they're gonna find intelligent life up there on the moon
i can't tell you how many times i tried to write this thing. i got no faith in my state of mind, nothing to trust. and i keep wanting to write stuff that is nothing but filth. but whatevs.
Notes: For the whole lyric-wheel-majig. Lyrics to the Peter Gabriel song ‘Darkness’ proffered by christy24fan. I did not get a chance to actually hear the song, if you can buy that. Broken computer speakers and forgotten Firewire card kept it trapped on the harddrive, where it can do nobody any good. And yeah. This gave me some trouble.
Skid
By Candle Beck
By the end of August, when Oakland is all Crayola blue sky and little kids with sunburns, everything has pretty much fallen apart. It’s something Bobby Crosby never expected, a summer like this with its carved-glass light, and then this fucking tragedy that he can’t even tell anyone about.
The way it works now is that Crosby pretends he can’t see anything different, and Mulder pretends he can’t see Crosby.
On days they’ve got a night game, Richie will take off early in the afternoon because he’s the restless sort, and Melhuse is basically living at his girlfriend’s place, so he’s never around. Once it’s quiet, Crosby waits till a commercial break, then leaves the television on and goes to Mulder’s room.
Mulder can be counted on to be messing around on the computer, wearing his headphones with the volume high enough that it’s audible even across the room, kinetic fucking trance like a too-fast heartbeat, dance remixes and rave songs. Crosby shuts and locks the door, and Mulder doesn’t notice him until Crosby pulls off his headphones and turns him around.
The music is still on, muffled in the background, and Crosby can hear it because they don’t talk anymore. Generally, they keep their jeans on but take their shirts off, because Crosby’s got a nipple thing and Mulder’s got a belly button thing. It’s the one little concession to the fact that they’ve been doing this all season, they know all the best places on each other’s bodies and the right tricks to use, every stitch from every surgery and the rifts of formerly broken bones-but for that they might as well be two guys using fake names in the back alley of a bar.
They don’t actually fuck anymore, because it takes too long and shows too much. Crosby sometimes has to bite his tongue to keep from asking, though, once so hard it bled.
Mulder’s legs hang off the end of the bed even after Crosby’s done blowing him, propped half on his side with his mouth sliding across Crosby’s chest and his hand disappearing into Crosby’s boxers, the zipper scoring little marks on his wrist. Mulder uses his teeth more than he did before, and Crosby imagines tiny universes of white scars all over his stomach and chest, hickeys for black holes.
The thing about Mulder is that he’s got these giant fucking hands. Crosby can feel him everywhere, nothing but fingers and palm and the pad of his thumb. Eventually Crosby is breathing fast enough that he can’t pay attention to anything else, cotton in his ears and his throat sore.
For about fifteen seconds, from immediately before to immediately after he comes, Bobby Crosby is not thinking about anything, which almost makes this worth everything else.
Mulder doesn’t stick around, afterwards. He goes to take a shower with his left hand held out away from him like it’s been contaminated. He doesn’t look back or nothing, and Crosby knows well enough to not be there when he gets back.
They a) do not talk about it, b) do not touch each other at any other time, not even accidentally, and c) do not make eye contact unless absolutely necessary.
It’s been like this for close to a month. Mulder has gotten quieter and stiller and his face stays blank all the time. Crosby watched it happen, all through August, watched Mulder disintegrate right before his eyes like magic or something.
It’s kind of unbearable. Crosby would give just about anything for the chance to holler ‘do-over’ and go back to the beginning, get it fucking right this time.
*
Used to be, they’d get really drunk first.
It happened at night, and when they were on the road. Mulder would drink wine right out of the bottle and the guys would call him white trash and wino. Crosby saw Mulder’s dedication and the dark red stain on his lips, the long bobbing motion of his throat, and Crosby started drinking faster too, a crowd of beer cans around his feet.
Everybody would wander off to bed, and they would wait a while in their separate rooms to make sure their housemates or teammates were asleep, Crosby drunkenly impatient and too antsy to sit still, pacing and rubbing his dick through his pants with the heel of his hand. Then he would sneak to Mulder’s room or Mulder would sneak to his, tottering and slurring and not wasting any time.
