lover now that you've left me i'm glad you're unlovely
alternate take of the story to become 'poor killer boy.' stopped messing around with it and just rolled with the threesome, eventually.
*
There was absolutely no fucking call for this. Sitting on top of his mail on the floor of his garage, bombed out of his mind, Zito pushed the invitation around the cement, hating it so much he was surprised it wasn’t breathing, and didn’t have blue eyes.
He’d fallen. For whatever drunken reason, he’d thought his headlights were on after he got out of the car and he’d stumbled around to the front and his feet had shot out from underneath him, the spill of mail like walking on ice.
Mulder had come back in January and threw a quiet, contained fit in Zito’s living room and declared, “I’m gone.”
He’d come back to tell Zito that, as if Zito didn’t know that, as if it wasn’t written sky-high on every fucking day.
*
Poor Killer Boy
standing up falling down
Drunk out of his goddamn mind, Zito slipped on the mail. Magazine and postcards on the cement floor of the garage like walking on ice, and he ended up on his back, the beams of the ceiling swaying above him.
Fuck. He could be dead right now.
Zito kicked at the garage door, awkward and angry, and clawed the mail out from underneath him, this fucking night that would not end and it was coming on dawn. His finger hooked along the corner of something and slit open so easy it didn’t even hurt. Blood smeared on the gray cement and the fine cream color of the envelope, his address stamped out in fancy gold calligraphy, and Zito rubbed his paper-cut finger all over it, until his name was gone and the Scottsdale return address was gone and he was lightheaded.
This fucking night.
Knew this was fucking coming, too, because god forbid Mulder break anything cleanly, and it didn’t do any good, little cocksucker just calling out to him from the heart of the desert, and this stupid electric burn in Zito’s chest. Too drunk for this.
Zito bit the corner of the envelope and tore it open, stuck his finger in his mouth. He tried to sit up, but that was a terrible idea and he melted back onto the floor again. The poisonous smells of car exhaust and oil and laundry detergent filled him up, seeped through his clothes and skin. He felt, god, tainted. Ruined.
The invitation didn’t make much sense, the letters blurred and in motion, but Zito’s head was enough together to see that Mulder had invited him plus one, and that hit Zito as solid as a baseball on bone. He wanted to drive all night to Scottsdale and rip Mulder’s balls off. Plus one. Motherfucker.
*
stay in touch
He awoke hyperventilating, his dream fleeing from him in scraps of green and gold. Slick cold feeling just under his skin, still a little drunk, sick as hell, Zito fell to the ground and staggered to the bathroom. He threw up twice and brushed his teeth until his gums bled, took five aspirin and poured a half-inch of frozen vodka into his orange juice.
The invitation to Mulder’s wedding-Mr. Barry Zito plus-fucking-one-was on the kitchen table. The envelope had teeth marks in it, a dirty sneaker print and the blood dried rust-red. The thing looked like it’d been through a war.
Zito knew he would end up burning it. Once he’d memorized every word. Once his hands stopped shaking. Once he calmed the fuck down.
When his phone rang, he jerked so hard the glass flew halfway across the room and was killed spectacularly on the linoleum, a spray of orange and glass. Fuck. Winter was murder on his nerves.
It was Hudson, and that was no good, because Hudson had spooky irritating intuition about Zito when Zito was fucking up. Even with the whole country between them and all the space separating them from when they’d been teammates and fuck fuck fuck-Zito would have to check the dates but he was pretty sure that Mulder was getting married on the anniversary of the day he was traded.
Unreal, Zito thought, itching his hand on the tabletop, the bright kitchen like baseball cards left out in the rain, the colors and faces and numbers blurring. Nothing Mulder did should surprise him anymore, but Zito had been off-guard for two fucking years now.
Hudson was eating something, which was incredibly rude and completely endearing for reasons that Zito didn’t really want to get into.
“It won’t stop raining.”
Zito lowered his head onto the table, balancing the phone carefully on his ear so that his hands were free. “No?”
“Thinking of building an ark.”
“You got my vote, pard.”
Hudson smirked audibly. “Gonna grace us with your pretty face down in Scottsdale?”
No. Hell no.
“Yeah.”
Fuck!
“Well, good. Mark wasn’t sure you would. Seeing as how you’re so fucking busy these days.”
“You know what, Timmy,” Zito started, splinter angry for a second before he cut himself off and bared his teeth, screaming silently at the waxed wood of the table. He breathed out, fog on the grain. “You talked to him?”
“RSVPed first thing. I was brought up right, ya see.”
“Hate you,” Zito mumbled. “Never liked you a bit.”
“Whatever you say, babe,” Hudson replied, distracted, and Zito thought that it was just his fucking luck to have made best friends with a guy who only called him nice things when he wasn’t thinking about it, who kept Zito so close that it was terrifying. Hudson had once lain full-out in the backseat of Zito’s car with his bare feet flat on the window, starlight drunk and laughing like he was about to die. Hudson had once said that Zito his favorite person, in the blare of tow-truck headlights, in the hard roadside night. It had sounded good at the time, but now Zito knew that it was only one more hook in his heart.
“He said something about me?” Zito asked, weaving his fingers together under the table.
“He said you better fuckin’ well come. Sick of your shit, ducking us all the fucking time.”
