when i was young i was invincible
47509 words (i know) for the multiple stalwart souls who requested some variation on outside in.
(sorry about the title. i like symmetry, goddamn it.)
Inside Out
By Candle Beck
You fall in Texas.
You will freely admit that you are not all the way sane, down there in Double-A. Everything is hyper-illuminated, senses cranked up so high you blink rapid-fire; you shiver and shake. You get into fights with dugout benches and Gatorade coolers, sneak down to the abandoned warehouses and hurl rocks through the windows, very late at night in the broken-glass quiet.
Twenty years old, cut loose of any obligation except to pitch, and tomorrow pitch some more. Midland is like a different planet, one set too close to the sun and on a skewed axis that lengthens the days, holds the heat solidly in place. You sweat through three shirts a day and the ensuing delirium feels completely excusable. You climb oil derricks searching for a breeze.
Bobby is there, anyway, sleeping next to you on a dusty blanket laid over the truck bed, driving you home in the slanted light of morning. He lets you get away with the crazy shit but says he won't lie for you if your stupid-ass stunts put you in the hospital and in shit with the ballclub. You agree that that is fair, and turn the headlights on a water tower from the top of which you can see a hundred miles in every direction.
You've known Bobby about two months, lived with him for most of that, shoddy little house on the edge of town with boards coming up from the porch, clouds of black flies over sinkholes in the yard. He's the best friend you'd ever had, somehow, and then it turns out that's just a smokescreen, a temporary diversion.
Every Sunday finds both of you out in the driveway, Bobby washing his car and you chucking sponges around, getting sunburned even though Bobby has told you a million times, sunscreen makes you no less of a man, Richie. You don't care. You kinda like the feel of it, skin tight and hot.
One of those Sundays you ambush him around the side of the car and wring a fully soaked sponge directly over his head, drenching his face and shirt. He shouts and knocks you onto the car, where you promptly slide off, roll laughing on the damp warm cement. Bobby comes looming, dumps the bucket of soapy water on you and then just kinda stands there staring down at you looking deeply surprised for some reason.
His shirt is stuck to his chest and stomach, spiky wet hair glistening and tinged dusky gold in the sunlight, and you get a very clear image of him on his knees, hands curled and tugging your shorts down while he gazes up at you steadily with those pretty blue eyes.
You grin, thinking, of course. Fucking around with the shortstop, what better way to pass the time down here in the bus leagues?
And Bobby will see the wisdom of it, of that you can be sure. Bobby gets tongue-tied around you when you don't have a shirt on sometimes. He leans towards you without realizing it, a dopey expression on his face. He knows you're crazy but he doesn't mind.
One night the two of you are hanging around the house trying to snap a recent string of bad luck, and you're as buzzed as you get without being sloppy drunk, having stumbled upon that immaculate frequency again. Bobby is pretending to only barely tolerate you, rolling his eyes and smirking as he washes the dishes, sleeves rolled to the elbows and forearms white-streaked with soap.
He says something about how indulging you is so much more fun than going out and getting laid, seriously, dude, and you feel adrenaline kick up in you because he is giving you these edgy dark-eyed looks and licking his lips unconsciously. It bursts in you, right now, right the fuck now.
You grab his belt and pull him close, you say, "You don't have to go out to get laid, man," and his eyes go huge as he does not hesitate, sliding his wet arms around your neck and kissing the smile off your mouth.
Bobby knows exactly what he's doing. The soap crackles over-loud in your ears as he holds your head in his hands, licks into your mouth, gets to every part of you. You shove your arms up under his shirt and jerk in shock from the feel of skin on skin, and he pushes you back into the counter, sucking on your lower lip and if you weren't crazy before, you certainly would be by now.
Panting, you hear yourself begging, "Oh suck me off Bobby, please say you will," and it might have embarrassed you if it didn't work so well on him, his body shuddering against yours as he nods in fast awkward jerks against your shoulder. He rucks your shirt up and sinks slowly to his knees, his mouth moving on a crooked line down your chest and stomach.
He's pretty goddamn good at that, too, so much so that by the end it's all you can do just to gasp at the ceiling and scrabble at his ears. You finish crashingly, mouth stuttering filth and nonsense. Bobby gives you about three seconds of recovery time before hauling you down to the floor with him, grabbing your hand and shoving it into his jeans. You get with the program, press your face into his throat and jerk him off fast and hard as he moans and bangs his head on the cabinets.
Then you're lying in a heap with him on the kitchen floor, staring upside-down at the refrigerator. He's heavy, draped all across you. You tell him, "We're definitely doing that again."
Bobby grunts, thumps his head against your shoulder. You grin up at nothing; you know that means yes.
You do it again a lot. You spend the rest of the season having more sex with Bobby Crosby than you've ever had with anybody else. The two of you get ridiculously good at it.
Living together helps. You've always liked what boys look like freshly rolled out of bed and muzzy-headed scrounging for breakfast first thing in the morning. Bobby elbows you aside when you're shaving and brushes his teeth standing hip to hip, crowded closer than strictly necessary, watching you in the mirror. Little kink he's got there, you with half your face coated white and half gleaming clean and smooth, you in a towel with your hair sticking up in jagged shapes, and usually he's back on his knees as soon as he's rinsed and spat. You nag him for the waste of toothpaste as he's mouthing across the trenched lines of your stomach and hips, your voice going all high and full of air.
You don't sleep in his bed and he doesn't sleep in yours, because even at night it's still as hot as an overworked kitchen, and Bobby, he jacks your own temperature up three degrees just from proximity. You don't room with him on the road, either, because it would require effort and negotiations and some plausible explanation for it, the formulation of which has you both totally stumped; normal people get sick of each other eventually.
