what i wrote instead of my essays this week
See, goddamn it, this is why people like me should not be given a year to fuck around in Europe. Because I'm writing like a fiend and getting no work done. sigh.
Aaaaaanyway. Three A's fics. One random little thing that has nothing to do with slash or baseball (the hell you say!) or anything, but I kinda like it.
first one, happy and lighthearted. Betcha forgot I could write a story like this.
Title: Bridges
Author: Candle Beck
Email: meansdynamite@yahoo.com
Category: MLB, Oakland A’s
Pairing: Mulder/Zito
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Sigh. It has so little to do with baseball, even disclaiming it seems too trouble.
Summary: Um . . . I miss California so much it knocks the wind out of me. That’s pretty much the only reason I wrote this.
Bridges
By Candle Beck
(driving in San Francisco bites)
They got lost somewhere downtown, trying to find the exit for the Bay Bridge, hopelessly bewildered by the Saturday night Market Street crowds and the many different forms of public transportation that flooded by Mulder’s car, the sleek old-fashioned street cars on electric wires, the buses, the Muni trams, the taxi cabs that darted around corners and up alleys like they were being chased by the cops, the cable cars hung thick with tourists, their elbows hooked around the gleaming brass poles, swinging out into the warm San Francisco night.
“This isn’t my fault,” Mulder said, cursing under his breath as he pulled the car up short, a half a second too late to make the green light. “You’re the one who lives here, you should know where the goddamn bridge is.”
Zito pointed out the window. “The bridge is right there, dude.”
The Bay Bridge was the biggest thing in the whole city, filling the space between the skyscrapers, peeking out around every corner, fantastically huge, sweeping blue-gray, airplane-protected by chains of silver-yellow lights. The bridge climbed up the sky like a ladder, clutching together San Francisco and Oakland, dog’s-leg bent with the tunnel through Treasure Island. Although it wasn’t true that you could see the Bay Bridge from anywhere in the city, it was the kind of thing that should be true.
Mulder scowled at the mass of steel visible out Zito’s window. “Great. Problem solved, then. Except we still don’t know how to *get to* the fucking thing.”
Zito, unperturbed, flapped his hand. “I have faith in you, man, you’ll figure it out.”
“I’d be able to figure it out a lot easier if I could make a fucking *left turn* in this godforsaken city!” Mulder shouted out his window, drawing curious glances and a few answering yells.
Zito gave him a look. “Don’t take it out on the city. It’s a poor craftsman who blames his tools, you know.”
Mulder slanted him an impatiently incredulous glance. “Are you talking in parables now?”
Zito grinned. “Just saying.” He tapped at the dashboard for a second, fiddling with the CDs, switching one for another, whistling tunelessly the way he did when he was bored. When he looked up again to find them still on Market, bearing down on the clock at the head of the Embarcadero Pier, he groaned. “No, man! You needed to go right at Seventh! Seventh!”
“Well, maybe if you’d for Christ’s sake *navigate* for once in your miserable life,” Mulder growled, spinning the wheel fiercely to duck onto a side street, make the loop around Union Square. “Instead of messing with the CD and taking up too much space, which I know are your special talents and everything, but-”
“Last time I tried to navigate for you,” Zito cut him off. “I ended up hitchhiking back from Richmond, so.”
“It was *your* fault we ended up in Richmond!” Mulder protested. “And you didn’t have to hitchhike, melodramatic punk, I was coming right back to pick you up. It was just a joke.”
Zito cocked an eyebrow. “I believe your exact words were, ‘Zito, get out of the motherfucking car before I beat you to death with that road atlas.’ So, you know, excuse me for deciding to take my chances with the potentially crazy people who gave me a ride.”
Mulder glanced at him. “You never told me you hitched back with crazy people.”
“Well, not really,” Zito shrugged. “It was actually a very nice couple coming back from a friend’s wedding. They gave me cake. But, the point is, they *coulda* been crazy. ‘Cause you just left me standing on the side of the road, anybody coulda come by.”
Mulder, suitably abashed at his tendency to let his impatience and annoyance get the best of him, muttered, “I was coming right back to pick you up.” He angled Zito his best impersonation of an apologetic look, reached out to tug on the sleeve of Zito’s T-shirt. “I’ll buy you some cake, to make it up to you.”
Zito grinned. “I think you should actually *bake* me a cake, if you’re really sorry.”
Mulder snorted. “I’m not *that* sorry.”
Zito craned his head to peer out at the sprawl of Union Square, the well-dressed theatre crowds out for a night on the town, then said thoughtfully, “You know, if we’d just stayed on Van Ness coming down, I don’t think we would have ended up in North Beach so many times.”
Mulder rolled his eyes. “Helpful.”
“Just get to the ballpark. It’s easy to find from the ballpark,” Zito advised.
“Zito, I swear to God, the only thing I could find in San Francisco right now is Union Square. Which would be perfect, if we were going to Sharper Image.”
Zito perked up. “Hey, let’s go to Sharper Image!” he said excitedly.
“What the hell is the matter with you?” Mulder asked, a reluctant smile pricking at the corners of his mouth.
“I spend too much time with you,” Zito shot back cheerfully. “You want me to drive?”
“There is no way I’m letting you behind the wheel of my car,” Mulder answered resolutely.
“Jeez, run into *one* mailbox, you’re hearing about it for the rest of your life,” Zito complained.
Mulder snuck across Market Street, heading south on Fourth, replying, “First of all, you ran into about four mailboxes. They were all just close together. Second of all . . . well, I don’t really need a second of all. You’re not driving. I’d like to get home alive tonight.”
“Gonna starve to death before you find the exit, but whatever,” Zito mumbled.
Ahead of them, SBC Park rose with its brand-new 1930s shine, the smooth red bricks and green metal, a statue of Willie Mays caught perfectly between swinging and running holding a spot of honor at the front.
Mulder scanned restlessly for signs that would direct him to 80, the highway over the bridge, but he didn’t see anything until Zito suddenly shouted, “There! Right there, dude, turn, turn!”
Startled, Mulder yelled back, “Where! Fucking where?”
Zito sighed, settled back. “You missed it,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Jesus Christ, Zito! If you’re gonna nearly give me a heart attack, could you at least do it early enough for me to make the goddamned turn?”
“Not my fault you’re slow on the uptake,” Zito said mildly.
Mulder glared at him as they pulled up to a stoplight by the train station. “You do realize that the only thing keeping me from killing you right now is the fact that we need you in the rotation, right?”
Zito smiled, poked Mulder’s side, making the other man squirm. “Yeah, is that the only reason?”
Mulder caught his hand. “That’s all that’s coming to mind,” he answered, then pulled Zito to him, kissing him quickly there at the stoplight.
When they drew back, Zito grinned at him. “I’m having a really good time. I think we should just stay lost.”
Mulder grinned back at him, and the Bay Bridge hovered there above them like it had always been part of the sky.
* * *
(sharks in the water)
They’d gone down to San Jose to see an Imax movie, the theatre a cluster of three giant domes holding the biggest screens in the state, just across the highway from the Winchester Mystery House and all its dead-end doors opening onto solid brick walls and sheer drops.
Coming back, they took the Dumbarton Bridge to cross over to the East Bay, to avoid the Bay Bridge traffic. The Dumbarton Bridge cut through the baylands, the marshy edges of the water, blocked out in irregular polygonal shapes of green and dark red, carefully preserved for the endangered species that made their home in the uncertain swamps between the low-slung urban mess of Silicon Valley and the San Francisco International Airport.
The bridge was long and low and flat, lining out like the horizon, the pavement even and unmarked, edged by the lightly brushed waves.
“And then, did you see that guy, when he fell off the mountain, right, he just went, like, whoa! And then he was totally falling, but the rope caught him and it was, like, dude! And he swung and he was gonna hit the rock, but he got his feet out and was, like, bam! And then-”
“Dude, Zito, take a breath,” Mulder said with a smile.
Zito grinned bashfully. “Sorry. It was just really cool.”
“I know. And the reason I know is that I was there too. I was the guy next to you, remember?”
Zito faked a look of surprise. “That was you? Shit, I should have stolen some more of your popcorn.”
“You couldn’t have stolen more than you did, man, because you stole all of it.”
“Oh,” Zito said. “Well, good then.”
Mulder spared him an exasperated glance, but Zito was already digging in his backpack, pulling out the cheap disposable camera he’d picked up at a gas station a few days before.
He wound the film, and then snapped a quick shot of Mulder’s profile as he drove. Mulder scowled at the road. “Don’t take a picture of me now, you’re getting my bad side.”
“You don’t have a bad side, dude,” Zito said, the compliment unthinking and off-hand as Zito turned to focus on the water.
“You’re never gonna get a picture of a shark, man, it’s a total lost cause,” Mulder told him, but Zito waved him off.
“There’s other stuff out there. Whales. Buoys. Um . . . dolphins.”
Mulder snorted. “Yeah, dolphins in the thirty degree water. I’m sure.”
Zito happily clicked away, taking pictures of the water and the marshes and the rails at the sides of the bridge. Mulder could already see the photos that would be developed, skewed angles and dizzy perspectives, everything either too close or too far to be seen properly. Mulder used to think that Zito just sucked at taking pictures, but later he decided that it would be weird if Zito produced well-balanced, in-focus pictures, because Mulder was pretty sure that Zito saw the world the way it looked through his camera lens, blurry and sweetly tilted and more interesting than reality.
Zito took a picture of the CDs littering the space between their seats, then one of Mulder’s hands on the steering wheel, then one of his own shoe.
“Is there a specific reason why we’re documenting this afternoon?” Mulder asked as Zito immortalized the license plate of the car in front of them.