Squeezing his eyes shut, Zito kept perfectly still to keep the phone from sliding off the side of his head. The papercut on his finger throbbed, pressed against the tendons in the back of his hand, and there must be a fucking window open somewhere because he was still cold.
And anyway, what the fuck did Mulder and Hudson want from him, because they were over now, over for fucking years, and this was scratching at scars. This was in no way healthy.
“You can tell him I’m coming, okay?” Spineless motherfucking coward.
“You can tell him your own damn self, fuck do you think I am, your fucking secretary?”
Zito caught the phone to his ear with one hand as he turned his face into the lip of the table and bit down hard on the wood, feeling the slight give and the plasticky smoothness. He pictured skin, muscle just as strong, and banished it. Tim Hudson with his clear rough voice and his easy affection and goddamn but Zito was over this now.
He forced in a breath and, for christ’s sake, calm down.
“Fine,” Zito said carefully. “I’ll tell him.”
“Goddamn right you will.” Hudson’s chin scraped across the phone, and Zito could see him like a vision, leaning against a kitchen counter with the phone between his shoulder and ear, flipping through a magazine, the dark oceanic daylight drenching the blue-gray tiles until Hudson might as well have been miles underwater. “God knows we wouldn’t know what to do without you.”
That was such a fucking lie that it should burn, Hudson should have spit it out with his teeth broken and bloody, his heart crushed under the weight of it.
“Right,” Zito managed, rolling his forehead on the table. “We’re getting the band back together.”
Hudson laughed, told Zito he loved him exactly like he said it to his kids, and see you soon.
Zito listened to the dead connection for a long time, thinking about five years of his short life and Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder and all the bad stuff, come right the fuck back to take his legs out from under him, and fuck, love you too, man, always have.
*
trade in these wings on some wheels
The highway between Hollywood and Phoenix was faceless and burnt-out like a doubleheader in mid-September, and Zito hated traveling east. He hated everything about this, the side of his hand badly bruised from punching the steering wheel.
Dressed up nice in a collared silk shirt and thin belt, his sneakers on the floor of the passenger side and the grit crunching under his bare feet, there wasn’t anything to look at in the fucking desert, gray-brown land pounding, the sky ashen-white. Mulder sucked the color out of Zito’s life-true.
Mulder did worse than that and Hudson was his little fucking partner in crime and Zito hated them an awful lot, but. That wasn’t right. That was easier to believe on the highway at ninety-seven miles an hour and holding, strung-out with the sun positioned perfectly behind him to turn the rearview mirror into a slash of light. Zito didn’t like where his head was right now, vicious schemes and the last quarter of his life on slow-motion repeat, but he didn’t hate Mulder and Hudson.
That was the problem.
His phone buzzed on the clash of CDs covering the shotgun seat. Zito eyed it suspiciously, seeing Eric Chavez’s name lit up in green, and he let it go, not wanting to talk to any of his so-called friends about any of the recent and not-so-recent upheavals in his life. It buzzed through to voicemail, a forty-seven second reprieve, and then started buzzing again, agitated and demanding his attention. The second interval of silence seemed to almost sulk in the space between, and then a short angry buzz, a text message.
Zito picked up his phone and held it at arm’s length, squinting because he hadn’t bothered to put in his contacts. Z. i could do this allday, k?
Zito sighed and called him back, a low rumble of curses vibrating in his mind.
“You need to learn to take a hint, Chavvy.”
“What? You want to talk to me. You’re dyyyying to talk to me.”
Zito rolled his eyes, the insides of his mouth feeling gritty and sore. It was one of those things, tripping over stuff that he hadn’t realized he’d miss. The big stuff he’d seen coming, like the Oakland clubhouse with its rattle and blur of noise, and waking up with Mulder sprawled all over the bed and half on top of him, and Hudson slamming down a beer and hugging him tight before he said goodnight, but this everyday stuff, too, like a canker sore that he kept forgetting he had. Rich Harden tugging on his wristwatch when he wanted Zito’s attention. Candy bars flipping through the air above the seats of the plane. Mulder biting the corner of his lip. Hudson rubbing his eyes with the back of his wrist. Eric Chavez being irritating. Zito couldn’t figure out which was worse, the big things or the little.
“Did you want something?”
“You’re coming down, right?”
A quick harsh burst of red melted over the highway, but Zito was probably bloodshot or gutshot or something else. “Why do y’all feel compelled to ask me that? I’ve known him longer than any of you. I’m one of his best friends, where the fuck else would I be?”
He bit down sharply on his lip, because, fuck, and fuck again, he was such a mess.
Chavez paused, stretching out the distance. “Yeah, I remember a lot of brotherly affection when you were toasting his injury and thanking god he was gone.”
Zito sucked in a breath between his teeth. He had said that, but he’d been drunk, first of all, and if they were all of a sudden gonna be held responsible for things that they did when they were drunk, then Chavez had more than a few one night stands and a crushed fender to answer for. And second of all, the affection that Mulder and Zito had for each other had never once been brotherly.
He’d been drunk. Mulder wouldn’t stop calling him and Zito couldn’t stand even thinking about him, the plain flat lines of Mulder’s face and his incredible arms. Mulder had taken Zito’s skin with him when he left.
