it's a rainy school night, we've got to fight the elements
Actually, temperatures are dropping like gravity outside and it's supposed to snow again tomorrow. Last time, only a few days ago, it snowed all day and I went to class and walked the pretty way to Georgetown to buy papers, down by the riverfront where I set the final scene of the first slash story I ever finished.
So I was making snowballs and throwing them at things, you know how we do, and it is impossible to throw a curveball made of snow, so don't bother trying.
Wearing sneakers in this weather and holes in the fingers of my gloves, cigarette burns and rusty nails, is all I can assume. We're starting to see Nationals gear around this piece. My friend's got a pennant up in his house that he bought at CVS. The 'W' caps are all brand-new and right out of the box, and I saw a kid the other day wearing the most broke-in Expos hat you've ever seen, and I said goddamn.
There should be further discussion on Barry Zito, whose hair right now is longer than mine, and longer than, like, rapunzel's, and okay! You know how Zito's favorite show is Spongebob Squarepants? Which, first of all, don't get me started, because I will defend my love for him to the death. Anyway, you also know about those flippy-face Spongebob watches that they're giving away with happy meals right now?
Query. Too stalker to get one and give it to the boy in Phoenix? I mean, like, assuming the opportunity presents itself, and fuck if I'm leaving Arizona till it does. Seriously, though. Spongebob watch? Creepy? I think not. My brother backs me up. He said, 'naw, dude, he'll love it.' And he was in Phoenix when he said that, waiting in the airport and bitching about the rain. That's some kinda sign, man, or my whole belief system is fucked.
It's a complicated mix of egotism, optimism, and low-level apprehension that I'm experiencing right now. Very famous people, lights in the sky, class at eight in the morning and men with guns coming in for lunch, and all I want for Christmas is baseball.
So I wrote this for the lyric wheel thingy. Take that for what it is worth, but listen. We need to form a search party. We are looking for ‘Song for Roger Maris,’ by the Mountain Goats, and we will not rest, goddamn it. High and low, kids. No stone unturned. Find it for me and I’ll write whatever you want me to, swear to god.
The Story Wherein Bobby Crosby Loses His Fucking Mind
By Candle Beck
They were in Cleveland, not yet late season but pretty close, and Mulder was sitting on the floor in the hotel hallway, a bottle of water from the vending machine between his feet, his head back on the wall.
Crosby was after some ice for his knee, and he put the bucket on the ground, crouched next to Mulder, who grinned up at him, eyes half-closed and damp.
“Hi there.”
“Dude,” Mulder said slowly. “It’s really important that you give me six hundred dollars.”
Crosby rolled his eyes, hauled him up by the arm, and put him to bed. He unbuckled Mulder’s belt, measuring each breath, rolled him over to get it off. Mulder snickered and pushed his face into the pillow, and Crosby concentrated on not dislocating his shoulder while pulling Mulder’s T-shirt off, and tried not to touch too much.
He tossed Mulder’s shirt at the roller suitcase on the floor, and patted Mulder on the head, murmuring something indistinct. He looked briefly at Mulder’s back and shoulder, this kind of perfect thing to see, to be this close to, and then cleared his throat, turned to go.
Mulder caught his wrist and pulled him back around. “Wait, hey,” he said with his voice weirdly high, breathy. Mulder grinned again, and slid his other hand up the leg of Crosby’s athletic shorts.
“Just once, okay?”
Crosby closed his eyes and swallowed hard and he didn’t realize he’d been so obvious.
They fucked very quickly and without much skill, and if Crosby hadn’t been wishing for this since spring training (even longer, it seemed sometimes, his whole life, maybe, as punk as that sounded), he probably would have been disappointed. As it was, though, he was mainly stunned and impossibly caught up in every moment of it.
Afterwards, Crosby couldn’t figure out how to go to sleep with Mulder right there beside him, big and heavy and breathing through his mouth. He sat in the armchair all night, listening to trance on Mulder’s headphones and staring at the ceiling.
He took off before the sun came up.
*
Mulder didn’t say anything about it. Didn’t even look at him, but that wasn’t new. Mulder had stopped looking at him a few weeks ago.
Crosby’s knee hurt. He should have iced it last night, he was so fucking stupid. Zito pitched and Mulder sat next to Rich Harden and discussed every breath Zito took. In five days, they’d be back home. Crosby wasn’t exactly looking forward to that.
It felt like he’d had a hole blown in his walls, and now everyone could see everything. He’d been doing so good. Four months living in the same house and the way Mulder had looked in late May, and Crosby had never even so much as stumbled.
Fucking Mark Mulder.
The night before getaway day, they went to a bar, a whole lot of them, and after a long time and a lot of liquor, Mulder slid into the booth next to Crosby and whispered into his ear, “Seriously, last time,” with his hand under the tablecloth, skimming under Crosby’s shirt.
Crosby made some little noise, like, what the fuck, here? right here, really? but Mulder just thumbed open the button of his jeans and didn’t look at him anymore. Mulder kept his eyes forward and Crosby jerked back against the booth as subtly as possible. Right in the middle, Zito thumped down on Mulder’s other side and Crosby clawed at Mulder’s arm under the table in a panic, but Mulder just started talking to Zito like it was nothing, like his hand wasn’t down Crosby’s pants. It was unbelievable. Crosby drew blood on the inside of Mulder’s wrist with his nails, just because that was the only part of Mulder he could touch.
Crosby got him back in the bathroom of Mulder’s hotel room, perfecting this with his knee fucking screaming and Mulder’s hip in his hand, and Mulder let Crosby borrow his toothbrush to get the taste out of his mouth, then kicked him out.
Crosby slept on the flight back home, and they didn’t even ride the same cab back to their house.
*
Just about a week after the last time, Zito came home with Harden, spilling in behind him with his hand clutched in the back of Harden’s shirt. By the time Mulder got back from the all-night, Zito was sitting with his back against the couch and his head resting on the cushion, his legs spread in a wide vee. Mulder sat with his knee against Zito’s shoulder, using Zito’s head as a place to put his drink.
Harden sort of curled up near the wall and Crosby stuck a phone message in his shirt collar, then slumped down on the other end of the couch.
It was a half-hour of ‘I Love the ‘80s’ before Crosby noticed that Mulder’s fingers were messing with the short hair at the back of Zito’s head, and Zito’s eyes were glazed over like when he was listening to music.
Crosby thought about reaching out and grabbing Mulder’s arm, maybe Mulder didn’t realize what he was doing, but then Mulder’s fingers carefully touched the knobs of Zito’s spine, tracing around, and Crosby got up, got the fuck out of there.
The next day, Mark Ellis, pale, injured Mark Ellis, will fill him in on the whole Mulder and Zito saga.
There were unfounded rumors about hotel rooms in New York City and back alleys in Chicago, dating back to 2001, and one incontrovertible night that half the team had been there for, when Mulder and Zito were screaming at each other on the back patio, cocksucker and motherfucker and it wasn’t supposed to be like this, and then, somehow, absurdly, Zito slapped Mulder open-palmed across the face.