“Sure,” Zito answered. “See, people only ever remember to take pictures when they’re on vacation or it’s like a special occasion or something. But that shit, you remember anyway, right? Like, I don’t need photos of Rome or the night we won the division title, because I know that stuff by heart, you know? So, I figure, we should take pictures of random days, random times. Like, maybe in a couple of years, I won’t remember going to this movie with you or driving across this bridge-”
“Or what pair of shoes you were wearing,” Mulder added with a smile.
“Yeah, or what you look like driving. But now I got the pictures to remind me.”
Mulder wondered, “What do I look like driving?” trying to sit up straighter and look more photo-worthy.
Zito held up the camera and squinted through the lens at the other man. “Very cool,” he nodded. “You’ve definitely got this hot-guy-behind-the-wheel-of-a-car thing going on right now, it’s working for you.”
Feeling a little self-conscious, Mulder tried to laugh it off. “Note to self: Zito finds me driving a turn-on.”
Zito rolled his eyes. “Yeah, ‘cause that’s information you’re really gonna put to good use.”
Mulder lifted his eyebrows suggestively. “I don’t know, man, I might be getting some ideas.”
Zito snickered. “That’d be pretty funny, if only for the newspaper headlines they’d write after you crashed us into a tree.”
“Are you saying I can’t multi-task?”
“I’m saying that particular task is not compatible with driving a car.”
Mulder shook his head, bemoaning, “Just my luck to end up with the one guy in the country with no sense of adventure.”
“Hey, I’m adventurous!” Zito protested. “I’m nothing but adventurous. I’m like . . . the guy who likes adventure.”
Mulder smirked. “Wow, that was almost poetry.”
“You’re the one who won’t eat sushi. A real risk-taker, you are,” Zito teased.
“Dude, sushi is wrong. It’s a very wrong food that’s just wrong. Stuff needs to be *cooked*!”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re real tough, except when you come face-to-face with a crab roll. Then it’s like, head for the hills!”
Zito grinned at him, and Mulder reached out to take the camera from him, judging the distance as best he could while still keeping an eye on the road, snapping a photo of that look on Zito’s face, because that was something he’d like to remember.
* * *
(running away from bad weather)
Half Moon Bay, when they finally got out there, was anticlimactically overcast, the clouds too low to make it over the hills, tucked against the shore. Zito just kept driving south down the Cabrillo Highway, out past the crushed-stone beach, the beach with the cool caves, the beach where you could build five foot tall log cabins out of the driftwood that sprawled out white in the surf like huge bleached bones, the beach by the lighthouse, Mulder wondering aloud if they were gonna end up in Los Angeles, seeing as how it didn’t seem like they were gonna stop any time soon. Eventually, redeemed, Zito drove them right out of the bad weather, cresting an even rise and the world breaking open in front of them, the feather-green hills and ducking roads to one side, the unbroken shore on the other, the Pacific Ocean unaccountably blue, sparks flickering on the waves.
They’d messed around, Zito trying to find some good waves to surf but giving up, the sea as clear as a mirror, the waves disintegrating so lightly on the sand, it was like they were apologizing for daring to intrude. They played long toss with an unopened can of Coke, hurling it all the way down the length of the beach, somersaulting in the air and caught bright red in the light, and then had a quick rock-paper-scissors match to determine who would actually open the can. Zito lost, and held the Coke out at arm’s length, which did nothing to prevent him from getting drenched when the soda exploded. Mulder was hooting with laughter when Zito tackled him and poured the rest of the can over his head, Mulder sputtering and chasing Zito into the water again.
Soon enough, there was sand in their hair and shoes, water in their ears, and Zito kept diving below, swimming soundless and predatory, hooking an arm around Mulder’s legs and trying to pull him down.
By the time they got back to the car, towels laid out on the seats, they were both beat, popping open sodas with extra caffeine in them, a bag of Skittles spilled out in the coin tray, the tips of Zito’s fingers stained purple.
Back up to Half Moon Bay, and out to 92, Zito asked, “You’ve been out to Skyline, right?”
Mulder, slouched down and trying not to nod off, the car warm and rumbling around him, blinked, pointed out the window as an exit zipped by. “You mean that Skyline, right there?”
Zito nodded. They were at the height of the road, about to go spiraling down into the valley that holed up in the strip of peninsula between the bay and the ocean. Their backs were to it, now, but the vista point at Skyline faced west, winding long across the highest string of hills that kept the coast well protected from the land. Skyline faced west; you could see everything from up there.
Mulder rubbed a hand across his face. “No, never been up there.”
Zito drummed his thumb on the steering wheel, keeping time. “That’s where I saw the solar eclipse last spring.”
“Yeah?” Mulder said, a little surprised. “Why did I think you were at my house for that eclipse?” confused with his false memories of Zito standing in his backyard, his features getting dimmer as the sun was edged out.
Half a grin on his face, Zito shrugged. “Because you’re a crazy man and there’s no accounting for what goes on in your head.”
Mulder shoved him, but only a little. They whipped over the highway overpass, Interstate 280’s eight lanes broad and open, only a few cars slipping through. As they cut across the peninsula towards the San Mateo Bridge, Mulder asked, “So, it was pretty cool? The eclipse, up on Skyline?”
Zito kept his eyes on the road, being a good driver and everything, and nodded, the profile of his expression looking serene, perfectly figured out. “I nearly went blind and all, but it was awesome. There was a bunch of people up there. This one guy, from, like, fucking Thailand, right?”
Zito shot him a quick look to make sure he was still following. Mulder was near to being half-asleep, comfortable and lank with exhaustion, a sweet quiet throb in his body, salt drying in his hair. He felt, without having much of anything to back it up, like he’d done something right, like maybe he’d been good that day.
He tipped his chin slightly to let Zito know he was listening. “Sure, Thailand. Did he speak English?”
Zito breathed out a laugh, darting between cars like a pinball. “Yeah, man, better than I do.”
“Well, that’s not saying much,” Mulder said back lazily, not even bothering to try and dodge Zito’s retaliatory smack.
“Anyway,” Zito continued, “We were talking, you know. Watching the eclipse and everything, talking. This guy, right, he’s been traveling around, like, the whole *world*, man, dude’s been everywhere. Buncha places I never even heard of before. Like, did you know Luxembourg is an actual country? Did you know that? I thought it was, like, a fairy tale land or something.”
Mulder let his eyes drift close briefly, a shade of a smile on his face, Zito and his ignorance of European geography, Zito and his action-hero manner of driving, Zito and his smooth voice.
“And I basically said to the guy, like, what are you doing here? Meaning, you know, what are you doing in California, America. And he just looks at me like it’s totally obvious and says, ‘I’m waiting for the moon to get in the way of the sun.’”
Zito grinned. “Just like that, he said it. Like *of course*. Like, why else would he be here? And I was kinda, you know, thinking of all the places that there are in the world, yeah, and this guy from Thailand ends up on the same hill as me, this guy from like a million miles away and he ends up on the same hill, just . . . waiting for the sun to disappear. It was so cool.”
They’d hit the bridge, the breathless climb up, five stories above the water before plummeting back down like rockets to the level of the bay, the high-armed streetlights that ran out in two neat funneling rows, one on each side, parallel lines looking for a place to intersect, and just as they began the long roll towards the eastern side, Mulder yawned against his shoulder and mumbled, “Keep talking, Zito, willya, just keep talking for a little while,” and then fell asleep.
* * *
(it doesn’t really matter where we end up, as long as it’s here)
They’d been down at the Presidio, for reasons passing understanding, and Zito had gotten the brilliant idea to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge.
Mulder thought he was just fucking around, at first. “Yeah, sure, then we’ll swim out to Angel Island, have a picnic,” rolling his eyes.
Zito only grinned. “I’m serious. You’ve never walked across the Golden Gate Bridge?”
Mulder hiked his eyebrows. “I don’t even think we’re *allowed* to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge. I think we’d probably get snipered by the Highway Patrol or something.”
Zito shook his head, hooked a hand around Mulder’s arm and tugged him close, the shadows of the old fort and the bars of Spanish light on Zito’s face. “Nah, I’ve done it a million times.” He thought about that, shrugged. “Well, maybe not a million. Maybe like twice. But it can be done, this I know.”
Zito had already started walking, up the tangled dirt hiking path through the straggle of woods. Mulder really had no choice but to follow, seeing as how Zito had the car keys.
“So, okay, assuming we do get over without being shot, what’ll we do once we’re on the other side?” Mulder asked, feeling like he was talking about a jailbreak or something, digging tunnels, scaling fences.
Zito picked up a stick, slashing at the shrubs, samurai fighting, not too concerned with the question. “Then we’ll be on the other side,” he said implacably, and Mulder decided that was reason enough..
It was a long walk uphill to the bridge, little pieces of wood sneaking into Mulder’s shoes, dry leaves in Zito’s hair. They were both breathing hard by the time they actually got to the toll plaza, night falling, the car headlights unfathomed and bleeding out a lake of white.
“See . . . see,” Zito said, panting and digging in his pocket for spare change to pay the toll, trying to get his breath back, grinning. “Told . . . you . . . it was . . . okay.”
Mulder just rolled his eyes again, wanting to pick the leaves out of Zito’s hair, wanting to brush the back of his hand across the smear of dust on Zito’s chin.
On the pedestrian walkway, torn by the destructive wind, they had to be on their toes, careful of the people on racing bikes who slotted behind them, shortly calling, “On your left!” before they blew past, the red and white reflectors on their wheels spinning like carousels.
Dusk on the bridge, and the sun was setting over the water.
Mulder studied the huge bundles of cables, thicker around than his chest, streaking upward on a swift curve, an exponential equation, a rust color halfway between red and orange.
“You know, a bunch of people died building this bridge,” he said.
Zito nodded, the collar of his shirt blown up, hiding his mouth. “I did know that. Also building the Hoover Dam.”
Mulder, unable to help himself, reached out and flipped Zito’s collar back down. It didn’t last, a few seconds later the wind rearing up and slapping them, plastering their clothes down, Zito’s collar cutting across his jaw.