“Whatever,” he said haltingly. “I’m on my way out now.”
“I can tell you’re psyched.” Chavez exhaled against the phone. “It’ll be weird. All of us in the same room again.”
Zito pulled the car over, near tears, and rested his forehead on the wheel. With the air conditioner abruptly cut off, the heat closed around him like a hand. He fumbled the buttons of his shirt open down to the waist, his back slick. They were supposed to be his friends and if they were, they should know better than to dig after this old shit again, not enough sense between them to let the dead fucking lie.
“It was bound to happen sometime,” Zito said, and slammed his eyes into the steering wheel, a blast of white starry pain, because that was what Hudson had said to him, a few hours shy of two years ago, when Zito kept saying, don’t do this, and Hudson only shook his head and looked away.
“Mark’s nervous as hell. It’s pretty funny.”
“Yeah?” Zito licked sweat off his upper lip. “What’s she like, anyway?”
He could hear Chavez shrug. “What you’d expect. Cute blonde chick who laughs at all his jokes.”
“Jesus. His jokes are never funny.
“Which I guess is why he’s not marrying you, huh?”
Zito cackled, curled up around the wheel with something metallic driving at his chest, thinking, that isn’t why.
“Hey look, I’ve got to go,” Chavez said suddenly. Zito blinked.
“And after you were such a pest, too.” He looked up and the world seemed unnatural, so still.
“Strippers, Z,” Chavez said cryptically, and hung up. Zito slumped back, banging his head on the seat. Strippers. God.
Stupid, he thought, and started driving again, worked a hangnail free with his teeth. Getting all worked up about this shit as if he weren’t the one who’d come out ahead. He wondered if Mulder would show him his World Series ring, if Mulder would wear it on his left ring finger up until the moment it was replaced. He wondered if he could steal it, slide it off Mulder’s hand while he was passed out drunk after his bachelor party with lipstick on his face and scratches on his back, smuggle it back to California and throw it in the ocean, because it wasn’t like Mulder had fucking earned it.
He could do that and Mulder would never ever forgive him, and it made Zito’s blood run fast and hot. He played it out to the end, Mulder tackling him on the beach, knuckles like rain and sand in his eyes. Mulder’s long body over him once again and for the last time, and wasn’t that what he’d been praying for? The last time?
Feeling merciless and brittle, Zito chewed up some aspirin and tried to stop looking at the gauge, two hundred miles behind him and the nothingness out here cloying like sugar water, sleeve-tugging, planishing the rough places until he was numb and smooth. He lowered the window and opened his shirt to the waist, letting sweat break out on his skin, wiped his damp eyes with his fingers. December in the desert, as it had been before and as it would be again.
This was the fucking problem with family. They always made you come back.
*
relapse
Two steps into the hotel lobby, and bam.
Hudson crashed onto Zito’s back and knocked him to his knees, a shock that strummed all the way through him, and then Hudson’s arms were around his neck, cutting off his air. Zito rolled and fought, gasping for breath. Hudson bit his shoulder, clung like a limpet and jesus, so warm, better than midday or a summer fever. Zito jammed his elbow into Hudson’s ribs and got him flat on the shiny marble floor, ducking out from under Hudson’s hold and locking his forearms down on Hudson’s chest, their legs tangled together.
Hudson grinned up at him like he’d break if he stopped. Zito’s lungs kicked and grasped; he was shaking, knees aching.
“Hello,” Hudson said casually.
“Fuck,” Zito said, and collapsed down onto Hudson’s chipped-stone body. Hudson put his arms around Zito’s back and rattled him a few times, fucking with his hair. For a moment that was almost too brief to measure, Zito was completely and unreservedly at peace.
“Your reflexes are for shit. Used to be, you’d see me coming ‘fore I ever thought of it.”
Pressing his forehead painfully into the jab of Hudson’s collarbone, Zito said again, his breath whistling, “Fuck, Huddy.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, tasting shirt cotton and plastic, the red dirt and lemonade smell of Hudson, the tug of Hudson’s hands in his hair. God help me, Zito thought, and pushed off, rolling onto his back.
Hudson sat up, still grinning. He pounded Zito on the shoulder a few times. “How’ve you been, son?”
Zito covered his face with his hands. “Fine,” he mumbled.
“Yeah? You look like hell. C’mon.” Hudson got to his feet, grabbed Zito’s wrist and hauled him up. Zito swayed on the slick floor, blood rushing to his head and sending him reeling, motherfuck he was going out of his mind, scratching at Hudson’s arm in hopes that the papercut would re-open and paint across Hudson’s skin. He’d do anything.
Hudson was talking fast, dinner and drinks with the boys, everybody’s here now, nice shirt, nice day, ain’t it something else.
Zito let Hudson lead him across the floor, their linked shadows fuzzy and breathless on the tile. Zito was astonished all over again, two years later and here they were again, running backwards.
*
never had it so good
Steam crowded out of the open door of the bathroom, rolling across the carpet. The mirror was completely clouded over, and Zito wrote with his finger the name of every team he’d ever played for, Little League, Babe Ruth, high school and college, the minor leagues and the Oakland Athletics, and the letters filled in gray until they couldn’t be read anymore.