Ellis will wrap his shoulder a bit tighter, and tell Crosby about the two of them standing there on the patio in the salt lights, staring at each other in shock with Mulder’s cheek brightening. The moment right after, when it was entirely quiet and still, before Zito had turned and left through the back gate, leaving his guitar on the living room floor and his favorite hoodie on Mulder’s bed.
But apparently no matter what they did, they couldn’t shake it. Zito and Mulder both had a tendency to not recognize warning signs, or to assume that warnings didn’t apply to them, and there was still a lot of time left to kill.
So here it was however many years later, and Crosby was listening intently for the sound of the front door closing, and watching out his window for the motion sensor lights in the driveway, but the only thing he heard that night was Mulder’s door being shut and locked, and the only light in the whole world was the alarm clock on Bobby Crosby’s night-table.
*
A couple of nights later, Crosby was long asleep when Mulder tried to climb into his bed.
Mulder’s knee dug into Crosby’s side and Crosby wrenched awake, shouting, “Fuck!” and knocking Mulder onto the floor.
Mulder punched the side of the bed and hissed, “fucking shhh, fuck.”
Crosby leaned over, fearful and his chest hurting. “What are you doing?” he whispered, clenching his hands in the sheets. Mulder was wavering, down there on the floor, rocking back and forth like a ship. Bobby could smell beer and the slick chemical scent of the shit Mulder used in his hair.
“God,” Crosby muttered, and fell back, staring at the ceiling. Mulder got up on his knees and loomed over him, smiling and pushing the sheet away, his hands on Crosby’s chest and stomach.
“One more-” Mulder started to say, but Crosby smacked his hands away and then shoved Mulder awkwardly from his back.
“No. Okay? Fuck off.”
“Dude, it’s just one more time,” Mulder told him, his eyes all earnest and focused on Crosby’s body, licking his lips and reaching for him again.
Crosby wished he was the kind of man who could get up and storm out, slam the door and crack the hinges and leave no evidence behind except the drunk guy on the floor of his room. He wished he was the kind of man who could just roll over and put his back to all this.
“Go fuck Zito, why don’t you,” he said, his mouth twisting.
Mulder’s face clouded, gray across his eyes and lines on his forehead. He shook his head, dragged his hand across Crosby’s stomach. “Don’t want Zito anymore,” he mumbled, bending down. “Want you.”
Crosby put his arm up over his face so that colors would go off behind his eyes. How could anyone think that he’d be able to turn this down? Nobody was that strong. Crosby found the back of Mulder’s head with his hand and arched up a little when Mulder opened his mouth on his stomach, and figured, ‘fuck. take what you can get, right?’
*
There was that for awhile, and eventually Mulder stopped saying “last time” and stopped saying anything else too, stayed quiet and drunk-hot, sliding into him at odd angles and odd times of day.
And the other thing that was happening, the thing that was not Mulder and not Mulder’s fucking hands, the baseball thing, it was staggering pretty hard. Crosby hadn’t really hit all that well for about a month now, the space between his shoulder blades throbbed and nothing gave itself away to him.
Crosby didn’t actually think about it all that much, weirdly, he didn’t think about anything, but when he did, he decided that it was only fair. Something elemental had happened to him-it should show in every second of his life. And nowhere more than here.
It was like a bomb had been set off.
He could remember what it’d been like early in the season, when every pitch found his bat and he could outrun anything. He could remember the pretty girls with his name across the fronts of their shirts, and the cheer when they announced him, and Mulder telling him, “they all come out to see you,” and that wasn’t true at all, because he wasn’t even the biggest fan favorite on the team, but it felt pretty real, back in June when he could do no wrong.
Anyway, it wasn’t until two days into September that he finally cornered Zito. He didn’t know what he expected, or wanted, really, it was just kind of spur of the moment.
Out by the bullpen at the Coliseum, the cruddy little plywood overhang above the bench, where Zito had his towel and water bottle, and Crosby waited out there until Zito trotted over after long toss and looked at him sidelong as he took a drink.
“’sup?” Zito asked, looking vaguely irritated the way he always did when he was talking to Crosby, interesting thing to notice now of all times.
“So, um.” Crosby squinted, the sun taking up half the sky over Zito’s left shoulder. “About Mark.”
Zito blinked real slow and then echoed flatly, “Mark.”
“Mulder.”
“Yes.”
Crosby held his breath a little bit. “I didn’t want you to think that I was, like, not cool with you and him. Because I definitely am. I feel, like, fuck it. We all know, why pretend?”
Zito looked at him in astonishment for a minute, and then laughed and cupped the back of Crosby’s neck. “I keep forgetting that this is your first time doing this. God, it’s adorable.”
Crosby was pretty sure that was a dig of some kind, but he was feeling poled by the light and the emptiness of the stadium and Zito’s hand just under his shirt collar.
“What you gotta understand, kid,” Zito told him, rubbing his thumb a little bit and looking at him concernedly like they were having a Moment, “is that you can’t really compare me and Mulder to you and Mulder. We’re just, we’re not even the same thing.”
And Zito said it all in a careful condescending tone that made it clear where the advantage lay in that consideration, and then let him go without ceremony, flicking Crosby’s ear and smiling easily.
“So don’t let it bug you so much.”
Crosby had no sort of answer to that. Zito had five years and Crosby had five months. They weren’t even speaking the same language.
The next time Mulder rolled in at two in the morning with his shirt half unbuttoned and a hickey on his throat, Crosby let him in even though Mulder smelled like bourbon, which, of all the people in the motherfucking world, happened to be Barry Zito’s favorite drink.
Crosby usually let Mulder do whatever he wanted.
*
None of them were gay, which was the weird thing. Well. One of the weird things. Zito still fucked models and people who were more famous than him, and no one was quite able to establish whether Alyssa Milano was his beard or he was hers, but the two of them seemed to share a comfortable, fuck-who-you-want-but-come-to-club-openings-with-me understanding of the situation, and it seemed to be working out okay.
Mulder, it turned out, hadn’t slept with a woman in almost a year. This according to Eric Chavez, who was the guy who would know. He explained it one night, not to Crosby but to Rich Harden-Crosby just happened to be right outside the open door.
“Mulder’s not a fag, he’s just tired of dealing with chicks. More effort, you know? Why bother when you get blown anyway?”
Crosby thought that sounded remarkably self-aware of Mulder, and therefore doubted the truth of it.
Anyway, pretty much the whole team knew about Mulder and Zito, except for Hudson, who steadfastly refused to even consider the idea of it. It was too fucked up for him, or maybe Hudson just knew how it was going to end and didn’t want to pay too much attention, in case he started to worry about the two of them.
Nobody really said anything, it was officially a secret, but everyone knew. That was another way Mulder and Zito weren’t like Mulder and Crosby. As far as Bobby could tell, Zito was the only man on the team who knew about them, and he only knew because Mulder didn’t lie to Zito, never had and probably never would.
Crosby was the real secret. But he was pretty sure that was only because everybody already cared about Mulder and Zito, had some vested interest in their fucking soap opera subplot, and nobody gave a shit about him.
Again, five months and five years. How could he even be expected to compete?
Crosby wasn’t sure why no one could tell about him, though. A spring and summer spent living right in the heart of this goddamn team, and he was still getting away with it. Chavez actually introduced him to his little sister, which, like, had never before happened to any boy, ever, in the history of time.
