and to conclude

[candle_beck]

the how-to series starts over here

Part Five: The Long Way Home, or How To Make It Right Again
By Candle Beck

Mulder didn’t know what he was doing there.

Five minutes before midnight and he was standing outside Anthony Pearl’s apartment, staring at the little metal plate that read 5G, positioned just above the door’s peephole. It was a simple, unremarkable wooden door, that dull Indian clay gray-brown color of a million other apartment doors in the city. Nothing particularly fascinating about it, nothing that made it stick out.

And yet Mulder had been standing in front of it for going on ten minutes, his gaze fixed intently, like he was trying to bore a hole in the wood with his eyes.

Fuck, knock already!

Before he could talk himself out of it, Mulder raised his hand and rapped his knuckles twice, wincing as he did so, already regretting it.

He heard the muffled sounds of movement from within the apartment, the scrape of a chair being pushed back, the padded thumps of feet approaching on carpet, and for a split second Mulder almost ran away, his whole body taut with the urge to flee, but then there were the shadows of two legs under the door, and he could hear the startled sound of Pearl recognizing him through the peephole, the other man’s voice saying, “Jesus Christ,” then the quiet curse as Pearl realized that he’d given away his position, he had no chance to sneak back away from the door and pretend not to be home.

There was a long, tense moment, Mulder standing out in the hallway with his hands bracketing his hips, staring directly back at the tiny piece of warped glass. The shadows of Pearl’s legs didn’t move from beneath the door, but neither did the door open.

Mulder got impatient, saying loudly, “Let me in, Pearl.”

The shadows twitched, like Pearl had jumped, and then the reporter’s voice came through the door clearly, “No way.”

Mulder hiked his eyebrows up, feeling frustration start to gather like black storm clouds around him. “Pearl-” he began, his voice going low and menacing, near to a growl, leaning forward towards the door.

Pearl made a choked laughing sound, cutting him off. “No, are you . . . are you kidding me? No way!”

Placing his hand up on the door, pressing his palm and fingers flat against the wood, Mulder wished that he could see through the peephole. It wasn’t fair that one side got to see the other while one of them was locked out, he thought, irritated, his temper gone past short to basically nonexistent.

“I’m not gonna hurt you, man,” he claimed, though he wasn’t entirely sure if that was true or not. When you end up at certain places in the middle of the night without knowing why, you can’t really rule out anything that might happen.

Mulder could almost see Pearl balancing on the balls of his feet, his hands braced against the doorjamb, peering through the glass, all his attention zeroed down to that little hole-punch of a view. “You’re going to hit me, your fist is going to make contact with my head at a high velocity, how exactly is that not going to hurt me?”

Mulder rolled his eyes, feeling something thick and red press up against his brain, and he replied, meaner than he intended, “I’m not gonna hit you, Pearl, for Christ’s sake! Let me in!”

There was a moment of consideration, static crackling on the cheap hallway carpet, then Pearl asked suspiciously, “You swear you’re not gonna hit me?”

Tired of this, a headache beating hard in his skull, possibly the same headache he’d had for the past three weeks, possibly a brand-new one, Mulder snapped, “Yeah, I fucking swear. Open the goddamned door.”

He heard the clinking of the chain being drawn off, the snap-back of the dead bolt as Pearl muttered to himself, “Yeah, because you don’t sound very mad, you sound perfectly calm.”

The door opened, and Mulder was face-to-face with Anthony Pearl for the first time. The reporter was younger than he had pictured in his mind, though he had known that Pearl was only a few years out of college, the man’s youth had been a Woodward and Bernstein-esque, wonder-kid sidebar to the whole story.

The whole fucking story.

Pearl looked even younger than he was, though, his face dusted with freckles like a paper boy, his brown hair trimmed short and yet somehow still mussed up, his eyes blue and wide, guileless, and Mulder thought that the man had better learn how to cultivate a better poker face, if he was gonna make journalism his life’s work.

Possibly adding to Pearl’s aura of boyishness was the fact that the man was stark terrified, clearly not yet over his fear that Mulder had come to beat him dead.

Mulder had spent three weeks embroiled in an intricate, all-encompassing hatred for this man, cursing him and feeling the harsh roll of his stomach whenever he heard Pearl’s name, and he hadn’t expected his despised nemesis to be so . . . well, so fucking young.

Mulder strode in, brushing Pearl aside with his shoulder, and took in the cluttered, tornadoed apartment as Pearl moved his eyes searchingly up and down the hallway as if looking for reinforcements, or witnesses, and then hesitantly closed the door behind him.

There were stacks of books on every available surface, canting to one side or the other, precariously fighting off the drag of gravity, chocked into the corners of the room, pushing out of an overstuffed bookshelf, books with broken spines left open on the coffee table, on the couch, on the floor, books with passages highlighted in glowing blue, or thinly circled by a black ballpoint, pages turned down or interrupted with a bookmark, sometimes not even a real bookmark, but a playing card, a baseball card, a grocery store receipt, an old subway ticket. There were books on baseball and sports reporting and investigative journalism and voodoo and the 1977 New York Yankees. Fiction books and almanacs and textbooks and technical manuals and books of statistics and poetry and essays and children’s books with pictures in them, a world of words, and where there weren’t books there were newspapers and magazines and print-outs of computer articles and yellow legal pads with the pages crowded with scrawled handwriting.

There was no television that Mulder could see, and he had the sneaking feeling that if he looked in the refrigerator, he would be met with a cold vacant cavity, maybe a few jars of condiments or some frozen dinners, no real food, the week’s meal budget having been spent on the latest best-seller, the latest landmark non-fiction tome, same as last week, and the week before, and the week before that.

“Jesus, Pearl,” he said, a bit stunned.

“What?” Pearl asked defensively, scanning the room and evidently seeing nothing at all strange with this orgy of language, this hemorrhage of literature.