Drunk Mulder was clumsy, and drunk Bobby was lazy, but it worked out all right. They would neck messily like teenagers for extended periods of time, both of them totally self-absorbed and rubbing against each other without shame.
Crosby had never been able to think straight during sex, and being drunk of course didn’t help. He kept being surprised, over and over again, by the length of Mulder’s back and the hardness of his chest. He never remembered anything.
They mumbled at each other, giving direction and encouragement and occasionally just saying ‘dude,’ back and forth like it meant everything. Mulder didn’t call him ‘rook’ or ‘rookie,’ which was good because Crosby didn’t want to think that this was just hazing. Mulder didn’t call him by his given names either, usually just limited his remarks to profanity and blasphemy, but Crosby called him ‘Mark,’ though he normally never did. It just seemed like the thing to do.
They stopped bothering with liquor in May, the night before they left for a swing through the Central. Crosby remembers, because Mulder’s pocket-sized Cleveland city map was on the bed. It was the middle of the day, and they were just hanging out, not doing much of anything, when Mulder spilled his soda and jumped up and cursed and took his shirt off.
There’s only so much that denial can do for a person.
The skin of Mulder’s stomach tasted faintly of Orange Slice, and he held onto Crosby’s ears like handlebars, sucking in air and his legs shaking under Crosby’s arms. Crosby could see everything clearly, for the first time. The sunlight all over them. Mark Mulder’s folded-up map of Cleveland stuck to Crosby’s bare shoulder after Mulder had stripped his shirt off and pushed him onto the bed.
That changed things, as one would expect. They couldn’t brush it off anymore, and there was a violent kind of freedom in that. It started happening more often, and in random places, just because they could. They fucked like they’d invented it. They got stupid and reckless and one time even did it in the video room at the Coliseum, up against the door with Mulder’s free hand covering Crosby’s mouth to muffle him, bite marks scattered like salt on Mulder’s palm.
In Crosby’s bedroom with the door muffled with a towel, Mulder’s hands were occupied pulling out every dirty trick in the book and Crosby’s whole body slick with sweat, and when Mulder said to him conversationally, “listen, I think I’m gonna fuck you pretty soon. Like, sometime in the next few minutes. So, don’t be alarmed,” it wasn’t like Crosby had any choice. His ability to say no to Mulder had run off without even leaving a note. It was probably in Bolivia by now.
It got worse, though. Mulder came back from the All-Star Game all flushed and hyper, and nearly tore Crosby’s shirt pulling him into the bedroom. A few minutes later, Crosby was moaning and wondering what the fuck they put in the water in Houston and where could he buy a vat of it, and then Mulder took it upon himself to try his hand at cocksucking, and Bobby Crosby felt a guide-wire snap in his chest.
Mark fucking Mulder with his face scowled in concentration, his eyes closed, his cheeks dented and the line of his jaw pulled taut, his hair under Crosby’s fingers and Crosby’s hips pushing up involuntarily, wanting to fuck Mulder’s mouth just so he could say that he had.
After that, Crosby couldn’t close his eyes without seeing Mulder sucking him off, it fucking haunted him. He was pretty sure the image was there forever, too. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing that would fade with time.
The entire situation became very important to him very quickly. It was like being fourteen years old again, with his eyes wide and his mouth dry, his voice cracking in his throat. He kept forgetting to care about anything else. Sometimes his life felt narrowed down to this, a hand, a mouth, a hipbone between his teeth.
Maybe it was just the novelty of the whole gay thing, but there honestly weren’t enough hours in the day for the amount of sex Crosby wanted to have with Mark Mulder. He thought about it constantly. It got so he was basically blushing all the time, and Hatteberg kept asking him if he was drunk.
And a day or two into August, right before things started to get sincerely bad, he decided that it was okay to fuck around with a guy as long as the guy was Mulder. It was the exception to heterosexuality, and the exception proved the rule, after all, so actually, Bobby Crosby was still straight. Just very suggestible. And he’d spent all season watching Mulder do no wrong, until it was an article of faith and if Mulder wanted to sleep with him, then it must be the right thing to do.
So, he was okay, and certainly not as hypocritical as Mulder was, calling Harden a fag for not only drinking Diet Coke with Lemon, but also pouring it into a glass with icecubes first. Crosby wasn’t entirely sure how icecubes made one a fag, and he was gonna ask Mulder for clarification, but he didn’t remember until Mulder had Crosby’s dick in his mouth, and by then it all kind of seemed like a moot point.
