you have to train for it when you're young
the weekend was out of hand. going to the game tonight, but i figured, before that, we should really say some more stuff about that kid, that fucking kid.
Introducing Travis Buck
By Candle Beck
When Travis Buck was seven years old, he’d closed two of his fingers in a car door. Slippery in the rain with his slicker hood over his eyes, he’d smashed the tips, and had to wear splints for almost three months. If you know to look, you can still see how those two, ring and middle, are a little deformed, gnarled and short.
He had no feeling in the fingertips, and so he couldn’t be a pitcher anymore. Not that he’d ever really wanted to be. Buck is a hitter. Born, bred, branded. The scar tissue doesn’t matter when the throw’s going two hundred feet in to the cut-off; like all real hitters, Travis Buck is a corner outfielder.
Buck gets this job in Phoenix, after Mark Kotsay has to have surgery and Milton Bradley starts talking doubtfully about his legs. Buck just wants to hit, and the game slows down for him, taking his time on pitches and breaking off first motion. In Phoenix, the little sunstroked stadium reminds him of the Babe Ruth League, the walls shrinking inwards.
He starts the season off lit, batting eighth or ninth, starting in right field. He learns to read unnamed spin on the stitches, and the angle of the bat draws him a few steps closer to the line. The coaches say he’s coming right along, and the other guys say, “Goddamn, kid.”
Buck rolls with it as much as he can, having difficulty finding room for all the happiness he’s stumbled upon just now. He can hit and he can run and he wakes up chewing on his busted fingers, he wakes up in different cities at different times of day and goes to breakfast with the guys, feeling unhinged, undone, so fucking excited.
On the road, the coaches admit what everyone already knows, that Buck won’t be going back to the minors when Kotsay comes back.
Buck goes two-for-four that night and nails a runner at home almost from the warning track. He wants to talk shit to the reporters afterwards, he wants to be brash and clever and lay out piece by piece how fucking easy this is for him, how he was never once afraid, but his last quote got him drilled in the first inning of the next game. If he does it again, he has to pay the coaches five thousand dollars, so he shies away and recites lines from Bull Durham until the press gets tired of him.
Here to stay, Buck thinks that he was designed for this, built from scratch to be good at every part of major league baseball. If his life holds together like this, it’ll be a miracle.
Anyway, the other thing he can do is hold his fingers over a candle flame for way too long, and Huston Street kinda turned green the last time, staring at Buck with wax on the side of his hand and a smile on his face.
This time, Bobby Crosby latches on to Buck’s wrist and inquires conversationally, “Is it gonna be that kinda night?”
Buck grins, cocky and a little bit crazy in a way that’s reminiscent of Barry Zito, and slides his singed fingertips up over the back of Crosby’s hand. Shapeless black smudges on Crosby’s knuckles, Crosby raising his eyebrows.
“We’ll know soon enough,” Buck promises, and pays for another round of shots. He and the starting pitchers are trading off responsibility for every drink, because Buck hit a double and two singles in back of a seven-inning shut-out, and they’ve got to buy off the luck.
Of course Buck had believed the press last year that said he was major league ready in Double-A, but to be so major league ready, to see every pitch so perfectly, able to think disdainfully, that’s what passes for break in the show?, like he’s seen it all even though, goddamn, the season’s three weeks old.
His rush through the minors is far from unprecedented, though, sped by injuries and a good spring, and he bonds with Street and Rich Harden over it, learns that he’s just like everyone else.
That kinda night, the kind Bobby is afraid of, it’s when Buck has had a good game (and as such, ever more frequent), and orders doubles, leaves the soda out of Harden’s jack and coke without telling him, asks the bartender if there’s any drinks that you, like, light on fire first. Buck loses his bearings very quickly, sometimes, and it ends with Crosby dragging him through the parking lot, Buck’s head lolling and that dumb-blind grin back on his face.