He put on a clean pair of black pants and a belt, finger-combing his hair and throwing open the curtains to stare down at the parking lot and the highways and the glassy Phoenix twilight. Hudson had left him unsteady and short-tempered, but then, most things did these days.
Knock, once twice three times in quick rhythm, and Zito got angry, because Hudson had said they were leaving in a half an hour and it’d been maybe, maybe fifteen minutes. He didn’t need to be hassled and rushed around this weekend; he was here, wasn’t here, the fuck else did they want from him.
But when he yanked the door open, it was Mark Mulder standing there, shined up like a penny, spiked and blued and lazily angled, tipping his shoulder against the doorframe and smiling so slight and neat at Zito.
Zito blinked a few times, fuck motherfuck, what are you doing here, Mulder like a fucking kick in the face, tequila and tabasco shots first thing in the morning, ripping Zito right the fuck open.
And Mulder’s eyes scanned down and fuck, no shirt, the blush spreading down Zito’s neck to his chest, Mulder’s eyes a little bit darker when he raised them again, hooded and trustless. Zito turned jerkily and made it halfway across the room before he stopped, carefully breathed out. He curled his hands into fists, thinking, fuck you, you don’t get to look anymore, not if you’re not gonna do anything about it.
“Figured you’d meet us at dinner,” Zito said, tasting each word to make sure that it was the right one.
“Good to see you too,” Mulder said at his back. Zito flinched and refused to acknowledge it. None of this was his fault.
Scrambling for the shirt he’d laid out nice on the bed, suddenly Mulder was there, right behind him, hooking a hand in Zito’s belt and pulling him up and back. Zito bumped into Mulder’s chest and froze, couldn’t for the life of him move, or breathe, or wish.
“You came down,” Mulder murmured, hot on Zito’s ear. Zito closed his eyes, feeling where Mulder’s fingers were bent just under his belt, way down low on the small of his back. Something fast burning through him, in the open places that Mulder had left behind, salt and acid and gasoline.
“I was invited, wasn’t I?” he said, trying for flippant and falling far short, his voice hitching. He wouldn’t lean back against Mulder, couldn’t, no matter what, and Mulder gave him a little tug and fuck.
Mulder, tight and hard as stone under Zito’s back, the bone of his wrist terribly evident in the lowest notch of Zito’s spine, put his mouth on the back of Zito’s shoulder and told him, “Didn’t think you would.”
“And miss all this?” Zito waited for Mulder’s free hand to slide around onto his stomach, for Mulder to buckle the backs of Zito’s knees with his own and press him facedown on the bed, shove his fingers under Zito’s belt, the flatlands at Zito’s sides, Mulder’s favorite place, Mulder’s open mouth skidding across Zito’s throat and his hand twisted in Zito’s hair, pulling his head back. Give them five minutes and they could get it all back. Mulder would fuck him again and Zito would come the first time without being touched, come the second time when Mulder banged his forehead on his shoulder and broke Zito’s name, saying it so rough.
Zito held so still it hurt.
“Still pretty fucking clever, huh?” Mulder, christ, kissed his shoulder, his teeth brief and sharp, gone like smoke, and Mulder whispered half to himself, “Still fucking pretty.”
Zito shivered hard and felt Mulder catch a breath sharply, felt the cold silver of Mulder’s belt buckle against his back and it made him twitch, startled him awake. This had killed him once, he couldn’t go through it again, please.
“Let go of me.”
Mulder didn’t for a second and for a second Zito thought he wouldn’t, stay pressed up against Zito’s back right where Zito wanted him, broad and strong and godawful, pushing his way back inside.
Then Mulder made an irritated noise and released him, stepped back. Zito’s skin crawled from the sudden cold, and he reached for his shirt with trembling hands, dragging it on and smoothing it down and staring at the intricate weave of the bedspread, folding his hands in and out.
“The fuck are you doing, Mark?” he asked, wild blood under his skin.
“What?” Mulder answered, sounding petulant.
“I. I came down here. Because you’re getting married. Married.”
“So?”
Zito turned, looking at Mulder in disbelief, and then looking closer, seeing the raw place at the corner of Mulder’s lip, where he gnawed compulsively when nervous, and his eyes all gutted and blacked, and his arms tight across his chest, his jaw hollowed and drawn. Zito swallowed, his stomach clenching.
“Are you. You don’t look okay.”
Mulder scoffed. “Yeah? You look like you got dragged behind a bus all the way here.”
“But still pretty, right?” Zito made a smile, and Mulder looked betrayed.
“God, Barry,” Mulder started, and stopped, angling his face down and away.
And this, this right fucking here, this was what got Zito every goddamn time.
He sank onto the bed, running a hand through his damp hair. Looked up at Mulder like squinting into the sun, Mulder ashamed and tired and angry, his face screwed up. Zito shook his head.
“I don’t think you should do this, man.”
Mulder shot him a glare. “Yeah, because you’re a real impartial observer.”
“Whether I am or not, and I’m obviously not, it doesn’t matter. This, it’s supposed to be for life, okay? And you’re still after me and, fuck, Mark, who else?”
Mulder didn’t answer, and anyway, it was a stupid question that Zito couldn’t help, caught inside by this thing that wanted to scream, I am the only one you love. Even if that wasn’t and hadn’t ever been true, still, still.