They were friends and all, and Crosby still fetched things like a good little rookie, still defended Mulder when Zito got drunk and started talking shit about organized sock drawers and the fucking mini-Dustbuster in the back of Mulder’s car. Mulder still pitched Crosby batting practice until the coaches yelled at him for overworking, still bought Cinnamon Toast Crunch when they ran out, even though Crosby was the only one who liked it and they were supposed to be in charge of their own shopping. It wasn’t too weird or anything.
They played Halo all day, and Mulder didn’t shoot him once. He picked Crosby first for his team when they had a Supersoaker war. He taught Crosby how to tell when Hudson and Jermaine Dye were bluffing, and Crosby won most of his signing bonus back in about three hours. He gave Crosby rides to the stadium, and then after the game, they would park in an alley or church parking lot and climb in the back of the SUV, streetlight through the tinted windows turning them gray and gold, until the only color he could make out was Mulder’s eyes. There was a lot of stuff that he’d never be able to shake.
This one time, Mulder fell asleep in Crosby’s bed, and the kid kept rolling over Mulder’s arm or bumping heads with him, all night long. There was just a hell of a lot more of Mulder than Crosby was used to, as far as people in his bed were concerned.
Crosby didn’t get all that much sleep, but it was okay, because he was awake to see the sunlight crawl across the bed and wind around Mulder’s hand, which was curled on Crosby’s chest like a cat, and Crosby kept thinking that this was what he’d been missing.
*
They go on the road, Chicago and then Toronto. Nick Swisher shows up all freshly-minted and still in his original packaging, and whenever anyone calls ‘rookie,’ it’s Swisher they mean and Crosby who answers first. It has been without a doubt the longest year of his life.
In the morning, Mulder comes down to the lobby looking more exhausted than he did the day before. His ERA since the break is over five. The coaches and trainers crowd him like groupies, asking about his back, about his shoulder, about his hip. He shrugs, shakes his head, gives one-word answers, slumped down with his arms crossed over his chest sullenly.
Crosby can see Mulder wishing for injury-at least then he’d have a fucking reason.
There’s no way this lasts, though. It’s September now. It’s Mark fucking Mulder. None of this makes sense, so it’ll definitely be over soon.
Fix Mulder, and you’ll fix everything else, too. Simple.
They get out to the yard and the sickly-colored fake turf hurts Crosby’s eyes, makes him think of Minnesota, that game a few weeks ago that wouldn’t end, his knees all fucked up and how Eric Chavez began to stutter terribly sometime in the sixteenth inning, something short-circuiting in his mind.
Mulder still won’t look at him, but Crosby should stop taking it so hard, because Mulder won’t look at anyone, not unless he has to. It’s really nothing personal. Honestly, none of this is meant to fuck Crosby up, that’s just a predictable side effect. They’ve both got more important stuff to deal with than wondering about the next time they’ll fuck like friends, not strangers.
Crosby can’t blame Mulder. Baseball is what holds them together. There’s nothing that Mulder isn’t allowed to sacrifice to get it back.
He keeps trying to remember who did what first. The first move or whatever. He’s almost certain it was Mulder. No way in the world would Crosby have tried a stunt like that, no matter how drunk he was. All Crosby really remembers from that night, so early in the season that half their furniture was still in boxes, is opening his mouth on Mulder’s throat, tasting line chalk and salt. And also, at some point, laughing very hard. Crosby wishes he’d paid more attention. Took notes, maybe.
He might not play today. Macha says he needs a day off, to rest his back, which has been stiffening, and his left knee, which has been buckling. Of course, Crosby hasn’t hit higher than .200 in almost a month and a half now, so it’s probably not just concern for his health.
If he sits, it won’t help. He doesn’t need a day off. He needs the rest of his life off.
*
Inconsequential things occur, red flags all over the horizon, and Bobby Crosby knocks softly on Mulder’s hotel room door, so early in the morning it’s still late at night.
Crosby’s heart beats in his throat, something heavy sunk low in his stomach, and he refuses to acknowledge the fact that he is scared almost out of his mind, and he has been like this for a long time now.