Crosby drapes him over the car and Buck claws at the metal, inching precariously down the hood. Crosby grabs him by the belt buckle and holds him still, digs around in Buck’s pockets for the car keys. The sky pitches and rolls and Buck’s hips twitch slightly when Crosby’s thumb skitters for a split second on the skin just under his shirt.
“You’re really bad at this, T,” Crosby mutters, his head bowed. Buck hums, dazed by the stars. “You know, the smart thing to do woulda been to go back home an hour ago and finish getting drunk there. Which I definitely suggested. And you totally shot me down because you’re dumb. So, really, this is just a huge favor that I’m doing you outta the kindness of my heart. And you owe me.”
“You’re not sober,” Buck says, his mouth feeling thick. “’Cause you’re ramblin’.”
“Hey, you know what? Still vertical, over here.”
Buck laughs, thinking that Crosby’s so fucking funny, wondering what his head feels like now that he’s shaved off all his hair. Everyone was relieved when Crosby showed up buzz-cutted again, but Buck’d only ever known him with these sticky dirty-blonde curls, and so it’s still weird for him, when Crosby takes off his cap in the dugout and runs a hand over his head, raising dust.
Crosby gets him wedged into the backseat, and Buck twists around so that his head is on the center console, blinking at Bobby as he climbs in the front.
“Turn the fuck around. Gonna be fucking decapitated like that. Buckle your seat belt. Keep still.” He smirks at Buck, who’s fumbling and happily lost in the backseat, his legs strewn. “Remind me to never go anywhere with you again.”
“Ah, fuck you,” Buck exhales, finally fitting the seat belt into the thing and looking up. “I feel like I’m in a taxi.”
“Limousine.”
Buck snorts and nods, lays his head back on the seat. He’s still getting used to the idea of it. He can see the edge of Crosby’s face, the vague glitter of his eyes when he checks the mirrors. Buck absently sorts through his most recent teammates and tries to figure their value mathematically. Crosby comes in pretty high, another immediate success, another pure hitter. Buck watches Crosby’s hand on the shift, the draw of tendons in his arms, splattered with streetlight and neon at irregular intervals.
Guys like Crosby are almost never a good idea.
No matter, because right now Buck is, to put it mildly, locked the fuck in. Right now Travis Buck can do anything.
In the apparently long-standing tradition of the Oakland Athletics, Buck is sleeping on Crosby’s couch, or, more regularly, on the big padded deck chair on the patio, in the dull night heat and the fresh air. There’s a spare bedroom, but someone died in there like four months ago and they don’t really like going inside.
All of them as rich as sin, and you’d think the first thing they’d do is stop living with roommates, and Buck guesses that it says something about them that they stick so close. He doesn’t really care, liking the shuffle of Crosby’s feet down the hall in the morning and the sun-blur from ten until two when even inside he has to squint, the world blasted and glowing.
Crosby gets out and opens the side door, telling Buck, “It’s about twenty feet, and frankly, I’m tired of carrying your ass places. Think you can make it?”
Buck waves dismissively, working to free himself from the seatbelt and stumbling out of the car. He makes it only barely, only catching himself on Crosby’s shoulder once. Thankful for the presence of walls all around him, Buck thinks that this is really the best place he’s ever lived, wanting to put his mouth on the back of Crosby’s neck.
Crosby leaves him on the couch with an air-sickness bag and a bottle of water, and Buck listens to him getting ready for bed, scanning the ceiling and the knifeline of trees, the strip of sky visible through the window. He allows himself to idly consider Crosby, half a house away, tossing his shirt into the laundry basket on the floor of his room, brushing his teeth with his belt off and his feet bare, wearing nothing except his jeans and the pressure bandage wrapped around his right shoulder.
There’s a chance that Buck is sleeping on the couch for more than just one reason.
Buck doesn’t remember going outside, but that’s where Crosby wakes him up, crashed across the deck chair with one leg and one hand resting on the cement. Slurred drunken dreams rasp quickly through Buck’s mind, surfacing to Crosby crouching by the chair, touching Buck’s arm but pulling away when Buck’s eyes clear.