Mulder shook his head, and Pearl eyed him guardedly, looking like he was about to bolt. Unsettled by Mulder’s silence, Pearl paced back and forth once, twice, restless, his hands going to his hips, then falling back to his sides, then crossing briefly over his chest. Finally, the reporter’s unease got the best of him, and he asked, “All right, what? Why’d you come over here, if it’s not to beat me up? ‘Cause, I mean . . . you’re *not* going to beat me up, right?”

Pearl’s hands were flighty as small birds, fluttering around him, not content to stay still. His anxiety was like a physical being in the room, jittery and making Mulder nervous.

“Calm down, Pearl, Jesus,” he implored, the pain in his head making everything bleary and overexposed.

Mulder had had a headache for days, weeks, ever since that morning in Billy Beane’s office, when everything that mattered had come to an end just as everything silly and insignificant had begun.

The press conference Beane had organized after the game that night had gone well, Zito lying like it was as natural to him as breathing, which was strange for Mulder, because he couldn’t recall ever having heard Zito lie about anything before that day. Zito had never had cause to lie, before that day.

But Zito had fooled the reporters, shooting them looks of exasperation and goodwill and camaraderie, making them laugh, every word he said ringing with the undercurrent of ‘Hey, come on, guys, you know me. Like I would ever lie to you.’

And they had believed him, because how could you not believe Zito, when he looked at you with those laughing eyes of his, when he winked and hooked a grin across his face, when he started talking with his hands, getting all animated and goofy, when he floored you with his humor and charm, his clean young heart, how could you not fall for it? How could you not fall for *him*?

Mulder had only been able to follow along meekly, feeling barely adequate next to Zito’s masterful performance, nodding where he was supposed to, agreeing with whatever came out of the other man’s mouth.

The press had swallowed it, hook, line and sinker, and the tumult around them slowly began to die down. Oh, sure, some of the guys were still skittish around them, jumpy like there were yappy dogs biting at their ankles, not looking Mulder in the eye, not slapping either of them as casually on the butt as they had done before, but most of their teammates and friends laughed it off, thought it was a helluva good joke to play on the reporters who lived for such a scandal.

All this should have made Mulder happy, should have made his life settle back down to where it had been, should have calmed his hectic mind and let him return his focus to playing ball, pitching his heart out every five days, chasing the pennant, the uncomplicated goals that he had always believed were everything he wanted.

It wasn’t so much working, though.

First off, there was the unrelenting, icicle-sharp grip of the headache that had become as much a part of him as his fingerprints. Every moment of every day, the pain traveled with him, beating, thick and awful, his constant companion. Aspirin had become his fifth food group, two chalky white pills every four hours like clockwork, not upping the dosage even when the medication failed to do anything but vaguely dull the pain, rub away the edges only slightly, because he knew he couldn’t afford to be groggy or out of it, not in the shuddering faded twilight of August, the cool dry leaves-turning start of September, not as the race for the division was picking up speed and beginning to tick down with urgency.

Secondly, there was the fact that he had stopped sleeping. Not altogether, of course . . . well, yes, actually, he had stopped sleeping altogether. Drifting off for snatched uncomfortable half-hours on planes and buses and even in the dugout, that really didn’t count, especially not when he was bolted out of his unsteady drowses by hellish fever dreams so vivid and intense he could still taste the sharp sour bite of adrenaline on his tongue after he woke up. Every night, his body pulsing with exhaustion, his head a flare of pain, his muscles quivering with the desperate need for rest, he would collapse into bed, and immediately his scathing eyes would flick open and his mind would start to whir and fling pictures and words at him, terrible crippling things, images of himself that made him press his clenched fists against his eyes until agonizing razor-wires of light ripped through his head, and he would lie there helpless, unable to quiet any part of himself, the night sinking away slow and thick as tar, until he dragged himself up in the milky cold light of dawn, so unimaginably tired he was almost weeping with it.

Third of all . . . well, third of all was Zito.

Zito.

Zito and his devastated eyes, Zito and his slack form, all the strength scraped out of him, Zito and his shaking hands, Zito and his beautiful face gone still and empty like a painting, Zito and the tremor in his voice that only Mulder could hear, Zito, pale with heavy insomniac bruises under his eyes, Zito who had somehow become a shadow, a phantom, not all there, someone less than real, like you could put your hand right through him, as if he was vapor, Zito in the blurry sideways slants of his vision, on the tip of his tongue, around the edges of his awareness, and Mulder was never sure who was being haunted and who was doing the haunting.

Third of all was what was going to be the end of him. It didn’t help at all for Mulder to know that he was the one who had set them both on this brutal, inhuman course, Mulder was the one who had forced them to this. The fact that Mulder had broken Zito’s heart didn’t mean that Mulder’s heart was in any fewer pieces.

For three weeks now, Mulder had done nothing but miss Zito. He kept half turning, expecting to find Zito right there beside him, and being met with only air. He kept reaching out in the night, and finding himself totally alone. Mulder didn’t know how to deal with this. He had always prided himself on being able to hold back from this kind of all-consuming emotion, he had structured his life so that nothing could hurt him this badly. Mulder couldn’t understand what was happening to him, but he knew that he was locked in too tight to breathe, that his wrecked nights and Zito’s broken heart, his torturous memories and Zito’s forgotten smile, his bewildered misery and Zito’s demolished faith in him, all of it made them inseparable, linked them together so that they shared blood and breath and sorrow, each of them lost in the other, spinning and falling and out of their minds as they tried to put their lives back together, and discovered that there are some wounds that refuse to heal.