And anyway, you like sneaking around, rendezvousing with Bobby in the hotel hallway after curfew and taking the back stairwell to the laundry room in the basement. You turn off the light and kick out the wedge that's holding the door open, and the room becomes red-lit by the Coke machine in the corner. Everyone looks good like that, young and deep-eyed.
Bobby perches on one of the washers and you take off your shirt, come to stand between his legs feeling like it's been weeks instead of less than a day. He hooks you around the neck and pulls your mouth to his, always so fierce and determined about it, vaguely pained. Bobby has decided to do this, and he never does anything halfway. He lets you unbutton his jeans and push him to slide back on the washer, an ideal height for him to fuck your mouth for the longest time, Bobby chewing his knuckles raw to keep himself quiet.
He's not used to this kind of thing. He tries to tell you once, "I'm not really like this, you know," and you don't believe him at all.
You make sure he's not intending to stop fucking around with you, and then brush it off. Bobby's conflicted, getting in pretty deep with you and balking against it instinctively because he doesn't think he's gay enough to actually go the distance with a dude, sleep in the same bed and everything. He's only ever screwed around with guys on a per diem basis, teammates more than happy to keep his secret and not meet his eyes the next day, opponents who subtly cruised him while standing at second base. Before he met you, it all could be written off fairly easily.
Then there's you, and you've been gay your whole life. At six years old you had the biggest crush on your T-ball coach; you can still remember the wild careen in your chest when he'd scooped you up in a hug after you'd smacked a home run onto the next field over. At thirteen you babbled on so much about your science lab partner that your mom sat you down and said seriously, "Richie, you know it's okay to have these feelings-"
and you had to cut her off, horrified, "Mom! Already aware! Gay and psyched about it!"
She had blinked, smiled, said you were such a smart boy, and you almost broke something, you rolled your eyes so hard. Then she let you have three dozen Bagel Bites for dinner, and you forgave her everything.
Anyway, you've been waiting for someone exactly like Bobby as long as you can remember, but he's taking a little longer to reach the same conclusion.
You're so pleased with how your life is going. By the end of the season, you can't even remember what day it was, that first time in the kitchen with the soap popping in your ear like soft firecrackers, Bobby's bare back under your hands. You can't say, this is where it started, and you kinda like that, like Bobby's always been here.
Last morning in the house, he bends you over the kitchen table, the only piece of furniture no one on craigslist wanted (minor fire damage), and fucks you goodbye with the cab waiting outside and his teeth denting the back of your shoulder. He goes home to California and you spend a couple weeks in Victoria and then go bumming around the world on your signing bonus until Christmas. You see Thailand and Australia; you go swimming in the Arabian Sea.
You send Bobby postcards from everywhere you go. You buy phone cards and set up shop at train station phone booths where there's a little bench to sit on, talking to him for an hour or two, eleven thousand kilometers away from each other and it shrinks to nothing when you have Bobby's voice in your ear.
After the holidays, you make it about a week before getting too antsy to deal with anything, and you throw a bag together, leave a note for your parents and light out for California.
It takes you two days to drive to Long Beach, taking the slow route all the way down the coast.
You call Bobby from the parking lot of an In-n-Out Burger, leaning against the car and sucking on a strawberry shake in the amazingly pleasant January day. Bobby picks up distracted and off his game, missing your cues and asking, "What?" every time you try to tell him something. You scowl behind your sunglasses, uncomfortable feeling in your stomach because Bobby should pay attention to you, he should want to hear that you've driven the whole edge of the country to come and see him.
It's okay once you get to his place, though. Bobby tries to maintain his cool, act like he's not at all fazed that you've shown up out of the blue, but you catch his eyes on you focused and heated, confused because maybe he hasn't really expected his gayness to follow him into the off-season. You take pity on him, crowd him up against the counter with your hips notching into his, his mouth opening on a silent gasp.
You smile. "Happy New Year, Bobby," you say, and he wraps his hand around the back of your head, splits your lip kissing you too hard and you will still be giving him grief for that years later.
You laze around his house for the rest of the off-season, directionless and unmoored, unworried. In the mornings you ride down to the beach to watch Bobby surfing. You get churros and ice cream bars from the cart for breakfast, Bobby's wet-suit split open and peeled down to his waist, salt drying on his skin, cinnamon sugar on his mouth. It's usually all you can do to keep from molesting him in public; once or twice you don't make it out of the parking lot, going down on him while he hangs on to the wheel for dear life, groaning, "Kids, little kids and fucking families right out there, you fucking slut, Richie, oh my god."
Back home, Bobby takes a shower and comes to watch trashy reality shows and play video games and make out with you until someone gets hungry or you run out of beer, and then the two of you head out into the cool afternoon, the rare winter rains. You always come back drunk and late, necking in the front hallway for long hallucinatory stretches, oxygen-deprived and giddy.
The two of you sleep in the one bed, and at first you keep jolting awake every time Bobby rolls over or coughs or brushes up against you, but after a few weeks you can sleep through it all.
A couple days before you're due to report in Phoenix, you and Bobby are watching some gangster flick with an impenetrable plot. You're slumped under his arm, and he's toying idly with your shirt sleeve, eyes narrowed and flashing with blue light. Kinda drunk, pretty tired, comfortable as all hell with the curve of your body matching Bobby's, and you think that you should tell him, warn him at the very least: lost my balance awhile ago, Bobby, think I've been falling.
But instead you drift off to sleep. You dream about baseball, and you're just stupidly happy.