“Yeah, but nobody writes songs about the Hoover Dam,” Mulder replied.
Zito bent a slight smile, hummed under his breath. They’d come to the middle of the bridge, halfway there and halfway back, and they stopped, leaning on the rail, watching the sun set. Their arms pressed together, shoulder to elbow, and they seemed somehow very far away from the rush of traffic at their backs.
Zito’s eyes tracked across the ocean, all the leaves combed free from his hair, looking clean and afraid of nothing, looking like he deserved everything that had been given to him.
Zito said quietly, that implied smile still on his face, “Open up that Golden Gate . . . California, here we come . . . right back where we started from . . . California, here we come.”
Mulder flipped Zito’s collar back down again, and touched Zito’s face, the tips of his fingers against the line of Zito’s jaw for barely an instant, drawing the other man’s eyes back to him, and they stood there on the bridge looking at each other until the Pacific Ocean swallowed up the light and they couldn’t see anything anymore.
THE END
“San Francisco is like something we were promised when we were kids, and when people say ‘California,’ it sounds like a prayer.”
--my friend Jeremy, who knows whereof he speaks
Um. How are we feeling about multiple lj cuts in the same message? Am I allowed to do this? Well, we shall find out!
second story, more fucked up than a barrel fulla monkeys.
Title: Heal Our Losses
Author: Candle Beck
Email: meansdynamite@yahoo.com
Category: MLB, Oakland A’s
Pairing: Chavez/Mulder, Chavez/Zito (you’re excited now, aren’t you?)
Rating: R (but it’s been fairly noted that I suck at rating these, so, you know, draw your own conclusions)
Archive: Anywhere you want to take it.
Disclaimer: Definitely never happened.
Feedback: A joyous thing.
Summary: Eric Chavez takes the long way down.
Notes: The title comes direct from Whitman. ‘We Shall All Be Healed’ is what they’re calling the Mountain Goats’ new album.
Heal Our Losses
By Candle Beck
Zito calls from across the clubhouse, “Hey, cabrón!” There’s white foul-line chalk on one side of Zito’s face and neck, smeared like flour, a skinny track of clean skin from behind his ear to his shoulder, where a drop of sweat has rolled down.
Chavez looks up, because he’s the only one Zito calls that, and the fluorescent lights strike hard in his eyes. He blinks, waits for things to get clear again. Zito’s wearing long sleeves under his jersey, which is unbuttoned. He looks like he’s halfway out the door; he looks like he’s already leaving.
Zito’s waving a hand, gesturing for him to come over. When Chavez stands, his vision fractures, slow-dissolves. He’s not aware that he’s swaying, about to fall over, until he feels a hand placed steadily on his side, looks down to see Mulder, near-grinning, saying, “Careful.”
The concrete floor is cracked in interesting ways, webbed, and by the time Chavez gets over to where Zito is, Zito has forgotten what he wanted to tell him and so they don’t talk about anything.
* * *
The night guards at the Coliseum know his face, they call him ‘hot shot’ and rag him for going oh-for-five the night before. Chavez plays along until he can gracefully extract himself and escape into the stadium.
It’s two in the morning and the place is truly haunted. Chavez has got a set of keys to let him through the tunnels, and not too many people know that he comes down here a lot in the middle of the night. Tonight it’s so he can look at tape, honest preparation. He watches his own at-bats, over and over again, until he doesn’t recognize the man at the plate as himself anymore. There’s a hitch in his swing, recently, he’s trying to pin it down. He’s not turning his wrists over on the follow-through the way he’s been taught, and this is something that he’s never had to think about before.
In the corner of his eye as he leaves the video room, locking the door behind him, he sees Vida Blue down the hallway, glowering from under his eyebrows, his hand moving slowly and gripping a baseball that shines in the darkness. And when Chavez turns to face him, Vida Blue is gone, back to where he came from.
* * *
Half-asleep, and there’s a hand on Chavez’s face.
It’s a pitcher’s hand, this he can tell. The hard tips of the fingers, a lifetime of searching for pitch grips remembered there. Chavez lifts his own hand, touches the pitcher’s wrist, the small bony knob, the soft skin of the underside.
Somebody says his name, says, “Hold still.” Chavez breathes out, pushes back, and one of them gasps, sounding more afraid than anything else. There’s a wicked twist between them, and Chavez’s head falls back, his mouth keening open.
That hand slides down his body, that famous left hand, trim-cut nails leaving behind fading white scratches on his chest, no thicker than a strand of hair. Chavez feels a roughened palm on his stomach, a mouth on his neck. Chavez bites his tongue, arches his hips up with his shoulders pressed down into the bed, thinking brokenly that he is a bridge now, he is a way over.
Somebody curses and spits in his hand, and in a spear of lucidity, Chavez knows that this must be Zito, tonight, because Zito spits in his hand dozens of times a game. Chavez is about to ask if Zito’s going to throw a fastball or a curve, but then there’s a tongue in his mouth and something ungodly happening above him, and Chavez’s mind is sky-clean, and for just a moment he is not aware that there is anything in the world that is not this.
* * *
Chavez has a recurring dream about a game that never ends. The players are all shadows, their faces indistinguishable, but Chavez can tell them apart by their batting stances, their swings, the way they turn the double play.
The game has been tied for maybe a decade, maybe longer. Every day, they come out and play from the moment the light sneaks over the horizon until the moment it gets too dark for the pitcher to read the signs. The visiting team scores in the top half of an inning and the home team matches them, run for run, neither side able to put it away.
They play on a simple field, the foul lines dug out with a spade, the infield grass shriveling, burned in the sun. There’s no outfield wall, the park just stretches on until it bleeds into the charred landscape. There’s a chain-link fence behind home plate and flat wooden bleachers to either side of the diamond. The players move like this is the place where they were born, like this is the place where they will die.
In the dream, Chavez is sitting on the end of the bench in the dugout, and before each batter goes to the plate, they touch his head for luck. Chavez is pretty sure he’s not doing them any good; if he were, the game would be over by now.
It’s a slow dream, it’s endless. Sometimes, Chavez-in-the-dream actually falls asleep and has dreams of his own. Chavez gets confused, everything about this is so real. That he can smell the dirt and feel the grass beneath his hands. That his back hurts from sitting on the bench for so long, that his hair is now irreparably tousled by all the players’ hands. That each crack of the bat widens his eyes, snaps through his heart. All this is the way it is in real life too, and eventually Chavez cannot tell the difference between this game and any other that he’s ever watched.
* * *
Chavez falls out the back door of the bar, into the alley, with his shirt untucked and someone else’s taste in his mouth. His hands are still shaking, and his eyes keep failing, everything blurring.
He can, oh, he can still feel the bathroom’s dirty floor under his knees, he can still feel his teeth scraping across taut skin and hands smoothing down his hair. He can still hear his name, broken into two separate gasps, and he has not escaped the terrible thought that if Mulder would just say his name like that more often, then maybe Chavez’s life would stop being such an utter fucking mess.
Once he gets his hands flat on the brick wall, he feels like he can breathe again.
The door slams behind him and before he can turn, there’s somebody strong up against his back, arms out on either side of him, Chavez’s hands bracketed by another pair, bigger than his, and he sees the scars on the knuckles, it’s Mulder come to find him again, Mulder not letting anything be still between them.
“Wasn’t finished with you yet,” Mulder’s voice says, almost a growl, and Chavez can feel the tremors wracking through, shuddering against the man behind him. “Why the fuck did you run away?”
Mulder takes one of his hands off the wall, fits it to Chavez’s hip, under his shirt. Chavez tilts forward, rests his forehead on the brick, and he is pulled back roughly, flush against Mulder’s body. Some kind of warning is rasped out, and then there are teeth tugging at his earlobe, a hickey worked on his throat.
Long fingers are running over his stomach and chest, and Chavez isn’t even really aware that he’s clawing at the buttons of his jeans until Mulder’s hand is atop his own, quicker and smarter, taking charge, and Chavez moans, dropping his head back onto Mulder’s shoulder, breathing in sharp hyperventilating bursts.
Chavez feels a deep laugh burring against his neck, and he bends his arm backward at an unnatural angle, hooking around Mulder’s waist, his hand clenched in a fist and pressed to the small of the man’s back, holding them together as tightly as he can. When he comes, it’s with this strange little cry.
The weight at his back is suddenly gone, and Chavez slumps forward, panting hard with his shoulder braced against the wall. He hears Mulder’s footsteps walking away, and tastes thin red brick dust, ashen on the roof of his mouth.
* * *
In the city, where totaled cars hug telephone poles and there’s a splintered fracture running down thirteen floors of windows in a skyscraper made of glass, Chavez buys a paper from a newsstand and throws away everything but the sports section, sitting on an abandoned stoop in the sallow light of the streetlamp.
He reads every story, every score, every stat, and he studies his own line without registering that this E. Chavez, who seems to have trouble against left-handed pitching, is him.
The streetlamp flickers, fire-like shadows on his sprawled legs, and Chavez looks up. Across the street is a church, a drive-thru confessional, and the marquee at the front reads plainly, ‘We Shall All Be Healed.’
Chavez doesn’t realize he’s crying until he feels the tears fall onto his hands.
* * *
In Zito’s car, the radio’s turned up loud, so they don’t talk. Zito drums his hand on the steering wheel, his thumb keeping time with the bass beats. Chavez’s eyes can see nothing but the smeary scatter of lights, streetlamps and headlights and neon signs and the blinking green men at the crosswalk.
Zito’s hand is on his leg, suddenly, and Chavez blinks down at it, thinking disjointedly, ‘where did that come from?’ Zito’s fingers tighten and Chavez remembers why he got in the car with the pitcher tonight.