Even the game could bring him no solace, which was probably the worst part about it. Whenever Mulder had nowhere else to turn, he had always turned to the game, and now he couldn’t even do that, he couldn’t use baseball to escape from the vicious things that clawed away inside him, the field was no home to him, the game came to nothing now. Mulder would be standing on the mound, leaned forward to peer in at the catcher’s signs, his arm dangling loose, the ball sweeping slowly like a pendulum, his shoulder warm, the muscles buzzing, the way it got when he was throwing hard and well, and then suddenly, in between deciding whether to pitch a slider or a brush-back, a singular picture would burst into his mind, like a flashbulb exploding, taking over every one of his senses, and he would see Zito doused by the spring-training sunlight, half the Arizona desert in his hair and crinkling in the corners of his eyes, or he would feel Zito’s mouth pressed hard and hot on his neck, his shoulder, low on his stomach, teeth scraping, third-degree burning him, branding him, or he would smell the salt of Zito’s skin, taste the man’s sweat on his tongue, or he would hear Zito’s voice telling him not to worry, because everything was going to be okay. Everything was going to be okay.

Mulder still came to the ballpark every day, still got paid to do it, and this was all he had ever wanted to do, but at some point pitching had become just another job, and the game had become what he did, not who he was.

Fuck the Mariners and their half-game lead. Fuck the pennant. Fuck baseball.

All Mulder wanted was Zito.

And that completely fucking petrified him.

Now here he was in Anthony Pearl’s apartment, which he’d found himself standing in front of after wandering the city for hours, trying to tire himself out enough so that he could maybe get some sleep, all the streets looking the same, actively trying to get lost, bitterly resentful when he recognized a certain park or harbor, hating the old steady beat of the current in the bay, the Bay Bridge with its impossible steel height crowding out the crystallized night sky.

Eventually Mulder had been standing before a building that looked deja-vu familiar, though he was pretty sure he had never been there before. He had checked the address and was shocked to recognize it from the time when he had, on a whim, looked up Anthony Pearl’s name in the phone book, never expecting the reporter to be actually listed, but there he was, between Andrew Pearl and Aurora Pearl, the latter of which was the kind of name that you would only find in San Francisco, home to forty years worth of misplaced flower children.

Not even thinking about what he was going to say, Mulder had slipped into the apartment building behind another tenant who was awkwardly shuffling her grocery bags, her dog’s leash, and her door key, and then Mulder had stood for ten minutes in Pearl’s hallway before summoning the courage (courage? How could he be afraid of a guy like Pearl?) to knock.

And Pearl wanted to know what he was doing there, which was a fair question. Mulder couldn’t exactly tell him that the end of Mulder’s life had coincided exactly with the moment a month ago when Pearl had approached Zito in that bar, and even if he could, what was he expecting Pearl to do about it?

Mulder looked at Pearl, standing there all unnerved and scared, and asked quietly, “Why’d you do it?”

Pearl blinked, his eyes flashing with different possible interpretations, then said, baffled, “Excuse me?”

All the muscles in Mulder’s body went shivery, his legs failing him, and he let himself collapse onto the sofa, surrounded by the rubbed-soft pages of books, that yellowing old-manuscript smell of libraries. The yielding plaid cushions felt excruciatingly good sinking down under his worn-out body.

He sighed, deep and fierce, and tilted forward, propping his elbows on his knees and taking his throbbing head into his hands. He spoke staring down at the floor, his eyes tracking along the sinewy patterns in the carpet, “Why’d you write that fucking story? You got some grudge against us? Did I make fun of your mom or something? Did Zito kill your pet hamster? Why would you want to do this to us, I’ve never even fucking *met* you before.”

Pearl’s voice came to him, loose and disembodied, “It . . . it was news, man. I was given a gift, a . . . a gift from God, a blockbuster story that no one else had. How am I supposed to ignore that?”

Mulder raised his head, skewering Pearl with his anger and his despair. He saw Pearl take in a surprised breath, and knew that he must look utterly obliterated. “Well, congratulations. Now you’re a fucking celebrity, and never mind that you’ve ruined two lives on your way to the top.”

Pearl laughed in disbelief, rolling his eyes, saying with sarcasm coating his voice, “Oh yeah, I’m a real big celebrity, I’m famous.” He shook his head. “Jesus, Mulder, where have you been? Since that press conference the two of you gave, I’ve been persona non grata in the world of sports journalism.”

Pearl came over to sit in the armchair next to the sofa, moving a stack of Sports Illustrateds out of his way. “My editor has got me covering minor league ball in Fresno and Mayor Willie Brown’s official statement that Willie Mays was a pretty good guy, in case we didn’t know that before. Everybody in the country knows me as the reporter who was dumb enough to fall for a joke and publish my gullibility in the paper. Every other reporter’s pissed off at me because they bought into my story, and now we all look stupid. Everyone thinks I was duped by a drunk ballplayer, so how about you knock off being mad at me for all the great benefits I’ve reaped from this ridiculous farce?”

Mulder, speaking by rote, like he was reading a script, replied, “You *are* the one who got duped, though, you’re the one who fell for it, seems like everybody’s got it pretty right.”

“No, they don’t.”

Mulder looked up at Pearl’s clear, untainted words, and found the reporter studying him with close appraisal, his expression disconcertingly resolute for someone so young. “What do you mean?” Mulder asked.

Pearl tilted forward, never letting his eyes leave the other man’s. “Every word Zito told me in the bar that night was true. And you know that as well as I do.”

Mulder’s mouth fell open, and his mind stuttered, stumbling over various automatic denials, unable to make any of the responses stick in his brain for longer than a fraction of a second, feeling like there were pieces he was missing, there was some way to explain this, talk his way out of it, but he had no idea what it was.

Pearl continued, taking Mulder’s shock in stride. “Nobody else was there that night, and nobody believes me, and I’ve stopped pushing it, because I was starting to sound like a nut conspiracy theorist, but I was there. I know what happened. Zito was telling me the truth. He wasn’t messing with me, he wasn’t joking.”

Pearl raised his hand, making little finger taps on the air to add weight to his words. “I’m a reporter, man. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to be. The entire basis of my job, my life, is separating truth from fiction. Do you really think I’d write that story if I wasn’t one-hundred percent certain, absolutely and no-doubt convinced, that it was true? Do you really think I can’t recognize when someone is so in love it’s coming out their eyes like a spill of light?”