You start the season back in Midland. Bobby goes to Triple-A in Sacramento and now you have two reasons to get there as soon as possible. He mocks you over the phone, dubs you 'bus league' and 'meat' and you tell him that you got clocked at 102 mph today, certainly hard enough to kill anyone dumb enough to call you names.
Bobby gets quiet for a second, then asks, "A hundred and two, are you fucking serious, Rich?" with this crazy rough edge of disbelief in his voice.
And you're grinning, swearing to it. You can't wait to show him.
You get brought up to Sacramento two weeks into the season. On the plane to California you rip the in-flight magazines to shreds and the flight attendants glare at you even though you tried to get all the bits into the barf bag. You can't help it, your hands won't stay still and you're honestly not sure if they're itching for a baseball or Bobby Crosby.
You get both.
The Rivercats pitching coach is introducing you around the clubhouse and you're trying to be covert about desperately scanning the room for the shortstop, hands balled up in fists at your sides. Bobby manages to get behind you, tackles you with a hug that sends you lurching forward into the coach, everyone staggering a few feet. You wrench yourself upright and get your arm hooked around Bobby's neck, his shoulder jammed against your chest and you can't breathe, beaming and huffing and cursing up a storm.
"And I see you've already met Crosby," the pitching coach says dryly, and you shoot him a grin, let Bobby haul you off to the lockers talking a mile a minute.
He doesn't take his hands off you, touching bare skin below your shirt sleeve, over your collar, minor electric shocks jerking through you every time. You close a fist in his jersey and lean close to say, "We have to go somewhere with a locking door right now," and his eyes flare black.
Quick tight nod and he whips his gaze across the room to make sure no one's paying attention and you're probably being way more obvious than you should be, hand clenched in Bobby's jersey and staring at him, standing too close, but you have never actually cared, only put on a show for Bobby's sake and even that's starting to fray.
He takes you to some closet jam-packed with office supplies and stacked crates of David sunflower seed packs. Shoves you up against the door, bites your mouth open and licks over your tongue and you are clinging to him, one leg already hooked around his hip because this is what he does to you, goddamn.
You have supplies in your pocket, maybe kind of expecting this or at least hoping, and you tell him to fuck you, hoarse and insistent just to watch him twitch. You twist and brace yourself on the door, pull his hand up to cover your mouth. Sharp teeth on his fingers and he's moaning quietly into your shoulder, jerking your jeans and shorts down roughly, mouthing at your neck.
You mumble, "Hurry, hurry the fuck up," and all Bobby can say is your name. He presses in and the two of you gasp as one, his fingers slipping out of your mouth as you flatten your cheek on the smooth wood of the door, shocky and almost freaked out by how good it feels. Bobby curls his hand on your shoulder, wet fingertips slipping on your collarbone, wraps his other around your hip and he can move you like that, guide you down and forward and back. You're beyond sense, little whines punched out of you and your head all full of stars.
Things progress somewhat quickly from there.
Bobby lives month-to-month in a one-bedroom within walking distance of the stadium. You pick up a second dresser from a yard sale, take over a hall closet as your own. You have your parents ship you a box of clothes and a box of videogames. It's not until you're unloading the groceries, sliding your cereal in between Bobby's Wheaties and Kix, that you realize you never asked if you could move in with him.
Bobby's screwing around on the living room floor trying to get your N64 and Playstation II hooked up alongside his Xbox. Black, white, and gray wires snake and tangle around him, and he looks up as you lean in the doorway, frustrated and looking about seven years old.
"I think it's broken," Bobby says. He scratches his forehead and leaves a smear of ash-colored dust above his eyebrow.
You think about how you should ask him if he's really cool with you staying, if he's starting to get sick of you yet, if it's okay that you never want to leave. You kinda steamrolled him into a lot of this, reading so much into his abortive gestures and guilty looks. He had misgivings but you never did, and you wonder if he's all the way here with you now, if it makes the kind of sense to him that it does to you. You think about how you want to take him home to Canada and marry him.
Instead you say, "I think your face is broken," and go to unpack the rest of your stuff.
You perform very well in the Pacific Coast League. Everything cuts so sharply out of your hand you keep expecting the stitches to tear your skin. You've unearthed this phantom pitch, you can barely feel it at the tips of your fingers, this splitter that knuckles and flutters and dies at the knees and no one knows what to call it; no one can really speak after seeing it somehow dance across the strike zone.
The coaches huddle and squint, and you wing a couple pitches sidearm, get barked at for screwing with your motion even though you were just messing around. You pin a few change-ups to the outside corner and they say, "Keep this shit up, kid, and you'll beat all these motherfuckers up there."
You don't know what to make of that. You say, "Thanks?" and then go to find Bobby.
Bobby's hitting the cover off the ball and has taken to watching you a lot, just kind of letting his gaze hook and follow you around. You're always aware of it, heat on the back of your neck, skin prickling on your arms. You wink and blow him ironic kisses, and he rolls his eyes, never looking away.
It's in Salt Lake City that you first start to think that Bobby might be in it for real. The rest of the team goes to some breeder club that you're resolutely not interested in, and so you and Bobby find a regular bar instead. You shoot some pool, play some darts. You get pretty fucked up and get a little hands-on, gripping the back of Bobby's neck, scuffing across his hair, looping an arm around his shoulders and leaning your weight on him as you wait at the bar.
You don't think anything of it. The world's so much easier to take when you've got a hand on him, and Bobby doesn't mind, dull flush on his face and a low pleased feeling burring out of him.
Fifth or sixth shot and it's one too many, it must be. Bobby sinks an unbelievable bank shot and you holler too loud, all astonishment and pride, grab him and press a kiss to the side of his head.