Zito isn’t looking at him, and his hand stays there until he has to shift gears, and then comes back, a little higher this time, steady and warm.
Chavez has a clear vision of himself with his arms thrown wide, his body unprotected, his face turned up to the sky. This might be sacrifice, it might be surrender, it might be redemption.
San Francisco’s been lit on fire outside his window, he can feel the blistered heat of it and smell the smoke, and Chavez hopes that they make it to the ocean before this catches up with them.
* * *
Chavez steps into the batter’s box and feels the world funneling down around him, whisper-silent and his heartbeat stuttering in his head.
Here, briefly, his power is easily defined, his every weakness well-known.
He won’t bite on first ball heat, and the second pitch clips the corner just as he pulls his hands back, and he is quickly in a hole.
He steps out, the stadium noise crashing down around him again, the lights searing, and pulls off his helmet, pushing a hand through his hair before he puts his helmet back on and wraps his hands around the bat, moving deftly back into the box like sinking underwater, and all he can hear and see is what he takes down with him.
Chavez battles back to a full count and he would live here if he could, he would never leave the field, the lines of the infield and the span of the outfield everything that makes sense to him anymore.
The payoff pitch is cutting low and inside, but it’ll find the zone, and Chavez swings hard, just looking to stay alive, but he drops his left shoulder and loses his balance, a painfully awkward cut and the ump punches him out.
Chavez looks down at his hands for a moment, still gripped tight and choked up on the bat, and then steps out of the box, his beautiful quiet life getting deafening and terrible again as he walks back to the dugout with his head down.
* * *
There’s a sound in the darkness, and Chavez rolls over, pushes the pillow off his head. Piecing through the shadows, Chavez picks out Mulder standing at the foot of his bed, looking down at him.
“You’re not asleep,” Mulder says conversationally.
Chavez is still near to his dream, he still feels like he might be good luck. “Not anymore, no.”
Mulder’s grin is sharp, brutal. “Good,” he answers, and then climbs onto the bed, up over Chavez, their legs tangling, leans down with his elbows to either side of Chavez’s head, their noses close enough to touch, close enough to feel Mulder’s breath on his lips.
Mulder studies him carefully for a moment, then moves to brush his hand across Chavez’s forehead, rustling his fingers through Chavez’s hair, angling down to kiss him, take his breath away.
Mulder draws back, pulls Chavez up to strip his T-shirt off him. Chavez lets Mulder undress him numbly, thinking that he doesn’t even really have to move, everything will be done for him.
Skimming his palms down Chavez’s sides, Mulder works slowly against the other man, hovering above him, not lowering himself down onto Chavez, Chavez increasingly twisting and desperate under his hands.
Mulder waits until Chavez is near to incoherent, whipping his head back and forth on the pillow, before he suddenly pulls all the way back, removes his hands from Chavez’s body and asks with something black in his tone, “Who else are you fucking?”
Chavez stiffens, shakes his head. This isn’t fair, this has got to be against the rules. “What? No one. C’mere.” He tries to pull Mulder back down against him, pressing upwards at the same time, but Mulder won’t have any of it, moving farther away, teasing him with quick unsatisfying bites along his jawline.
“Bullshit. C’mon, man, you can tell me,” Mulder purrs with true menace. “You know I don’t give a fuck what you do. Just curious.”
Chavez groans, streaks his hands across Mulder’s back, Mulder shivering. “No one,” he gasps as Mulder drags his tongue down his throat in retaliation. “I fucking swear.”
Mulder lets out a disbelieving laugh, unevenly interrupted with hard inhalations. “I see you come home,” he murmurs, ducking his head down again, Chavez craning back to give him full access, but it’s just Mulder breathing hotly on his pulse, and Chavez has probably never wanted anyone as much as he wants Mulder at this moment, Mulder who is already shifting away from him again and continuing, “I see you come home and it looks to me like you’ve been well-fucked, and I haven’t come anywhere near you in a week. So who is it, babe?” and Mulder’s voice hits a rich new low on the last word, and Chavez’s whole body is strumming, clamoring.
“You got some girl hidden away? You don’t want to tell me about her, you’re afraid I’ll steal her away from you?” Mulder laughs softly, catches Chavez’s wrists in his hand when Chavez reaches for him blindly, pinning Chavez’s hands above his head, Mulder’s other hand tracing bare designs on Chavez’s stomach. “You’re right, I probably would.”
But neither of them believes that’s the case, because Chavez is struggling against Mulder’s grip and futilely straining upwards, trying to find some friction, something, his eyes half-lidded and swollen, his teeth digging into his lower lip, his forehead pressed against his arm, and Chavez didn’t know Mulder was this strong.
Mulder smirks down at Chavez, slick shameless thing that he is, and leans close to say right in Chavez’s ear, “Or maybe you got some other guy. I think . . . maybe you don’t like girls so much anymore. Maybe you don’t want anything but this.”
Oh, and that’s true, that’s so true, and Chavez has to fight down a scream with everything in him, mumbling, “Yeah, this, this, please.”
Mulder’s eyes flash, and his voice is hateful as he asks again, “Who are you fucking?”
Chavez closes his eyes so he won’t have to look at the other man, grates out, “I am . . . *trying* . . . to fuck you. If you wouldn’t mind.” He punctuates this by lifting his head and attaching his mouth to Mulder’s collarbone, hearing the other man catch his breath harshly, startled and swiftly taking himself out of Chavez’s restrained radius.
Mulder’s hand is chained around his wrists, his expression ripped between desire and anger, madman’s eyes and Mulder whispers raggedly, “All right, keep your fucking secrets. You think you got everything, but you don’t even have me.”
And finally, finally, Mulder lets their bodies fall together, releases Chavez’s hands and kisses him so hard, they both end up with blood on their lips.
* * *
When Zito pushes him down, Chavez does not get up again.
He lies on the ground, his legs splayed, his head aching. Zito looms above him, outlined against the sky. Zito pokes him with his foot. “Get up.”
Chavez shakes his head, and Zito nudges him again. “C’mon, I was just messing around. Get up.”
Chavez lifts his arm and rests it atop his eyes. He’s better able to breathe like this, without the press of the light on his eyelids. He hears Zito shift, and hears Zito’s voice from closer than it was before.
“This is definitely, like, a sidewalk,” Zito says. “I don’t think you can just go to sleep here or whatever it is you’re doing.”
Chavez takes his arm away. Zito’s crouched next to him, his hands fluttering ineffectively. The street’s on a hill, the change is spilling out of Chavez’s pockets, rolling away down the pavement.
“I’m not going to sleep,” Chavez tells him.
Zito hikes an eyebrow. “What are you doing, then?”
Chavez reaches out, touches the collar of Zito’s shirt, his fingertips pattering high at the place where Zito’s chest meets his throat. Zito looks surprised, and moves backwards, his eyes flicking nervously up and down the street. Chavez drops his hand.
“I’m lying on the sidewalk. Clearly.”
Zito rolls his eyes. Chavez can tell he’s getting annoyed now. “Yeah, well, when you’re done being a fucking nutcase, give me a call, all right?”
And Zito stands, walks away. Chavez thinks that he’s bluffing, he wouldn’t really just leave Chavez here on the ground like this, but Zito doesn’t come back, and Chavez stares up at the sky until night falls, counts the stars until some guy who looks like he belongs to a fraternity sneers down at him and says, “Jesus, how fucking pathetic can you get,” and kicks him hard in the ribs.
* * *
When Chavez closes his eyes, he sees the Coliseum’s sturdy gray walls and the ridged hills to the east, he sees the industrial shore, the petrified oil-slick at the bottom of the water, he sees the last homerun he hit disappearing over the outfield fence and the staggered undiluted joy on his teammates’ faces the night they won the twentieth game of the streak.
When Chavez closes his eyes, he sees Zito hurling curve after curve, each one hooking like falling in love, and he sees Mulder stunning batters with his fastball, something so fierce that Chavez cannot fight against it.
When Chavez closes his eyes, he sees everything that has become the truth about him, and he knows that for all that has gone wrong in his heartbreakingly short life, this is still the worst thing he has ever done.
* * *
At the ballpark, Chavez is stretching out in short left field as Mulder and Zito warm up next to each other in the bullpen. He can hear them talking, fading in and out. Zito prefaces everything with ‘dude,’ and asks about four times if Mulder thinks Zito’s overthrowing his fastball. Mulder keeps saying, “Motherfucker, stay *down*, motherfucker,” and Chavez knows he’s talking about his curveball, but can’t quite get it out of his head that Mulder is talking about him.
Chavez squints against the sun and there is grass in his mouth. The crowd of kids leaning out from the stands and watching the players warm up keep yelling his name, waving notepads and pristine baseballs at him.
Mulder calls his name for half a minute, lost in the fans’ chorus, and eventually gets fed up and bounces a ball over to where Chavez is sitting in the grass, to get his attention. When Chavez looks over, both Mulder and Zito are standing there grinning at him. The two of them look like photographs of themselves for a moment, frozen with the pure early summer sunlight on their faces, slipping like fingers through their hair, their gloves on their hips, cocky teasing grins on their faces, like the way history will remember them.
Chavez gets up and walks over to them, handing the ball back to Mulder. “What?” he asks.
Mulder ticks an eyebrow, glances at Zito. Zito just rolls his eyes, and Mulder shrugs. “Nothing. Just wanted to make sure you’d come when called.”
Zito muffles a laugh against his hand, and Mulder’s grin has taken on a vaguely cruel edge, but that might just be Chavez imagining things.
Chavez swallows and thinks that everyone must surely see the way he is tied to these two perfect men, his stupid obedience to them, his knees ready to hit the ground the second either of them says the word, ready to do whatever they ask of him, ready to fall as far as they want him to, his skin cool and dry with anticipation or dread, this must be crystal-clear to the world.
Because they are perfect and Chavez is devastatingly not. Because they are perfect and he never will be.