Fucking a teammate, a roommate, he’d done both those before, but never more than a one night stand sort of arrangement, a locker room, hotel room, hall closet existence, momentary and ill-considered. Long Beach State and the Pacific Coast League, but whatever he did back there was just short of violence, hardly counted at all. This should be some big gay revelation for Bobby Crosby, because he hadn’t fucked anyone other than Mark Mulder in almost two months. Pretty soon, this would be the kind of thing that was going to hurt.
Didn’t matter. It’d always been like this. From day one, not even at spring training this year, but last September, when he’d got called up after the ‘Cats won the title. And he’d seen Mark Mulder, sitting on the outfield grass watching the guys run, he’d seen Mark Mulder jumping off the bench to his feet without thinking when something good happened, until his hip splintered again and he got yelled at.
He’d seen Mark Mulder and that was pretty much it.
So, as long as the guys had known him, they’d known the Bobby Crosby who was totally helpless as far as Mulder was concerned, so this was definitely nothing new.
Crosby dreamt of switchblades, and woke up in Texas. They were back in their division again, right where they’d started, and they’d stay here until the end of the season. Crosby still couldn’t hit but there didn’t seem to be anything he could do that would keep him from getting the award.
Zito and Mulder came down in the elevator together, Zito smirking and winking at Crosby, but Mulder handed him a Powerbar on the bus like it was nothing, and ended up necking with Crosby in the equipment room at the Ballpark a couple hours later.
Things moved real fast here at the end. The angle of the incline kept getting sharper and sharper. Mulder shifted and gripped him like he was falling. Mulder pitched with this pained look on his face, and his back was fine, his hip was fine, he was fucking fine, so lay off.
No talking about Mulder’s latest outing or Joe Blanton, and no talking about Bobby’s strikeout total and drop in the order, just total focus on what they could do right, the last thing, the only thing they were any good at these days.
By the time they left Seattle, having gone 3-6 on the trip and heading home for the last weekend of the season, Crosby didn’t care who knew or what they called him. He could not go through this alone and he wasn’t going to try.
He found himself next to Mulder on the plane, and Mulder drank two rum and cokes in fifteen minutes and then fell asleep, breathing heavily and slouched over towards Crosby’s side. Crosby rested his head on the wall and stared out the little window, seeing the reflection of Mulder’s legs, his hands.
*
They didn’t make it. Crosby just sort of assumed that they would, postseason play was their due reward, their birthright, but probably that was the point of the lesson. Don’t count on anything.
Falling a single game short, that was a very long way from fair. That was this awful breaking thing, and even worse was the first game of the set against Anaheim, Mulder’s start at home, and everything that went wrong in that one.
They got home that night and Mulder holed up in his room, the door locked and Crosby knew he was wearing his headphones because he didn’t answer the knocking. Crosby lay in bed listening for sounds of life in the next room, and thought, ‘please zito please,’ and it was some kind of perfect for Crosby to be praying in Barry Zito’s name tonight, that the success or failure of Bobby Crosby’s rookie year was now resting on Zito’s shoulders, of everyone who could be responsible for this.
Mulder made no noise and didn’t crawl into Crosby’s bed in the middle of the night, and Zito lost the next day, and they were knocked out.
Mulder disappeared that night, too. Nobody wanted to go out or anything, and Hudson had intentionally spent time with both Mulder and Zito in the clubhouse after the game, clapping them on the shoulder and saying, “Boy, I tell ya,” and then nothing else. Crosby saw Mulder get in his car and drive without hesitation to the highway, taking the wrong exit and heading north, towards the bridge.
Crosby snuck into Mulder’s room after Harden passed out, hid in his bed and was woken up several hours later by Mulder’s hands rolling him over, Mulder whispering, “it’s over now, you know that, we’re done.” Mulder didn’t say “last time,” but it meant pretty much the same thing.
Crosby got them all tied together, legs and arms and Mulder’s hand pressed flat to the bare skin of Crosby’s back, his mouth open on Crosby’s shoulder.
They stayed there till morning, and Mulder didn’t even get mad at him for not going back to his own room. Mulder stirred against his back and a little time passed and then Mulder’s arm tightened and let go, pushing away from Crosby. Mulder petted him a few times on the head distractedly, then got up. Crosby kept his eyes shut and heard Mulder pulling on his sweats and a T-shirt, coughing and swearing softly under his breath.
Crosby waited till Mulder left the room, closing the door behind him, before nervously slipping out and back down the hall, collapsing into his own bed and imagining that he’d been here the whole night, never even moved.
*
The season was over and Mulder was back in Scottsdale by the end of the week and Bobby Crosby ended up watching the playoffs alone with Harden in their house, and he’d really expected this to be a bigger moment in his life, that being in pain like this would call a spotlight out of his heart, but actually he just felt invisible and so scared he couldn’t breathe, more tired than he’d ever been.
The Red Sox won the World Series, and Harden said, “huh.” Crosby nodded, watched the St. Louis Cardinals in a defeated row in their dugout, blood-red uniforms and hard veteran faces. The Cards were now trivia forever, who did the Sox beat to break the curse, except in New England where they’ll call it the Curse. Bobby thought that no one in the world could look good in that color red.
Midway through November, Mulder called and told him, “I’m in Van Nuys. You should come get me.”
Bobby was back in Long Beach by that time, and he didn’t even say anything, though it was two in the morning and Barry Zito lived in Van Nuys. He drove across the city and picked Mulder up at the gas station down the street from Zito’s house. Mulder had his medium-sized duffel with him, and he looked like he hadn’t shaved or showered in a week.
He slumped in the passenger’s seat and closed his eyes like he was asleep. Crosby kept fantasizing about the different ways Zito could have thrown him out. They were just south of Inglewood when Crosby said stupidly:
“You know, it’d be a lot simpler if he wasn’t involved.”
Mulder didn’t answer for awhile, and Crosby held the wheel so tight the leather creaked.
“He’s always gonna be involved. No matter what.”
Crosby swallowed. “For me, you know, it’s. It’s just you.”
Mulder sighed. “I know,” he said, and they stayed quiet until they were back at the ocean, Crosby tossing Mulder’s duffel on top of the dresser in his room and pushing Mulder onto the bed without even pulling the drapes closed first.
It was absolutely the best time Bobby Crosby could remember, it was this clear balance between Mulder being drunk and Crosby being half-asleep, both of them moving slowly, with all the world on their side, and Mulder smiling against his shoulder blade, licking the back of his neck.
And neither of them said it because neither of them knew, but, yeah, last time, for real.
*
Mulder went back to Scottsdale and they were just friends again, talking with no great urgency or obligation, and Crosby was still trying his best to be funny and cool and make Mulder like him, even after all this time, still just a dumb fucking kid with a crush.
When Hudson got traded, Mulder called him late on the night the news had broke, after Crosby had already talked to everybody else, talked to Hudson and heard him say in a strange uneven voice, “Don’t let them turn you all soft, kid, all right?” Crosby promised he wouldn’t. He decided that he was gonna miss the fuck out of Hudson.
Mulder called way after that and woke him up, and three a.m. phone calls were always either drunk friends or fatal car accidents, so Bobby was relieved to hear Mulder slurring and calling him “baby” the way he only did when he was too wrecked to stand.