Crosby looks away and smiles kinda sheepishly. “It looked like you weren’t breathing.”
Cracking his jaw on a yawn, Buck rubs at his eyes. He’s deeply confused, pretty sure that if he’s not breathing, he might be hurt, and he’ll get in trouble if he gets hurt. He should be worried. Crosby’s a comfort, though, keeping his voice low in respect to the hour, backlit by the pool water. Buck takes stock and can find no trace of pain in his body.
“Good lookin’ out,” Buck says softly.
Crosby glances at him, silver flick of his eyes and his nice face unguarded in something like surprise. Like he hadn’t really expected to find Buck still alive out here. Buck feels his skin start to itch, catches himself staring at Bobby’s mouth.
Pushing himself out of the chair, Buck skims off his shirt before he’s really got his balance under him, falling more than jumping into the pool, the cold a shock to his heart, making him jerk hard and sink to the bottom. He scrapes his knuckles and exhales a stream of bubbles, appreciating the clean, overbright silence under the water.
Guys like Crosby make Buck crazy.
When he comes up for air, Crosby is sitting on the deck chair, his hands folded between his knees. “Was that on purpose?”
Buck shakes his hair briskly, shoves a wet mess of it out of his eyes. “Mostly.”
Crosby tips his head to the side and says, “When you get pneumonia and die, what should I tell the team?”
Buck grins into the water, blue around the cracks of his teeth, his fists pressed into the side of the pool and he’s already starting to shiver. This destructive confidence in everything-the idea that nothing is too much for him anymore, too difficult or unlucky. He is fearless tonight; Bobby’s been around since the very beginning.
“Tell them I said win the pennant.”
White hint of teeth as Crosby smiles and looks away. He does that a lot, Buck’s starting to realize. Most of Crosby is very surface and easy to pick out, but this is subtler, when he’s trying to work out the next best thing.
“Hey, Bobby, you should come in because it’s a really nice night.” Buck digs his knuckles in on the stone.
Crosby gives him a look like, what are you playing at, but stands and kicks off his flip-flops, takes off his shirt. Buck ducks under the water, blinking slow as chlorine bites his eyes. Behind him, the landscape abruptly explodes, Crosby cannon-balling in a flurry of bubbles and sonic-like waves. Crosby twists near the bottom, and Buck pushes up, allows himself to rise.
“Kinda fucking cold, T,” Crosby says, his shoulders pale above the water.
“You’ll adjust,” Buck replies absently, swimming cautiously in a wide arc around Crosby. Crosby gives him another of those looks and swims away, low and flat to the bottom.
They swim for awhile. They get the horseshoe from the patio and chuck it into the deep end, race each other to it. Buck’s faster, but Crosby can stay under longer. Green leaves from the recent storm litter the water, frictionless and soft, folding between Buck’s fingers, his long hand reaching for Crosby’s ankle, pulling him under.
He floats. Crosby cuts beneath him like a shark, ever in motion. Buck thinks about what it would feel like if Crosby brushes his head against his back, muffled prickle on his spine. It’s gotten very late, Buck’s summer constellations pushed out of alignment, torn over with red plane lights.
Crosby drifts near Buck’s shoulder, his chin on the surface of the water. “You know what I was thinking about the other day? Even if I play till I’m forty, it’ll still be less time in the majors than I took to get to the majors. I mean, if you reckon that everything from T-ball on is basically preparation. Eighteen, nineteen years of it.”
Buck follows a shooting star, aware of Crosby as a smear in his peripheral vision. “Hmm.”
“Don’t you think that’s weird?” Crosby asks, poking Buck and making him skew glacially towards the edge.
“I’m not really much of a judge.”
“What? What?” Crosby presses his fingers up under Buck’s shoulder blade, carefully guides him in a circle. “You make no sense.”
Buck shows his teeth and seeks out Crosby’s eyes. They’re lidded and locked on his face. Crosby does this sometimes, forgets that Buck is just the newest kid, stares at him like Buck’s the eye of a storm, some kind of safe harbor.