Mulder doesn’t open the door, so Crosby knocks again, glancing up and down the hall. He flattens both hands and leans in, his ear up against the wood. “Mulder,” he calls in a near-whisper.
Some stuff shifts and rustles in the room, and then Mulder’s voice is close, just on the other side.
“Go away.”
“Wait, hey,” Crosby says, widening his eyes at the peephole in case Mulder is watching. “Lemme in, okay?”
He hears Mulder sigh, can picture him rubbing a hand across his face. “I’m fucking tired, man.”
“So’m I,” Crosby whispers, stroking his fingers on the door and worrying inanely about splinters. “But, um. It’ll be easier to sleep if you. Let me in.”
“You’re getting really fucking pathetic, you know that?”
Crosby winces. It’s definitely true, but that’s a pretty mean thing to say, even without having to see his face. He swallows, resting his head against the door, and thinks about control.
“I just,” Crosby starts, no real idea what he intends to say. “I don’t think it should be like this anymore. Because you. You don’t look at me. Or talk to me. You don’t even fuck me. Which is, um. Not cool. And it hasn’t made us play better. So, like, it’s not the way it has to be.”
Crosby listens at the door like he’s cracking a safe. He imagines he can hear Mulder breathing. Imagines he can feel Mulder’s pulse. Mulder doesn’t answer for awhile, and Crosby imagines him fighting back tears, very dramatic and everything.
“Until I can pitch again,” Mulder finally says. “It’s this or nothing. I got no room for anything else.”
Crosby closes his eyes. “What if you never get it back?” he asks hoarsely.
“Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?”
Crosby shakes his head, breathing out slowly, but doesn’t answer. After a pause, Mulder says tightly, “Look, figure it out, man. I’m not standing here all night listening to you fucking whine.”
Crosby thinks about it, head rolling on the door, eyes still closed. Truth is, he never even had a chance. Mulder used to be perfect and now he’s just a litter of blonde and blue fragments on the floor. At neither time could Bobby Crosby have taken top priority in Mulder’s mind. He should have known better, really. If he gets his do-over, he’ll stay the fuck away, he’s learned his lesson.
The funny thing is, Crosby always thought baseball came first with him, too.
“Okay,” Crosby says carefully, his voice steady. “I guess I’m done then.”
Mulder’s silence sounds surprised. Crosby smiles vaguely-probably no one’s rejected Mulder in years, if ever.
He’s pretty sure he’s making a big mistake, because anything is better than nothing, and at least this way he gets someone else’s hand on his dick on a regular basis. But, to hell with it. He’s so tired of all this.
“Night, Mark,” Crosby whispers, and leaves before Mulder has a chance to say anything back. He’s about halfway down the hall when he realizes sadly that this is probably what being in love feels like.
Crosby gets back to his room and listens through the wall even though Mulder’s not on the other side-force of habit. He thinks that none of this is fair, he’s just a fucking kid, he didn’t know.
But that train of thought is going nowhere good, so instead he closes his eyes and counts down the seconds until dawn, counts himself into the future, when his rookie year will be far behind him, and there will be a toughened scar instead of this open wound in his heart.
THE END
i'm scared of swimming in the sea
dark shapes moving under me
every fear i swallow makes me small
inconsequential things occur
alarms are triggered
memories stir
it's not the way it has to be
i'm afraid of what i do not know
i hate being undermined
i'm afraid i can be devil man
and i'm scared to be divine
don't mess with me my fuse is short
beneath this skin these fragments caught
when i allow it to be
there's no control over me
i have my fears
but they do not have me
walking through the undergrowth, to the house in the woods
the deeper I go, the darker it gets
i peer through the window
knock at the door
and the monster i was
so afraid of
lies curled up on the floor
is curled up on the floor just like a baby boy
i cry until i laugh
i'm afraid of being mothered
with my balls shut in the pen
i'm afraid of loving women
and i'm scared of loving men
flashbacks coming in every night
don't tell me everything's alright
when I allow it to be
it has no control over me
i own my fear
so it doesn't own me
walking through the undergrowth, to the house in the woods
the deeper i go, the darker it gets
i peer through the window
knock at the door
and the monster i was
so afraid of
lies curled up on the floor
is curled up on the floor just like a baby boy
i cry until i laugh
--Peter Gabriel, ‘Darkness’
Notes: For the whole lyric-wheel-majig. Lyrics to the Peter Gabriel song ‘Darkness’ proffered by christy24fan. I did not get a chance to actually hear the song, if you can buy that. Broken computer speakers and forgotten Firewire card kept it trapped on the harddrive, where it can do nobody any good. And yeah. This gave me some trouble.