THE END
Okay. Now you're depressed as hell, huh. sorry.
Aaaaaanyway. Three A's fics. One random little thing that has nothing to do with slash or baseball (the hell you say!) or anything, but I kinda like it.
first one, happy and lighthearted. Betcha forgot I could write a story like this.
Title: Bridges
Author: Candle Beck
Email: meansdynamite@yahoo.com
Category: MLB, Oakland A’s
Pairing: Mulder/Zito
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Sigh. It has so little to do with baseball, even disclaiming it seems too trouble.
Summary: Um . . . I miss California so much it knocks the wind out of me. That’s pretty much the only reason I wrote this.
Bridges
By Candle Beck
(driving in San Francisco bites)
They got lost somewhere downtown, trying to find the exit for the Bay Bridge, hopelessly bewildered by the Saturday night Market Street crowds and the many different forms of public transportation that flooded by Mulder’s car, the sleek old-fashioned street cars on electric wires, the buses, the Muni trams, the taxi cabs that darted around corners and up alleys like they were being chased by the cops, the cable cars hung thick with tourists, their elbows hooked around the gleaming brass poles, swinging out into the warm San Francisco night.
“This isn’t my fault,” Mulder said, cursing under his breath as he pulled the car up short, a half a second too late to make the green light. “You’re the one who lives here, you should know where the goddamn bridge is.”
Zito pointed out the window. “The bridge is right there, dude.”
The Bay Bridge was the biggest thing in the whole city, filling the space between the skyscrapers, peeking out around every corner, fantastically huge, sweeping blue-gray, airplane-protected by chains of silver-yellow lights. The bridge climbed up the sky like a ladder, clutching together San Francisco and Oakland, dog’s-leg bent with the tunnel through Treasure Island. Although it wasn’t true that you could see the Bay Bridge from anywhere in the city, it was the kind of thing that should be true.
Mulder scowled at the mass of steel visible out Zito’s window. “Great. Problem solved, then. Except we still don’t know how to *get to* the fucking thing.”
Zito, unperturbed, flapped his hand. “I have faith in you, man, you’ll figure it out.”
“I’d be able to figure it out a lot easier if I could make a fucking *left turn* in this godforsaken city!” Mulder shouted out his window, drawing curious glances and a few answering yells.
Zito gave him a look. “Don’t take it out on the city. It’s a poor craftsman who blames his tools, you know.”
Mulder slanted him an impatiently incredulous glance. “Are you talking in parables now?”
Zito grinned. “Just saying.” He tapped at the dashboard for a second, fiddling with the CDs, switching one for another, whistling tunelessly the way he did when he was bored. When he looked up again to find them still on Market, bearing down on the clock at the head of the Embarcadero Pier, he groaned. “No, man! You needed to go right at Seventh! Seventh!”
“Well, maybe if you’d for Christ’s sake *navigate* for once in your miserable life,” Mulder growled, spinning the wheel fiercely to duck onto a side street, make the loop around Union Square. “Instead of messing with the CD and taking up too much space, which I know are your special talents and everything, but-”
“Last time I tried to navigate for you,” Zito cut him off. “I ended up hitchhiking back from Richmond, so.”
“It was *your* fault we ended up in Richmond!” Mulder protested. “And you didn’t have to hitchhike, melodramatic punk, I was coming right back to pick you up. It was just a joke.”
Zito cocked an eyebrow. “I believe your exact words were, ‘Zito, get out of the motherfucking car before I beat you to death with that road atlas.’ So, you know, excuse me for deciding to take my chances with the potentially crazy people who gave me a ride.”
Mulder glanced at him. “You never told me you hitched back with crazy people.”
“Well, not really,” Zito shrugged. “It was actually a very nice couple coming back from a friend’s wedding. They gave me cake. But, the point is, they *coulda* been crazy. ‘Cause you just left me standing on the side of the road, anybody coulda come by.”
Mulder, suitably abashed at his tendency to let his impatience and annoyance get the best of him, muttered, “I was coming right back to pick you up.” He angled Zito his best impersonation of an apologetic look, reached out to tug on the sleeve of Zito’s T-shirt. “I’ll buy you some cake, to make it up to you.”
Zito grinned. “I think you should actually *bake* me a cake, if you’re really sorry.”
Mulder snorted. “I’m not *that* sorry.”
Zito craned his head to peer out at the sprawl of Union Square, the well-dressed theatre crowds out for a night on the town, then said thoughtfully, “You know, if we’d just stayed on Van Ness coming down, I don’t think we would have ended up in North Beach so many times.”
Mulder rolled his eyes. “Helpful.”
“Just get to the ballpark. It’s easy to find from the ballpark,” Zito advised.
“Zito, I swear to God, the only thing I could find in San Francisco right now is Union Square. Which would be perfect, if we were going to Sharper Image.”
Zito perked up. “Hey, let’s go to Sharper Image!” he said excitedly.
“What the hell is the matter with you?” Mulder asked, a reluctant smile pricking at the corners of his mouth.
“I spend too much time with you,” Zito shot back cheerfully. “You want me to drive?”
“There is no way I’m letting you behind the wheel of my car,” Mulder answered resolutely.
“Jeez, run into *one* mailbox, you’re hearing about it for the rest of your life,” Zito complained.
Mulder snuck across Market Street, heading south on Fourth, replying, “First of all, you ran into about four mailboxes. They were all just close together. Second of all . . . well, I don’t really need a second of all. You’re not driving. I’d like to get home alive tonight.”
“Gonna starve to death before you find the exit, but whatever,” Zito mumbled.
Ahead of them, SBC Park rose with its brand-new 1930s shine, the smooth red bricks and green metal, a statue of Willie Mays caught perfectly between swinging and running holding a spot of honor at the front.
Mulder scanned restlessly for signs that would direct him to 80, the highway over the bridge, but he didn’t see anything until Zito suddenly shouted, “There! Right there, dude, turn, turn!”
Startled, Mulder yelled back, “Where! Fucking where?”
Zito sighed, settled back. “You missed it,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Jesus Christ, Zito! If you’re gonna nearly give me a heart attack, could you at least do it early enough for me to make the goddamned turn?”
“Not my fault you’re slow on the uptake,” Zito said mildly.
Mulder glared at him as they pulled up to a stoplight by the train station. “You do realize that the only thing keeping me from killing you right now is the fact that we need you in the rotation, right?”
Zito smiled, poked Mulder’s side, making the other man squirm. “Yeah, is that the only reason?”
Mulder caught his hand. “That’s all that’s coming to mind,” he answered, then pulled Zito to him, kissing him quickly there at the stoplight.
When they drew back, Zito grinned at him. “I’m having a really good time. I think we should just stay lost.”
Mulder grinned back at him, and the Bay Bridge hovered there above them like it had always been part of the sky.
* * *
(sharks in the water)
They’d gone down to San Jose to see an Imax movie, the theatre a cluster of three giant domes holding the biggest screens in the state, just across the highway from the Winchester Mystery House and all its dead-end doors opening onto solid brick walls and sheer drops.
Coming back, they took the Dumbarton Bridge to cross over to the East Bay, to avoid the Bay Bridge traffic. The Dumbarton Bridge cut through the baylands, the marshy edges of the water, blocked out in irregular polygonal shapes of green and dark red, carefully preserved for the endangered species that made their home in the uncertain swamps between the low-slung urban mess of Silicon Valley and the San Francisco International Airport.
The bridge was long and low and flat, lining out like the horizon, the pavement even and unmarked, edged by the lightly brushed waves.
“And then, did you see that guy, when he fell off the mountain, right, he just went, like, whoa! And then he was totally falling, but the rope caught him and it was, like, dude! And he swung and he was gonna hit the rock, but he got his feet out and was, like, bam! And then-”
“Dude, Zito, take a breath,” Mulder said with a smile.
Zito grinned bashfully. “Sorry. It was just really cool.”
“I know. And the reason I know is that I was there too. I was the guy next to you, remember?”
Zito faked a look of surprise. “That was you? Shit, I should have stolen some more of your popcorn.”
“You couldn’t have stolen more than you did, man, because you stole all of it.”
“Oh,” Zito said. “Well, good then.”
Mulder spared him an exasperated glance, but Zito was already digging in his backpack, pulling out the cheap disposable camera he’d picked up at a gas station a few days before.
He wound the film, and then snapped a quick shot of Mulder’s profile as he drove. Mulder scowled at the road. “Don’t take a picture of me now, you’re getting my bad side.”
“You don’t have a bad side, dude,” Zito said, the compliment unthinking and off-hand as Zito turned to focus on the water.
“You’re never gonna get a picture of a shark, man, it’s a total lost cause,” Mulder told him, but Zito waved him off.
“There’s other stuff out there. Whales. Buoys. Um . . . dolphins.”
Mulder snorted. “Yeah, dolphins in the thirty degree water. I’m sure.”
Zito happily clicked away, taking pictures of the water and the marshes and the rails at the sides of the bridge. Mulder could already see the photos that would be developed, skewed angles and dizzy perspectives, everything either too close or too far to be seen properly. Mulder used to think that Zito just sucked at taking pictures, but later he decided that it would be weird if Zito produced well-balanced, in-focus pictures, because Mulder was pretty sure that Zito saw the world the way it looked through his camera lens, blurry and sweetly tilted and more interesting than reality.
Zito took a picture of the CDs littering the space between their seats, then one of Mulder’s hands on the steering wheel, then one of his own shoe.
“Is there a specific reason why we’re documenting this afternoon?” Mulder asked as Zito immortalized the license plate of the car in front of them.
“Sure,” Zito answered. “See, people only ever remember to take pictures when they’re on vacation or it’s like a special occasion or something. But that shit, you remember anyway, right? Like, I don’t need photos of Rome or the night we won the division title, because I know that stuff by heart, you know? So, I figure, we should take pictures of random days, random times. Like, maybe in a couple of years, I won’t remember going to this movie with you or driving across this bridge-”
“Or what pair of shoes you were wearing,” Mulder added with a smile.