Stupid, very stupid--maybe all the time you've spent in California this year has made you soft.
At any rate, someone latches onto your arm, thick fingers digging in, and rips you away from Bobby, shoves you hard to the floor. You sprawl and thwack, head ricocheting, blooming with pain, and through the haze you hear:
"This ain't a fuckin' faggot bar,"
and you get killing angry.
You scramble to your feet, hauling yourself up on the pool table with your mouth wrenched and sawdust in your hair. You're just in time to see Bobby feint at your attacker with his pool cue and then whip his elbow into the man's face, a bright explosion of red. The man, a hulking filthy-jacketed trucker type, drops to his knees with a cry, both hands trying to hold back the spill of blood, and Bobby serves him a rib-buckling kick in the chest, sends him skidding back across the floor.
Then Bobby's eyes light on you and you see a wild burn there, something elemental and pure that sets you shaking. His hand locks on your arm, and you drag him close, throw your arm around his shoulders and sneer at the rest of the bar, indistinguishable smear of hostile faces.
"He's goddamn right, no self-respecting faggot would be caught dead in this pissant dive."
You spit on the ground, feel Bobby's hand clutch warningly in your shirt. You don't care. You hope they do come after the two of you, give Bobby an excuse to use the pool cue and show off that beautiful swing of his. You know you could take every one of these motherfuckers.
But no one makes a move, all of them plainly lynching the two of you in their minds but not wanting to run the risk their compatriot did of getting the shit kicked out of him by a queer.
You and Bobby make it out into the parking lot and only then do you show some sense and run, because you don't have a car and the last thing you need is to get gay-bashed on the way back to the team hotel. You're laughing, stumbling over broken squares of sidewalk, the rhythm of your and Bobby's strides falling like a too-fast heartbeat. Adrenaline and triumph and this great blasting feeling in your chest, this sense of having been blown wide open.
You get far enough away that no one will follow, and then you pull Bobby into a convenient alley, push him up against the wall.
"Amazing, that was amazing," you say breathlessly, kneading your hands in his shirt. Bobby touches your forehead where a knot is forming, his mouth thin and intent.
"Motherfucker put his hands on you," Bobby explains absently, like it should be self-evident.
You shift closer to him, kicking his feet apart to slide your leg between. Your face burns hot, your head light and glassy. You've never felt like this before.
"Bobby," you say into his throat. He hums, stroking his hands up under your shirt. "Fuck, man, that's it. It's you, I'm done with everyone else. I only want you from now on."
And Bobby almost chokes on his laugh, his fingers tightening on your sides. He nudges your face up with his own and gets a look at you. You grin idiotically, unhinged, wanting to show everything so that he might believe you. Bobby says your name, drops his head back on the wall and laughs helplessly up at the sky. You lick along the line of his throat, storing away the taste and the feel of him swallowing against your mouth. He holds you flush against him and tells you yes over and over again.
So that's settled. You've stumbled upon the first great love of your life, here in the minor leagues, and you go down to the high school field on a Sunday and have Bobby pitch to you because all you want to do is hit home runs.
You have a couple more months living with him in Sacramento, and you end up staying in a lot, fooling around in front of movies with the lights off, playing dirty Scrabble, falling asleep on top of each other on the couch. Something has shifted in Bobby since Salt Lake City. He's easier, sweet and calm in the mornings, watching you in a different way now, like he's stopped trying to figure you out and is just enjoying the view. He remembers little off-hand things you say, bands you heard were cool, this neat-looking graffiti art book you saw in a shop window, the really cute guy you like on a billboard for a new TV show, and suddenly you have concert tickets and a package from Amazon.com and a post-it reminder stuck to the television screen on the day the series debuts. Bobby doesn't say much about any of it, but you're pretty sure you couldn't love him this hard without him being the same way.
Then in July the Oakland Athletics call you up to the major leagues.
You don't remember a whole lot from that night. The boys take you out and get you loaded, pour you into a cab with Bobby at the end of it, wishing you all the best, waving from the sidewalk. You hang out the window shouting see you soon, give 'em hell, boys, and then slump back next to Bobby, groping him clumsily as he snickers and pretends to fend you off.
A chunk is missing, and then the next thing you remember is tumbling down onto the bed with Bobby, his chin clocking across your cheek and you can't feel it, just the rough slide of his body against yours, the overwhelming thrum all through you because tomorrow you're going to the Show.
And you remember Bobby saying fast, voice scraping, "You can fuck me this time, Richie, it's okay," and you're one hundred percent sure that he loves you then, because he's never done that before and this was already the best night of your life.
You only remember bits and pieces from then on. Your mind doesn't trust you to bear the full weight of it, like how angels have to appear in human form so they don't burn people's eyes out of their sockets. You get snatches, the long slick line of Bobby's back under your hands, how he buries his face in his folded arms and chews bruises onto his biceps, how he pushes back against you rough and off-rhythm like he doesn't want to but can't help it, and how by the end you've reduced him to one endless moan, and you wrap your arms around his chest from behind, press your face to his shoulder. He's the only thing you can feel, everywhere and all around.
You still feel like you've been blinded in a mild way. You don't think you'll ever be able to see anything else the same, the rest of the world sure to cloud, dim and dull.
In the morning Bobby makes you chocolate chip pancakes, and then drives you the eighty miles to Oakland, keeping you distracted with filthy jokes and rambling anecdotes that ring false and fantastical. You appreciate what he's trying to do because you could flip your shit so easily right now, it's not even funny.
You're twenty-one years old and in a whole bunch of ways, your life begins right now.
