors are supposed to mean the major, right? What's yellow for?"
There's silence for a moment, then Rhymes says, reluctantly, "Science. It's... yellow's for science."
"You majored in science?"
"I. No, they don't... they don't have colors for the specific majors, just the, like. The general field."
"So what'd you--"
"Molecular biology," Rhymes mutters. "I know, I know. Don't."
"Jesus," Max says, with a whistle at the end. He thought he was hot shit with his business classes and his oversized vocabulary (oversized for a ballplayer, everything being relative). But molecular biology... that's on a whole other playing field.
Rhymes is staring at the road doggedly, hands locked on the wheel with his knucklebones pressing sharp against the thin skin there. "It's not like I'm sneaking off to the lab between road trips now, ok. Don't... just don't get all weird over it."
"Hey. Hey, man, no." Max is genuinely hurt that Rhymes would even consider bunching him in with those people: the people who would make a molecular biology degree out to be some disfiguring disease. They exist in baseball, no doubt about that, but Max is not one of them. "It's fine, it's just... wow, biology-- intense. But it's not bad... I mean, heck, I was on track to graduate too, before the draft."
"So why didn't you? Graduate, I mean," Rhymes says. "If you were on track."
"The draft. That's it really, I got drafted." Max scrunches down further in the passenger seat, almost out from under the seatbelt, knees threatening the glove compartment. He laces his fingers together over his stomach. "I got drafted outta high school, but late rounds, just as a throwaway. Junior year of college, they took me first round. First round isn't a throwaway. It wasn't gonna get any better than that, so I figured I should take it, you know, while the option was there."
"I didn't realize you went first round," Rhymes says, sounding kind of funny, although Max would be hard-pressed to explain how.
"Why, where'd you go?"
"Twenty-seven." Rhymes is keeping his eyes scrupulously tied to the road. "And that was senior year, so it was basically like... do you really wanna do this baseball thing? Cause you got this degree, and if you don't play ball, you better start beefing up for med school."
"Well. Obviously you made the right choice," Max says. He means that things like that don't matter once you make it up to the big leagues, MLB is MLB, they're all in this together, so on and so forth, and Rhymes did make it up, so it wasn't a mistake, choosing to go all in for baseball-- but now it's a little awkward. There are things between them that weren't there before. There's Max's draft slot, and Rhymes' diploma. There are reminders of a kind of failure on both sides.
It's not really failure, of course. They're both wearing that scrolled English D on their chests, and it doesn't much matter what they did or did not do to get here. What really matters is what they do now that they are here.
---
He never had trouble finding girls in college. Part of it had been the fact that he was a varsity athlete, but mostly it was down to his eyes. They're different colors: his right eye is light blue, his left eye dark brown. His college teammates treated it like a party trick, bringing over girls they wanted to impress, Hey baby, you wanna see something wild? C'mon over here, take a look at Maxie here. Check it out! Crazy, huh?
Inevitably, some of the girls would be more intrigued by Max than the guy who'd dragged them over to gawk. He accumulated hook-ups and dates without even trying. In fact, much of his collegiate romantic career was one long series of unintentional effortless accidents, right up until late in his sophomore year, and the infielder.
His name was Gary, he was a righty, and he was a little bit younger than Max, although they were in the same graduating class. The Mizzou Tigers media guide listed him at 5'10, but that was generous. Max had at least half a foot on him. They were close in the way that all the guys on the team from his year were close, huddled together as collective protection from the upperclassmen.
They were drinking, of course, and reminiscing about their rookie hazing, which had involved liberal use of cucumbers. It started out as friendly banter ("Looked pretty pro with that veggie, man." "Oh yeah? Well you didn't look like you were struggling with it any either"), which evolved into more serious banter ("Where'd you learn to do that, huh?" "You really wanna know?"). This detoured into false bravado and bluster ("I'll show you if you show me"). In any event, it ended with Max on his knees and a dick in his mouth, where he made the startling discovery that this might, actually, be something he wanted to do. It definitely warranted further research.
He supposed that the age of twenty was a little late in the game to be figuring something like this out, but he hadn't really-- God, he never even thought it was an option. He'd always thought it wasn't something normal guys did. He knew that some guys were gay, but those were the guys who spoke differently and knew show tunes and paid a lot of attention to their shirts, not your average burping, ball-scratching, carelessly hairy guys in loose band t-shirts and old sneakers. It certainly wasn't something athletes did.
But Max was an athlete, so, apparently, it was. Or at least it could be.
It wouldn't be easy, he knew that much right from the start. The fact that Gary was on his team was a stroke of random luck. If guys were into guys and still wanted to seriously play baseball, they kept it real quiet. He wasn't likely to find much open sympathy among his potential future teammates, on his maybe-potential future professional team.
But it was workable, he felt certain of that. He could make it work. He'd just have to be smart about it, that was all-- and Max knew how to be smart.
---
Rhymes opens his apartment door and turns quickly, grabbing Max's hand, pulling him in behind and slamming the door shut. Max teeters, off-balance, and braces himself against the closest wall with his free hand. A twinge of anxious surprise flutters low in his gut; is Rhymes that worried about his neighbors?
"Sorry," Rhymes says. "I always hafta close the door fast. Don't wanna let him out." This is a nonsensical statement, so Max just stares at him. Rhymes smiles and releases Max's hand, nods at the floor.
Max looks down. There's a fat tan pug hopping frantically around Rhymes' ankles. It's not barking, just jumping and jumping and jumping, letting its tongue flap around, eyes rolling. Its tightly curled tail wobbles in a ridiculous near-blur.
Thank god. At least Rhymes isn't going crazy or something.
"He's kind of an escape artist," Rhymes adds, scooping up the pug under one arm and tucking it there like a piece of luggage. The pug wriggles once, pistons its legs, then goes limp, head lolling contentedly against Rhymes' side. Rhymes carries the dog down the hall and through a doorway at its end. Max shakes his head once, assimilating the new information-- tiny infielder has tiny excitable dog, ok-- before moving to follow.
The space at the end of the hall is one of those miniature apartment living rooms with the kitchen attached, separated in this case by a half-wall, currently being used to house two different coffeemakers and all their accessories. It is an impressive array of stainless steel and shiny black Euro-appliance-tech. Max stares some more.
Rhymes comes up, pug no longer in hand, and leans a hip against the half-wall, reaching out to stroke one of the coffeemakers in a satisfied, proprietary kind of way. "Mine. That other one's Jeff's." Jeff Larish is Rhymes' roommate, another minor league type up in Detroit on a temporary basis. "I know it's kinda ridiculous... it's just, I like coffee one way and he likes it his way. We couldn't find a machine that could make it both ways, so, uh, we hafta have the two. I guess it gets kinda noisy when we have both of 'em going in the mornings, but aside from that it's not as crazy as it looks. Um. Honest."
"Some serious coffee consumption happening in this household," Max says, shaking his head. He's grinning as he does, though. "No wonder you're so jumpy at the park."
Rhymes smiles sheepishly. "Well, it's not just the coffee." He keeps one hand on the coffee machine, runs the other backwards through his hair, pushing the longish curls out of his face. He looks suddenly shy, and awfully young, even though he is actually a little older than Max. It must be the height (more precisely, the lack of it).