Two years ago and three and five and seven, when Mulder had come around all wired after a game and pinned Zito down and grinned and used his teeth just enough. They were together all the damn time and it was only natural, the gleam on Mulder’s skin, the pale soft spot where his hip ran into his stomach. Zito was just a half-hidden queer and Mulder didn’t mind because Zito knew what to do with him, how to bend and break for him and how deep he could let Mulder go. Fucking around because it was a way to keep moving, Zito dreamt of sharks, woke to Mulder slung across the dawn light, seeping in so fucking slow. Nobody had misspent their youth better than the two of them.
Now Zito was a patchwork homeless free agent and Mulder was getting married, and it killed him to know that they’d never gotten over each other. When Mulder and Hudson had been traded, it’d ripped bolts out of Zito, the places where they’d been attached, and left behind the craven kind of wounds that never fucking healed.
It was hard not to think that fucking around with Mulder had kinda fucked him up.
“I don’t need to hear this from you,” Mulder said, but he sounded sad.
“Why’d you invite me, then?” Zito asked without thinking. Mulder might have winced, it was difficult to tell. “I mean. What the fuck made you think I’d want to see this?”
Mulder shook his head, sidling thin bitten glances at Zito, the corner of his lip pulled in. “Maybe I missed you.”
“Of course you fucking missed me. It was still a shitty thing to do.” Zito rubbed his eyes, biting down on the insides of his mouth. “I didn’t want to come, the guys guilted me into it. So now I gotta dress up all fancy and fucking smile.”
“It’s the dressing up that really bothers you, isn’t it?”
“Fuck you. You knew this would happen.”
“Knew what would happen?” Mulder sneered, red and white, flat blue eyes in slits.
Good, fine, get angry, and Zito tightened his mouth down to almost nothing. “You knew I’d come down here and that this would fuck me up, even though, jesus, man, all you ever had to do to fuck me up was fucking breathe. And you knowthat.”
Mulder was quiet, closed-up with his hands in fists under his arms, pissed off. Zito bared his teeth for a moment, hating the way that Mulder always made him say more than he’d meant to.
“This is just completely uncalled for,” he said, trying to hold on to his anger even as it flickered and guttered, drained away. Mulder was looking at him with his expression unreadable, his body taut, and Zito was trying not to remember what that felt like, tasted like.
There was a knock at the door, ten seconds of silence too much to ask for, and Zito stood, brushed past Mulder to open it. Hudson was leaning against the opposite wall, hands in his pockets.
“Could hear y’all fighting halfway down the hall,” he said quietly.
Showing too much, despising himself, Zito ducked his head, a flush hot on his neck. “We were just talking.”
Hudson came in and took in Mulder, standing with his arms crossed, and Zito, scratching nervously at the back of his neck. The three of them in the same place again and Zito had forgotten how they filled a room up with electricity, crackle-pop and a sheen on the air. He could taste something bitter and coppery, adrenaline stirring up dim little twitches in his hands and face.
“Hey, Mark.”
Mulder sighed. “Hey, Tim.”
“Good to have our boy back, huh?”
Zito balled his fists and leaned back against the door, scowling. “Would you mind not talking about me like I’m not in the fucking room?”
Hudson’s eyes flashed at him slate-colored, a strange knowing cast on his face, and Zito pressed his back hard to the wood. Mulder and Hudson kept him in such a short orbit, locked in on the two of them, and god, god, what he wouldn’t give.
“Well, this’s been fun,” Hudson said slow. “But we got a reservation, so how ‘bout you put on some shoes.”
Mulder knuckled the inside of his elbow and looked at Zito like, we’re nowhere near done, as if Zito didn’t know that, as if everything he’d ever wanted wasn’t right here in the room with him and fuck if he’d ever get to touch it.
*
here’s to your good looks, baby, now here’s to my health
Dinner was an unmitigated and well-choreographed disaster, as had been expected.
Crosby and Harden were already drunk when they got to the restaurant, and Hudson pulled the manager aside and laid on his best southern charm to get them a private room, as Crosby and Harden giggled and bit at each other, held up like posts. Jealous, Zito slid his hand up under Crosby’s coat, hoping for the thick curve and cool of a flask. Mulder loomed over Hudson’s shoulder, a sentinel, looking like he wanted to tear off Zito’s hand and tear out Crosby’s heart.
There was nothing there, anyway.
Chavez came late, a thin black tie hanging loose around his neck and a ballcap stuffed in his back pocket. He hugged Zito’s head before sitting down, Zito’s face smashed against his perfume-smelling shirt, Chavez’s fingers flat and hard over his ears so that he could only hear a blur.
Just the boys tonight, the ballers, the remains. Fucking awful idea, and Zito drank fast to catch up, let Mulder hook his ankle around Zito’s own under the table. Harden and Crosby were all over each other, young and loose and gleeful, Harden’s face bright red, Crosby’s hair longer than Zito had ever seen it, starting to curl. Hudson rested his glass against his mouth, tapped his teeth, fingers wet-slipping.
Zito didn’t talk much, and neither did Mulder. Every time he looked over, Hudson was watching, not trusting either of them. He was cool and handsome as ever, painfully so, and Zito twisted his foot against Mulder’s, slicking his throat.