Pearl let loose a rush of air, leaned back in the chair, as if the effort of the words had taken more out of him than he had expected. Mulder was staring, flabbergasted. Pearl was nothing like what he expected, straightforward and honest where Mulder had thought he’d be shifty and dissembling, young and still enamored of the truth where Mulder had thought he’d be jaded and cynical. Somehow Mulder knew he could trust this man, and that was the last thing he had ever expected to think when he confronted the reporter.

“Pearl, are we . . . is this off the record?” Mulder asked cautiously, something like a confession welling up within him.

Something flitted past in Pearl’s eyes, a zip of kicked-up attention, but his face remained impassive. “Yeah. Of course. We’re just sitting here talking.”

Mulder eyed him. “You’ll excuse me if I have a little trouble believing you right off the bat. Off the record, totally and completely, no chance of any of this ending up on the front page tomorrow?”

Pearl nodded, affirming, “No chance.”

Mulder rambled on, though he already believed Pearl. Mulder knew he was just trying to forestall what would come next, trying to hold back this immense thing that was moving inside of him. “’Cause if you report anything that’s said tonight, any single word of it, you tell anybody I was here, I’ll come back, and I *will* hit you then, man, I’ll beat you into next week, and it doesn’t really feel like we’re off the record, so-”

Pearl cut him off, saying exasperated, “I don’t flip a switch or anything, Mulder, we’re off the damn record! Say what you’ve got to say.”

Mulder took a long moment, staring down at his hands, thinking about Zito’s hands, moving over his body, calluses on the tips of his fingers, roughened skin to remind him of the trembling power of his guitar strings, the gentle stretching shadows of his fingers slipping over Mulder’s ribs, tapping out Morse code on his chest, working out the password to his heart.

Mulder felt something crooked wrench violently inside him, like he was being thrown out of his orbit, and suddenly he was bent forward, covering his face up, every part of him breaking into shards, and he said, his voice crippled and falling like a moan, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, and I can’t get past it, I can’t get over him. He never looks at me anymore, he never smiles. I don’t care about anything else, and I can’t sleep, and the only thing I want is him.”

Mulder half-sobbed, though his eyes were dry, tremors snaking through his body, his palms pressed to his eyes, and he was so tired, he was so fucking tired. “I can’t do anything without him. He’s everything, and I lost him. I fucking lost him, and now I don’t know how to get him back, and I’m so scared. I’m so fucking scared.”

There were the soft fabric sounds of Pearl rising from the armchair and coming to sit next to Mulder on the couch, and when the reporter carefully placed a hand on Mulder’s shoulder, the pitcher jerked away, terrified to feel someone else’s comforting touch on his wicked body. Pearl wouldn’t let him go, though, closing his hand firmly on the other man’s shoulder, grounding him, holding him in place.

“Hey,” Pearl said, his voice low and stunned. “It’s okay, man. You’re all right, it’s okay.”

Mulder tore his hands away from his face and cried, caught between fury and despair, “It’s *not* okay, it’ll never be okay again! Can’t you . . . can’t you see what’s happening? He hates me, and he should, that’s the way it should be, that’s the way I made it, so it’s never gonna be okay. I’m . . . I’m not all right, I’m a fucking mess.”

Mulder was ripped open, he was falling apart.

Pearl kept his hand strong and motionless on Mulder’s shoulder, and eventually the pitcher raised his shattered eyes to the reporter, saw Pearl looking overwhelmed, his blue eyes huge, his boyish face blinking at Mulder like the pitcher was some kind of alien life form that he had never seen before.

“Mulder, you’ve . . . you’ve got to tell him, man.”

That was almost funny, and Mulder rasped out a disbelieving laugh. “What, so I can see him slam the door in my face? I’m not really thinking that’s gonna solve anything, Pearl.”

Pearl looked at him, his gaze going steady, and said without the slightest tinge to his voice, “You’re an idiot.”

The balls on this guy . . .

Mulder stared at him incredulously, his eyes glinting, unable to believe that Pearl had really just said that. “Well, thanks a lot, man, I’m really fucking glad I unburdened my soul to you,” he snapped harshly.

Pearl didn’t get angry, didn’t lash back, just pinned Mulder with those damning eyes of his, saying, “It’s true. If you think Zito wouldn’t take you back, if you really think he wouldn’t give his left arm for the chance to be with you again, then you’re so stupid, there aren’t even words to describe the depths of your idiocy.”

Mulder fell back against the couch, dislodging Pearl’s hand, and put his own hand to his temple, where his pulse beat so heavy and hard he expected to feel blood on his fingertips. He spoke with his eyes covered, shut tight, blocking everything out.

“I broke his heart. I destroyed him. I made him take this incredible thing, this thing he believed in like the Pope believes in God, I made him take the best part of both of us and tell the whole world it was a lie. He’s so good, Pearl, he’s so honest and right. He’s so much better than I am, and I made him sacrifice himself to save me. To save my worthless life, my fucking ego.”

Taking his hand away, Mulder let himself look at Pearl, and his voice was drained as he said, “Why would he ever want me back? What could I ever do but hurt him again?”

His too-young eyes moving with wisdom far beyond his years, Pearl responded, “Listen, man, I don’t know everything about the two of you, I don’t know much more than what Zito told me that night and what you’ve told me here. But I know I’ve never seen anybody more in love with another person than Zito is with you. You . . . you should have heard him, Mulder, you’re his whole world.”

Pearl sighed, ran a hand through his hair, leaving bits of it tufting up on his head. “When I was trying to decide if I should do the story, if it would be ethically right to publish someone’s private life like that, I ended up thinking about how Zito was so sure of you, so certain that you’d eventually figure out that you needed him and then he’d take you back. And I thought that there was nothing I could do that could change that, it was out of my power to break the two of you apart. I didn’t think it mattered if you guys were in love in secret or in the open, because you were *so* in love, you could get through anything.