"Jeff's not home, right?" Max asks. Rhymes mutely shakes his head. Max steps towards him, watching closely. If Rhymes backs away, he'll call it off right now. He is not in the business of pressuring other people, or freaking out teammates. But if Rhymes seems to be handling things tolerably well, Max is not going to treat him with unnecessary kid gloves. Not when he's pretty damn sure that he read all the signals correctly.
---
There was a wet squelch, like a soaked cloth was being twisted up, followed by a sharp smack. A moment later the sensation of the rat-tailed towel hitting his ass registered. Max came up on his toes and managed to not squeak only by the grace of God and Ty Cobb. "Good game," Rhymes said, grinning. The towel hung limp from his hand, its end dripping onto the short-pile clubhouse carpet.
"What do you want, you unbelievable asshole?"
Rhymes' grin only widened in response. Max sighed and made a big show of rubbing his butt, waggling his fingers around, pretending to check for welts. He'd just emerged from his post-game shower and was still bare-assed naked, which apparently meant he presented an appealing target. Rhymes twirled the towel once with a tidy, compact snap of his wrist. He was wearing jeans already, although he hadn't bothered to put on a shirt, or socks. His bare ankles peeked out from the bottom hems of his pantlegs, thin and bony. "You're a menace," Max said.
It had been a good game. Max started and went seven innings, easy, so effortless that his shoulder barely registered the use. There were a few hits, a couple of walks, but no runs, and no heavily accumulated baserunners either; the bases were never loaded, he was never pitching in an unduly stressful environment. He'd amassed 98 pitches by the end of the 7th and Leyland had pulled him, not because he was struggling and needed it, but because Leyland had told the papers that he didn't want to overstretch Max's still-young, fairly valuable right arm.
Cabrera hit a massive, towering three-run homer in the 8th that absolutely destroyed the spirits of the Twins. Max could actually see their shoulders slumping in their dugout as the ball flew out, defeat almost palpably radiating from across the field even though there was technically still time for Minnesota to make up the difference. Two quick, painless trips to the bullpen finished out the game. A good solid win for the team and a gratifying W in the stat books for Max.
Not that statistical Wins meant much. He used to think they did, but he had done a lot of research into baseball statistics over the years, and by now he knew better. Wins were too dependent on factors outside of a pitcher's control-- you could pitch perfectly and not get one if you had no run support or shitty defense behind you, or you could pitch like absolutely horseshit and still get that W if your team scored a ton of runs while you were in the game.
Still. Still. He had pitched well today and he had gotten the W and it was a good game for everyone, except for the Twins, and fuck the Twins. He could enjoy that. He was enjoying it right now, here in the locker room, with little Will Rhymes and his stupid shit-eating grin and the damn deadly towel he was twisting around in his hands, almost like a nervous tic.
"Get outta here with that thing," Max said, reaching out an arm to swipe lazily at Rhymes.
With another startlingly quick snap of his wrist, Rhymes flicked the towel at Max again, striking him low across the stomach this time. It stung, goddammit. Max lunged, catching Rhymes by surprise. He wrapped the towel around one fist, pinning Rhymes to the opposite wall with his other arm. "You should watch where you're waving that thing, Mighty Mouse."
Rhymes blushed. The pink started at his ears and spread across the tops of his cheekbones, then suffused the rest of his face. Max stared, fascinated. There was something appealing in this, Rhymes with his bare back against the wall, chin tipped high to keep Max's face in sight, pinking up all over his face and, as Max watched, down his neck, all the way to his collarbones. He looked vulnerably defiant, a tease overwhelmed, a whole host of things Max had learned to not expect from other ballplayers. For a moment the urge to kiss him was nearly overwhelming, and Max almost forgot where he was.
Almost. He swallowed hard, aware of his nakedness in a way he normally wasn't in the clubhouse. His dick was right out there, man! In the open! Usually it wasn't a big deal; dick, air, so what? Him and everyone else. But suddenly he had to be careful, because some invisible line had been crossed, and it wasn't just his dick anymore: it was about to be a hard dick, and that was most assuredly not ok in a professional clubhouse. He stepped back from Rhymes deliberately, giving him a chance to brush it off. But Rhymes just stared at him with eyes gone huge, flush firmly in place. His hands, bereft of the towel, trembled slightly at his sides.
Max unwrapped the towel from his fist and dropped it into the bottom of his locker. He turned slowly, reaching for his clothing, struggling to keep his own hands from shaking. This was new. This was not what he was expecting. This was bad, except it had the potential to be very, very, very good.
"We should hang out," he said, a little surprised to hear the steadiness of his voice. "We should... right now, we should definitely hang out."
"I... yeah." Max glanced back in time to see Rhymes press both palms briefly backwards against the wall, then push himself off of it. "Yeah. Let's... we can go to my place, it's closer."
"Great." Max stared into his locker and stepped into his boxers carefully, trying to not seem like he was rushing, not turning around to see if Rhymes was looking at his ass. They were just horsing around, normal teammates annoying each other, anyone looking at them would have thought just that. He was cool, he was calm. He was under control. Mostly.
---
Rhymes watches him now with those same big eyes. They're something new, something Max has never seen from Rhymes on the field. They contribute to the visual lie of youth Rhymes has going on, but they also make him look like he's desperately trying to acquire information, like if he opens his eyes wide enough, he'll actually be able to understand more of what is right in front of him. Max wonders if this is what Rhymes looks like when he's bending over a microscope.
Max wants to say something cliché, along the lines of tell me to stop and I will, but he doesn't. He just keeps moving until he's in Rhymes' space, then goes closer, as close as they were in the clubhouse. Rhymes tips his head back again to look up at Max. His hand comes off the coffeemaker and curls tentatively around Max's hip. Once it's there he seems to gain confidence as his fingers quickly firm up their grip, and his other hand skates under the hem of Max's t-shirt at once, pushing across Max's lower back.
"What do you wanna do?" Max asks, voice low like he's trying to keep someone from overhearing, even though there's nobody else in the apartment, aside from the dog. Rhymes trembles once, then stills, both hands on Max.
"Anything," he says. "Anything. Just, can we, can we not fucking stand here talking about it--"
Max laughs out loud. His arms come up around Rhymes like it's the most natural thing in the world. He bends down to nuzzle the top of Rhymes' head. "Yeah. Yeah. Bedroom."
Rhymes shivers pleasantly against him. Max grins into his hair. Smart guy, he thinks, only a little bit smug. He read the signals right after all. Pitch-perfect.
---
The first thing he did after he got drafted was call home to his parents, who both cried. The second person he called was Scott Boras, his agent, who gave him some numbers to think about. They seemed like irresponsibly huge numbers to Max, so he was trying to not think about them.
The third person he called was Gary.
"Arizona," Gary said, as soon as he picked up. "Cool."
"I know. I know! Shit, man, can you believe it?"
"I kinda can, actually. The numbers you've been puttin' up, damn boy. Least they could do." He could practically hear Gary's smile over the phone. "Hey, you comin' over? I think you got a congratulatory fuck headin' your way."