It takes Bobby another six weeks before he comes to join you in the major leagues. By then you've already had an improbably spectacular start to your career as a starter, so good you almost want to toy with the hitters, stick them in an 0-2 hole and then throw stuff they can only foul off, maybe seven or eight swings just so they'll be especially exhausted when you finally have mercy and strike the fuckers out. You can put the ball anywhere you want. You throw triple-digits all the freakin' time, get-'em-over fastballs and waste pitches that you blaze on in there just because you can.
It's fairly encouraging. You know better than to read your own press (you only had to know Barry Zito maybe three hours before recognizing the walking-cautionary-tale aspect to him), but you also know that your mom and dad are filling scrapbooks for you to have when there's no longer any risk of jinxing it. God only knows when that will be, but anyway.
Everyone seems to agree that you belong up here. This is on a list of your three major life goals, along with the amorphous idea of love that has crystallized in Bobby Crosby, and climbing Mt. Everest (don't worry, you'll get to it), so it's understandable that you're feeling pretty fucking terrific about the whole thing. Twenty-one years old, and two out of three checked neatly off. You're like six different kinds of prodigy.
You explain this to Bobby over the phone (you might be drunk), and he somewhat misses the point, asks how come you only have three major life goals because he's got at least a dozen knocked off already and twice that left to go. He starts listing them, of course, and you think he might be fucking with you because no way has Bobby ever been involved in an orgy--"Overreached," you tell him, "I woulda believed a threesome."
You rein him in, get him to stop snickering. The ever-present pain under your ribs--wish he were here cold-whistling through you--spikes up when you hear his breath hitch as he quiets. Your head is too heavy for your body and you lay it in the cradle of your arm curled on the table, drawn in around yourself.
The point, which you try painstakingly to relay to him as you slouch in the deserted breakfast room at the hotel, staring sideways at a huge blank television screen, is that the only two objectives that matter are major league baseball, and having a partner in crime. The game you love, the person you love, done and done.
Bobby doesn't say anything for a long time.
You are not so drunk as to think that that's insignificant. You squeeze your eyes shut, wondering if you've fucked it up.
"Yeah," Bobby answers eventually, sounding farther away. "Generally good goals to have, I'd say."
But that's not the point, they've already been achieved, and you don't know any other ways to get that across. Bobby already knows that you're completely fucking gone on him, he doesn't need to act so ruffled and off-key. You're about to ask him to gay-marry you just to freak him out more, if he fucking wants to play it that way after more than a goddamn year, but then you stop short.
It occurs to you suddenly, feels like a smack. One of those things on Bobby's epic life goal list is almost assuredly 'get married and have kids.' A gauzy vision of the future since he was a kid himself, and never once has he pictured another guy where the pretty little wife should be.
Goddamn it, you have fucked it up. It's not like you, your instincts are usually so good. You're angry with yourself, mostly, because you know better than to bring this stuff up when Bobby's not here for you to distract with a hummer. You're only a bit still pissed-off at him, but it's fucking noisy for a minority opinion.
Bobby loves you; he shouldn't fucking care.
Anyway, you change the subject hurriedly and pretend like you're just drunk, just talking shit, and after a minute Bobby relaxes and gets going on a rant about the subpar quality of the umpiring in the Coast League.
You can't sleep that night. You're living rent-free in the back bedroom of a house shared by a few of your teammates. All their crap is still stored in here, snowboards and a pile of winter coats and a pair of fishing rods casting eerie twig-like shadows on the wall. You feel temporary and out of place and you wonder what Bobby looks like at this moment, if he's still sleeping on his side of the bed like you are.
You get through it. Bobby shows up on the bus with the September call-ups and you just barely manage not to suck him off in front of everyone, and then the two of you are sitting next to each other in a major league dugout, blinking in astonishment.
Bobby puts his arm around your shoulders in the fifth inning, tips his head towards yours as you freeze, heat soaking under your skin. Out of the corner of your eye, you can see the edge of Bobby's mouth curl into this impossibly sweet half-smile.
"Ask me for anything you want tonight," he says right in your ear, and then pulls his arm away and sits back and you pray with all you have that the two of you aren't on camera at this moment, because you're pretty sure you're staring at him in a ridiculously obvious manner, your eyes enormous and dark and your mouth cocked open.
"Jesus Christ, Bobby." You grit your teeth. He's grinning moronically out at the field.
"This is incredible," he says, and you don't think he's talking about you anymore, but maybe, maybe it's all tied up together now, you and him and baseball and everything.
"This is nothing," you tell him, still gazing at him part lovesick and part mortified. "Wait till we win."
You do win, that day and the next and the next. It's a very good team, you tell him as you drive home that first night. He's already aware, he can read the box scores, and everyone in the game knows that there's spooky good voodoo hovering around Oakland just now, but he lets you go on and on, every player and all the connections between them, Bobby nodding along and turning back to gape at the view of the bay as you climb into the hills.
You're thinking about that promise he made you in the fifth inning and you've got a hand around his wrist, dragging him along with you up the walk and into the house. You forget that you've even got roommates until Mark Mulder shouts questioningly from the kitchen, and then you've got to go and show them Bobby, standing at least two feet away from him because you are in no state right now, every horizontal surface looking equally good.
Finally, finally, you get Bobby back into your bedroom, door locked and lights off and you're both tearing out of your shirts, reaching for each other. You're clumsy, faint soft taste of sunscreen on Bobby's skin and for some reason it's driving you out of your mind. Your hands are flying all over the place, knocking Bobby's aside, chipping off his jaw, and eventually he gets tired of you being so desperately amateur, takes your head in his hands and kisses you until you're limp and pliant and he can dump you on the bed. You get up on your elbows to watch him stripping out of his jeans and working you out of yours too, and then he's sliding between your legs and bracing himself over you.