The thing with all of this, the problem. Not fair to cancel it out by saying that Zito was in love with both of them, because it wasn’t about that. Loyalty was more important, and so was history, and so was baseball. Zito was forever counting up the things that meant more to him that Mulder and Hudson, telling lies and breaking hearts, and somehow he was twenty-eight years old and a free agent and totally fucking lost.
They were a fucking infection. Zito woke up in the morning having forgotten that there was this, this thing inside him, and spent all day relearning it, ignoring their phone calls, running scared and taking cover when the rare opportunity presented itself. It was a dumb hateful way to live. He’d gone so far down.
Zito got exceptionally drunk, baselessly proud of himself. He found that he was able to meet Mulder’s eyes again, smile, make stupid faces at Hudson at the end of the table. Mulder slouched back in his chair, watching Zito all blurred and uncertain, eyes half-shut.
Chavez started the toasts, over the wreck of plates and wine bottles and the silverware tossing white reflections of light back and forth. He said, “To Mark who’s a son of a bitch,” and then started laughing. Crosby shouted, “To Mark who still owes me the fucking security deposit,” and Harden covered up his face with his arm, his shoulders shaking.
Hudson grinned like a razor. “To Mark who’s getting in way the fuck over his head.” They cheered and slammed their glasses together and Crosby’s shattered in his hand. That only made Harden and Chavez laugh harder, Crosby licking skinny trails of blood, diluted in stoli, off his wrist and knuckles. Zito was beaming, his face aching.
He stood. The room waltzed and dived, and Zito steadied himself on Chavez’s shoulder, forks and spoons cartwheeling to the carpet, an overturned wine bottle dripping deep red over the edge of the table.
“To Mark,” he said, his mouth feeling unwieldy. “Who’s gonna be a terrible husband.”
Harden hooted and banged his spoon on his glass until it broke too, and now the whole place was dangerous, glinting sharded invisible pieces of glass all over the table, Crosby smearing blood onto Harden’s face.
Mulder was looking up at Zito, confused and worried. Zito smiled messily at him, his teeth clenched tight. He was close to tears.
“To Mark who’s champion of the fucking world,” Zito said, swaying. “Who doesn’t deserve it. To Mark and his motherfucking fiancée and their motherfucking future and I hope you’ll never know a day of sorrow, you cocksucking piece of shit.”
He had time to see Mulder’s face fall open with shock and pain and a scar-bright vein of hatred, but then the world grayed out and Hudson caught him around the waist. Zito hung his head, lost control of his body, slumping into Hudson’s arms.
“Hey, hey,” Hudson said softly in his ear. “Hold on, son, you’re fucked up.”
As if that was new.
Hudson got him as far as the small corridor where the bathrooms were before Zito pitched forward, his weight tipping too far, and he landed hard on his shoulder, his head bouncing off the floor, flaring colors and lights behind his eyes. He curled up, moaning, fuck, did he really say that? Mulder would never ever forgive him, oh god, how could he have done that?
Hudson stroked his hair back, his hand rough. “Little emotional tonight, huh?”
“Tim,” Zito almost whimpered, turning his face into Hudson’s bent knee, his wet eyes hidden. “Fuck, I didn’t mean it. You gotta tell him I didn’t mean it.”
Hudson snorted. “Not gonna lie to him for you.”
Zito trembled, clutched at Hudson’s leg, fingers clawing and searching on the smooth fabric. “But he’s gonna hate me.”
“That wasn’t what you were going for? Here, sit up, for christ’s sake.” Hudson pushed and pulled on Zito’s shoulders and hauled him up. Hudson was sitting Indian-style and Zito crooked his legs over Hudson’s own, wrapping an arm halfway around Hudson’s waist to stay anchored. Hudson pushed his hand through Zito’s hair again. “You’re drunk. You’re really, like, drunk as fuck, baby. So just calm down.”
Choking off a desolate laugh, Zito wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, crying like a fucking faggot, poor killer boy so fucked up. Hudson hooked his hand around the nape of Zito’s neck, latching on there and keeping him quiet. Keeping him still with the restaurant sounds, clink and laugh and chatter, dim around them, a cigarette burn in the wallpaper right at eye-level. Zito tried as hard as hell to find the reins, feeling Hudson’s spine move under his fisted hand.
“Now,” Hudson said, his voice low and peaceful. “You want me to get him so you can apologize and maybe salvage something from this fucking mess?”
Zito shook his head automatically, his stomach rolling over sickly. Couldn’t face Mulder. Couldn’t defend himself if Mulder wanted to do something drastic to him. He bit his tongue hard, trying to bring back the long warm hungover mornings he’d spent in Mulder’s bed with the rich scent of coffee and Mulder’s hand rapping softly on his head, the sheets wrecked around their legs. It was gone, he’d fucked it up.
“You want to pretend you can’t remember in the morning? He might buy that. He’ll still hate you, but at least he won’t bring it up again.”
Still hate you. Zito twisted his neck under Hudson’s hand, coughed, “No.”
Hudson sighed, his thumb moving in a slow arch just under Zito’s hairline. “What do you want to do, then?”
Zito buckled, folded into Hudson, his face buried in Hudson’s shoulder. “I want to go home,” he said raggedly, broken. “You got to get me out of here, Timmy, please.”