"Yeah," Max said. He was already jamming his feet into his shoes, halfway out the door. "Hell yeah."
He ended up sitting on the couch in Gary's apartment, pants down around his ankles, a towel under his ass as a concession to Gary's two roommates. The muscles of Gary's thighs stood out in sharp relief as he worked himself up and down in Max's lap, knees on either side of Max's legs. His arms were braced on the back couch cushions. Every so often he would turn his face to the side, close his mouth around Max's ear, huffing hot breath straight down.
Max rolled his hips when he could, whenever it seemed like he wouldn't interrupt Gary's rhythm with his own contributions. Mostly he held still, letting Gary do all the work. It was impossible to shake the idea that he was being serviced, like a birthday boy at a strip joint. He felt like he should be seeking out the parts of Gary's body that were collecting the most sweat, sticking dollar bills to them.
He came with Gary's tongue in his ear and his short pitcher's fingernails digging into Gary's back, hard enough to leave reddened lines. He gave himself exactly one minute to relax, counting seconds backwards in his head, then pushed Gary over onto the couch and jerked him off slowly, watching his face. It wasn't as if he was leaving the next day, but there was already a sense of finality about everything. He had crossed over the line from college to the pros, and Gary was firmly on the college side of things, not destined for the draft this year. Maybe not ever.
Gary gasped, head crashing back into the couch. Max tightened his grip, breathing hard on the head of Gary's dick, adding as much warmth as he could without actually using his mouth. It was like a test, to see if he could coax a sufficiently big orgasm out of Gary with just his hand, although Gary liked getting fucked and was still turned-on from that, so it was sort of cheating. Max was not above that kind of cheating, though.
There was a stuttering stop in Gary's breath; Max squeezed around the sudden pulse, watching Gary's come leak out and drip down over his fingers. He contemplated the resulting mess briefly, considered getting up for a tissue before rejecting that idea and simply licking his fingers clean. He didn't often do that; he had managed to become a fan of sucking dick without becoming a fan of the way semen tasted. Still, there wasn't that much of it, and it was worth it to see the way Gary watched with his eyes hooded, tongue half out of his mouth like he had been about to lick his lips and forgot on the way.
"So what're you gonna do?" Gary asked, after. He was stroking a hand slowly up and down Max's side. "In the Majors."
"I dunno. Stop, I guess." Max could have pretended to not know what Gary was talking about, but there was no point. "Fuck some girls, you know, throw up a smokescreen." He hadn't set out to renounce them or anything, but he hadn't slept with a woman since he'd started up with Gary; he could get it up for a girl just fine, and sex with girls was fine, but sex with a guy-- or at least this one particular guy-- was more than enough for him at the moment.
It wasn't like they were dating. Gary hooked up with girls, very enthusiastically, sometimes loudly and publicly and probably over-compensatorily at parties. He might have hooked up with other guys too, but not where Max (or anyone else on the team) had seen him. Max just wasn't much into multiple people at once-- it strained his organizational abilities. Too many people to juggle on the weekends, too many phone numbers to keep straight. It was easier to hook up with only one person, that was all.
"You better look into that," Gary said. He reached up and traced a forefinger down the long line of Max's nose. "Pretty boy like you, they'll eat you up alive and spit you out stone dead."
Max shook his head, careful to not dislodge Gary's finger from the tip of his nose. "I'm gonna be playing Major League Baseball. Who cares about that stuff?"
"People care," Gary said. His voice was heavy with emotion, although Max wasn't sure if it was sadness or pity or envy or resigned anger or something else. It could have just been post-orgasmic slowness weighing down Gary's vocal cords. Any of those reactions would have been appropriate; he had no way to know.
---
"Look at me," Rhymes says. Max ignores him, keeping his eyes closed. He wants to concentrate on the taste, the feeling of pressure on his tongue and the stretch in his jaw, and closing his eyes, limiting his available senses, will help. He has Rhymes' dick in his mouth, and he is-- not that he would ever tell Rhymes this-- absolutely, positively determined to do some savoring here. It's been a while.
A hand lands on his head, scruffing up his hair, not that he has much to scruff. "C'mon," Rhymes says. "Open up. I wanna see your eyes." He shifts his hips, restless, clearly trying to keep himself from outright thrusting. "Max... look at me. Max. Please."
That's pretty close to begging, and, well, he did say 'please'. Max opens his eyes and turns them up, searching for Rhymes' face over the lightly curved planes of his abdomen and chest.
"Christ," Rhymes breathes. Max lifts his eyebrows, knowing it makes his eyes bigger. Rhymes struggles momentarily to get an elbow under his upper body, lifting it off the bed. He rubs his hand backwards over Max's head, cupping it around the base of his skull. "Jesus fucking Christ, look at you."
"Kinda hard for me to look at myself," Max says, but it comes out more like Inna ar or ee oo oog ah ahell, because, well, he has a dick in his mouth.
Rhymes inhales sharply at the sensation of Max trying to form sentences around him, eyes screwing shut for a moment before snapping back open with what Max thinks must be a conscious effort.
"That's. Max. That's really... wow." Rhymes takes a deep, steadying breath. "Complete heterochromia. Really... really fucking. God. Is it... is it congenital, or, or..." He gasps, the fingers on the back of Max's head clenching. Max rolls his tongue, letting it muscle around the curvature of Rhymes' dick, keeping his eyes locked on Rhymes' face. "Or is it, ah, mo... mosaicism?" He forces out the last word all on one quick breath, like he knows that if he lingers over it, he's never going to get all the syllables to hang together.
Max pulls off wetly, keeping his lips pursed so that a strand of saliva clings briefly, a thin gossamer lifeline from his mouth to Rhymes. "Dunno," he says. "I never got it tested or anything. I was born with it, though." He licks his lips, watching Rhymes stare. "Why, you think it's hot?"
"I... yeah. Shit." Rhymes takes another deep breath, laughs a little. "Shit! Yeah. It is." Without Max's mouth on him, he seems a little more in control of himself, although his face is still red and his hair is starting to go limp, sweat apparently forming under the considerable mass of it on his scalp. The elbow he has braced on the bed quivers slightly. "What, uh. Man. What color were your parents' eyes?"
"Blue. Both."
"Uh. Mmm, that makes me think it's mosaicism, or. Like, a spontaneous first-gen mutation, not regular inheritance." This sounds far too coherent for Max's liking, so he gets a nice grip on the base of Rhymes' dick with his right hand and rubs lightly, just letting his pitcher's calluses make themselves known. Rhymes groans and squeezes his eyes shut hard before popping them open again in that pained, overly conscious way. "B-but I guess there's no... no way to really know without, uh, shit, without g-genetic testing."
Max inches up the bed so that he can lean his head on Rhymes' hip. "Dude. Are you turned on by my sexy biology?"
"You're a pretty, uh. Fascinating specimen," Rhymes says.
"You usually fuck your specimens?"
"I'm not fucking you."
"That can be arranged," Max says. He glances up again to gauge Rhymes' reaction, which appears to be somewhere between completely out of his depth and speechlessly turned-on. "Or I can keep doin' what I was doin'."
"Maybe." Rhymes looks down, turning even redder, if that is possible. "Maybe you'd better, um, stick with this. For now."