"Hiya," Bobby says, and smiles, just fucking beautiful sometimes. You kiss the hell out of him, leave him gasping and dazed. "Ah, goddamn, Richie, I missed the fuck out of you."
You haul him down, breaking the taut lines of his arms and toppling his body onto yours. "Yes, very much with the missing," you say, stupid breathy tone in your voice but how can that be helped?
Bobby huffs out a laugh, noses at your cheek. "What's the play, dude?"
You shake your head, biting your lip hard and trying to get yourself in order. You're not gonna mess around here, it's been six weeks.
"'m gonna fuck you first and that'll last about thirty seconds, and then you can do me," you say, grinning because it's gonna be spectacular.
Bobby shivers, buries his face in your throat and you can feel him breathing raggedly for a few seconds, gnawing soft and kinda frantic over your collarbone. You rock your hips up experimentally and sure enough, quick-draw over there is already half-hard. You fold your hands around his hips, tug until he gets the idea and shifts to straddle your body, his fists dug into the mattress to either side of your head.
"Like this, I think," you whisper. You're staring up at him like he's due to vanish at midnight, like you'll never get another chance, and he's staring right back.
It is the best sex of your life by about a mile. You last slightly longer than thirty seconds with Bobby on top, but that's only because he sets this absurd glacial pace, sinking down with his eyes half-lidded and black and locked on you, your hands clutching his hips and his hands wrapped around your wrists. He tests every centimeter, every angle, moving so slow and killing you, destroying you, and it's nothing but the shape of his mouth silently forming your name as his eyes slip closed that finishes it for you.
He wastes no time getting his own back, rolling you onto your stomach and giving you a pillow to bite on before promptly fucking you through the mattress. Bobby has his face buried between your shoulder blades and you can feel him swallow his moans, bite down on his groan with his mouth to your spine. Just before you come for the second time, you catch yourself wondering what the fuck you've been doing with your life that's not this.
Once you have Bobby and baseball in the same place again, the days begin to fly. The dash to the post-season is one of those things that seems insanely overexposed while it's happening, everything so brightly outlined, but then when it's over it smears like wet ink, weeks tangling up together. You play baseball and you have a lot of sex with Bobby and you don't care anymore about the passage of time.
The A's get knocked out in the first round, same as the last three years running, and afterwards everyone looks literally whipped, lashed and flayed until their backs are bent and their faces damp with tears. Miguel Tejada is taking the whole thing very poorly, and Bobby's uncomfortable with his hand on Miggy's back and his palpable awareness that he's the reason the team is letting Tejada walk as a free agent. Everybody says goodbye, slowly packing up their lockers, and you think about how things will look different next year, once you and Bobby are both here to stay.
You're splitting up for the first few weeks of the off-season, you heading north and him south, but before you go he takes you car shopping.
Bobby sold the truck that he'd had since college back in Sacramento, once they told him he would be getting on the bus to Oakland with the other chosen ones. He intends to spend a sizable chunk of his signing bonus on something big and black and shiny, show up in Phoenix next year a baller in all senses of the word.
You go out to the fancy auto row in Walnut Creek and spend an afternoon wandering long aisles of sun-struck luxury cars, silver jaguars leaping forward everywhere you look. Bobby could not be more excited, chattering away with the salespeople and stroking his hand across butter-soft leather interiors. He hangs on to your belt listening to the spiel of available accessories and financing options, and he doesn't realize he's doing it, which thrills you, makes you color but the Indian summer is stretching on and you can blame it on the heat.
Bobby tells you about his dad's cars for probably the sixtieth time, the keepsakes of Ed Crosby's own major league career. Though the family lived very sensibly and middle-class for the most part, there they were in the driveway like tangible dreams, cherry-red Mustang convertible, classic F-100 pick-up, perfectly restored vintage Impala. Bobby knows those cars like he knows baseball, encyclopedically.
This car will be the first of his eventual collection, and he goes for functionality first, gets an Escalade so big you can both lie down in the back without even having to shift the seat. You could move into this car, and you kind of want to, watching Bobby grin and pet the seats, rub his thumb on the shiny dials of the stereo. You can see fifty years of Sundays ahead of you, pelting sponges at Bobby and catching him up against the blinding gleam of American metal.
Things slow down once Bobby drives away down I-5 and you go back to Canada alone.
It's jarring, back in your little hometown without any of the touchstones you've learned to depend on so heavily, even the ones you hadn't consciously noticed; you miss the everyday sunlight, the sweeping blue sky.
Your parents can't miss you moping around, and you don't bother to mince words, informing them that you've fallen for a teammate and you don't do well when he's not around. They look worried, fair enough considering the perils and pitfalls inherent to playing baseball for a living, but express cautious optimism because you have always landed on your feet. You agree that you really are quite well-adjusted, and thank them for that, and then you all go for pizza.
It makes things simpler when you talk Bobby into coming up to see you after Thanksgiving. He doesn't take much convincing, decides to drive it to see how his new car handles over a long haul, but you don't care how he wants to pretty it up; you know what it's like to make that drive when there's someone waiting at the other end.
Bobby gets in late, keeping you on the phone for the last forty minutes so he doesn't fall asleep at the wheel. You're sitting on the front steps when he pulls in, heavy coat over your thin T-shirt and Bobby crashes down into you from out of his fucking huge car. You catch him in your arms, laughing, wishing people could see the two of you together because it's really kinda remarkable.