Mulder tried to have phone sex with him and ended up falling asleep in the middle, and Crosby snickered, fell asleep grinning. The next day, he called Mulder and made fun of him and his hangover, and then they talked seriously about Tim Hudson and Mulder said, “I’m more worried about Barry, tell you the truth. It’s, like, his life goal to get Hudson to fuck him.”
“Jesus Christ.”
Mulder laughed. “Of course it’ll never happen. I mean, it was never gonna, even before this. Hudson doesn’t do that shit, but, well. You know Zito and his fucking reach-for-the-stars thing.”
Crosby closed his eyes and counted to three, before saying casually, “You should come see me.”
Mulder laughed again, sounding the exact same. “Hey man, I got a fucking rotation to lead now. You think I got time for your ass?”
Crosby stammered and felt sick, and changed the subject, hung up as soon as he could, and they didn’t talk again until Mulder got traded two days later.
*
Crosby drank for five solid hours, then somehow ended up at Zito’s house in Van Nuys, pounding on the door and hollering up at the windows, his throat feeling slick and smooth and every word rolling out on oiled bearings.
Zito opened the door in board shorts and nothing else, flopping long hair that hadn’t been cut since April, bare feet and the puka-shell bracelet around his wrist, but no watch, just the tan line.
Crosby almost fell into him, warm stomach-skin against his forearm and then Zito pushing him back up, balancing him carefully.
“What, what’re we,” Crosby mumbled, everything come loose from its fittings. “What’re we gonna do, man?”
Zito half-carried him down the hall and deposited him on the couch. “’Bout what?” he asked, yawning and rubbing a hand through his hair.
Crosby blinked wetly and tilted towards Zito, Zito would understand, Zito was the only other one who knew. “Without him. How’re we suppose’ta be, like, how we are?”
Zito looked at him for awhile, sorting that out, then smiled, rasping his hand across Crosby’s head. Crosby turned into it, a little bit, pushing his head forward and up into Zito’s palm, all broad and circling.
“Aw. You’re just all sorts of a mess.”
Crosby shook his head vehemently, knocking Zito’s hand off, and growled. “I. I am fine. Fine. It just seems. Like a big. Uh. Change. Real big.”
Not looking like he believed much of that, Zito got up and got Crosby a glass of water. He drank it messily, dripping off the line of his jaw and wetting the front of his shirt a bit. Zito leaned back against the couch arm and said with his arms crossed over his chest, “Look, it’s not, like, unheard of to be all fucked up because of Mark Mulder.”
Crosby put his glass on the coffee table and it promptly fell off the edge, rolling towards his feet. He looked down at it and he was for some reason blinking back tears. “I’m not. Listen. How do you-you’re just gonna let him go, aren’t you?”
“Don’t have a whole lot of choice, rook.”
“You can’t call me that anymore.” Zito rolled his eyes. Crosby continued haltingly, “You don’t. It’s like you don’t care. Which, like. How come you’ve been with him for so long?”
Zito shrugged, eyeing him intently. “I guess that is how.”
Crosby stared at his hands, and whispered, mostly to himself, “How the fuck do you do that?”
Zito touched his arm, stroked his fingers down to Crosby’s elbow. “Here, lemme-” and Zito cut himself off, leaned in and then he was kissing Crosby, stupid drunk Crosby with his sure-firing nerves and the weight of Zito’s hands on his stomach, Zito stripping off his shirt and saying into Crosby’s throat, “I’ll show you, pay attention, this is how.”
Crosby thought of all the things Zito could do that he couldn’t, leave and come back and lay his hands on Mulder in anger, and remember what Mulder was like at twenty-two years old, and know that everybody was fucking around on everybody else and still be able to sleep at night, and all Crosby could do was search for pieces of Mulder in Zito, thinking that with as much history as they shared, there had to be something left behind, there had to be a memory he could take home as his own.
*
Crosby left before morning, and cursed himself and wept on the highway. He went down to the beach two blocks away from his house and ran up and down the sand all afternoon, until his calves burned and his chest felt close to giving under the pressure.
He thought about three months from now, this suddenly unfamiliar team of his, and he thought of Zito twisting up and holding Crosby’s head in his hands and things that were different and things that were the same.
He tried to buy a bottle of whiskey and got carded, of all the idiotic things to happen. Of course he didn’t have his ID on him, he didn’t carry that shit during the off-season. He had to go all the way home and dig around for it, finding it eventually with some Polaroids in an inside pocket of his road trip bag, and it wasn’t until he was cracking the bottle at a stoplight that Mulder called, said dully, “You fucking piece of shit,” and then hung up.
And right there, mark it, Crosby’s life was over, because Barry Zito didn’t know how to recognize a fucking secret when it pushed him to his knees.
Crosby pulled into an empty parking lot, took a few pulls, and tried calling Mulder back for a half an hour with no luck, and then he called Zito and screamed into his voicemail, “You FUCK!” and then kind of broke down a little before he was able to get it together and drive home.
He kept trying to call Mulder and eventually Zito left a decidedly unapologetic message, “Dude, fucking chill, it’s not like he cares,” but that was the problem, that was the only problem that Bobby Crosby had ever had.
*
And so Crosby drove though the night to Arizona, with the moon falling away behind him, blind-drunk and numb and mostly crazy. He found Mulder’s condo, where Crosby was supposed to maybe-stay in the spring, the rooms he’d never be in again, the windows showing trees he’d never see. He punched the outside wall until his knuckles smeared over with blood, then passed out in front of the door, shaking because it was kinda cold out here at night.
Mulder came out at a little past ten in the morning, and Crosby opened his eyes to see Mulder standing with one leg to either side of his body, looking down at him and locking the door. Crosby put his hand on Mulder’s leg, scratching at his jeans, but Mulder kicked him away. He looked pretty pissed.
“Go home, Bobby,” Mulder told him, and stepped all the way over, chipping Crosby’s side with his shoe. “Get the fuck out of here.”
“Mulder,” Crosby said hoarsely, sitting up with the skin of his face flattened and raw from the ground. His shoulder hurt, his cheek hurt, and this was his life now, he couldn’t stand it. He wasn’t going to be able to take this much longer. “Hey man, wait, you gotta wait.”
But Mulder was already out in the sunshine, putting on his sunglasses and beeping his car unlocked, and he didn’t even look back, not once.
THE END
and okay. heh. this got wrote right after the, you know, tragedy. it was necessary, dude. i really had no choice about the matter. it didn't get posted then or in the successive weeks because, you know, the shame. but i've since decided that shame is for lameoids. i'll just be over here, hiding my face with my hands and whistling innocently when you call to me. i had nothing to do with it, i swear.
Timeline
By Candle Beck
1. After
Mulder gets up first, and his eyes are all fucked up, so he keeps them mostly closed. He kicks a pair of boxers and fishes them off his foot, sliding them on as he stumbles to the bathroom.
It’s not till he’s standing there waiting for the water to run hot, idly fiddling his thumb along the waistband and yawning, that pieces begin to come back to him, in fits and starts, like a bad dream he once had.