"Fine by me," Max says. More than fine by him, really. He bends down and opens his mouth, curling his lips a little to blunt the edges of his teeth as Rhymes' dick slides back in.
"Beautiful specimen," Rhymes says. Max can feel a blush of his own spreading in a low heat across his face. He's a ballplayer: he's not used to anyone calling him beautiful. But Rhymes is not saying it mockingly. If anything, he's saying it reverentially.
This is what you get for doing a biology major, he thinks. His lips hurt a little as they twitch in an involuntary attempt to smile. He inhales carefully through his nose, relaxes his throat as best he can, lets his head sink slowly down, relishing the small noises Rhymes is making--
"Robbles."
Max pauses, still eying Rhymes. Rhymes' mouth is hanging open a little, slack with whatever sensations Max is calling up.
"Robbles!"
"Excuse me?" Max says, pulling off.
Rhymes closes his mouth slowly, gaze drifting from Max's eyes to his mouth and back again. "I... what?"
"Robbles!" This time Max can tell the noise is not coming from Rhymes. In fact, it almost sounds like it's coming from the floor next to the bed. He frowns, ignores the jolt of arousal that kicks him in the gut when Rhymes's eyes laser in on his lips again, and bends sideways to look.
The pug stares up at him, eyes popping. "Robbles!" it says, voice raspy, tail wagging vigorously.
Max pulls himself back into Rhymes' lap. "Why is your dog saying 'robbles'?"
Rhymes curves one hand around the back of Max's head again. "Ah, jeez, that's just how he barks. Ignore him."
"I dunno if I can suck you off while your dog is standing there watching us and offering commentary," Max says, eying Rhymes' dick dubiously. The head is reddened and shiny with spit, and he wants it. He wants it really, really badly, but now that he knows the dog is there he can hear it breathing, which is just weird.
"Ugh. Scram!" Rhymes shouts.
"Robbles robblesrobbles!"
"Oh my god. Get out of here! Go! Out!"
There's a disappointed snuffling sound, then a slow and reluctant patter of receding paws. Max scrambles up and hastily closes the bedroom door. When he turns back around, Rhymes is holding his own dick, legs sprawled, shoulders still propped up off the bed on one elbow. It's a gay porn pose, but it's Will Rhymes in the pose, with his ridiculous curls and his half-heartedly groomed body hair, the bruises on his sides from stray baseballs, the feet that, outside of cleats, look too awkwardly big for his frame, his goofy grin.
He looks perfect. Max wants to say so, but he figures that might be weird. Instead he turns on a grin of his own in Rhymes' direction, probably just as goofy, and climbs back onto the bed.
---
"You know what's funny?" he asks. He pokes Rhymes in the shoulder, to make sure that he's listening.
"Ow. What?" Rhymes rubs at his arm and glares at Max. They're sitting next to each other on the bench, watching Austin Jackson foul off every single pitch. He's up to ten now. Jackson leads off and Rhymes is batting eighth; he doesn't even have his batting helmet in his hands yet.
"I'm on the Tigers," Max says.
"Um. No shit?"
"That was my college team too. The University of Missouri Tigers."
"Ha ha?" Rhymes says, cautiously. "Um, congratulations on making it back into the territory of large striped felid carnivores?"
Max spreads his hands. "I just mean, isn't that something? I was on the Tigers, and now I'm on the Tigers. I'm a Tiger."
Rhymes rolls his eyes. "Well, if you go by that, I think I was supposed to end up in Cleveland. My high school team was the Redskins, and my college team was the Tribe."
"Could've been Atlanta," Max says. He stretches out his arms, lets one fall along the back lip of the bench. With his hand dangling down, he can just barely brush the top of Rhymes' shoulder. Jackson fouls off another pitch.
Rhymes leans back a little, putting more of his shoulder in reach of Max's fingertips. "Yet here I am."
"It's that crazy biology-oriented brain," Max says. "You couldn't resist the opportunity to study the wild tiger in his natural habitat up close."
"Molecular biology, not zoology, you big doofus. There's kind of a difference." Rhymes punches Max in the chest, light enough to be clearly teasing, but hard enough for Max to still definitely feel it. His heart feels funny, like it skipped a beat, although he's not sure if that's from the punch, or for some other reason.
"Bi-ology, zoo-ology, ooo, big distinctions from such a little guy," Max says, already laughing, which is good, because Rhymes starts attacking his side, and it's more like tickling than a proper fight. "What do I know, man? All I know is baseball-ology."
This is the first team where he's been able to make fun of someone else for being The Clubhouse Brain. He snickers at his own incomparable wit and shoves at Rhymes, who shoves him back, upsetting someone's water bottle. Magglio Ordonez hops out of the way, swearing loudly at them. At least, Max assumes he's swearing at them; whatever Ordonez is saying, it's in Spanish.
"No, you're right. This is field research," Rhymes says. "I need to observe you so we can figure out how something so deranged managed to survive to adulthood. For science!" Max pins him to the bench with one hand and tickles his side with the other. He spares a brief thought for the network cameras, although he's not sure if he hopes they're filming this, or if he really hopes they aren't. Rhymes wheezes with laughter. "Jesus, someone call in a tranq dart, I'm being attacked by a wild evolutionary dead-end here!"
"Idiotas," Magglio mutters.
That much Max can translate. He grins down at Rhymes, at the hectic explosion of his hair and the light blush of exertion on his cheeks, the navy blue athletic tape making tight cuffs on both his wrists. Idiots, sure. They're baseball players. They'll be the smartest idiots on the team, and that, Max thinks, is a final destination good enough for the both of them.
The working title for this was 'tassel', which should tell you how I got it from the prompt.
Max Scherzer/Will Rhymes, Max Scherzer/other dude
NC-17
6057 words
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.
On the subject of Tigers and Pugs
A long time ago, far away from the self-contained universe of Major League Baseball, Max was a student. Really. A college student just like everyone else, trying to figure out his major, fighting with the online registration system, navigating the social minefield that was dorm life, staying out way too late and paying for it the next day because he was twenty years old and that was what you did when you were twenty years old. He was a student-athlete (or an athlete-student, as the joke went), which maybe made things a little different, but there were lots of student-athletes at Missouri; he was hardly unique.
He liked being a student. He had always done well in school, and in fact high school had been one easy A after another, his only regret a final 3.9 instead of a perfect 4.0. The summer after he graduated, the Cardinals drafted him. It was just a courtesy, since he was a local kid, and it was so late in the draft-- the 43rd round-- that it didn't mean anything. You only signed out of the 43rd round if you had absolutely no hope of doing anything else with your life. Max wasn't that kid. He was smart, he was going places. He told the Cardinals thanks but no thanks (no hard feelings on either side; the scouts knew he wasn't going to sign that low) and packed up for Mizzou. His mother cried when he moved into his dorm, and he felt very grown-up about it all: there was a whole new chapter of his life opening up now, a chapter where he got to write his own plotlines. He figured he was really cool at the time, thinking of something deep like that. He winces now when he remembers it, of course, but at the time: seriously, man. Deep.