Hudson’s hand stilled and for a moment Zito was sure he’d say no, leave him here to die in this fucking hallway with its dead cigarette smell. But Hudson only placed his mouth on Zito’s temple and said, “Yeah, okay,” and asked if he could walk, held him up when Zito admitted that he couldn’t.
*
said it’s a crash i’d call it a fall
Zito was hysterical in the back of the cab, punching the side of his head and staring at the melt of the night outside the windows, streaks of yellow light and police sirens. Hudson kept saying calm down and pinned Zito’s fists to the seat, Hudson’s small hard hands clenched around his wrists in a batter’s grip. Zito wanted to leave immediately, drive back to Hollywood with Hudson asleep in the shotgun seat, but Hudson said no way.
Something about Hudson’s flash-silver eyes in the dark, the cut of Hudson’s mouth drawling at him, the wipe of streetlight across his face taking years off him. Zito wanted Hudson to explain what the fuck was wrong with him, lay it out plain and even, trace Zito’s spidery history and say, here, right here. You lost your mind right here. This cold summer day.
Hudson got Zito up to the room, Zito tossed like a coat over his shoulder, and dumped him on the bed, breathing heavily. Zito missed him immediately, digging his fingers into the bedspread, not sure how to exist without Hudson solid underneath him.
“Fuck. Getting too old for this shit,” Hudson said, cracking his back, and Zito wasn’t sure which of them he was talking about.
“I’m sorry,” he said helplessly.
“Yeah? For which part?”
That must have been a rhetorical question, Zito thought foggily, and he curled up around his knees. Eventually, he’d have to stop feeling so fucking ripped apart. He couldn’t go on like this; he was worth a hundred million dollars.
“Huddy,” he mumbled into the bed. “Stick around for a while, huh?”
Hudson sighed, but Zito peeked from under his eyelashes and saw him toeing off his shoes, stripping out of his jacket. His heart leapt, that grit-shine of Hudson after a long night, the ring of possibility that lived between them like an unnamed third.
Hudson sat down on the edge of the bed. “What is all this, man?”
Pushing a fist up against his eye, Zito shook his head minutely. “I’m just having a bad night.”
“Way I hear it, you’ve been having a bad winter. Bad couple of years.”
“Who the fuck told you that?”
“People who still return my fucking calls, Barry.”
Zito flinched, popped a knuckle on the bone of his eye socket. He’d never had a good explanation for why he dodged Hudson and Mulder, beyond to say that talking to them when they were gone was like swallowing pieces of glass.
Hudson blew out a breath. “Look. You can’t keep on like this. You and Mark, you gotta let that shit go.”
“What do you know about it,” Zito muttered, riding the drunk as far as it would take him. Hudson’s hand was close to his ankle, making Zito think crazy things, like if he rolled, if he pushed.
“Am I supposed to be fucking stupid?” Hudson asked sharply. “You tried to play so cool, all the time, so cool. Like it was only buddy fucking. But you followed him around like you’d die otherwise, and he was the same only worse, and what? I wasn’t supposed to notice?”
And that was just fucking perfect, broke a jagged window open in his chest, because christ, but Zito didn’t want to hear this from Hudson. Humiliated with his face half-covered, the skiddy slide of the bedspread on his forehead, it was like being branded. Strip him down to nothing and it was there on his skin, scar tissue and Mulder’s name and Hudson’s own, throbbing in the daylight and never when it rained, and it never rained in the places where Zito lived. Hudson could see it and maybe he could see everything, and it used to be that Zito would rather be dead than so revealed, but he was different now.
“I couldn’t help it,” he whispered. He heard Hudson sigh, and then cool fingers on the jut of his ankle.
“Whatever. No reason to tell me. I was only your best fucking friend.”
Fighting off something cold, Zito managed, “Not anymore?”
“Fuck you. You can ask that of someone who didn’t just haul your drunk ass halfway across metro Phoenix, all right?”
Zito immediately balled that up and pushed it down inside him, a small matchlight to remember when he had to give Hudson up again. Hudson held onto his ankle loosely, bled out a localized point of heat.
“I’m no good at this stuff, man,” Zito said, his voice scoured and weak.
“You’re fucking terrible at this stuff, kid.”
Feeling oddly shook loose by Hudson’s hand on him and the ring of the drunk through him, Zito pushed himself up, his eyes swollen and lit.
“It’s not just him, Tim, you know?”
Hudson looked at him quickly and then looked away. “Maybe you wanna think about calling it a day. Go back home.”
“Hey.” Zito folded his hand down over Hudson’s, feeling him twitch. Home hadn’t been a place for years now, mostly just right here. “I’m trying to tell you-”
“Don’t.”
Hudson pulled his hand out and stood up, skated his palm over his head. Zito stared up at him, throat crowded and thick, this fucking night. He would have bet his free agency that it couldn’t get any worse, but Mulder showed up then, hammering on the door and shouting at Zito through the wood.
Zito tucked his knees against his chest and clutched his ankles, wide-eyed and terrified watching Hudson cross to the door. He wanted to hiss at Hudson, don’t let him in, keep him away from me, but Hudson didn’t like being told what to do.