He watches his eyes open in the mirror, open very widely. He looks down and the boxers he’s wearing aren’t his. They’re tight, digging into his hips, red cotton and shorter than his and he recognizes them, because they’re Tim Hudson’s. The water pounding into the tub makes it hard to pay attention to anything else.
Mulder turns slowly and the bathroom door is open a crack because he wasn’t even thinking about it. He angles to see through and sees a pair of legs hanging off the end of the bed, bare feet with the bones looking astonishingly prominent through the skin. There’s an arm too, slung over the legs with a hand cupped around a kneecap.
Mulder kicks the bathroom door shut, falls back against it. He thinks he might be about to throw up.
*
Zito and Hudson come down to breakfast on the same elevator, but Hudson walks in a few yards ahead of him, which is strange because Zito’s legs are longer and Hudson has a tendency to saunter.
Zito is pale, and his shirt is on inside-out. Hudson looks pissed off, and when Chavez elbows him in greeting, he flinches so hard he knocks a glass off the table. Crosby asks where Mulder is and neither of them answers. Zito keeps rolling the spoon on his folded napkin, his eyes cast down. He’s biting his lip, and Hudson is as far away from him as he can get while still being at the same table.
*
Hudson has to go back to the room because his wallet fell out of his back pocket. God knows when. He also needs to get his boxers. These are his oldest and best-worn jeans, but they’re chafing the shit out of him.
Zito watches him as he leaves, but Hudson doesn’t look back.
The door is open. Just a bit, there’s a sock in the bottom. Hudson’s boxers are neatly folded on the dresser and his wallet is on top, dead center. The bed has been made, or at least, the comforter tossed on a skewed angle so one corner brushes the carpet, and the pillows are smashed together against the headboard, leaning one against another like friends.
The lights are off, curtains drawn, but the bathroom door is half ajar and throwing a yellow wedge out across the room. Hudson tucks his wallet in his back pocket, his boxers in his front pocket, and sort of takes a look into the bathroom, though he meant to just grab his shit and go.
Mulder is sitting on the toilet with half his face covered by shaving cream, jeans on and no shirt, and he’s staring at nothing in particular, his razor in his hand resting on his knee, spots of white on his fingers and the back of his hand. He looks like he’s in shock.
“Mark, hey,” Hudson says, and Mulder jerks, dropping his razor. He looks over and Hudson barely recognizes him, half finished with his face smeared and a pinprick of blood on the line of his jaw.
“Get out.”
Hudson swallows, and leaves.
*
Zito goes to his own room after breakfast and calls his parents. He thinks he sounds remarkably normal, and makes his mom laugh, and scribbles down the dates they’ll be in San Francisco a few weeks from now on the palm of his hand. He’s always forgetting to transfer hand-notes to paper, until he looks down during the fourth inning and realizes the ink has faded and been sweated off and can’t be read anymore.
He sits at the table by the window and tries to figure out where he is. The East Coast, sure. Beyond that, he’s lost. Pretty sure it’s not Boston, almost positive it’s not New York. Nothing looks familiar, except this hotel room, that bed, these hands shaking slightly on the table top.
Zito makes fists, thinks sadly, ‘this is what casual sex gets you.’ Thinks what if one of them had something, VD or something, and they all came down with it and the trainers found out. Zito hears sneering jokes about sharing hookers in his mind, and then tries his very best to stop thinking about it.
Hudson’s room is right next to his. Zito hears him come in, the door slamming behind him. Zito watches the connecting door, hears the television go on. Zito gets up and gets his iPod and turns the volume up high enough that the loud songs fuzz with static at the corners, and looks out the window for awhile longer.
* * *
2. During
So, yeah. Drunk and then drunk some more. And every time Mulder moves, Zito gets scared that his shoulders are just going to crush him, flatten him down, because Mulder moves and his shoulders block out all the light.
And when he turns his head, there’s Hudson’s chest, bare chest with slight dark hair scattered around, and neither Mulder or Zito has hair on their chests, except Mulder, who has this little scruff right in the center, dirty blonde, so really it’s just Zito who doesn’t, but it’s okay.
Zito fits his mouth on Hudson’s chest, stunned that he is allowed, that this is actually happening, and he can pull his teeth across and leave small white scuffs on the skin, Hudson’s chest bumping his chin when Hudson breathes in real fast. Zito feels Mulder’s hand on his stomach, scratching lightly around his bellybutton and making Zito shiver and jerk because Mulder knows he’s ticklish, goddamn it. Hudson’s head is back, his hand in Zito’s hair. Mulder’s legs are all tied up with his own.
There’s a moment, right before Mulder’s hand slides down and in and around and starts jerking him off, when all Zito can feel is total amazement.
*
Hudson watches Mulder’s hand disappear into Zito’s shorts and feels Zito’s breath blow out hot against a wetted spot of his chest, feels Zito’s teeth close down compulsively and Hudson moans.
He looks and Mulder’s eyes are on him, and everything in the room is blue right now, because that’s the color of the light drafting from the television, but Mulder’s eyes are always that color, really, Hudson should have noticed before. Mulder’s hand is moving in a careful slow rhythm, and Zito is gasping and arching slightly between them, but Mulder is watching Hudson.
Hudson leans across and kisses him. Zito cranes his head up and his mouth goes to Hudson’s throat, his arm around Hudson’s back. Mulder kisses him like he’s got nothing to do for the rest of his life except this. It’s like drowning or something, it’s like not caring that he can’t get any air.
There’s a moment when he’s got Mulder’s tongue in his mouth and Zito’s hand clumsily pulling open his belt, and Hudson thinks about a photo shoot four or five years ago, how perfect all three of them looked back then.
*
There are all these arms and legs and hands, it’s confusing the hell out of him. Everywhere Mulder turns, there’s more skin, another elbow, two more knees clocking into his own. They’re on top of the covers, crumpling it all up, and Mulder keeps thinking that there will be a breeze and they’ll get goosebumps, shiver and crush nearer to each other, but it’s all heat, heat and slick and sweat on Mulder’s forehead, down his back.
He watches Zito’s face when he comes, this look of clean surprise on his face, oh wow hey, with Zito’s shoulders tense and high before he sags back. Hudson is moving his mouth over Mulder’s shoulder, awkwardly positioned with his hand braced on the headboard. Hudson’s very close when he whispers in Mulder’s ear, “Fuck him.”
Mulder’s whole world ends, right then, hearing Hudson say that to him and understanding it so clearly, the picture of it slamming into his mind and taking his breath away. Hudson kisses him, and helps him roll Zito onto his side.
Mulder’s hands are shaking pretty badly, the entire time. Hudson presses things into his hands, and Mulder wants to ask how Hudson knows about the little inside pocket of Mulder’s suitcase where he keeps that stuff, and Mulder absurdly wants to stop and carefully explain to Hudson that he only uses that for jacking off, because god knows Mulder doesn’t fuck around with guys. But Hudson’s fingers are fumbling with his, so slippery it’s like they’re both made of water, and Hudson is rocking against Zito, so Mulder figures maybe he should just roll with it.
He’s listening to Zito curse softly, his face turned into the pillow, and watching Zito’s hand run up and down Hudson’s side, watching Hudson kiss him over and over again. Hudson slips his boxers off and angles against Zito, moving in time with their chests together, snapping his hips. Mulder presses in and Zito sounds like he’s in pain, but his hand winds around Hudson’s back and he pushes back against Mulder and says, very quietly, “please.”