“When Zito denied the story, I thought maybe I was wrong, and it’s honestly not been the best couple of weeks for me, thinking I was responsible for that, but . . . Jesus, Mulder, look at yourself. You’ve come here in the middle of the night and told me all this stuff, told a *reporter* all this stuff, and not just any reporter, but the one reporter in the world that you actually have the least cause to trust, you’ve said all this to me, and yet you don’t think Zito’s something real enough to fight for? He is, man. He’s waiting for you. I’ve spent all of an hour with him drunk in a bar, and I can still tell you that he’d wait the rest of his life for you, you’ve got every piece of his heart.”

The words hit Mulder deep, resonating, but he couldn’t shake the memory of the look on Zito’s face for the past three weeks, that irreparably damaged abyss in his eyes. Mulder shook his head, unconsciously, trying to banish the image.

Pearl asked, a wedge of light from the kitchen backlighting him, making a little scrim glow around his head, “Mulder, what are you afraid of?”

Mulder lifted his head, his eyes dark with anguish, and said roughly, “Everything. Everything. I’m afraid of what I’ve become, this . . . this terrible thing I’ve done. I’m afraid of what I’ll destroy next.”

Pearl shook his head, his brow furrowing. “You’ve already broken his heart. You’ve already broken your own. The worst has already happened. You try to get him back and he says no, then you’ll still be in the same place, but at least you’ll have tried. So, what are you afraid of?”

Feeling like the ache in his head had spread to his bones, his heart, his whole being, Mulder replied, his voice cracking, “I don’t know.”

His eyes shifting like clouds across the sky, painted with reasons and argument, Pearl asked, “Are you afraid you’ll lose baseball? You think you’ll get kicked off the team? Have more respect for the game than that, man. You lied to Billy Beane, so you might have to deal with his right hook, but he’s the best GM in the business, and he’s not going to let two twenty game winners go because of something like this.”

Mulder nodded, staring down at the carpet, accepting the logic of it. “I know.”

Pearl remained curious, softly interested, trying to work this out, like it was a puzzle the solution to which was right under his nose, if he could just stumble upon the clues. “So what is it? People look at you different, talk about you different? Are you scared of that?”

Mulder hated the black feeling of agreement in him, the shabby ashamed part of himself that cared about such things. “Yeah. Maybe. It’s just . . . it’s hard to admit that you’re not the man you always thought you were. The man everyone thought you were.”

“Is that the man you want to be, Mulder?”

Mulder looked up, catching a strand of light that speared across his face like honesty, and his eyes were burning. “I want to be a better man. I want to be the kind of man who doesn’t hurt him the way I have.”

The myriad expressions twisting on Pearl’s face, sympathy and compassion and consideration and doubt and speculation, cleared slowly, like the fog sinking away from the bay, and he said, his voice undiluted, steady, “Then go ahead. You know what you want, so go get it.”

Did that make sense? Could it really be that simple? After all this time being alone and confused and frozen with fear, all this time being lost and so far from home, Mulder felt something shift in his chest, and a low, certain voice in his mind told him that it doesn’t always have to be so complicated. Sometimes the answer is right there in front of you, and it turns out to be the easiest thing in the world. Sometimes things just fall into place.

Mulder saw some bright glimmer on the horizon of his mind, and he thought that maybe that was hope. Maybe that was redemption.

Mulder looked at Pearl, the reporter looking back at him evenly with nothing but truth in his eyes, and Mulder was still in pain, still tired, still scared, but he felt like he could stand up now. Maybe he could do something about this.

As Mulder rose from the couch, some small trance was broken, both of them taking a brief moment to shake themselves free from the intense emotions of the past few minutes, and Mulder was embarrassed for a second as he realized how much of his heart and soul this virtual stranger had been witness to.

Pearl crooked a hesitant smile, and Mulder knew he didn’t have to worry, didn’t have to be ashamed of anything that had transpired here.

Casting a skeptical eye around the room, Mulder said, his voice wavering only slightly, “You’ve got too many books, Pearl.”

Pearl laughed at that, relief humming through him, and replied, “No such thing, man.”

Grinning, his features feeling stretched out of form, it had been so long since the expression had visited his face, Mulder offered his hand to the other man. “Yeah, you’re probably right. Hell, I’m only a couple of years removed from comic books, I’m definitely not one to talk.”

Pearl took his hand, and for a moment, the two men just looked at each other, linked and with so much between them, the air was thick and hard to breathe in.

“Thanks, Pearl,” Mulder said, his voice staggered with sincerity.

Pearl smiled at him, his eyes mild, the color of the sky on the first day of the playoffs. “You can call me ‘Earl’ if you want. Your better half seemed quite attached to the name.” They grinned at each other, and Mulder knew what Zito had meant by wanting to make it real, wanting to share their secret with another person.

Pearl let go of his hand, saying seriously, “Good luck, Mulder.”

Mulder nodded, his heart tangled up in his throat, and left before all his strength fled out of him.

* * *

Zito wasn’t home.

He wasn’t fucking home.

What the *hell* kind of evil fucking joke was this for God to pull?

Mulder stared disbelieving at the door to Zito’s apartment, unable to comprehend that, after everything, after the fucker of a night he’d had, everything he’d been through and come to terms with, somehow Zito wasn’t even there for him to make things right again.

Mulder paced back and forth across the little patch of carpet in front of the door, three steps one way, then three steps back, his frustration making him restless and predatory.

There was a fine sheen of sweat on Mulder’s body, slicking his hair, his arms and legs trembling hard, evidence of his all-out sprint from Pearl’s apartment to Zito’s, up the forty-five degree angle hills (and whose brilliant idea had it been to build a city on a series of roller-coasters, for Christ’s sake?), through the still silent parks, dashing through the puddles of gleaming yellow streetlight, running across streets against the signal, the screech of horns, the incoherent curses of the nighttime drivers, his shoes pounding on the concrete, the buildings shooting up like sheer slate-gray cliffs around him, catching sight of his blurred, frantic reflection in the dark store windows, all his years of baseball and his strong well-built athlete’s body finally being put to good use, as if the only reason he’d ever played the game, the only reason he’d ever kept in such good shape was for this crucial moment, the only reason for his power and speed and long legs was so that he could get to Zito as quickly as possible, so that he could race across a city in the deep crush of past-midnight, the ice-chip stars watching him dispassionately, the moon like a saint, so high above him.