“Bobby, you know it’s worth ten times what we already gave,” Buck tells him, and Crosby’s lip curls up, brightening his eyes with a tilt of his chin. His hand flattens on Buck’s back under the water, pushing him up slightly.
“See, you’ve learned fucking nothing,” Crosby starts to say, but Buck kicks his legs under him and rises to meet Crosby’s mouth with his own, catching him mid-breath and already slick. Toothpaste and chlorine, Buck notices, distracted by Crosby hooking his arms around his waist and jerking them together.
There’s really nothing quite like it. Buck’s dizzy almost immediately, Crosby’s stomach against his own, Crosby marking the hell out of his neck, his hands wide on Buck’s back, underwater and moving down.
Buck knows that he should be happy with what he already has, the familiar stretch in straightaway right field where he’s worn the grass down yellow and spare, and Bobby Crosby his ever-better friend, and baseball the only important thing that happens to him this year.
But Buck’s never been smart, and, fuck, if he can have one dream, he can have all of them.
Crosby shoves him against the pool wall and opens Buck’s shorts, his hands jarring and cool. Buck wraps his arms around Crosby’s shoulders and says against his cheek, “Come on, tell me about how this is everything you ever wanted,” and Crosby laughs hard with his hand still moving and his face buried in Buck’s throat.
“Too fucking sharp, rook, you’re gonna ruin us.”
Buck grins idiotically, completely poled by joy at the moment, the goosebumps on Crosby’s arms and the spidery moon and tilted sky. He thinks that he could do this every night for the next twenty years, too, and that shakes him to the bone. Crosby smiles at him without complication, just this strange and perfect fit, and Buck doesn’t know what to do because he doesn’t know anything anymore.
But he figures, just, more of this. This is good.
THE END
Endnotes: You see, I’m nice to them when they first start out. I’d like it noted for the record. The thing with Buck’s fingers? So totally made up. The articles about him haven’t gotten that specific yet (give it time).
Introducing Travis Buck
By Candle Beck
When Travis Buck was seven years old, he’d closed two of his fingers in a car door. Slippery in the rain with his slicker hood over his eyes, he’d smashed the tips, and had to wear splints for almost three months. If you know to look, you can still see how those two, ring and middle, are a little deformed, gnarled and short.
He had no feeling in the fingertips, and so he couldn’t be a pitcher anymore. Not that he’d ever really wanted to be. Buck is a hitter. Born, bred, branded. The scar tissue doesn’t matter when the throw’s going two hundred feet in to the cut-off; like all real hitters, Travis Buck is a corner outfielder.
Buck gets this job in Phoenix, after Mark Kotsay has to have surgery and Milton Bradley starts talking doubtfully about his legs. Buck just wants to hit, and the game slows down for him, taking his time on pitches and breaking off first motion. In Phoenix, the little sunstroked stadium reminds him of the Babe Ruth League, the walls shrinking inwards.
He starts the season off lit, batting eighth or ninth, starting in right field. He learns to read unnamed spin on the stitches, and the angle of the bat draws him a few steps closer to the line. The coaches say he’s coming right along, and the other guys say, “Goddamn, kid.”
Buck rolls with it as much as he can, having difficulty finding room for all the happiness he’s stumbled upon just now. He can hit and he can run and he wakes up chewing on his busted fingers, he wakes up in different cities at different times of day and goes to breakfast with the guys, feeling unhinged, undone, so fucking excited.
On the road, the coaches admit what everyone already knows, that Buck won’t be going back to the minors when Kotsay comes back.
Buck goes two-for-four that night and nails a runner at home almost from the warning track. He wants to talk shit to the reporters afterwards, he wants to be brash and clever and lay out piece by piece how fucking easy this is for him, how he was never once afraid, but his last quote got him drilled in the first inning of the next game. If he does it again, he has to pay the coaches five thousand dollars, so he shies away and recites lines from Bull Durham until the press gets tired of him.