“Yeah, or what you look like driving. But now I got the pictures to remind me.”
Mulder wondered, “What do I look like driving?” trying to sit up straighter and look more photo-worthy.
Zito held up the camera and squinted through the lens at the other man. “Very cool,” he nodded. “You’ve definitely got this hot-guy-behind-the-wheel-of-a-car thing going on right now, it’s working for you.”
Feeling a little self-conscious, Mulder tried to laugh it off. “Note to self: Zito finds me driving a turn-on.”
Zito rolled his eyes. “Yeah, ‘cause that’s information you’re really gonna put to good use.”
Mulder lifted his eyebrows suggestively. “I don’t know, man, I might be getting some ideas.”
Zito snickered. “That’d be pretty funny, if only for the newspaper headlines they’d write after you crashed us into a tree.”
“Are you saying I can’t multi-task?”
“I’m saying that particular task is not compatible with driving a car.”
Mulder shook his head, bemoaning, “Just my luck to end up with the one guy in the country with no sense of adventure.”
“Hey, I’m adventurous!” Zito protested. “I’m nothing but adventurous. I’m like . . . the guy who likes adventure.”
Mulder smirked. “Wow, that was almost poetry.”
“You’re the one who won’t eat sushi. A real risk-taker, you are,” Zito teased.
“Dude, sushi is wrong. It’s a very wrong food that’s just wrong. Stuff needs to be *cooked*!”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re real tough, except when you come face-to-face with a crab roll. Then it’s like, head for the hills!”
Zito grinned at him, and Mulder reached out to take the camera from him, judging the distance as best he could while still keeping an eye on the road, snapping a photo of that look on Zito’s face, because that was something he’d like to remember.
* * *
(running away from bad weather)
Half Moon Bay, when they finally got out there, was anticlimactically overcast, the clouds too low to make it over the hills, tucked against the shore. Zito just kept driving south down the Cabrillo Highway, out past the crushed-stone beach, the beach with the cool caves, the beach where you could build five foot tall log cabins out of the driftwood that sprawled out white in the surf like huge bleached bones, the beach by the lighthouse, Mulder wondering aloud if they were gonna end up in Los Angeles, seeing as how it didn’t seem like they were gonna stop any time soon. Eventually, redeemed, Zito drove them right out of the bad weather, cresting an even rise and the world breaking open in front of them, the feather-green hills and ducking roads to one side, the unbroken shore on the other, the Pacific Ocean unaccountably blue, sparks flickering on the waves.
They’d messed around, Zito trying to find some good waves to surf but giving up, the sea as clear as a mirror, the waves disintegrating so lightly on the sand, it was like they were apologizing for daring to intrude. They played long toss with an unopened can of Coke, hurling it all the way down the length of the beach, somersaulting in the air and caught bright red in the light, and then had a quick rock-paper-scissors match to determine who would actually open the can. Zito lost, and held the Coke out at arm’s length, which did nothing to prevent him from getting drenched when the soda exploded. Mulder was hooting with laughter when Zito tackled him and poured the rest of the can over his head, Mulder sputtering and chasing Zito into the water again.
Soon enough, there was sand in their hair and shoes, water in their ears, and Zito kept diving below, swimming soundless and predatory, hooking an arm around Mulder’s legs and trying to pull him down.
By the time they got back to the car, towels laid out on the seats, they were both beat, popping open sodas with extra caffeine in them, a bag of Skittles spilled out in the coin tray, the tips of Zito’s fingers stained purple.
Back up to Half Moon Bay, and out to 92, Zito asked, “You’ve been out to Skyline, right?”
Mulder, slouched down and trying not to nod off, the car warm and rumbling around him, blinked, pointed out the window as an exit zipped by. “You mean that Skyline, right there?”
Zito nodded. They were at the height of the road, about to go spiraling down into the valley that holed up in the strip of peninsula between the bay and the ocean. Their backs were to it, now, but the vista point at Skyline faced west, winding long across the highest string of hills that kept the coast well protected from the land. Skyline faced west; you could see everything from up there.
Mulder rubbed a hand across his face. “No, never been up there.”
Zito drummed his thumb on the steering wheel, keeping time. “That’s where I saw the solar eclipse last spring.”
“Yeah?” Mulder said, a little surprised. “Why did I think you were at my house for that eclipse?” confused with his false memories of Zito standing in his backyard, his features getting dimmer as the sun was edged out.
Half a grin on his face, Zito shrugged. “Because you’re a crazy man and there’s no accounting for what goes on in your head.”
Mulder shoved him, but only a little. They whipped over the highway overpass, Interstate 280’s eight lanes broad and open, only a few cars slipping through. As they cut across the peninsula towards the San Mateo Bridge, Mulder asked, “So, it was pretty cool? The eclipse, up on Skyline?”
Zito kept his eyes on the road, being a good driver and everything, and nodded, the profile of his expression looking serene, perfectly figured out. “I nearly went blind and all, but it was awesome. There was a bunch of people up there. This one guy, from, like, fucking Thailand, right?”
Zito shot him a quick look to make sure he was still following. Mulder was near to being half-asleep, comfortable and lank with exhaustion, a sweet quiet throb in his body, salt drying in his hair. He felt, without having much of anything to back it up, like he’d done something right, like maybe he’d been good that day.
He tipped his chin slightly to let Zito know he was listening. “Sure, Thailand. Did he speak English?”
Zito breathed out a laugh, darting between cars like a pinball. “Yeah, man, better than I do.”
“Well, that’s not saying much,” Mulder said back lazily, not even bothering to try and dodge Zito’s retaliatory smack.
“Anyway,” Zito continued, “We were talking, you know. Watching the eclipse and everything, talking. This guy, right, he’s been traveling around, like, the whole *world*, man, dude’s been everywhere. Buncha places I never even heard of before. Like, did you know Luxembourg is an actual country? Did you know that? I thought it was, like, a fairy tale land or something.”
Mulder let his eyes drift close briefly, a shade of a smile on his face, Zito and his ignorance of European geography, Zito and his action-hero manner of driving, Zito and his smooth voice.
“And I basically said to the guy, like, what are you doing here? Meaning, you know, what are you doing in California, America. And he just looks at me like it’s totally obvious and says, ‘I’m waiting for the moon to get in the way of the sun.’”
Zito grinned. “Just like that, he said it. Like *of course*. Like, why else would he be here? And I was kinda, you know, thinking of all the places that there are in the world, yeah, and this guy from Thailand ends up on the same hill as me, this guy from like a million miles away and he ends up on the same hill, just . . . waiting for the sun to disappear. It was so cool.”
They’d hit the bridge, the breathless climb up, five stories above the water before plummeting back down like rockets to the level of the bay, the high-armed streetlights that ran out in two neat funneling rows, one on each side, parallel lines looking for a place to intersect, and just as they began the long roll towards the eastern side, Mulder yawned against his shoulder and mumbled, “Keep talking, Zito, willya, just keep talking for a little while,” and then fell asleep.
* * *
(it doesn’t really matter where we end up, as long as it’s here)
They’d been down at the Presidio, for reasons passing understanding, and Zito had gotten the brilliant idea to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge.
Mulder thought he was just fucking around, at first. “Yeah, sure, then we’ll swim out to Angel Island, have a picnic,” rolling his eyes.
Zito only grinned. “I’m serious. You’ve never walked across the Golden Gate Bridge?”
Mulder hiked his eyebrows. “I don’t even think we’re *allowed* to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge. I think we’d probably get snipered by the Highway Patrol or something.”
Zito shook his head, hooked a hand around Mulder’s arm and tugged him close, the shadows of the old fort and the bars of Spanish light on Zito’s face. “Nah, I’ve done it a million times.” He thought about that, shrugged. “Well, maybe not a million. Maybe like twice. But it can be done, this I know.”
Zito had already started walking, up the tangled dirt hiking path through the straggle of woods. Mulder really had no choice but to follow, seeing as how Zito had the car keys.
“So, okay, assuming we do get over without being shot, what’ll we do once we’re on the other side?” Mulder asked, feeling like he was talking about a jailbreak or something, digging tunnels, scaling fences.
Zito picked up a stick, slashing at the shrubs, samurai fighting, not too concerned with the question. “Then we’ll be on the other side,” he said implacably, and Mulder decided that was reason enough..
It was a long walk uphill to the bridge, little pieces of wood sneaking into Mulder’s shoes, dry leaves in Zito’s hair. They were both breathing hard by the time they actually got to the toll plaza, night falling, the car headlights unfathomed and bleeding out a lake of white.
“See . . . see,” Zito said, panting and digging in his pocket for spare change to pay the toll, trying to get his breath back, grinning. “Told . . . you . . . it was . . . okay.”
Mulder just rolled his eyes again, wanting to pick the leaves out of Zito’s hair, wanting to brush the back of his hand across the smear of dust on Zito’s chin.
On the pedestrian walkway, torn by the destructive wind, they had to be on their toes, careful of the people on racing bikes who slotted behind them, shortly calling, “On your left!” before they blew past, the red and white reflectors on their wheels spinning like carousels.
Dusk on the bridge, and the sun was setting over the water.
Mulder studied the huge bundles of cables, thicker around than his chest, streaking upward on a swift curve, an exponential equation, a rust color halfway between red and orange.
“You know, a bunch of people died building this bridge,” he said.
Zito nodded, the collar of his shirt blown up, hiding his mouth. “I did know that. Also building the Hoover Dam.”
Mulder, unable to help himself, reached out and flipped Zito’s collar back down. It didn’t last, a few seconds later the wind rearing up and slapping them, plastering their clothes down, Zito’s collar cutting across his jaw.