Mizzou was invested in the success of its student-athletes, which meant he got some help. Not like the football or basketball players got, but his academic adviser was more accessible than the person who nominally held that position for his roommate (an engineer), so that was something. He-- the adviser-- had Max taking easy coasting classes his first semester, Geology 'Rocks for Jocks' 101 and all that, but before second semester started Max went in and explained that he was thinking about majoring in business, with half an eye on grad school if this whole baseball thing didn't work out, and what classes should he be taking to get himself on that track?
The adviser had been very surprised. Max had gotten the impression that there weren't too many athletes who came in asking to get placed in harder classes.
He'd been the most educated guy on all of his minor league teams, and it had been the same once he made it up, in Arizona. He got used to it. Guys came to him and asked questions about their finances, asked him to explain an unfamiliar word in an article. He split up the bill at restaurants and bars, figured out the right amount of tip. He was The Clubhouse Brain in whatever clubhouse he happened to be inhabiting at the time.
He assumed it would be the same in Detroit. Why not?
---
Dangling from the rear-view mirror of Will Rhymes' car is a tassel. It's golden yellow, with a little cheap plastic 05 hanging from the top. Max flicks it to make the strands fan out. Rhymes reaches over without taking his eyes off the road and bats Max's hand away.
"What's this from?" Max runs a finger along the underside of the tassel, letting the strands fall over one by one. "College?"
"Uh huh," Rhymes says.
"So you graduated." Max makes it a statement, not a question, because duh. They don't just give out the tassels for shits and giggles, he knows that, he's just saying it because... he just is, that's all. Rhymes nods anyways and shoots a quick glance over, risky on the highway. Max leans back in his seat. "So, what'd you... the colors are supposed to mean the major, right? What's yellow for?"
There's silence for a moment, then Rhymes says, reluctantly, "Science. It's... yellow's for science."
"You majored in science?"
"I. No, they don't... they don't have colors for the specific majors, just the, like. The general field."
"So what'd you--"
"Molecular biology," Rhymes mutters. "I know, I know. Don't."
"Jesus," Max says, with a whistle at the end. He thought he was hot shit with his business classes and his oversized vocabulary (oversized for a ballplayer, everything being relative). But molecular biology... that's on a whole other playing field.
Rhymes is staring at the road doggedly, hands locked on the wheel with his knucklebones pressing sharp against the thin skin there. "It's not like I'm sneaking off to the lab between road trips now, ok. Don't... just don't get all weird over it."
"Hey. Hey, man, no." Max is genuinely hurt that Rhymes would even consider bunching him in with those people: the people who would make a molecular biology degree out to be some disfiguring disease. They exist in baseball, no doubt about that, but Max is not one of them. "It's fine, it's just... wow, biology-- intense. But it's not bad... I mean, heck, I was on track to graduate too, before the draft."
"So why didn't you? Graduate, I mean," Rhymes says. "If you were on track."
"The draft. That's it really, I got drafted." Max scrunches down further in the passenger seat, almost out from under the seatbelt, knees threatening the glove compartment. He laces his fingers together over his stomach. "I got drafted outta high school, but late rounds, just as a throwaway. Junior year of college, they took me first round. First round isn't a throwaway. It wasn't gonna get any better than that, so I figured I should take it, you know, while the option was there."
"I didn't realize you went first round," Rhymes says, sounding kind of funny, although Max would be hard-pressed to explain how.
"Why, where'd you go?"
"Twenty-seven." Rhymes is keeping his eyes scrupulously tied to the road. "And that was senior year, so it was basically like... do you really wanna do this baseball thing? Cause you got this degree, and if you don't play ball, you better start beefing up for med school."
"Well. Obviously you made the right choice," Max says. He means that things like that don't matter once you make it up to the big leagues, MLB is MLB, they're all in this together, so on and so forth, and Rhymes did make it up, so it wasn't a mistake, choosing to go all in for baseball-- but now it's a little awkward. There are things between them that weren't there before. There's Max's draft slot, and Rhymes' diploma. There are reminders of a kind of failure on both sides.
It's not really failure, of course. They're both wearing that scrolled English D on their chests, and it doesn't much matter what they did or did not do to get here. What really matters is what they do now that they are here.
---
He never had trouble finding girls in college. Part of it had been the fact that he was a varsity athlete, but mostly it was down to his eyes. They're different colors: his right eye is light blue, his left eye dark brown. His college teammates treated it like a party trick, bringing over girls they wanted to impress, Hey baby, you wanna see something wild? C'mon over here, take a look at Maxie here. Check it out! Crazy, huh?
Inevitably, some of the girls would be more intrigued by Max than the guy who'd dragged them over to gawk. He accumulated hook-ups and dates without even trying. In fact, much of his collegiate romantic career was one long series of unintentional effortless accidents, right up until late in his sophomore year, and the infielder.
His name was Gary, he was a righty, and he was a little bit younger than Max, although they were in the same graduating class. The Mizzou Tigers media guide listed him at 5'10, but that was generous. Max had at least half a foot on him. They were close in the way that all the guys on the team from his year were close, huddled together as collective protection from the upperclassmen.
They were drinking, of course, and reminiscing about their rookie hazing, which had involved liberal use of cucumbers. It started out as friendly banter ("Looked pretty pro with that veggie, man." "Oh yeah? Well you didn't look like you were struggling with it any either"), which evolved into more serious banter ("Where'd you learn to do that, huh?" "You really wanna know?"). This detoured into false bravado and bluster ("I'll show you if you show me"). In any event, it ended with Max on his knees and a dick in his mouth, where he made the startling discovery that this might, actually, be something he wanted to do. It definitely warranted further research.
He supposed that the age of twenty was a little late in the game to be figuring something like this out, but he hadn't really-- God, he never even thought it was an option. He'd always thought it wasn't something normal guys did. He knew that some guys were gay, but those were the guys who spoke differently and knew show tunes and paid a lot of attention to their shirts, not your average burping, ball-scratching, carelessly hairy guys in loose band t-shirts and old sneakers. It certainly wasn't something athletes did.
But Max was an athlete, so, apparently, it was. Or at least it could be.
It wouldn't be easy, he knew that much right from the start. The fact that Gary was on his team was a stroke of random luck. If guys were into guys and still wanted to seriously play baseball, they kept it real quiet. He wasn't likely to find much open sympathy among his potential future teammates, on his maybe-potential future professional team.
But it was workable, he felt certain of that. He could make it work. He'd just have to be smart about it, that was all-- and Max knew how to be smart.
---
Rhymes opens his apartment door and turns quickly, grabbing Max's hand, pulling him in behind and slamming the door shut. Max teeters, off-balance, and braces himself against the closest wall with his free hand. A twinge of anxious surprise flutters low in his gut; is Rhymes that worried about his neighbors?
"Sorry," Rhymes says. "I always hafta close the door fast. Don't wanna let him out." This is a nonsensical statement, so Max just stares at him. Rhymes smiles and releases Max's hand, nods at the floor.
Max looks down. There's a fat tan pug hopping frantically around Rhymes' ankles. It's not barking, just jumping and jumping and jumping, letting its tongue flap around, eyes rolling. Its tightly curled tail wobbles in a ridiculous near-blur.
Thank god. At least Rhymes isn't going crazy or something.