Here to stay, Buck thinks that he was designed for this, built from scratch to be good at every part of major league baseball. If his life holds together like this, it’ll be a miracle.
Anyway, the other thing he can do is hold his fingers over a candle flame for way too long, and Huston Street kinda turned green the last time, staring at Buck with wax on the side of his hand and a smile on his face.
This time, Bobby Crosby latches on to Buck’s wrist and inquires conversationally, “Is it gonna be that kinda night?”
Buck grins, cocky and a little bit crazy in a way that’s reminiscent of Barry Zito, and slides his singed fingertips up over the back of Crosby’s hand. Shapeless black smudges on Crosby’s knuckles, Crosby raising his eyebrows.
“We’ll know soon enough,” Buck promises, and pays for another round of shots. He and the starting pitchers are trading off responsibility for every drink, because Buck hit a double and two singles in back of a seven-inning shut-out, and they’ve got to buy off the luck.
Of course Buck had believed the press last year that said he was major league ready in Double-A, but to be so major league ready, to see every pitch so perfectly, able to think disdainfully, that’s what passes for break in the show?, like he’s seen it all even though, goddamn, the season’s three weeks old.
His rush through the minors is far from unprecedented, though, sped by injuries and a good spring, and he bonds with Street and Rich Harden over it, learns that he’s just like everyone else.
That kinda night, the kind Bobby is afraid of, it’s when Buck has had a good game (and as such, ever more frequent), and orders doubles, leaves the soda out of Harden’s jack and coke without telling him, asks the bartender if there’s any drinks that you, like, light on fire first. Buck loses his bearings very quickly, sometimes, and it ends with Crosby dragging him through the parking lot, Buck’s head lolling and that dumb-blind grin back on his face.
Crosby drapes him over the car and Buck claws at the metal, inching precariously down the hood. Crosby grabs him by the belt buckle and holds him still, digs around in Buck’s pockets for the car keys. The sky pitches and rolls and Buck’s hips twitch slightly when Crosby’s thumb skitters for a split second on the skin just under his shirt.
“You’re really bad at this, T,” Crosby mutters, his head bowed. Buck hums, dazed by the stars. “You know, the smart thing to do woulda been to go back home an hour ago and finish getting drunk there. Which I definitely suggested. And you totally shot me down because you’re dumb. So, really, this is just a huge favor that I’m doing you outta the kindness of my heart. And you owe me.”
“You’re not sober,” Buck says, his mouth feeling thick. “’Cause you’re ramblin’.”
“Hey, you know what? Still vertical, over here.”
Buck laughs, thinking that Crosby’s so fucking funny, wondering what his head feels like now that he’s shaved off all his hair. Everyone was relieved when Crosby showed up buzz-cutted again, but Buck’d only ever known him with these sticky dirty-blonde curls, and so it’s still weird for him, when Crosby takes off his cap in the dugout and runs a hand over his head, raising dust.
Crosby gets him wedged into the backseat, and Buck twists around so that his head is on the center console, blinking at Bobby as he climbs in the front.
“Turn the fuck around. Gonna be fucking decapitated like that. Buckle your seat belt. Keep still.” He smirks at Buck, who’s fumbling and happily lost in the backseat, his legs strewn. “Remind me to never go anywhere with you again.”
“Ah, fuck you,” Buck exhales, finally fitting the seat belt into the thing and looking up. “I feel like I’m in a taxi.”
“Limousine.”
Buck snorts and nods, lays his head back on the seat. He’s still getting used to the idea of it. He can see the edge of Crosby’s face, the vague glitter of his eyes when he checks the mirrors. Buck absently sorts through his most recent teammates and tries to figure their value mathematically. Crosby comes in pretty high, another immediate success, another pure hitter. Buck watches Crosby’s hand on the shift, the draw of tendons in his arms, splattered with streetlight and neon at irregular intervals.