You take him inside, take him upstairs where your parents are in bed watching a rerun of Law & Order. You present Bobby in the doorway, tossing your arm around his shoulders and brandishing a gleeful smile.
"This is Bobby who I told you about, he made excellent time."
Your parents smile and nod approvingly, introduce themselves by their first names even though you know Bobby will call them sir and ma'am for at least the first five years. They ask Bobby about the drive and how he likes the team and how long he's known you, and Bobby's tense under your arm but his voice holds even.
"'kay, family time's over," you announce eventually, pulling Bobby closer. "Good night, love you people, c'mon Bobby."
Bobby waits until you're in your room and your hands are under his shirt before asking, "What'd you tell them about me?"
You're distracted, licking his throat. "The truth."
"That, that being?"
His voice catches, gives, and you lift your head, some of the fog of arousal clearing off. Bobby's head is tipped back, his lower lip pulled between his teeth. You cup a hand around the nape of his neck, tug him to look at you. His gaze flicks and tries to dance away but you nip at his mouth and he sucks in a sharp breath. His eyes stick on you again, big and dark and scared.
"You know what you are to me, man," you say. There's a lump in your throat, something seeping cold as quicksilver in your stomach. "Just waiting for you to figure it out too."
His mouth goes thin and for a second you're wildly afraid, but then he's walking you backwards and laying you on the bed, one hand on your face and the other wide across your stomach.
"I've figured it out, Richie," he says, sandpaper in his whisper. "Every time you go away I miss you so fucking bad."
He kisses you then and it's a good thing, you might have laughed out loud otherwise and he probably wouldn't have understood why. Instead you get to kiss him, rasp your hands over his buzzed hair and suck on his tongue, and no matter how often this happens you will never get used to it, never get over it.
You stop bringing up the future unless it relates to baseball. You believe the things that he's told you; you sleep side by side in your kid's bed with the hockey player sheets, and now when he moves, you move.
You're four days behind when he goes home for Christmas. You stay just long enough to open presents in the morning with your family, and then you hop the first plane, no time for the romance of the coastal highway when it's been four days since you've seen him.
He lives in a place a couple blocks away from the ocean this year, and you move back in with him for the rest of the winter. The time goes very quickly, all coffeeshops and sand in your shoes and flash-quick afternoons wandering the boardwalk, because you are just stupid in love with him and he's always around.
You have to report to Phoenix on Valentine's Day, two weeks earlier than he does, and when you start packing up your stuff, he starts packing up his, like it wasn't even a question. You could almost fly, you're so goddamn happy.
You'll both need a car out there, so you drive out following his shiny black Cadillac, stopping to exchange handjobs in a gas station bathroom somewhere near Joshua Tree, drag-racing down the empty two-lane stretches of I-10. There's a condominium complex that puts up ballplayers for spring training, and you manage to snag the choice room at the end of the hall, with a blue view of the pool and the desert stretching out all around. Bobby stands at the window looking out, and you watch him from across the room for a minute, his fine wide shoulders blocking the light and his big hands pressed to the glass.
A few days later you have worked the stiffness and rust of the off-season out of your arm, and pitching doesn't hurt anymore. Your shoulder feels fuzzy and pleasantly swollen, every pitch you'll throw this year carving out a residence. The pitchers and catchers talk shit about the rest of the team, saying how much more peaceful and quiet it is without those loud motherfuckers, but you know they feel like you do, only a shadow of yourself without an infield to back you up.
Then Mark Mulder asks if you want to get in on the house he's gonna rent in the East Bay for the season, and you say yes without putting too much thought into it. Mulder says awesome and wanders away to pester Zito, and you scratch at the back of your head, kinda discombobulated. You're usually better about thinking before you speak.
Back at the condo that night you're slumped against Bobby on the couch, his feet propped up on the coffee table and his arm over you in that easy way that has become utterly routine. You poke at his hip, distant and preoccupied.
"Hey Bobby," you say, and he goes, "Hm?" absently lifting his hand to card briefly through your hair. You swallow, smile. "Mulder's getting a house again, he wanted to know if I was interested."
Bobby makes another humming sound, most of his attention on South Park. You continue, "So are we interested?"
Bobby shrugs, "Yeah, that's cool."
He's not thinking it through, maybe a bad habit the both of you are developing. You wait a minute, then say:
"We'll have to tell him."
That wakes Bobby up, and he gives you a bitch-crazy look that makes you cringe on the inside. You shove your shoulder harder into him, and explain how you wouldn't make it two weeks without getting caught with your hands down each other's pants. It's a miracle you made it through the end of the season last year, but everyone was pretty diverted by the pennant race, so. You tell him all this stuff, all these totally valid reasons, and you feel his arm become tense as a strut as he argues and refuses, a brick-colored flush climbing his face.
He's getting too worked up and you're getting that sick hateful insecure feeling coiling through your stomach again, so you leave it alone. You go get Chinese food menus to distract him, shooting him narrow little glares when he's not looking. You consider withholding sex until he gets the fuck over himself, but that's hardly a viable option for you once he takes off his shirt.
Things are kinda strained for the few weeks. You're irritated with him and trying to keep it from being patently obvious. You keep reminding yourself over and over again, Bobby's not like you, he's not just gay no matter what.
Spring training is well underway and you have teammates to substitute in when Bobby's in a mood. You pal around with Eric Chavez and Mark Ellis and Barry Zito and Mark Mulder, suddenly and starkly at the heart of the team as you invent new card games on the clubhouse floor and hang around in parking lots with the car doors open and the radios blasting. They take you out drinking and you don't tell Bobby you're going, catching a backwards glimpse of him turning down his collar as he watches you leave the stadium. He's scowling, bad visions gouged across his face.