And then Zito wasn’t even fucking home.

Mulder pounded on the door one last time, the heel of his fist aching from the abuse, for once not caring about neighbors or getting caught, for once not giving a damn what anyone else thought, calling out, “Zito! For fuck’s sake, man, open the door! It’s good news, I swear to God, I’m not gonna hurt you again! Never gonna hurt you again, dude, please open the door!”

He contemplated briefly on the trend his life seemed to be taking of him banging on doors and begging to be let in, and slapped his hand against the wood, the vibration of the impact burring in his fingers.

Nothing.

No sound trickling out, no strip of light flooding from under the door, not the slightest hint to suggest that Zito was home and just hiding from him.

“Fuck,” Mulder said, falling against the wall, leaning on his shoulder. “Fuckety fuck fuck.”

Heaving a huge, whooshing sigh, Mulder slowly levered himself up and then went down to sit on the front step and wait for Zito to come home.

Some things are too important to leave until tomorrow.

Mulder needed to do this now, he needed to get Zito back *tonight*, this night, this ebony black embrace of time. Mulder didn’t know how long he would be full of this crashing urgency, this radiant flare of purpose, he was desperately afraid that if he spent another night alone, lying awake and second-guessing everything, his masochistic mind would betray him, talk him out of it, and he would be right back where he started from. With nothing to show for any of it.

Zito’s front step was hard. “Fucking concrete,” Mulder muttered, scooting around, wrapping his arms around himself, trying to find a comfortable position. Giving it up as hopeless, he settled in as best he could, his eyes flicking back and forth down the street, wishing to see that familiar silhouette, Zito’s perfect form cutting through the night, wanting the streetlights to flash down on a shock of messy hair, spotlighting an unlined young face with eyes as bright as newborn stars and a sweet quirking grin. Maybe Zito would be wearing one of his crazy neon shirts, something with sequins or silver threads tracing Japanese patterns, maybe he would be glowing, visible from a block away through the shadows, maybe he would be just wearing his old green sweatshirt and jeans, and maybe he would be glowing anyway.

Mulder tilted his head against the cold stone column of the doorway, yawning, his jaw cracking. The force of the night began to settle on him, his three weeks of horribly uninterrupted consciousness catching up with him. His physical and emotional exhaustion made him heavy, his arms feeling like wet cement, his eyes smoldering, falling to half-mast.

Mulder let his eyes close for just a minute, just to soak some moisture into them, thinking about rain clattering on a slippery wooden dock, and strings of hotel beds, every one the same as the one that came before, and skyscrapers, and homemade confetti of scorecards and construction paper snowing down into his hair, and catches of breath, and hit-and-running, and strong musician’s fingers curling around his own on a scuffed baseball, showing him how to throw a curve that would break twelve to six and defy the laws of physics, and tousled summer grass, and Fenway Park, and Zito smiling, his face caught flush in the full July sun, and how he had been the most beautiful thing Mulder had ever seen.

“Mulder.”

And Zito’s voice, yeah, that was a good thing to think about too. Mulder smiled in his sleep, pulling his arms a little tighter around his body, wondering why it was so cold in his bedroom.

“Mulder.”

A hand on his arm, shaking him slightly, which was . . . nice, he supposed, but didn’t really fit in with all the rest of his disjointed, fragmented happy thoughts.

“Mulder, dude, wake up.”

Mulder started, jerked out of his lazy doze. He blinked, his mind smothered with the loose cotton of an abrupt return to awareness. His eyes cleared, and he saw Zito, standing over him, quickly taking his hand off Mulder’s arm and stepping back once he was sure the other man was fully awake.

Zito stared at him warily, a faint aura of fear and sorrow surrounding him, shadows drifting across his face from the doorway lights and the moon, making his eyes hooded and unreadable, the line of his jaw starkly defined, his disheveled hair falling at dramatic angles over his ears and across his forehead, the ends sun-tipped even in the dense night, and for some reason Mulder couldn’t speak.

Zito stuffed his hands into his pockets and looked away, gazing down the street, his profile traced solemnly in the dim light, and Mulder, who had visualized this moment perhaps a million times in the three weeks since he had last spoken to the other man, had never once pictured himself struck dumb, his mind suddenly gone blank, unable to do anything but stare at Zito, feeling like his eyes were swallowing up his whole face, big as half dollars.

“What are you doing here, man?” Zito asked, his voice stripped of any sort of emotion, and he still wasn’t looking at Mulder.

Mulder felt his mouth open, his lungs full and ready to push words out, but there was nothing inside him.

“I told you I needed some time. And, no, three weeks is not enough time. Come see me in three years, maybe,” Zito continued, the planes of his face tight, like if he let one part of himself relax, the rest would fall to pieces as well.

Mulder finally scraped something out of himself, asking, his voice thick from the half-sleep and all the reckless possibilities that were scrolling inside him, “Where were you?”

Zito shrugged, his loose windbreaker rustling with the movement, his eyes still scanning the dark street, the illuminated streetlights hovering weightlessly like planets, and answered dully, “Out. Walking around. I don’t know.”

Mulder blinked at the knowledge that Zito had been wandering the city too, and wondered if he had been doing that for the whole unbearable length of the three weeks, same as Mulder, and how close the two of them had come to turning a corner and running into each other at some cold lonesome four in the morning. He wondered what they would have said to each other, if they had. What they might have done to each other.

Zito lifted his arm and pulled his hand across his face, a grimace snagging his mouth, and Mulder knew Zito wouldn’t be able to stand being around him for much longer.