Skid
By Candle Beck
By the end of August, when Oakland is all Crayola blue sky and little kids with sunburns, everything has pretty much fallen apart. It’s something Bobby Crosby never expected, a summer like this with its carved-glass light, and then this fucking tragedy that he can’t even tell anyone about.
The way it works now is that Crosby pretends he can’t see anything different, and Mulder pretends he can’t see Crosby.
On days they’ve got a night game, Richie will take off early in the afternoon because he’s the restless sort, and Melhuse is basically living at his girlfriend’s place, so he’s never around. Once it’s quiet, Crosby waits till a commercial break, then leaves the television on and goes to Mulder’s room.
Mulder can be counted on to be messing around on the computer, wearing his headphones with the volume high enough that it’s audible even across the room, kinetic fucking trance like a too-fast heartbeat, dance remixes and rave songs. Crosby shuts and locks the door, and Mulder doesn’t notice him until Crosby pulls off his headphones and turns him around.
The music is still on, muffled in the background, and Crosby can hear it because they don’t talk anymore. Generally, they keep their jeans on but take their shirts off, because Crosby’s got a nipple thing and Mulder’s got a belly button thing. It’s the one little concession to the fact that they’ve been doing this all season, they know all the best places on each other’s bodies and the right tricks to use, every stitch from every surgery and the rifts of formerly broken bones-but for that they might as well be two guys using fake names in the back alley of a bar.
They don’t actually fuck anymore, because it takes too long and shows too much. Crosby sometimes has to bite his tongue to keep from asking, though, once so hard it bled.
Mulder’s legs hang off the end of the bed even after Crosby’s done blowing him, propped half on his side with his mouth sliding across Crosby’s chest and his hand disappearing into Crosby’s boxers, the zipper scoring little marks on his wrist. Mulder uses his teeth more than he did before, and Crosby imagines tiny universes of white scars all over his stomach and chest, hickeys for black holes.
The thing about Mulder is that he’s got these giant fucking hands. Crosby can feel him everywhere, nothing but fingers and palm and the pad of his thumb. Eventually Crosby is breathing fast enough that he can’t pay attention to anything else, cotton in his ears and his throat sore.
For about fifteen seconds, from immediately before to immediately after he comes, Bobby Crosby is not thinking about anything, which almost makes this worth everything else.
Mulder doesn’t stick around, afterwards. He goes to take a shower with his left hand held out away from him like it’s been contaminated. He doesn’t look back or nothing, and Crosby knows well enough to not be there when he gets back.
They a) do not talk about it, b) do not touch each other at any other time, not even accidentally, and c) do not make eye contact unless absolutely necessary.
It’s been like this for close to a month. Mulder has gotten quieter and stiller and his face stays blank all the time. Crosby watched it happen, all through August, watched Mulder disintegrate right before his eyes like magic or something.
It’s kind of unbearable. Crosby would give just about anything for the chance to holler ‘do-over’ and go back to the beginning, get it fucking right this time.
*
Used to be, they’d get really drunk first.
It happened at night, and when they were on the road. Mulder would drink wine right out of the bottle and the guys would call him white trash and wino. Crosby saw Mulder’s dedication and the dark red stain on his lips, the long bobbing motion of his throat, and Crosby started drinking faster too, a crowd of beer cans around his feet.
Everybody would wander off to bed, and they would wait a while in their separate rooms to make sure their housemates or teammates were asleep, Crosby drunkenly impatient and too antsy to sit still, pacing and rubbing his dick through his pants with the heel of his hand. Then he would sneak to Mulder’s room or Mulder would sneak to his, tottering and slurring and not wasting any time.
Drunk Mulder was clumsy, and drunk Bobby was lazy, but it worked out all right. They would neck messily like teenagers for extended periods of time, both of them totally self-absorbed and rubbing against each other without shame.