There’s a moment, when Mulder’s fucking Zito and Hudson is whispering things into Zito’s ear that make Zito shudder and tighten and whimper (“next mulder’s gonna suck my dick and you can watch, man, yeah?” and then Mulder tries to stop listening because he won’t be able to hold out if he hears any more of that), Hudson’s hand on Zito’s face and Mulder’s hand on Hudson’s hip, and Mulder opens his mouth on Zito’s shoulder blade, wanting no part of a life where this is denied him.
* * *
3. Before
There was a bar. That’s pretty clear. But it was just a regular bar, East Coast bar with smoke in Mulder’s eyes and girls looking up at him, tipping their heads back. A sweet-faced boy, a hard good-looking man, and Mulder’s eyes cleared, realized that was Zito on his left and Hudson on his right, and Mulder laughed.
They went back to the hotel and the others were behind some door, happy excited sounds coming out into the hall, but Zito walked right past like he knew where he was going, and leaned against his shoulder on the door to Mulder’s room.
Hudson was walking along beside him and sometimes their arms touched, when one of them sort of lost his balance and tilted in. Zito was yawning, watching them come.
Hudson was drunk because he was talking even slower than usual, and Zito was drunk because he was running the tip of his tongue over his lips and yawning. Mulder was drunk because he was noticing stuff like that.
Mulder fumbled for the key and Hudson put his hand on Zito’s arm to pull him off the door and Mulder was looking at Hudson’s hand, perfectly formed and everything just right, so that Mulder could see the knuckles and the tendons and the small dent on the inside of Hudson’s wrist. Zito’s fingers were all chewed up, and Mulder had these gawky oversized hands that were like something out of a cartoon, but Hudson’s hands looked exactly like they should.
He let them into the room, and Zito crawled onto the bed first thing, because for Zito, any time that was spent standing could be better spent sitting, and any time that was spent sitting could be better spent lying down. Hudson crouched in front of the minibar and was pulling out all the little bottles, lining them up by order of height. Mulder turned on the television and sat on the end of the bed.
It was strange, because almost always one of them went to whatever room the party was in, and Hudson usually got to bed earlier than Mulder or Zito, and no matter what the press wanted to think, the three of them were hardly inseparable. They didn’t usually hang out, just the three of them.
But it was okay. Hudson was saying, “You want the whiskey or the vodka, man?” and Zito was chanting behind him, “Bailey’s Bailey’s Bailey’s, I get the Bailey’s,” and Mulder was thinking that whoever had invented a liquor that tasted like candy might as well have just named it ‘To Get Barry Zito Hammered.’
Zito kicked him in the back so that he’d move because that Heineken commercial he liked was on, and Mulder scootched back on the bed until he was sitting against the headboard and Zito’s head was by his elbow, a pillow punched into shape. Hudson sat cross-legged by Mulder’s feet and there was a little pick-up-stick pile of miniature liquor bottles on the bed in front of him, his fingers playing across them and Hudson was smiling a little bit, looking tired and cool and glad to be where he was.
Mulder took the vodka, and he was drunk enough that it didn’t even hurt going down. Hudson sipped the whiskey like he was on a back porch or something, all the time in the world, and Zito happily licked at the tiny mouth of the Bailey’s, humming and his tongue flickering out between his lips over and over again.
They watched some bad television and talked in circles about Mulder’s new car, pretty dark-green Jaguar, and what they were gonna do for Mulder’s birthday (strip club, was the general consensus, because that’s what Kielty wanted to do, and it was his birthday too, and Mulder was always down with the strip club. “’Kay, but lame,” Zito kept saying, totally unoriginal, we can do that anytime, and Mulder kept elbowing him in the head, telling him, “didn’t we take you to Lazer-Tag and buy you Slurpees on your birthday, didn’t we do that? You’ll get a lapdance and be happy about it, punk”). They talked about a lot of stuff that got confused and didn’t make much sense, and Zito would end up giggling and pressing his face into Mulder’s arm, and Mulder would roll his eyes to see Hudson smirk.
There were small empty bottles on the bed, and Mulder realized that Zito’s face was still against his arm, though Zito wasn’t laughing anymore. Hudson was looking at the television, rubbing his knuckles thoughtfully across his chin. Mulder poked Zito’s head. Zito’s eyes were closed, and he mumbled something, turning his head so that his mouth was on the sleeve of Mulder’s shirt, and Mulder could feel Zito’s teeth even and sharp.
Mulder made some kind of sound, something like hey or quit it, something not like either of those at all, and then Zito pushed up and did this lazy kind of roll with his whole body so that he was on his side, pressed all along the line of Mulder, and then he was dragging his mouth across Mulder’s shoulder. His eyes were still closed.
Mulder just stared, his stomach all hot and in knots and his mind cut loose like a helium balloon. Zito’s hand was crawling up his arm, brushing his chest, and pulling his shirt away from his neck, and then Zito’s mouth was on bare skin, licking like Mulder was made of chocolaty liquor, and Mulder felt the gasp slice into his lungs, but didn’t hear it.
Hudson did, though. And when Mulder shot a panicked glance his way, Hudson was just watching them, very still with his hand half-curled into a fist and resting on his knee. His eyes looked hard and flat and the color of slate. Zito bit Mulder’s throat and pushed his hand across Mulder’s stomach. Mulder watched Hudson’s throat swallow.
“Tim.”
Later, Mulder would have no idea whether it was him or Zito who’d said that. Later, he decided that it probably didn’t matter.
Hudson winced like he’d be stung, and his hands were fiddling with one of the bottles. Zito was up to Mulder’s face, almost, quick sucking kisses under his jaw and his fingers tapping messages on Mulder’s cheek. Hudson’s eyes shot away and looked at the window, but the shades were drawn. It was only television light, whisking along unnoticed, and Hudson said with his voice very tight, “Right, well, I’ll. Go on an’. Go. If y’all are. Um. I’ll go.”
And Mulder was about to say, fuck man, I’ll go with you, because what the fuck, but then Zito hit a specific spot that Mulder had never told anybody about ever, because saying stuff like, please right there, embarrassed the fuck out of him. It’s just under his ear, for future reference. Just where his jaw meets his throat.
Zito hit it perfectly with teeth and tongue and Mulder short-circuited, and turned, and kissed him, kissed him hard and pressed Zito down into the bed. Zito tasted very sweet and very warm, and he was eager and open beneath him. When Mulder pulled off, his head carbonated, Hudson was still on the end of the bed, staring with his mouth open a little bit, wet like he’d licked his lips.
Zito’s arm was around the back of Mulder’s neck, and he was shifting impossibly up against him, twisting his hips and smiling. He pulled Mulder down and whispered in his ear, “Get him over here, dude.” He slid his hand down the back of Mulder’s shirt, wide flat hand on Mulder’s back and Mulder kissed him again, bit his lip.
Then he pulled away, and sat up, and grabbed a fistful of Tim Hudson’s shirt and hauled him across the bed, because if you’re gonna fuck up a little, you should fuck up a lot.