Desperate to keep the other man from leaving, Mulder spoke quickly, blurting out the first thing that came to his mind, “I went to see Anthony Pearl tonight.”

Zito’s head snapped around, forgetting that he didn’t want to look at Mulder, and the stunned look on his face would have been funny, under different circumstances. “You . . . you what?” he asked, his eyebrows arcing upwards, his eyes wide with disbelief. “Oh, Jesus, Mulder, you didn’t hit him, did you? Fuck, you can’t just go around beating up reporters, how is that gonna make anything better? He’s gonna file a police report, you’re gonna get arres-”

Mulder raised his hands to try and calm the other man down, breaking into his panicked rant, “No, I, I didn’t hit him, I didn’t-why does everyone think that my one goal in life is to kick the shit out of Anthony Pearl?”

Zito shrugged, slipping back into a defensive pose, remembering that he didn’t want to be having this conversation, he didn’t want to have anything to do with Mulder, sitting on his front step at three in the morning. “I dunno. Maybe ‘cause you’ve spent the past three weeks spitting whenever you hear his name.”

There was a moment of silence that stretched out long and keening between them, then Zito asked for the second time, his voice gone bleak again, “What are you doing here?”

Mulder wished Zito would come and sit with him on the step. He wanted to rise, go to the other man, but he didn’t trust his legs to hold him up. He spoke to Zito, his face tilted upwards like he was searching the sky for some evidence of heaven, some proof of God.

“Pearl, he . . . he said some things. He’s not such a bad guy. I guess . . . I guess I can see how you would have wanted to open up to him.”

Which was perhaps the understatement of the decade, because Mulder hadn’t just opened up to Pearl, he had basically dug his heart out of his chest and thrown it down on the reporter’s coffee table.

Zito’s eyes narrowed angrily, “So what, this is you forgiving me? Saying you understand how I could have been so stupid? Well, gee, Mulder, thanks a lot, but save it, okay? I don’t need to be absolved of anything by you, we’re done, remember?”

Mulder remembered.

He felt bruised inside of himself, his heart a battered untrustworthy thing, and he needed to make Zito understand why he’d come. “That’s . . . that’s not what I was saying. I . . . Pearl, he told me some stuff. He said maybe I haven’t . . . haven’t ruined everything. Maybe we’re not so far gone that I can’t make it right again.”

Looking at him, his tense shoulders falling slightly in surprise, an easy breeze fluttering through his hair and making brittle new-autumn leaves skip around his feet, Zito asked slowly, “What are you talking about?”

Zito was standing there in front of him, solid and real with a piece of duct tape holding together one of his sneakers, a rip in the shoulder of his light coat, revealing a little slash of the navy blue cotton shirt underneath, a hole big enough for two fingers in the knee of his jeans, a healing scrape on the heel of his hand, from Zito’s headfirst dive after a bunt pop-up in the game two days ago, Zito was standing there in front of him, looking sort of beat-up, sort of lost, looking worn down to the bone, Zito was standing there in front of him, lit up by the moon, and never before, not once in all his life, had Mulder been so sure of what he wanted.

The words were jamming into his head now, crashing against each other, caroming around like pool balls, and Mulder tried desperately to sort them out, put them in some comprehensible order, so that he wouldn’t just end up babbling things like ‘want’ and ‘need’ and ‘heart’ and ‘everything’ and ‘forgive me’.

“Zito, I’ve been . . . I’ve been such an asshole, and I’m so sorry, I can’t even begin to tell you how sorry I am. I was stupid and blind and scared, you were right, you know, you were right from the start. I was scared of you, and the way I felt, ‘cause I’d never felt anything like that before, it was this huge thing, it was so much bigger than I was, and I couldn’t understand it, and it fucking terrified me. But that wasn’t real fear, ‘cause then I lost you, I made you lie and I wrecked everything, and you wouldn’t look at me, and I couldn’t touch you, and I was all alone, and I knew real fear then, I’ve been so fucking scared for so fucking long, because I don’t know how to do anything without you, I don’t know how to *be* anything without you. And I don’t want to feel this way anymore. I just want you back, and I know I don’t deserve it, I know there’s no reason for you to take me back, but Pearl said you would, and he’s a pretty smart guy, so maybe you will, I don’t know. I just know that I can’t do this anymore, because you’re everything I’ve ever needed and I want you to be sure of me again.”

So much for not babbling.

Zito’s eyes through Mulder’s breathless ramble just kept getting bigger and bigger, until Mulder almost expected them to drop right out of their sockets, Zito’s hands coming out of his pockets in slow-motion, and by the end of it, Zito was stunned and motionless, as still as if he’d been carved out of stone

Mulder, his soul spilled out onto the street, his whole life hanging in the balance, wished with everything in him that Zito would say something, *anything*, and when Zito didn’t, the shock striking language from his tongue, Mulder rushed ahead, because if he just kept talking, at least Zito wouldn’t be able to tell him no.

“I know this probably doesn’t make much sense, after the way I’ve been, but you gotta understand, Zito, I’ve been fighting you tooth and nail for most of the season now, ever since this thing started between us. I didn’t want to feel this way about you, because I thought I had to be this certain guy, this ideal ballplayer, a real man, and there was nothing in the way I felt about you that matched the image I thought I had to live up to. These . . . these expectations of what I was supposed to be. Like, God forbid that anyone ever find out that the great Mark Mulder is sleeping with a man. God forbid that anyone ever find out that Mark Mulder is lost without this man. And you knew it months ago, ‘cause you’re so much smarter than I am, but it took me until tonight to realize that I don’t want to be someone else’s ideal. I don’t want to be someone else’s picture of a real man. I just want to be the man who gets to come home to you at the end of the day. And to hell with the game, if they can’t understand. You messed me up, Zito, you really did a job on me, because at some point baseball stopped being the only thing I cared about. Baseball means shit without you. I can hardly even believe I just said that, but it’s true. I could never throw another pitch in my life, but if I had you, I think I could still be happy. I think I could still be whole.”