"He's kind of an escape artist," Rhymes adds, scooping up the pug under one arm and tucking it there like a piece of luggage. The pug wriggles once, pistons its legs, then goes limp, head lolling contentedly against Rhymes' side. Rhymes carries the dog down the hall and through a doorway at its end. Max shakes his head once, assimilating the new information-- tiny infielder has tiny excitable dog, ok-- before moving to follow.
The space at the end of the hall is one of those miniature apartment living rooms with the kitchen attached, separated in this case by a half-wall, currently being used to house two different coffeemakers and all their accessories. It is an impressive array of stainless steel and shiny black Euro-appliance-tech. Max stares some more.
Rhymes comes up, pug no longer in hand, and leans a hip against the half-wall, reaching out to stroke one of the coffeemakers in a satisfied, proprietary kind of way. "Mine. That other one's Jeff's." Jeff Larish is Rhymes' roommate, another minor league type up in Detroit on a temporary basis. "I know it's kinda ridiculous... it's just, I like coffee one way and he likes it his way. We couldn't find a machine that could make it both ways, so, uh, we hafta have the two. I guess it gets kinda noisy when we have both of 'em going in the mornings, but aside from that it's not as crazy as it looks. Um. Honest."
"Some serious coffee consumption happening in this household," Max says, shaking his head. He's grinning as he does, though. "No wonder you're so jumpy at the park."
Rhymes smiles sheepishly. "Well, it's not just the coffee." He keeps one hand on the coffee machine, runs the other backwards through his hair, pushing the longish curls out of his face. He looks suddenly shy, and awfully young, even though he is actually a little older than Max. It must be the height (more precisely, the lack of it).
"Jeff's not home, right?" Max asks. Rhymes mutely shakes his head. Max steps towards him, watching closely. If Rhymes backs away, he'll call it off right now. He is not in the business of pressuring other people, or freaking out teammates. But if Rhymes seems to be handling things tolerably well, Max is not going to treat him with unnecessary kid gloves. Not when he's pretty damn sure that he read all the signals correctly.
---
There was a wet squelch, like a soaked cloth was being twisted up, followed by a sharp smack. A moment later the sensation of the rat-tailed towel hitting his ass registered. Max came up on his toes and managed to not squeak only by the grace of God and Ty Cobb. "Good game," Rhymes said, grinning. The towel hung limp from his hand, its end dripping onto the short-pile clubhouse carpet.
"What do you want, you unbelievable asshole?"
Rhymes' grin only widened in response. Max sighed and made a big show of rubbing his butt, waggling his fingers around, pretending to check for welts. He'd just emerged from his post-game shower and was still bare-assed naked, which apparently meant he presented an appealing target. Rhymes twirled the towel once with a tidy, compact snap of his wrist. He was wearing jeans already, although he hadn't bothered to put on a shirt, or socks. His bare ankles peeked out from the bottom hems of his pantlegs, thin and bony. "You're a menace," Max said.
It had been a good game. Max started and went seven innings, easy, so effortless that his shoulder barely registered the use. There were a few hits, a couple of walks, but no runs, and no heavily accumulated baserunners either; the bases were never loaded, he was never pitching in an unduly stressful environment. He'd amassed 98 pitches by the end of the 7th and Leyland had pulled him, not because he was struggling and needed it, but because Leyland had told the papers that he didn't want to overstretch Max's still-young, fairly valuable right arm.
Cabrera hit a massive, towering three-run homer in the 8th that absolutely destroyed the spirits of the Twins. Max could actually see their shoulders slumping in their dugout as the ball flew out, defeat almost palpably radiating from across the field even though there was technically still time for Minnesota to make up the difference. Two quick, painless trips to the bullpen finished out the game. A good solid win for the team and a gratifying W in the stat books for Max.
Not that statistical Wins meant much. He used to think they did, but he had done a lot of research into baseball statistics over the years, and by now he knew better. Wins were too dependent on factors outside of a pitcher's control-- you could pitch perfectly and not get one if you had no run support or shitty defense behind you, or you could pitch like absolutely horseshit and still get that W if your team scored a ton of runs while you were in the game.
Still. Still. He had pitched well today and he had gotten the W and it was a good game for everyone, except for the Twins, and fuck the Twins. He could enjoy that. He was enjoying it right now, here in the locker room, with little Will Rhymes and his stupid shit-eating grin and the damn deadly towel he was twisting around in his hands, almost like a nervous tic.
"Get outta here with that thing," Max said, reaching out an arm to swipe lazily at Rhymes.
With another startlingly quick snap of his wrist, Rhymes flicked the towel at Max again, striking him low across the stomach this time. It stung, goddammit. Max lunged, catching Rhymes by surprise. He wrapped the towel around one fist, pinning Rhymes to the opposite wall with his other arm. "You should watch where you're waving that thing, Mighty Mouse."
Rhymes blushed. The pink started at his ears and spread across the tops of his cheekbones, then suffused the rest of his face. Max stared, fascinated. There was something appealing in this, Rhymes with his bare back against the wall, chin tipped high to keep Max's face in sight, pinking up all over his face and, as Max watched, down his neck, all the way to his collarbones. He looked vulnerably defiant, a tease overwhelmed, a whole host of things Max had learned to not expect from other ballplayers. For a moment the urge to kiss him was nearly overwhelming, and Max almost forgot where he was.
Almost. He swallowed hard, aware of his nakedness in a way he normally wasn't in the clubhouse. His dick was right out there, man! In the open! Usually it wasn't a big deal; dick, air, so what? Him and everyone else. But suddenly he had to be careful, because some invisible line had been crossed, and it wasn't just his dick anymore: it was about to be a hard dick, and that was most assuredly not ok in a professional clubhouse. He stepped back from Rhymes deliberately, giving him a chance to brush it off. But Rhymes just stared at him with eyes gone huge, flush firmly in place. His hands, bereft of the towel, trembled slightly at his sides.
Max unwrapped the towel from his fist and dropped it into the bottom of his locker. He turned slowly, reaching for his clothing, struggling to keep his own hands from shaking. This was new. This was not what he was expecting. This was bad, except it had the potential to be very, very, very good.
"We should hang out," he said, a little surprised to hear the steadiness of his voice. "We should... right now, we should definitely hang out."
"I... yeah." Max glanced back in time to see Rhymes press both palms briefly backwards against the wall, then push himself off of it. "Yeah. Let's... we can go to my place, it's closer."
"Great." Max stared into his locker and stepped into his boxers carefully, trying to not seem like he was rushing, not turning around to see if Rhymes was looking at his ass. They were just horsing around, normal teammates annoying each other, anyone looking at them would have thought just that. He was cool, he was calm. He was under control. Mostly.
---
Rhymes watches him now with those same big eyes. They're something new, something Max has never seen from Rhymes on the field. They contribute to the visual lie of youth Rhymes has going on, but they also make him look like he's desperately trying to acquire information, like if he opens his eyes wide enough, he'll actually be able to understand more of what is right in front of him. Max wonders if this is what Rhymes looks like when he's bending over a microscope.