Guys like Crosby are almost never a good idea.
No matter, because right now Buck is, to put it mildly, locked the fuck in. Right now Travis Buck can do anything.
In the apparently long-standing tradition of the Oakland Athletics, Buck is sleeping on Crosby’s couch, or, more regularly, on the big padded deck chair on the patio, in the dull night heat and the fresh air. There’s a spare bedroom, but someone died in there like four months ago and they don’t really like going inside.
All of them as rich as sin, and you’d think the first thing they’d do is stop living with roommates, and Buck guesses that it says something about them that they stick so close. He doesn’t really care, liking the shuffle of Crosby’s feet down the hall in the morning and the sun-blur from ten until two when even inside he has to squint, the world blasted and glowing.
Crosby gets out and opens the side door, telling Buck, “It’s about twenty feet, and frankly, I’m tired of carrying your ass places. Think you can make it?”
Buck waves dismissively, working to free himself from the seatbelt and stumbling out of the car. He makes it only barely, only catching himself on Crosby’s shoulder once. Thankful for the presence of walls all around him, Buck thinks that this is really the best place he’s ever lived, wanting to put his mouth on the back of Crosby’s neck.
Crosby leaves him on the couch with an air-sickness bag and a bottle of water, and Buck listens to him getting ready for bed, scanning the ceiling and the knifeline of trees, the strip of sky visible through the window. He allows himself to idly consider Crosby, half a house away, tossing his shirt into the laundry basket on the floor of his room, brushing his teeth with his belt off and his feet bare, wearing nothing except his jeans and the pressure bandage wrapped around his right shoulder.
There’s a chance that Buck is sleeping on the couch for more than just one reason.
Buck doesn’t remember going outside, but that’s where Crosby wakes him up, crashed across the deck chair with one leg and one hand resting on the cement. Slurred drunken dreams rasp quickly through Buck’s mind, surfacing to Crosby crouching by the chair, touching Buck’s arm but pulling away when Buck’s eyes clear.
Crosby looks away and smiles kinda sheepishly. “It looked like you weren’t breathing.”
Cracking his jaw on a yawn, Buck rubs at his eyes. He’s deeply confused, pretty sure that if he’s not breathing, he might be hurt, and he’ll get in trouble if he gets hurt. He should be worried. Crosby’s a comfort, though, keeping his voice low in respect to the hour, backlit by the pool water. Buck takes stock and can find no trace of pain in his body.
“Good lookin’ out,” Buck says softly.
Crosby glances at him, silver flick of his eyes and his nice face unguarded in something like surprise. Like he hadn’t really expected to find Buck still alive out here. Buck feels his skin start to itch, catches himself staring at Bobby’s mouth.
Pushing himself out of the chair, Buck skims off his shirt before he’s really got his balance under him, falling more than jumping into the pool, the cold a shock to his heart, making him jerk hard and sink to the bottom. He scrapes his knuckles and exhales a stream of bubbles, appreciating the clean, overbright silence under the water.
Guys like Crosby make Buck crazy.
When he comes up for air, Crosby is sitting on the deck chair, his hands folded between his knees. “Was that on purpose?”
Buck shakes his hair briskly, shoves a wet mess of it out of his eyes. “Mostly.”
Crosby tips his head to the side and says, “When you get pneumonia and die, what should I tell the team?”
Buck grins into the water, blue around the cracks of his teeth, his fists pressed into the side of the pool and he’s already starting to shiver. This destructive confidence in everything-the idea that nothing is too much for him anymore, too difficult or unlucky. He is fearless tonight; Bobby’s been around since the very beginning.
“Tell them I said win the pennant.”
White hint of teeth as Crosby smiles and looks away. He does that a lot, Buck’s starting to realize. Most of Crosby is very surface and easy to pick out, but this is subtler, when he’s trying to work out the next best thing.
“Hey, Bobby, you should come in because it’s a really nice night.” Buck digs his knuckles in on the stone.