Crosby had never been able to think straight during sex, and being drunk of course didn’t help. He kept being surprised, over and over again, by the length of Mulder’s back and the hardness of his chest. He never remembered anything.
They mumbled at each other, giving direction and encouragement and occasionally just saying ‘dude,’ back and forth like it meant everything. Mulder didn’t call him ‘rook’ or ‘rookie,’ which was good because Crosby didn’t want to think that this was just hazing. Mulder didn’t call him by his given names either, usually just limited his remarks to profanity and blasphemy, but Crosby called him ‘Mark,’ though he normally never did. It just seemed like the thing to do.
They stopped bothering with liquor in May, the night before they left for a swing through the Central. Crosby remembers, because Mulder’s pocket-sized Cleveland city map was on the bed. It was the middle of the day, and they were just hanging out, not doing much of anything, when Mulder spilled his soda and jumped up and cursed and took his shirt off.
There’s only so much that denial can do for a person.
The skin of Mulder’s stomach tasted faintly of Orange Slice, and he held onto Crosby’s ears like handlebars, sucking in air and his legs shaking under Crosby’s arms. Crosby could see everything clearly, for the first time. The sunlight all over them. Mark Mulder’s folded-up map of Cleveland stuck to Crosby’s bare shoulder after Mulder had stripped his shirt off and pushed him onto the bed.
That changed things, as one would expect. They couldn’t brush it off anymore, and there was a violent kind of freedom in that. It started happening more often, and in random places, just because they could. They fucked like they’d invented it. They got stupid and reckless and one time even did it in the video room at the Coliseum, up against the door with Mulder’s free hand covering Crosby’s mouth to muffle him, bite marks scattered like salt on Mulder’s palm.
In Crosby’s bedroom with the door muffled with a towel, Mulder’s hands were occupied pulling out every dirty trick in the book and Crosby’s whole body slick with sweat, and when Mulder said to him conversationally, “listen, I think I’m gonna fuck you pretty soon. Like, sometime in the next few minutes. So, don’t be alarmed,” it wasn’t like Crosby had any choice. His ability to say no to Mulder had run off without even leaving a note. It was probably in Bolivia by now.
It got worse, though. Mulder came back from the All-Star Game all flushed and hyper, and nearly tore Crosby’s shirt pulling him into the bedroom. A few minutes later, Crosby was moaning and wondering what the fuck they put in the water in Houston and where could he buy a vat of it, and then Mulder took it upon himself to try his hand at cocksucking, and Bobby Crosby felt a guide-wire snap in his chest.
Mark fucking Mulder with his face scowled in concentration, his eyes closed, his cheeks dented and the line of his jaw pulled taut, his hair under Crosby’s fingers and Crosby’s hips pushing up involuntarily, wanting to fuck Mulder’s mouth just so he could say that he had.
After that, Crosby couldn’t close his eyes without seeing Mulder sucking him off, it fucking haunted him. He was pretty sure the image was there forever, too. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing that would fade with time.
The entire situation became very important to him very quickly. It was like being fourteen years old again, with his eyes wide and his mouth dry, his voice cracking in his throat. He kept forgetting to care about anything else. Sometimes his life felt narrowed down to this, a hand, a mouth, a hipbone between his teeth.
Maybe it was just the novelty of the whole gay thing, but there honestly weren’t enough hours in the day for the amount of sex Crosby wanted to have with Mark Mulder. He thought about it constantly. It got so he was basically blushing all the time, and Hatteberg kept asking him if he was drunk.
And a day or two into August, right before things started to get sincerely bad, he decided that it was okay to fuck around with a guy as long as the guy was Mulder. It was the exception to heterosexuality, and the exception proved the rule, after all, so actually, Bobby Crosby was still straight. Just very suggestible. And he’d spent all season watching Mulder do no wrong, until it was an article of faith and if Mulder wanted to sleep with him, then it must be the right thing to do.
So, he was okay, and certainly not as hypocritical as Mulder was, calling Harden a fag for not only drinking Diet Coke with Lemon, but also pouring it into a glass with icecubes first. Crosby wasn’t entirely sure how icecubes made one a fag, and he was gonna ask Mulder for clarification, but he didn’t remember until Mulder had Crosby’s dick in his mouth, and by then it all kind of seemed like a moot point.