Mulder drew in a shuddering breath, and remembered the most important thing, he remembered the one thing that he had forgotten to say. “And also I love you. I’m in love with you. I love you and all I am is the guy who loves you. And I didn’t know that, because I didn’t know anything, but I know that now, I know that like I know the sky is blue. I love you. So maybe you should say something now.”

Zito took a shuffling half-step forward, almost like he was hypnotized, one hand stretching forward dreamily, like he was offering to help Mulder stand, then Zito caught sight of the unconscious gesture and stopped dead, his hand falling quickly, softly colliding with his blue-jeaned leg, and Zito just stared rapt again, before he finally let out an astonished breath, and traveling on that breath was one word: “Mulder.”

Which was at least something.

Mulder, knowing he had dissolved into something senseless and pleading, cleared his throat, tried to settle his chaotic mind, and said hoarsely, his voice hitching, “Come sit down.”

There was a throbbing second of consideration, like the moment after the pitch but before the umpire’s call, when everyone in the stadium is holding their breath, waiting to see whether elation or crushing disappointment will flood them, and then Zito shifted forward, moving so slowly Mulder felt like he was watching him come frame-by-frame, until Zito sank down beside him on the step, never once taking his eyes from Mulder’s face.

They sat there together, six inches apart, not touching, and all they did for an eternity was look at each other, and Mulder thought that if all he was ever allowed to do was just sit here next to Zito, looking at him silently, then that would still be good enough.

When Zito finally spoke, it was barely a whisper, the words falling almost inaudibly onto the step between them, “You really fucked me up, you know that?”

Mulder nodded, his throat dry, replying, “Fucked myself up pretty bad too.”

They fell silent again, and Mulder was watching the patched colors of the night shamble across Zito’s face, watching for news of his fate. His salvation was so close, he could almost taste it, his heart beating out of rhythm in anticipation, and Mulder asked the one question that would let him know whether he would be let in from the cold, “Did you . . . did you ever figure out how to fall out of love with me?”

A car drove past on the street, and the headlights swept across Zito’s face, making his eyes shine with something inviolate, and when the car had gone, the dazzling glow didn’t fade, like Zito was spot-lit, stunned with light from the inside out, and when he blinked, a single tear began to track slowly down his cheek, and Zito answered, his voice uneven, scoured rough from all that he had been through, “It’s . . . it’s the strangest thing, you know? I tried, I honestly did, I tried so hard to get rid of you, I did everything I could think of to stop loving you, but it was no good. I couldn’t stop. I never could.”

Mulder felt all the joy he had ever known building up within him, rattling him like a grenade had detonated in his chest, and he wanted to grab Zito and hug the air out of him, he wanted to kiss away the tear and promise that Zito would never again have reason to cry, and he wanted to spend the rest of his life fulfilling that promise.

Zito was still trying to hold back from the rush of emotion, trying to make his voice strong as his eyes shaded deeper and deeper with something hushed and miraculous, “There’s stuff we gotta talk about, you know. Lots of stuff.”

Mulder knew. After everything that had happened, they couldn’t just go back to where they had been, there were other considerations. The press, the ballclub. How in the hell were they supposed to go about telling the world, after admitting it once, then denying it? Would they even tell the world? Starting this again would be light-years more difficult than it had been the first time, it would take everything they had just to keep their heads above water.

But it was them. It was Mulder and Zito, and together they could do anything.

A piece of Zito’s hair fell down across his forehead, a skinny backslash over his eyebrow, and without thinking, Mulder reached up and brushed it away, then paused with his hand on Zito’s face, noticing that he was shaking a little bit, his fingertips drumming lightly on Zito’s temple.

Zito closed his eyes, and subtly turned his face into Mulder’s hand, and Mulder felt his heart open up like it had wings.

He ran his thumb over Zito’s cheekbone, trailed his fingers across the man’s mouth and over his eyelids, feeling the sleepy questions of Zito’s mind under the fragile skin, and it was as if he was touching Zito for the first time, and he was captivated, he was amazed. Mulder slid his hand down Zito’s throat, feeling the sandpaper rasp of his stubble and the rumble of his pulse, skidding across the slippery fabric of his windbreaker, stealing inside, over the wrinkled-soft map of his shirt, finally placing his hand flat on Zito’s chest, holding the man’s heart carefully in his palm.

When Zito breathed out a long, low sigh, Mulder felt it come from deep inside the other man’s body, and watched as the air fell from his lips in a tumbling cloud that broke open and disintegrated almost immediately.

“It’s getting cold,” Mulder whispered, moving to wrap his other arm with painstaking care around Zito’s shoulders, shifting by inches, waiting for Zito to stiffen and pull away, but Zito only made a small sound like he had just realized the answer to some age-old riddle, and settled into the curve of the other man’s form, his weight feeling impossibly good, indescribably right as he fit himself against Mulder’s body.

Zito opened his eyes, looking like forever, and said softly, “Summer’s coming to an end.”

Mulder nodded, feeling overcome, feeling restored, and moved his head down slowly until it rested on Zito’s shoulder, his eyes hidden, finally warm again, finally at peace, and Mulder thought that he might laugh, or cry, or let fall some other tender breakdown of emotion that had no words to describe it. Zito’s hand came up to smooth down his hair, soothing away the last of his pain and fear, and Mulder had never felt anything as wonderful as that. It felt like he’d finally found his way home.

Mulder breathed in and the air filled up his chest like pure white light, like faith, and Mulder said into the delicately flushed skin of Zito’s neck, “The season’s almost over.”

Zito held onto him like he was never going to let go again, and replied, his voice certain like a prayer, “It’s okay. Next year’s gonna be our best yet. I can feel it.”

THE END

Well, I stumbled in the darkness
I’m lost and alone
Though I said I’d go before us
And show the way back home
Is there a light up ahead?
I can’t hold on very long
Forgive me, pretty baby, but I always take the long way home

--Tom Waits