Mulder was a wreck, which did something strange to Zito, spurred his pulse and dropped his stomach. His shirt had come untucked and there was a dark smudge on his cheek and his face was pale, eyes blazing. He didn’t even seem to notice Hudson, zeroing in on Zito and spitting, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Teeth dug into his jeans, Zito kept his eyes down, thinking, how much time do you have?
“What the hell was that back there? Was that supposed to fucking funny?”
“Mark,” Hudson said softly, and Mulder spun, his back tense and broad, holding back the light. “Leave him alone. He was drunk. He was talking shit.”
“Jesus Christ, we’re gonna do this again? He screws up and you defend him?”
Hudson smiled hard and chill. “You said it’d be just like old times.”
“Stay out of it.” Mulder turned back to Zito, metallic snap of his eyes into Zito’s own. “You.”
Zito nodded miserably. “Would you believe me if I said I was sorry?”
“Not for a fucking second. Is this why you came down here?”
“No!” Zito caught himself and pressed his mouth to his knee again, shuddering. “You invited me. I thought I could. I thought it wouldn’t be so bad anymore.”
Mulder sneered and Hudson tipped his head back on the door, looking worn and sick. Zito was caught off-guard again and again by how stupid he was, how far off his perception was from reality. He’d thought he could be in the same room as Mulder and Hudson, get drunk in public, stand up for them like he had once upon a time, but Oakland was a lifetime away now, which still felt so disjointed, awkward piece of history shoved out of place. Zito misjudged everything. The situation was so much worse than he’d feared.
“I want you out of here,” Mulder said. “Pack up your shit, go back to Hollywood.”
“Mark,” Zito cried. “C’mon, don’t be like that.”
Mulder shook his head roughly, his neck popping. He was canting slightly, blurred at his edges. “You’re gonna fuck everything up. Already have.”
“Why don’t we all just take a fucking breath,” Hudson said, pushing off the door. “You’re both way too drunk to be having this conversation.”
getaway
Five years of his short life, spent with Mulder at one hand and Hudson at the other, and Zito didn’t have the
When they were in the same room together, it’s almost impossible for Zito to remember that he was trying to stay angry.
Fits better than his own fucking heartbeat. Like there was any fucking doubt that Mulder would be a poor excuse for a husband, unfaithful as he had always been, perversely driven to failure.
He needed help. Backup. A witness. Zito couldn’t go to Mulder’s wedding because he would have a complete and irredeemable nervous breakdown, and it wouldn’t be behind closed doors this time. Zito had a universe of friends, and they were sworn to protect him, so he just had to calm the fuck down.
Of course Crosby would be going; he’d probably give Mulder his fucking kidney as a present, too. He’d get drunk at the reception and fuck one of the bridesmaids in the bathroom and make an idiot of himself trying to give a toast. He’d end up a mess in the back of Zito’s car, his face buried in his arms, his shoulders pulled up like folded wings.
And Harden would go just for the open bar and to make bitchy remarks to Zito under his breath, flash the sign of the devil in the middle of the church. Zito considered the possibility of kidnapping Harden from the airport when he arrived and holing them both up in some Travelodge near the highway with a bunch of scotch and some hookers, but it seemed like an awful lot of work.
Zito called Chavez, the morning after the night before, curled around the edge of his kitchen table, his face on the smooth surface. Chavez might help.
Zito tried not to think that fucking Mulder had kinda fucked him up.
Who woulda thought that of the three of us, you’d be the one about to sign a hundred-million dollar deal?
Billy thought.
Billy can suck my dick.
Well, there’s an image that’s scarred me to my very soul, thanks.
What’s she like?
She’s a cute blonde who laughs at Mulder’s jokes.
Jesus. His jokes are never worth laughing at.
Well, I guess that’s why he’s not marrying you.
This was the problem with family. They always made you come home.
Endnotes: Of course Mulder didn’t get married on the anniversary of the day he was traded. That would be cruel. This was also supposed to contain a bachelor party, but, um, I don’t really know what happened.
Several section headers ripped off neatly from the man the myth the legend: the Boss.
Crazed open-mouthed smile.
He stands, and Zito’s shaking his head, thinking feverishly that he’s not
He’s leaving me again. I’m fucking losing him again.
Looking for keys in a moving car. Wait a minute, man. If we’re driving in your car, should the keys be in the ignition?
Zito’s been working on not being so dependent on others for his quality of life.
This is the truth:
The twenty-dollar bill folded as small as a pack of gum, that Zito’s dad never failed to slip into Zito’s hand when dropping him off at the airport, to get something to eat in O’Hare or Sky Harbor or wherever, even after Zito bought him a house.
Sex in a little league parking lot
He keeps waiting to wake up.
If the same measure holds up as evidence, Zito comes out way ahead, in his and Mulder’s free agency, in Hudson being on the trade block, again. Last week, Zito got compared pretty favorably to Sandy Koufax; it’s done weird things to him.
Strange to have reservations, somewhere specific and timely, as opposed to the mesh of their lives otherwise. He doesn’t know how he ever did it before cell phones and email, only a landline and answering machine supporting these everyday kinda friends of his. They meet up in small places, bookstores and street corners and convenience stores, and he thinks sometimes that if he had to go through much more effort, he probably wouldn’t consider it worthwhile.