* * *
4. Order of Things
Chavez says to Zito, “What the fuck?” sometime before batting practice, his eyes caught like lint on Zito’s neck, pulling Zito’s collar out. Zito hits his hand away, and Chavez leers at him.
“When did you get lucky, fuckin’ holding out on me now?”
Over Chavez’s shoulder, Mulder is watching them, his mouth small. Zito shrugs and makes sure his collar is over the mark (the mark, what, and Mark over there, and Zito’s hungover enough for his head to be hurting just thinking about all this), and mutters something that probably doesn’t make much sense.
He sees Mulder turn away. Zito thinks futilely that Mulder knows Zito’s a tactile drunk, always rubbing up against people and folding against them on couches. Mulder should have known better than to let him get that drunk when they were all on the bed together.
Zito remembers most of it now. He’s pretty sure it was his fault.
*
Mulder runs into him in the trainer’s room. Mulder is just there getting some tape. Zito’s at the table with a heat pack on his back. Mulder comes in and Zito’s head turns and Zito looks at him with an expression of clean surprise, very familiar, and Mulder blinks, takes his eyes away.
Mulder’s working on breathing, his hands in the cabinet, when Zito says low, “I’m sorry.”
Mulder freezes, but then his shoulders fall and he turns. Zito is staring somewhere to the left of him. His face looks strange and hard. “I’m really sorry.”
Zito’s wearing his wristwatch and no shirt, the strap of the heat pack across his stomach and his chest looking smooth and untouched. With a roll of tape around his wrist, Mulder steps to him and says, “Listen-”
But Zito’s already up and moving, fluttering newspaper pages in his wake, and Mulder’s left standing there.
*
Hudson pitches and not much happens. Zito chews his nails at one end of the dugout and Mulder tears up a bunch of Gatorade cups at the other. Hudson doesn’t look at either of them.
After the game, he takes his wedding ring out of the little zip pocket he keeps it in on road trips, and slides it back on. He’s watching SportsCenter in the lounge, waiting for the bus to come to take them to the airport, and Zito comes in and sits next to him on the couch.
Zito’s quiet for two commercial breaks, then he reaches and touches the back of Hudson’s hand, two fingertips careful on the ring, and Hudson closes his eyes, doesn’t open them until he’s sure Zito is gone.
*
They never mention it again.
THE END
eta, four freakin' years later, okay all right fine: they mentioned it again.
So I was making snowballs and throwing them at things, you know how we do, and it is impossible to throw a curveball made of snow, so don't bother trying.
Wearing sneakers in this weather and holes in the fingers of my gloves, cigarette burns and rusty nails, is all I can assume. We're starting to see Nationals gear around this piece. My friend's got a pennant up in his house that he bought at CVS. The 'W' caps are all brand-new and right out of the box, and I saw a kid the other day wearing the most broke-in Expos hat you've ever seen, and I said goddamn.
There should be further discussion on Barry Zito, whose hair right now is longer than mine, and longer than, like, rapunzel's, and okay! You know how Zito's favorite show is Spongebob Squarepants? Which, first of all, don't get me started, because I will defend my love for him to the death. Anyway, you also know about those flippy-face Spongebob watches that they're giving away with happy meals right now?
Query. Too stalker to get one and give it to the boy in Phoenix? I mean, like, assuming the opportunity presents itself, and fuck if I'm leaving Arizona till it does. Seriously, though. Spongebob watch? Creepy? I think not. My brother backs me up. He said, 'naw, dude, he'll love it.' And he was in Phoenix when he said that, waiting in the airport and bitching about the rain. That's some kinda sign, man, or my whole belief system is fucked.
It's a complicated mix of egotism, optimism, and low-level apprehension that I'm experiencing right now. Very famous people, lights in the sky, class at eight in the morning and men with guns coming in for lunch, and all I want for Christmas is baseball.
So I wrote this for the lyric wheel thingy. Take that for what it is worth, but listen. We need to form a search party. We are looking for ‘Song for Roger Maris,’ by the Mountain Goats, and we will not rest, goddamn it. High and low, kids. No stone unturned. Find it for me and I’ll write whatever you want me to, swear to god.
The Story Wherein Bobby Crosby Loses His Fucking Mind
By Candle Beck
They were in Cleveland, not yet late season but pretty close, and Mulder was sitting on the floor in the hotel hallway, a bottle of water from the vending machine between his feet, his head back on the wall.
Crosby was after some ice for his knee, and he put the bucket on the ground, crouched next to Mulder, who grinned up at him, eyes half-closed and damp.
“Hi there.”
“Dude,” Mulder said slowly. “It’s really important that you give me six hundred dollars.”
Crosby rolled his eyes, hauled him up by the arm, and put him to bed. He unbuckled Mulder’s belt, measuring each breath, rolled him over to get it off. Mulder snickered and pushed his face into the pillow, and Crosby concentrated on not dislocating his shoulder while pulling Mulder’s T-shirt off, and tried not to touch too much.
He tossed Mulder’s shirt at the roller suitcase on the floor, and patted Mulder on the head, murmuring something indistinct. He looked briefly at Mulder’s back and shoulder, this kind of perfect thing to see, to be this close to, and then cleared his throat, turned to go.
Mulder caught his wrist and pulled him back around. “Wait, hey,” he said with his voice weirdly high, breathy. Mulder grinned again, and slid his other hand up the leg of Crosby’s athletic shorts.
“Just once, okay?”
Crosby closed his eyes and swallowed hard and he didn’t realize he’d been so obvious.
They fucked very quickly and without much skill, and if Crosby hadn’t been wishing for this since spring training (even longer, it seemed sometimes, his whole life, maybe, as punk as that sounded), he probably would have been disappointed. As it was, though, he was mainly stunned and impossibly caught up in every moment of it.
Afterwards, Crosby couldn’t figure out how to go to sleep with Mulder right there beside him, big and heavy and breathing through his mouth. He sat in the armchair all night, listening to trance on Mulder’s headphones and staring at the ceiling.
He took off before the sun came up.
*
Mulder didn’t say anything about it. Didn’t even look at him, but that wasn’t new. Mulder had stopped looking at him a few weeks ago.
Crosby’s knee hurt. He should have iced it last night, he was so fucking stupid. Zito pitched and Mulder sat next to Rich Harden and discussed every breath Zito took. In five days, they’d be back home. Crosby wasn’t exactly looking forward to that.
It felt like he’d had a hole blown in his walls, and now everyone could see everything. He’d been doing so good. Four months living in the same house and the way Mulder had looked in late May, and Crosby had never even so much as stumbled.
Fucking Mark Mulder.
The night before getaway day, they went to a bar, a whole lot of them, and after a long time and a lot of liquor, Mulder slid into the booth next to Crosby and whispered into his ear, “Seriously, last time,” with his hand under the tablecloth, skimming under Crosby’s shirt.
Crosby made some little noise, like, what the fuck, here? right here, really? but Mulder just thumbed open the button of his jeans and didn’t look at him anymore. Mulder kept his eyes forward and Crosby jerked back against the booth as subtly as possible. Right in the middle, Zito thumped down on Mulder’s other side and Crosby clawed at Mulder’s arm under the table in a panic, but Mulder just started talking to Zito like it was nothing, like his hand wasn’t down Crosby’s pants. It was unbelievable. Crosby drew blood on the inside of Mulder’s wrist with his nails, just because that was the only part of Mulder he could touch.