Crosby gives him a look like, what are you playing at, but stands and kicks off his flip-flops, takes off his shirt. Buck ducks under the water, blinking slow as chlorine bites his eyes. Behind him, the landscape abruptly explodes, Crosby cannon-balling in a flurry of bubbles and sonic-like waves. Crosby twists near the bottom, and Buck pushes up, allows himself to rise.
“Kinda fucking cold, T,” Crosby says, his shoulders pale above the water.
“You’ll adjust,” Buck replies absently, swimming cautiously in a wide arc around Crosby. Crosby gives him another of those looks and swims away, low and flat to the bottom.
They swim for awhile. They get the horseshoe from the patio and chuck it into the deep end, race each other to it. Buck’s faster, but Crosby can stay under longer. Green leaves from the recent storm litter the water, frictionless and soft, folding between Buck’s fingers, his long hand reaching for Crosby’s ankle, pulling him under.
He floats. Crosby cuts beneath him like a shark, ever in motion. Buck thinks about what it would feel like if Crosby brushes his head against his back, muffled prickle on his spine. It’s gotten very late, Buck’s summer constellations pushed out of alignment, torn over with red plane lights.
Crosby drifts near Buck’s shoulder, his chin on the surface of the water. “You know what I was thinking about the other day? Even if I play till I’m forty, it’ll still be less time in the majors than I took to get to the majors. I mean, if you reckon that everything from T-ball on is basically preparation. Eighteen, nineteen years of it.”
Buck follows a shooting star, aware of Crosby as a smear in his peripheral vision. “Hmm.”
“Don’t you think that’s weird?” Crosby asks, poking Buck and making him skew glacially towards the edge.
“I’m not really much of a judge.”
“What? What?” Crosby presses his fingers up under Buck’s shoulder blade, carefully guides him in a circle. “You make no sense.”
Buck shows his teeth and seeks out Crosby’s eyes. They’re lidded and locked on his face. Crosby does this sometimes, forgets that Buck is just the newest kid, stares at him like Buck’s the eye of a storm, some kind of safe harbor.
“Bobby, you know it’s worth ten times what we already gave,” Buck tells him, and Crosby’s lip curls up, brightening his eyes with a tilt of his chin. His hand flattens on Buck’s back under the water, pushing him up slightly.
“See, you’ve learned fucking nothing,” Crosby starts to say, but Buck kicks his legs under him and rises to meet Crosby’s mouth with his own, catching him mid-breath and already slick. Toothpaste and chlorine, Buck notices, distracted by Crosby hooking his arms around his waist and jerking them together.
There’s really nothing quite like it. Buck’s dizzy almost immediately, Crosby’s stomach against his own, Crosby marking the hell out of his neck, his hands wide on Buck’s back, underwater and moving down.
Buck knows that he should be happy with what he already has, the familiar stretch in straightaway right field where he’s worn the grass down yellow and spare, and Bobby Crosby his ever-better friend, and baseball the only important thing that happens to him this year.
But Buck’s never been smart, and, fuck, if he can have one dream, he can have all of them.
Crosby shoves him against the pool wall and opens Buck’s shorts, his hands jarring and cool. Buck wraps his arms around Crosby’s shoulders and says against his cheek, “Come on, tell me about how this is everything you ever wanted,” and Crosby laughs hard with his hand still moving and his face buried in Buck’s throat.
“Too fucking sharp, rook, you’re gonna ruin us.”
Buck grins idiotically, completely poled by joy at the moment, the goosebumps on Crosby’s arms and the spidery moon and tilted sky. He thinks that he could do this every night for the next twenty years, too, and that shakes him to the bone. Crosby smiles at him without complication, just this strange and perfect fit, and Buck doesn’t know what to do because he doesn’t know anything anymore.
But he figures, just, more of this. This is good.
THE END
Endnotes: You see, I’m nice to them when they first start out. I’d like it noted for the record. The thing with Buck’s fingers? So totally made up. The articles about him haven’t gotten that specific yet (give it time).