They were friends and all, and Crosby still fetched things like a good little rookie, still defended Mulder when Zito got drunk and started talking shit about organized sock drawers and the fucking mini-Dustbuster in the back of Mulder’s car. Mulder still pitched Crosby batting practice until the coaches yelled at him for overworking, still bought Cinnamon Toast Crunch when they ran out, even though Crosby was the only one who liked it and they were supposed to be in charge of their own shopping. It wasn’t too weird or anything.
They played Halo all day, and Mulder didn’t shoot him once. He picked Crosby first for his team when they had a Supersoaker war. He taught Crosby how to tell when Hudson and Jermaine Dye were bluffing, and Crosby won most of his signing bonus back in about three hours. He gave Crosby rides to the stadium, and then after the game, they would park in an alley or church parking lot and climb in the back of the SUV, streetlight through the tinted windows turning them gray and gold, until the only color he could make out was Mulder’s eyes. There was a lot of stuff that he’d never be able to shake.
This one time, Mulder fell asleep in Crosby’s bed, and the kid kept rolling over Mulder’s arm or bumping heads with him, all night long. There was just a hell of a lot more of Mulder than Crosby was used to, as far as people in his bed were concerned.
Crosby didn’t get all that much sleep, but it was okay, because he was awake to see the sunlight crawl across the bed and wind around Mulder’s hand, which was curled on Crosby’s chest like a cat, and Crosby kept thinking that this was what he’d been missing.
*
They go on the road, Chicago and then Toronto. Nick Swisher shows up all freshly-minted and still in his original packaging, and whenever anyone calls ‘rookie,’ it’s Swisher they mean and Crosby who answers first. It has been without a doubt the longest year of his life.
In the morning, Mulder comes down to the lobby looking more exhausted than he did the day before. His ERA since the break is over five. The coaches and trainers crowd him like groupies, asking about his back, about his shoulder, about his hip. He shrugs, shakes his head, gives one-word answers, slumped down with his arms crossed over his chest sullenly.
Crosby can see Mulder wishing for injury-at least then he’d have a fucking reason.
There’s no way this lasts, though. It’s September now. It’s Mark fucking Mulder. None of this makes sense, so it’ll definitely be over soon.
Fix Mulder, and you’ll fix everything else, too. Simple.
They get out to the yard and the sickly-colored fake turf hurts Crosby’s eyes, makes him think of Minnesota, that game a few weeks ago that wouldn’t end, his knees all fucked up and how Eric Chavez began to stutter terribly sometime in the sixteenth inning, something short-circuiting in his mind.
Mulder still won’t look at him, but Crosby should stop taking it so hard, because Mulder won’t look at anyone, not unless he has to. It’s really nothing personal. Honestly, none of this is meant to fuck Crosby up, that’s just a predictable side effect. They’ve both got more important stuff to deal with than wondering about the next time they’ll fuck like friends, not strangers.
Crosby can’t blame Mulder. Baseball is what holds them together. There’s nothing that Mulder isn’t allowed to sacrifice to get it back.
He keeps trying to remember who did what first. The first move or whatever. He’s almost certain it was Mulder. No way in the world would Crosby have tried a stunt like that, no matter how drunk he was. All Crosby really remembers from that night, so early in the season that half their furniture was still in boxes, is opening his mouth on Mulder’s throat, tasting line chalk and salt. And also, at some point, laughing very hard. Crosby wishes he’d paid more attention. Took notes, maybe.
He might not play today. Macha says he needs a day off, to rest his back, which has been stiffening, and his left knee, which has been buckling. Of course, Crosby hasn’t hit higher than .200 in almost a month and a half now, so it’s probably not just concern for his health.
If he sits, it won’t help. He doesn’t need a day off. He needs the rest of his life off.
*
Inconsequential things occur, red flags all over the horizon, and Bobby Crosby knocks softly on Mulder’s hotel room door, so early in the morning it’s still late at night.
Crosby’s heart beats in his throat, something heavy sunk low in his stomach, and he refuses to acknowledge the fact that he is scared almost out of his mind, and he has been like this for a long time now.