“Yeah, but nobody writes songs about the Hoover Dam,” Mulder replied.
Zito bent a slight smile, hummed under his breath. They’d come to the middle of the bridge, halfway there and halfway back, and they stopped, leaning on the rail, watching the sun set. Their arms pressed together, shoulder to elbow, and they seemed somehow very far away from the rush of traffic at their backs.
Zito’s eyes tracked across the ocean, all the leaves combed free from his hair, looking clean and afraid of nothing, looking like he deserved everything that had been given to him.
Zito said quietly, that implied smile still on his face, “Open up that Golden Gate . . . California, here we come . . . right back where we started from . . . California, here we come.”
Mulder flipped Zito’s collar back down again, and touched Zito’s face, the tips of his fingers against the line of Zito’s jaw for barely an instant, drawing the other man’s eyes back to him, and they stood there on the bridge looking at each other until the Pacific Ocean swallowed up the light and they couldn’t see anything anymore.
THE END
“San Francisco is like something we were promised when we were kids, and when people say ‘California,’ it sounds like a prayer.”
--my friend Jeremy, who knows whereof he speaks
Um. How are we feeling about multiple lj cuts in the same message? Am I allowed to do this? Well, we shall find out!
second story, more fucked up than a barrel fulla monkeys.
Title: Heal Our Losses
Author: Candle Beck
Email: meansdynamite@yahoo.com
Category: MLB, Oakland A’s
Pairing: Chavez/Mulder, Chavez/Zito (you’re excited now, aren’t you?)
Rating: R (but it’s been fairly noted that I suck at rating these, so, you know, draw your own conclusions)
Archive: Anywhere you want to take it.
Disclaimer: Definitely never happened.
Feedback: A joyous thing.
Summary: Eric Chavez takes the long way down.
Notes: The title comes direct from Whitman. ‘We Shall All Be Healed’ is what they’re calling the Mountain Goats’ new album.
Heal Our Losses
By Candle Beck
Zito calls from across the clubhouse, “Hey, cabrón!” There’s white foul-line chalk on one side of Zito’s face and neck, smeared like flour, a skinny track of clean skin from behind his ear to his shoulder, where a drop of sweat has rolled down.
Chavez looks up, because he’s the only one Zito calls that, and the fluorescent lights strike hard in his eyes. He blinks, waits for things to get clear again. Zito’s wearing long sleeves under his jersey, which is unbuttoned. He looks like he’s halfway out the door; he looks like he’s already leaving.
Zito’s waving a hand, gesturing for him to come over. When Chavez stands, his vision fractures, slow-dissolves. He’s not aware that he’s swaying, about to fall over, until he feels a hand placed steadily on his side, looks down to see Mulder, near-grinning, saying, “Careful.”
The concrete floor is cracked in interesting ways, webbed, and by the time Chavez gets over to where Zito is, Zito has forgotten what he wanted to tell him and so they don’t talk about anything.
* * *
The night guards at the Coliseum know his face, they call him ‘hot shot’ and rag him for going oh-for-five the night before. Chavez plays along until he can gracefully extract himself and escape into the stadium.
It’s two in the morning and the place is truly haunted. Chavez has got a set of keys to let him through the tunnels, and not too many people know that he comes down here a lot in the middle of the night. Tonight it’s so he can look at tape, honest preparation. He watches his own at-bats, over and over again, until he doesn’t recognize the man at the plate as himself anymore. There’s a hitch in his swing, recently, he’s trying to pin it down. He’s not turning his wrists over on the follow-through the way he’s been taught, and this is something that he’s never had to think about before.
In the corner of his eye as he leaves the video room, locking the door behind him, he sees Vida Blue down the hallway, glowering from under his eyebrows, his hand moving slowly and gripping a baseball that shines in the darkness. And when Chavez turns to face him, Vida Blue is gone, back to where he came from.
* * *
Half-asleep, and there’s a hand on Chavez’s face.
It’s a pitcher’s hand, this he can tell. The hard tips of the fingers, a lifetime of searching for pitch grips remembered there. Chavez lifts his own hand, touches the pitcher’s wrist, the small bony knob, the soft skin of the underside.
Somebody says his name, says, “Hold still.” Chavez breathes out, pushes back, and one of them gasps, sounding more afraid than anything else. There’s a wicked twist between them, and Chavez’s head falls back, his mouth keening open.
That hand slides down his body, that famous left hand, trim-cut nails leaving behind fading white scratches on his chest, no thicker than a strand of hair. Chavez feels a roughened palm on his stomach, a mouth on his neck. Chavez bites his tongue, arches his hips up with his shoulders pressed down into the bed, thinking brokenly that he is a bridge now, he is a way over.
Somebody curses and spits in his hand, and in a spear of lucidity, Chavez knows that this must be Zito, tonight, because Zito spits in his hand dozens of times a game. Chavez is about to ask if Zito’s going to throw a fastball or a curve, but then there’s a tongue in his mouth and something ungodly happening above him, and Chavez’s mind is sky-clean, and for just a moment he is not aware that there is anything in the world that is not this.
* * *
Chavez has a recurring dream about a game that never ends. The players are all shadows, their faces indistinguishable, but Chavez can tell them apart by their batting stances, their swings, the way they turn the double play.
The game has been tied for maybe a decade, maybe longer. Every day, they come out and play from the moment the light sneaks over the horizon until the moment it gets too dark for the pitcher to read the signs. The visiting team scores in the top half of an inning and the home team matches them, run for run, neither side able to put it away.
They play on a simple field, the foul lines dug out with a spade, the infield grass shriveling, burned in the sun. There’s no outfield wall, the park just stretches on until it bleeds into the charred landscape. There’s a chain-link fence behind home plate and flat wooden bleachers to either side of the diamond. The players move like this is the place where they were born, like this is the place where they will die.
In the dream, Chavez is sitting on the end of the bench in the dugout, and before each batter goes to the plate, they touch his head for luck. Chavez is pretty sure he’s not doing them any good; if he were, the game would be over by now.
It’s a slow dream, it’s endless. Sometimes, Chavez-in-the-dream actually falls asleep and has dreams of his own. Chavez gets confused, everything about this is so real. That he can smell the dirt and feel the grass beneath his hands. That his back hurts from sitting on the bench for so long, that his hair is now irreparably tousled by all the players’ hands. That each crack of the bat widens his eyes, snaps through his heart. All this is the way it is in real life too, and eventually Chavez cannot tell the difference between this game and any other that he’s ever watched.
* * *
Chavez falls out the back door of the bar, into the alley, with his shirt untucked and someone else’s taste in his mouth. His hands are still shaking, and his eyes keep failing, everything blurring.
He can, oh, he can still feel the bathroom’s dirty floor under his knees, he can still feel his teeth scraping across taut skin and hands smoothing down his hair. He can still hear his name, broken into two separate gasps, and he has not escaped the terrible thought that if Mulder would just say his name like that more often, then maybe Chavez’s life would stop being such an utter fucking mess.
Once he gets his hands flat on the brick wall, he feels like he can breathe again.
The door slams behind him and before he can turn, there’s somebody strong up against his back, arms out on either side of him, Chavez’s hands bracketed by another pair, bigger than his, and he sees the scars on the knuckles, it’s Mulder come to find him again, Mulder not letting anything be still between them.
“Wasn’t finished with you yet,” Mulder’s voice says, almost a growl, and Chavez can feel the tremors wracking through, shuddering against the man behind him. “Why the fuck did you run away?”
Mulder takes one of his hands off the wall, fits it to Chavez’s hip, under his shirt. Chavez tilts forward, rests his forehead on the brick, and he is pulled back roughly, flush against Mulder’s body. Some kind of warning is rasped out, and then there are teeth tugging at his earlobe, a hickey worked on his throat.
Long fingers are running over his stomach and chest, and Chavez isn’t even really aware that he’s clawing at the buttons of his jeans until Mulder’s hand is atop his own, quicker and smarter, taking charge, and Chavez moans, dropping his head back onto Mulder’s shoulder, breathing in sharp hyperventilating bursts.
Chavez feels a deep laugh burring against his neck, and he bends his arm backward at an unnatural angle, hooking around Mulder’s waist, his hand clenched in a fist and pressed to the small of the man’s back, holding them together as tightly as he can. When he comes, it’s with this strange little cry.
The weight at his back is suddenly gone, and Chavez slumps forward, panting hard with his shoulder braced against the wall. He hears Mulder’s footsteps walking away, and tastes thin red brick dust, ashen on the roof of his mouth.
* * *
In the city, where totaled cars hug telephone poles and there’s a splintered fracture running down thirteen floors of windows in a skyscraper made of glass, Chavez buys a paper from a newsstand and throws away everything but the sports section, sitting on an abandoned stoop in the sallow light of the streetlamp.
He reads every story, every score, every stat, and he studies his own line without registering that this E. Chavez, who seems to have trouble against left-handed pitching, is him.
The streetlamp flickers, fire-like shadows on his sprawled legs, and Chavez looks up. Across the street is a church, a drive-thru confessional, and the marquee at the front reads plainly, ‘We Shall All Be Healed.’
Chavez doesn’t realize he’s crying until he feels the tears fall onto his hands.
* * *
In Zito’s car, the radio’s turned up loud, so they don’t talk. Zito drums his hand on the steering wheel, his thumb keeping time with the bass beats. Chavez’s eyes can see nothing but the smeary scatter of lights, streetlamps and headlights and neon signs and the blinking green men at the crosswalk.
Zito’s hand is on his leg, suddenly, and Chavez blinks down at it, thinking disjointedly, ‘where did that come from?’ Zito’s fingers tighten and Chavez remembers why he got in the car with the pitcher tonight.
Zito isn’t looking at him, and his hand stays there until he has to shift gears, and then comes back, a little higher this time, steady and warm.