You decide that you are going to get bombed out of your fucking head tonight. The boys are fully on board with this plan, passing you shot after glimmering shot, waving down the girl with the tray of rainbow-colored jello shooters. Your tongue turns bright blue.
A good night all around, and then Mulder comes back to the booth with two girls, some of those lovely interchangeable Phoenix girls with their tans and high-lighted hair. You're all drinking and talking for awhile, Mulder kicking you under the table and you kicking back wondering what the hell his deal is. Mulder's got his arm around one of the girls and you're trying not to think about Bobby. It takes you probably too long to realize that Mark brought the second girl over so you'd have someone to put your arm around too, and as soon as that obvious fact dawns on you, you burst into laughter.
The girls laugh along, confused, and Mulder's got a huge grin on his face but he's stomping on your foot under the table, trying to get you to chill the fuck out. You shake your head, hand over your eyes, unwieldy pressure growing in your chest as you attempt to stop howling with laughter.
You don't know what excuse Mulder makes to get the both of you hauled out of the booth, but anyway, he's herding you over to the wall, his expression exasperated and annoyed even though he's still wearing a smirk. That's just Mulder's default.
"How fuckin' drunk are you?" Mulder demands. "I told Meg you were cool, you're making me look terrible right here."
You let your head fall back on the wall, catching your breath and you're a little bit less hysterical now.
"Mark, you tool," you say. "Don't go setting girls up with gay boys, it's mean."
His eyes go comically wide, and his mouth fishes a couple times before he manages, "You're-"
"Like a three dollar bill, baby. Welcome to the party." You punch his arm, happy to see him just bat you away like usual, no weird flinch or anything.
"Jesus!" Mulder actually wrings his hands, which makes you snicker. "You gotta tell me these things."
"Yeah, that just happened. You all right?" You feel like it's only polite to ask. Mulder shoots you a look, half a sneer.
"Duh. It's just helpful information to have before you go looking for someone to blow your buddy."
You laugh, a normal sound this time, not that mad cackle from before. You almost tell him that there's no need, you get all you can handle at home, but you bite that quickly back because Mulder knows how much time you spend with Bobby and you're certainly not gonna go telling his secrets like they're your own.
Instead you just smack him affectionately upside the head and go back to the table, where you promptly launch a discussion of cute guys on network TV, which Meg and her friend appreciate after the initial surprise, oh of course dawning across their faces. Mulder rolls his eyes, kicks you a few more times under the table just because you're getting all kinds of love from the girls now.
You make sure Mulder knows not to run his mouth as you stand in the street hailing a cab at the end of the night, and he gives you that short-bus look again, says, "I can keep a fucking secret, don't listen to what Hudson says," and you want the story behind that but you also want to get home.
Bobby's still awake, laid full-out on the couch in front of the television, and you crawl on top of him, unsteady with dangerous elbows and knees until he huffs and yanks you down, chinning the top of your head and holding the back of your neck to keep you from squirming.
You exhale against his neck. You tell him, "Mulder knows I'm gay now."
Bobby barely twitches. "What, did you make a pass at him?" he asks without anything showing in his voice, but you're pretty sure it's just a joke.
"Nah. Just told him." You shift your hips over his, settle in more securely. Your hand's over his heart and it seems to be racing slightly.
"Did you," Bobby starts, and then hesitates, his chest hitching. "Was that to, to get back at me?"
"What?" You shove up, try to catch his eyes but he's staring resolutely at the television. You grab his chin and pull his face around and he glowers at you, simmering and faint behind the muted blue of his eyes. "It wasn't about you."
Bobby's lip snarls, not believing that, and he tries to jerk away but you won't let him go, saying sharp, "Listen, you son of a bitch. I haven't gotten to tell anybody in years because I never get to know anybody well enough to trust before I'm off to some new team, and because you distract me a lot of the time anyway. I never intended to keep it a secret from my friends, 'cause I don't make friends with people who'd fucking care. But I know these guys now, I'm gonna be living with them with or without you and I'm not gonna do it lying, so yeah. Yeah I told him."
He pushes you into the back of the couch and gets his legs out, standing quick and running his hands over his hair. His face is all knotted and freaked out, eyebrows up in broken lines.
"Fuck, Richie," he says on a hiss. "You think he's not gonna figure out about me now too, whether or not I live with you guys?"
"I know he will, that's why we should just tell them." Bobby's face flashes pure panic for a second, and you hold up your hands. "Not all of them, calm down. The ones we live with, whoever else we spend enough time with outside the ballpark, our friends, that's all."
Bobby's shaking his head, his lips pressed thin. His eyes are darting rabbit-like, scanning for exits, and you get off the couch, go over to take his shoulders in your hands. He's tense, on the verge of flight, but he doesn't shrug you off.
"What the hell are you so worried about?" you ask him. He gives you a look of undiluted disbelief.
"If we get caught, that's all history will remember about us, that's it," Bobby says. "You really wanna go down like that?"
You smile, shake your head because you can't believe he hasn't gotten it yet.
"I couldn't give a fuck about history. Right now is everything I want, can you just understand that already?"
He looks at you for a long moment. searching for something in your face and you don't know what, you don't know how to show it although you're sure it's there, whatever it is; anything Bobby needs you to be, you can be.
After awhile his hands creep up and hitch in your belt and you take that as it's meant, pull him into a kiss. Starts fast and hard because that's how it always starts, but then Bobby gets a hand around the back of your head and slows it down, brings you down to the floor so carefully you feel made of glass. He means something by that, and you try to decipher it but everything is going endless and hot and he's over you and you can't keep your head together.
continues without interruption