Max wants to say something cliché, along the lines of tell me to stop and I will, but he doesn't. He just keeps moving until he's in Rhymes' space, then goes closer, as close as they were in the clubhouse. Rhymes tips his head back again to look up at Max. His hand comes off the coffeemaker and curls tentatively around Max's hip. Once it's there he seems to gain confidence as his fingers quickly firm up their grip, and his other hand skates under the hem of Max's t-shirt at once, pushing across Max's lower back.
"What do you wanna do?" Max asks, voice low like he's trying to keep someone from overhearing, even though there's nobody else in the apartment, aside from the dog. Rhymes trembles once, then stills, both hands on Max.
"Anything," he says. "Anything. Just, can we, can we not fucking stand here talking about it--"
Max laughs out loud. His arms come up around Rhymes like it's the most natural thing in the world. He bends down to nuzzle the top of Rhymes' head. "Yeah. Yeah. Bedroom."
Rhymes shivers pleasantly against him. Max grins into his hair. Smart guy, he thinks, only a little bit smug. He read the signals right after all. Pitch-perfect.
---
The first thing he did after he got drafted was call home to his parents, who both cried. The second person he called was Scott Boras, his agent, who gave him some numbers to think about. They seemed like irresponsibly huge numbers to Max, so he was trying to not think about them.
The third person he called was Gary.
"Arizona," Gary said, as soon as he picked up. "Cool."
"I know. I know! Shit, man, can you believe it?"
"I kinda can, actually. The numbers you've been puttin' up, damn boy. Least they could do." He could practically hear Gary's smile over the phone. "Hey, you comin' over? I think you got a congratulatory fuck headin' your way."
"Yeah," Max said. He was already jamming his feet into his shoes, halfway out the door. "Hell yeah."
He ended up sitting on the couch in Gary's apartment, pants down around his ankles, a towel under his ass as a concession to Gary's two roommates. The muscles of Gary's thighs stood out in sharp relief as he worked himself up and down in Max's lap, knees on either side of Max's legs. His arms were braced on the back couch cushions. Every so often he would turn his face to the side, close his mouth around Max's ear, huffing hot breath straight down.
Max rolled his hips when he could, whenever it seemed like he wouldn't interrupt Gary's rhythm with his own contributions. Mostly he held still, letting Gary do all the work. It was impossible to shake the idea that he was being serviced, like a birthday boy at a strip joint. He felt like he should be seeking out the parts of Gary's body that were collecting the most sweat, sticking dollar bills to them.
He came with Gary's tongue in his ear and his short pitcher's fingernails digging into Gary's back, hard enough to leave reddened lines. He gave himself exactly one minute to relax, counting seconds backwards in his head, then pushed Gary over onto the couch and jerked him off slowly, watching his face. It wasn't as if he was leaving the next day, but there was already a sense of finality about everything. He had crossed over the line from college to the pros, and Gary was firmly on the college side of things, not destined for the draft this year. Maybe not ever.
Gary gasped, head crashing back into the couch. Max tightened his grip, breathing hard on the head of Gary's dick, adding as much warmth as he could without actually using his mouth. It was like a test, to see if he could coax a sufficiently big orgasm out of Gary with just his hand, although Gary liked getting fucked and was still turned-on from that, so it was sort of cheating. Max was not above that kind of cheating, though.
There was a stuttering stop in Gary's breath; Max squeezed around the sudden pulse, watching Gary's come leak out and drip down over his fingers. He contemplated the resulting mess briefly, considered getting up for a tissue before rejecting that idea and simply licking his fingers clean. He didn't often do that; he had managed to become a fan of sucking dick without becoming a fan of the way semen tasted. Still, there wasn't that much of it, and it was worth it to see the way Gary watched with his eyes hooded, tongue half out of his mouth like he had been about to lick his lips and forgot on the way.
"So what're you gonna do?" Gary asked, after. He was stroking a hand slowly up and down Max's side. "In the Majors."
"I dunno. Stop, I guess." Max could have pretended to not know what Gary was talking about, but there was no point. "Fuck some girls, you know, throw up a smokescreen." He hadn't set out to renounce them or anything, but he hadn't slept with a woman since he'd started up with Gary; he could get it up for a girl just fine, and sex with girls was fine, but sex with a guy-- or at least this one particular guy-- was more than enough for him at the moment.
It wasn't like they were dating. Gary hooked up with girls, very enthusiastically, sometimes loudly and publicly and probably over-compensatorily at parties. He might have hooked up with other guys too, but not where Max (or anyone else on the team) had seen him. Max just wasn't much into multiple people at once-- it strained his organizational abilities. Too many people to juggle on the weekends, too many phone numbers to keep straight. It was easier to hook up with only one person, that was all.
"You better look into that," Gary said. He reached up and traced a forefinger down the long line of Max's nose. "Pretty boy like you, they'll eat you up alive and spit you out stone dead."
Max shook his head, careful to not dislodge Gary's finger from the tip of his nose. "I'm gonna be playing Major League Baseball. Who cares about that stuff?"
"People care," Gary said. His voice was heavy with emotion, although Max wasn't sure if it was sadness or pity or envy or resigned anger or something else. It could have just been post-orgasmic slowness weighing down Gary's vocal cords. Any of those reactions would have been appropriate; he had no way to know.
---
"Look at me," Rhymes says. Max ignores him, keeping his eyes closed. He wants to concentrate on the taste, the feeling of pressure on his tongue and the stretch in his jaw, and closing his eyes, limiting his available senses, will help. He has Rhymes' dick in his mouth, and he is-- not that he would ever tell Rhymes this-- absolutely, positively determined to do some savoring here. It's been a while.
A hand lands on his head, scruffing up his hair, not that he has much to scruff. "C'mon," Rhymes says. "Open up. I wanna see your eyes." He shifts his hips, restless, clearly trying to keep himself from outright thrusting. "Max... look at me. Max. Please."
That's pretty close to begging, and, well, he did say 'please'. Max opens his eyes and turns them up, searching for Rhymes' face over the lightly curved planes of his abdomen and chest.
"Christ," Rhymes breathes. Max lifts his eyebrows, knowing it makes his eyes bigger. Rhymes struggles momentarily to get an elbow under his upper body, lifting it off the bed. He rubs his hand backwards over Max's head, cupping it around the base of his skull. "Jesus fucking Christ, look at you."
"Kinda hard for me to look at myself," Max says, but it comes out more like Inna ar or ee oo oog ah ahell, because, well, he has a dick in his mouth.
Rhymes inhales sharply at the sensation of Max trying to form sentences around him, eyes screwing shut for a moment before snapping back open with what Max thinks must be a conscious effort.
"That's. Max. That's really... wow." Rhymes takes a deep, steadying breath. "Complete heterochromia. Really... really fucking. God. Is it... is it congenital, or, or..." He gasps, the fingers on the back of Max's head clenching. Max rolls his tongue, letting it muscle around the curvature of Rhymes' dick, keeping his eyes locked on Rhymes' face. "Or is it, ah, mo... mosaicism?" He forces out the last word all on one quick breath, like he knows that if he lingers over it, he's never going to get all the syllables to hang together.