Chavez has a clear vision of himself with his arms thrown wide, his body unprotected, his face turned up to the sky. This might be sacrifice, it might be surrender, it might be redemption.
San Francisco’s been lit on fire outside his window, he can feel the blistered heat of it and smell the smoke, and Chavez hopes that they make it to the ocean before this catches up with them.
* * *
Chavez steps into the batter’s box and feels the world funneling down around him, whisper-silent and his heartbeat stuttering in his head.
Here, briefly, his power is easily defined, his every weakness well-known.
He won’t bite on first ball heat, and the second pitch clips the corner just as he pulls his hands back, and he is quickly in a hole.
He steps out, the stadium noise crashing down around him again, the lights searing, and pulls off his helmet, pushing a hand through his hair before he puts his helmet back on and wraps his hands around the bat, moving deftly back into the box like sinking underwater, and all he can hear and see is what he takes down with him.
Chavez battles back to a full count and he would live here if he could, he would never leave the field, the lines of the infield and the span of the outfield everything that makes sense to him anymore.
The payoff pitch is cutting low and inside, but it’ll find the zone, and Chavez swings hard, just looking to stay alive, but he drops his left shoulder and loses his balance, a painfully awkward cut and the ump punches him out.
Chavez looks down at his hands for a moment, still gripped tight and choked up on the bat, and then steps out of the box, his beautiful quiet life getting deafening and terrible again as he walks back to the dugout with his head down.
* * *
There’s a sound in the darkness, and Chavez rolls over, pushes the pillow off his head. Piecing through the shadows, Chavez picks out Mulder standing at the foot of his bed, looking down at him.
“You’re not asleep,” Mulder says conversationally.
Chavez is still near to his dream, he still feels like he might be good luck. “Not anymore, no.”
Mulder’s grin is sharp, brutal. “Good,” he answers, and then climbs onto the bed, up over Chavez, their legs tangling, leans down with his elbows to either side of Chavez’s head, their noses close enough to touch, close enough to feel Mulder’s breath on his lips.
Mulder studies him carefully for a moment, then moves to brush his hand across Chavez’s forehead, rustling his fingers through Chavez’s hair, angling down to kiss him, take his breath away.
Mulder draws back, pulls Chavez up to strip his T-shirt off him. Chavez lets Mulder undress him numbly, thinking that he doesn’t even really have to move, everything will be done for him.
Skimming his palms down Chavez’s sides, Mulder works slowly against the other man, hovering above him, not lowering himself down onto Chavez, Chavez increasingly twisting and desperate under his hands.
Mulder waits until Chavez is near to incoherent, whipping his head back and forth on the pillow, before he suddenly pulls all the way back, removes his hands from Chavez’s body and asks with something black in his tone, “Who else are you fucking?”
Chavez stiffens, shakes his head. This isn’t fair, this has got to be against the rules. “What? No one. C’mere.” He tries to pull Mulder back down against him, pressing upwards at the same time, but Mulder won’t have any of it, moving farther away, teasing him with quick unsatisfying bites along his jawline.
“Bullshit. C’mon, man, you can tell me,” Mulder purrs with true menace. “You know I don’t give a fuck what you do. Just curious.”
Chavez groans, streaks his hands across Mulder’s back, Mulder shivering. “No one,” he gasps as Mulder drags his tongue down his throat in retaliation. “I fucking swear.”
Mulder lets out a disbelieving laugh, unevenly interrupted with hard inhalations. “I see you come home,” he murmurs, ducking his head down again, Chavez craning back to give him full access, but it’s just Mulder breathing hotly on his pulse, and Chavez has probably never wanted anyone as much as he wants Mulder at this moment, Mulder who is already shifting away from him again and continuing, “I see you come home and it looks to me like you’ve been well-fucked, and I haven’t come anywhere near you in a week. So who is it, babe?” and Mulder’s voice hits a rich new low on the last word, and Chavez’s whole body is strumming, clamoring.
“You got some girl hidden away? You don’t want to tell me about her, you’re afraid I’ll steal her away from you?” Mulder laughs softly, catches Chavez’s wrists in his hand when Chavez reaches for him blindly, pinning Chavez’s hands above his head, Mulder’s other hand tracing bare designs on Chavez’s stomach. “You’re right, I probably would.”
But neither of them believes that’s the case, because Chavez is struggling against Mulder’s grip and futilely straining upwards, trying to find some friction, something, his eyes half-lidded and swollen, his teeth digging into his lower lip, his forehead pressed against his arm, and Chavez didn’t know Mulder was this strong.
Mulder smirks down at Chavez, slick shameless thing that he is, and leans close to say right in Chavez’s ear, “Or maybe you got some other guy. I think . . . maybe you don’t like girls so much anymore. Maybe you don’t want anything but this.”
Oh, and that’s true, that’s so true, and Chavez has to fight down a scream with everything in him, mumbling, “Yeah, this, this, please.”
Mulder’s eyes flash, and his voice is hateful as he asks again, “Who are you fucking?”
Chavez closes his eyes so he won’t have to look at the other man, grates out, “I am . . . *trying* . . . to fuck you. If you wouldn’t mind.” He punctuates this by lifting his head and attaching his mouth to Mulder’s collarbone, hearing the other man catch his breath harshly, startled and swiftly taking himself out of Chavez’s restrained radius.
Mulder’s hand is chained around his wrists, his expression ripped between desire and anger, madman’s eyes and Mulder whispers raggedly, “All right, keep your fucking secrets. You think you got everything, but you don’t even have me.”
And finally, finally, Mulder lets their bodies fall together, releases Chavez’s hands and kisses him so hard, they both end up with blood on their lips.
* * *
When Zito pushes him down, Chavez does not get up again.
He lies on the ground, his legs splayed, his head aching. Zito looms above him, outlined against the sky. Zito pokes him with his foot. “Get up.”
Chavez shakes his head, and Zito nudges him again. “C’mon, I was just messing around. Get up.”
Chavez lifts his arm and rests it atop his eyes. He’s better able to breathe like this, without the press of the light on his eyelids. He hears Zito shift, and hears Zito’s voice from closer than it was before.
“This is definitely, like, a sidewalk,” Zito says. “I don’t think you can just go to sleep here or whatever it is you’re doing.”
Chavez takes his arm away. Zito’s crouched next to him, his hands fluttering ineffectively. The street’s on a hill, the change is spilling out of Chavez’s pockets, rolling away down the pavement.
“I’m not going to sleep,” Chavez tells him.
Zito hikes an eyebrow. “What are you doing, then?”
Chavez reaches out, touches the collar of Zito’s shirt, his fingertips pattering high at the place where Zito’s chest meets his throat. Zito looks surprised, and moves backwards, his eyes flicking nervously up and down the street. Chavez drops his hand.
“I’m lying on the sidewalk. Clearly.”
Zito rolls his eyes. Chavez can tell he’s getting annoyed now. “Yeah, well, when you’re done being a fucking nutcase, give me a call, all right?”
And Zito stands, walks away. Chavez thinks that he’s bluffing, he wouldn’t really just leave Chavez here on the ground like this, but Zito doesn’t come back, and Chavez stares up at the sky until night falls, counts the stars until some guy who looks like he belongs to a fraternity sneers down at him and says, “Jesus, how fucking pathetic can you get,” and kicks him hard in the ribs.
* * *
When Chavez closes his eyes, he sees the Coliseum’s sturdy gray walls and the ridged hills to the east, he sees the industrial shore, the petrified oil-slick at the bottom of the water, he sees the last homerun he hit disappearing over the outfield fence and the staggered undiluted joy on his teammates’ faces the night they won the twentieth game of the streak.
When Chavez closes his eyes, he sees Zito hurling curve after curve, each one hooking like falling in love, and he sees Mulder stunning batters with his fastball, something so fierce that Chavez cannot fight against it.
When Chavez closes his eyes, he sees everything that has become the truth about him, and he knows that for all that has gone wrong in his heartbreakingly short life, this is still the worst thing he has ever done.
* * *
At the ballpark, Chavez is stretching out in short left field as Mulder and Zito warm up next to each other in the bullpen. He can hear them talking, fading in and out. Zito prefaces everything with ‘dude,’ and asks about four times if Mulder thinks Zito’s overthrowing his fastball. Mulder keeps saying, “Motherfucker, stay *down*, motherfucker,” and Chavez knows he’s talking about his curveball, but can’t quite get it out of his head that Mulder is talking about him.
Chavez squints against the sun and there is grass in his mouth. The crowd of kids leaning out from the stands and watching the players warm up keep yelling his name, waving notepads and pristine baseballs at him.
Mulder calls his name for half a minute, lost in the fans’ chorus, and eventually gets fed up and bounces a ball over to where Chavez is sitting in the grass, to get his attention. When Chavez looks over, both Mulder and Zito are standing there grinning at him. The two of them look like photographs of themselves for a moment, frozen with the pure early summer sunlight on their faces, slipping like fingers through their hair, their gloves on their hips, cocky teasing grins on their faces, like the way history will remember them.
Chavez gets up and walks over to them, handing the ball back to Mulder. “What?” he asks.
Mulder ticks an eyebrow, glances at Zito. Zito just rolls his eyes, and Mulder shrugs. “Nothing. Just wanted to make sure you’d come when called.”
Zito muffles a laugh against his hand, and Mulder’s grin has taken on a vaguely cruel edge, but that might just be Chavez imagining things.
Chavez swallows and thinks that everyone must surely see the way he is tied to these two perfect men, his stupid obedience to them, his knees ready to hit the ground the second either of them says the word, ready to do whatever they ask of him, ready to fall as far as they want him to, his skin cool and dry with anticipation or dread, this must be crystal-clear to the world.
Because they are perfect and Chavez is devastatingly not. Because they are perfect and he never will be.
THE END
Okay. Now you're depressed as hell, huh. sorry.