Mulder doesn’t open the door, so Crosby knocks again, glancing up and down the hall. He flattens both hands and leans in, his ear up against the wood. “Mulder,” he calls in a near-whisper.
Some stuff shifts and rustles in the room, and then Mulder’s voice is close, just on the other side.
“Go away.”
“Wait, hey,” Crosby says, widening his eyes at the peephole in case Mulder is watching. “Lemme in, okay?”
He hears Mulder sigh, can picture him rubbing a hand across his face. “I’m fucking tired, man.”
“So’m I,” Crosby whispers, stroking his fingers on the door and worrying inanely about splinters. “But, um. It’ll be easier to sleep if you. Let me in.”
“You’re getting really fucking pathetic, you know that?”
Crosby winces. It’s definitely true, but that’s a pretty mean thing to say, even without having to see his face. He swallows, resting his head against the door, and thinks about control.
“I just,” Crosby starts, no real idea what he intends to say. “I don’t think it should be like this anymore. Because you. You don’t look at me. Or talk to me. You don’t even fuck me. Which is, um. Not cool. And it hasn’t made us play better. So, like, it’s not the way it has to be.”
Crosby listens at the door like he’s cracking a safe. He imagines he can hear Mulder breathing. Imagines he can feel Mulder’s pulse. Mulder doesn’t answer for awhile, and Crosby imagines him fighting back tears, very dramatic and everything.
“Until I can pitch again,” Mulder finally says. “It’s this or nothing. I got no room for anything else.”
Crosby closes his eyes. “What if you never get it back?” he asks hoarsely.
“Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to?”
Crosby shakes his head, breathing out slowly, but doesn’t answer. After a pause, Mulder says tightly, “Look, figure it out, man. I’m not standing here all night listening to you fucking whine.”
Crosby thinks about it, head rolling on the door, eyes still closed. Truth is, he never even had a chance. Mulder used to be perfect and now he’s just a litter of blonde and blue fragments on the floor. At neither time could Bobby Crosby have taken top priority in Mulder’s mind. He should have known better, really. If he gets his do-over, he’ll stay the fuck away, he’s learned his lesson.
The funny thing is, Crosby always thought baseball came first with him, too.
“Okay,” Crosby says carefully, his voice steady. “I guess I’m done then.”
Mulder’s silence sounds surprised. Crosby smiles vaguely-probably no one’s rejected Mulder in years, if ever.
He’s pretty sure he’s making a big mistake, because anything is better than nothing, and at least this way he gets someone else’s hand on his dick on a regular basis. But, to hell with it. He’s so tired of all this.
“Night, Mark,” Crosby whispers, and leaves before Mulder has a chance to say anything back. He’s about halfway down the hall when he realizes sadly that this is probably what being in love feels like.
Crosby gets back to his room and listens through the wall even though Mulder’s not on the other side-force of habit. He thinks that none of this is fair, he’s just a fucking kid, he didn’t know.
But that train of thought is going nowhere good, so instead he closes his eyes and counts down the seconds until dawn, counts himself into the future, when his rookie year will be far behind him, and there will be a toughened scar instead of this open wound in his heart.
THE END
i'm scared of swimming in the sea
dark shapes moving under me
every fear i swallow makes me small
inconsequential things occur
alarms are triggered
memories stir
it's not the way it has to be
i'm afraid of what i do not know
i hate being undermined
i'm afraid i can be devil man
and i'm scared to be divine
don't mess with me my fuse is short
beneath this skin these fragments caught
when i allow it to be
there's no control over me
i have my fears
but they do not have me
walking through the undergrowth, to the house in the woods
the deeper I go, the darker it gets
i peer through the window
knock at the door
and the monster i was
so afraid of
lies curled up on the floor
is curled up on the floor just like a baby boy
i cry until i laugh
i'm afraid of being mothered
with my balls shut in the pen
i'm afraid of loving women
and i'm scared of loving men
flashbacks coming in every night
don't tell me everything's alright
when I allow it to be
it has no control over me
i own my fear
so it doesn't own me
walking through the undergrowth, to the house in the woods
the deeper i go, the darker it gets
i peer through the window
knock at the door
and the monster i was
so afraid of
lies curled up on the floor
is curled up on the floor just like a baby boy
i cry until i laugh
--Peter Gabriel, ‘Darkness’