Max pulls off wetly, keeping his lips pursed so that a strand of saliva clings briefly, a thin gossamer lifeline from his mouth to Rhymes. "Dunno," he says. "I never got it tested or anything. I was born with it, though." He licks his lips, watching Rhymes stare. "Why, you think it's hot?"
"I... yeah. Shit." Rhymes takes another deep breath, laughs a little. "Shit! Yeah. It is." Without Max's mouth on him, he seems a little more in control of himself, although his face is still red and his hair is starting to go limp, sweat apparently forming under the considerable mass of it on his scalp. The elbow he has braced on the bed quivers slightly. "What, uh. Man. What color were your parents' eyes?"
"Blue. Both."
"Uh. Mmm, that makes me think it's mosaicism, or. Like, a spontaneous first-gen mutation, not regular inheritance." This sounds far too coherent for Max's liking, so he gets a nice grip on the base of Rhymes' dick with his right hand and rubs lightly, just letting his pitcher's calluses make themselves known. Rhymes groans and squeezes his eyes shut hard before popping them open again in that pained, overly conscious way. "B-but I guess there's no... no way to really know without, uh, shit, without g-genetic testing."
Max inches up the bed so that he can lean his head on Rhymes' hip. "Dude. Are you turned on by my sexy biology?"
"You're a pretty, uh. Fascinating specimen," Rhymes says.
"You usually fuck your specimens?"
"I'm not fucking you."
"That can be arranged," Max says. He glances up again to gauge Rhymes' reaction, which appears to be somewhere between completely out of his depth and speechlessly turned-on. "Or I can keep doin' what I was doin'."
"Maybe." Rhymes looks down, turning even redder, if that is possible. "Maybe you'd better, um, stick with this. For now."
"Fine by me," Max says. More than fine by him, really. He bends down and opens his mouth, curling his lips a little to blunt the edges of his teeth as Rhymes' dick slides back in.
"Beautiful specimen," Rhymes says. Max can feel a blush of his own spreading in a low heat across his face. He's a ballplayer: he's not used to anyone calling him beautiful. But Rhymes is not saying it mockingly. If anything, he's saying it reverentially.
This is what you get for doing a biology major, he thinks. His lips hurt a little as they twitch in an involuntary attempt to smile. He inhales carefully through his nose, relaxes his throat as best he can, lets his head sink slowly down, relishing the small noises Rhymes is making--
"Robbles."
Max pauses, still eying Rhymes. Rhymes' mouth is hanging open a little, slack with whatever sensations Max is calling up.
"Robbles!"
"Excuse me?" Max says, pulling off.
Rhymes closes his mouth slowly, gaze drifting from Max's eyes to his mouth and back again. "I... what?"
"Robbles!" This time Max can tell the noise is not coming from Rhymes. In fact, it almost sounds like it's coming from the floor next to the bed. He frowns, ignores the jolt of arousal that kicks him in the gut when Rhymes's eyes laser in on his lips again, and bends sideways to look.
The pug stares up at him, eyes popping. "Robbles!" it says, voice raspy, tail wagging vigorously.
Max pulls himself back into Rhymes' lap. "Why is your dog saying 'robbles'?"
Rhymes curves one hand around the back of Max's head again. "Ah, jeez, that's just how he barks. Ignore him."
"I dunno if I can suck you off while your dog is standing there watching us and offering commentary," Max says, eying Rhymes' dick dubiously. The head is reddened and shiny with spit, and he wants it. He wants it really, really badly, but now that he knows the dog is there he can hear it breathing, which is just weird.
"Ugh. Scram!" Rhymes shouts.
"Robbles robblesrobbles!"
"Oh my god. Get out of here! Go! Out!"
There's a disappointed snuffling sound, then a slow and reluctant patter of receding paws. Max scrambles up and hastily closes the bedroom door. When he turns back around, Rhymes is holding his own dick, legs sprawled, shoulders still propped up off the bed on one elbow. It's a gay porn pose, but it's Will Rhymes in the pose, with his ridiculous curls and his half-heartedly groomed body hair, the bruises on his sides from stray baseballs, the feet that, outside of cleats, look too awkwardly big for his frame, his goofy grin.
He looks perfect. Max wants to say so, but he figures that might be weird. Instead he turns on a grin of his own in Rhymes' direction, probably just as goofy, and climbs back onto the bed.
---
"You know what's funny?" he asks. He pokes Rhymes in the shoulder, to make sure that he's listening.
"Ow. What?" Rhymes rubs at his arm and glares at Max. They're sitting next to each other on the bench, watching Austin Jackson foul off every single pitch. He's up to ten now. Jackson leads off and Rhymes is batting eighth; he doesn't even have his batting helmet in his hands yet.
"I'm on the Tigers," Max says.
"Um. No shit?"
"That was my college team too. The University of Missouri Tigers."
"Ha ha?" Rhymes says, cautiously. "Um, congratulations on making it back into the territory of large striped felid carnivores?"
Max spreads his hands. "I just mean, isn't that something? I was on the Tigers, and now I'm on the Tigers. I'm a Tiger."
Rhymes rolls his eyes. "Well, if you go by that, I think I was supposed to end up in Cleveland. My high school team was the Redskins, and my college team was the Tribe."
"Could've been Atlanta," Max says. He stretches out his arms, lets one fall along the back lip of the bench. With his hand dangling down, he can just barely brush the top of Rhymes' shoulder. Jackson fouls off another pitch.
Rhymes leans back a little, putting more of his shoulder in reach of Max's fingertips. "Yet here I am."
"It's that crazy biology-oriented brain," Max says. "You couldn't resist the opportunity to study the wild tiger in his natural habitat up close."
"Molecular biology, not zoology, you big doofus. There's kind of a difference." Rhymes punches Max in the chest, light enough to be clearly teasing, but hard enough for Max to still definitely feel it. His heart feels funny, like it skipped a beat, although he's not sure if that's from the punch, or for some other reason.
"Bi-ology, zoo-ology, ooo, big distinctions from such a little guy," Max says, already laughing, which is good, because Rhymes starts attacking his side, and it's more like tickling than a proper fight. "What do I know, man? All I know is baseball-ology."
This is the first team where he's been able to make fun of someone else for being The Clubhouse Brain. He snickers at his own incomparable wit and shoves at Rhymes, who shoves him back, upsetting someone's water bottle. Magglio Ordonez hops out of the way, swearing loudly at them. At least, Max assumes he's swearing at them; whatever Ordonez is saying, it's in Spanish.
"No, you're right. This is field research," Rhymes says. "I need to observe you so we can figure out how something so deranged managed to survive to adulthood. For science!" Max pins him to the bench with one hand and tickles his side with the other. He spares a brief thought for the network cameras, although he's not sure if he hopes they're filming this, or if he really hopes they aren't. Rhymes wheezes with laughter. "Jesus, someone call in a tranq dart, I'm being attacked by a wild evolutionary dead-end here!"
"Idiotas," Magglio mutters.
That much Max can translate. He grins down at Rhymes, at the hectic explosion of his hair and the light blush of exertion on his cheeks, the navy blue athletic tape making tight cuffs on both his wrists. Idiots, sure. They're baseball players. They'll be the smartest idiots on the team, and that, Max thinks, is a final destination good enough for the both of them.