Crosby got him back in the bathroom of Mulder’s hotel room, perfecting this with his knee fucking screaming and Mulder’s hip in his hand, and Mulder let Crosby borrow his toothbrush to get the taste out of his mouth, then kicked him out.
Crosby slept on the flight back home, and they didn’t even ride the same cab back to their house.
*
Just about a week after the last time, Zito came home with Harden, spilling in behind him with his hand clutched in the back of Harden’s shirt. By the time Mulder got back from the all-night, Zito was sitting with his back against the couch and his head resting on the cushion, his legs spread in a wide vee. Mulder sat with his knee against Zito’s shoulder, using Zito’s head as a place to put his drink.
Harden sort of curled up near the wall and Crosby stuck a phone message in his shirt collar, then slumped down on the other end of the couch.
It was a half-hour of ‘I Love the ‘80s’ before Crosby noticed that Mulder’s fingers were messing with the short hair at the back of Zito’s head, and Zito’s eyes were glazed over like when he was listening to music.
Crosby thought about reaching out and grabbing Mulder’s arm, maybe Mulder didn’t realize what he was doing, but then Mulder’s fingers carefully touched the knobs of Zito’s spine, tracing around, and Crosby got up, got the fuck out of there.
The next day, Mark Ellis, pale, injured Mark Ellis, will fill him in on the whole Mulder and Zito saga.
There were unfounded rumors about hotel rooms in New York City and back alleys in Chicago, dating back to 2001, and one incontrovertible night that half the team had been there for, when Mulder and Zito were screaming at each other on the back patio, cocksucker and motherfucker and it wasn’t supposed to be like this, and then, somehow, absurdly, Zito slapped Mulder open-palmed across the face.
Ellis will wrap his shoulder a bit tighter, and tell Crosby about the two of them standing there on the patio in the salt lights, staring at each other in shock with Mulder’s cheek brightening. The moment right after, when it was entirely quiet and still, before Zito had turned and left through the back gate, leaving his guitar on the living room floor and his favorite hoodie on Mulder’s bed.
But apparently no matter what they did, they couldn’t shake it. Zito and Mulder both had a tendency to not recognize warning signs, or to assume that warnings didn’t apply to them, and there was still a lot of time left to kill.
So here it was however many years later, and Crosby was listening intently for the sound of the front door closing, and watching out his window for the motion sensor lights in the driveway, but the only thing he heard that night was Mulder’s door being shut and locked, and the only light in the whole world was the alarm clock on Bobby Crosby’s night-table.
*
A couple of nights later, Crosby was long asleep when Mulder tried to climb into his bed.
Mulder’s knee dug into Crosby’s side and Crosby wrenched awake, shouting, “Fuck!” and knocking Mulder onto the floor.
Mulder punched the side of the bed and hissed, “fucking shhh, fuck.”
Crosby leaned over, fearful and his chest hurting. “What are you doing?” he whispered, clenching his hands in the sheets. Mulder was wavering, down there on the floor, rocking back and forth like a ship. Bobby could smell beer and the slick chemical scent of the shit Mulder used in his hair.
“God,” Crosby muttered, and fell back, staring at the ceiling. Mulder got up on his knees and loomed over him, smiling and pushing the sheet away, his hands on Crosby’s chest and stomach.
“One more-” Mulder started to say, but Crosby smacked his hands away and then shoved Mulder awkwardly from his back.
“No. Okay? Fuck off.”
“Dude, it’s just one more time,” Mulder told him, his eyes all earnest and focused on Crosby’s body, licking his lips and reaching for him again.
Crosby wished he was the kind of man who could get up and storm out, slam the door and crack the hinges and leave no evidence behind except the drunk guy on the floor of his room. He wished he was the kind of man who could just roll over and put his back to all this.
“Go fuck Zito, why don’t you,” he said, his mouth twisting.
Mulder’s face clouded, gray across his eyes and lines on his forehead. He shook his head, dragged his hand across Crosby’s stomach. “Don’t want Zito anymore,” he mumbled, bending down. “Want you.”
Crosby put his arm up over his face so that colors would go off behind his eyes. How could anyone think that he’d be able to turn this down? Nobody was that strong. Crosby found the back of Mulder’s head with his hand and arched up a little when Mulder opened his mouth on his stomach, and figured, ‘fuck. take what you can get, right?’
*
There was that for awhile, and eventually Mulder stopped saying “last time” and stopped saying anything else too, stayed quiet and drunk-hot, sliding into him at odd angles and odd times of day.
And the other thing that was happening, the thing that was not Mulder and not Mulder’s fucking hands, the baseball thing, it was staggering pretty hard. Crosby hadn’t really hit all that well for about a month now, the space between his shoulder blades throbbed and nothing gave itself away to him.
Crosby didn’t actually think about it all that much, weirdly, he didn’t think about anything, but when he did, he decided that it was only fair. Something elemental had happened to him-it should show in every second of his life. And nowhere more than here.
It was like a bomb had been set off.
He could remember what it’d been like early in the season, when every pitch found his bat and he could outrun anything. He could remember the pretty girls with his name across the fronts of their shirts, and the cheer when they announced him, and Mulder telling him, “they all come out to see you,” and that wasn’t true at all, because he wasn’t even the biggest fan favorite on the team, but it felt pretty real, back in June when he could do no wrong.
Anyway, it wasn’t until two days into September that he finally cornered Zito. He didn’t know what he expected, or wanted, really, it was just kind of spur of the moment.
Out by the bullpen at the Coliseum, the cruddy little plywood overhang above the bench, where Zito had his towel and water bottle, and Crosby waited out there until Zito trotted over after long toss and looked at him sidelong as he took a drink.
“’sup?” Zito asked, looking vaguely irritated the way he always did when he was talking to Crosby, interesting thing to notice now of all times.
“So, um.” Crosby squinted, the sun taking up half the sky over Zito’s left shoulder. “About Mark.”
Zito blinked real slow and then echoed flatly, “Mark.”
“Mulder.”
“Yes.”
Crosby held his breath a little bit. “I didn’t want you to think that I was, like, not cool with you and him. Because I definitely am. I feel, like, fuck it. We all know, why pretend?”
Zito looked at him in astonishment for a minute, and then laughed and cupped the back of Crosby’s neck. “I keep forgetting that this is your first time doing this. God, it’s adorable.”
Crosby was pretty sure that was a dig of some kind, but he was feeling poled by the light and the emptiness of the stadium and Zito’s hand just under his shirt collar.
“What you gotta understand, kid,” Zito told him, rubbing his thumb a little bit and looking at him concernedly like they were having a Moment, “is that you can’t really compare me and Mulder to you and Mulder. We’re just, we’re not even the same thing.”
And Zito said it all in a careful condescending tone that made it clear where the advantage lay in that consideration, and then let him go without ceremony, flicking Crosby’s ear and smiling easily.
“So don’t let it bug you so much.”
Crosby had no sort of answer to that. Zito had five years and Crosby had five months. They weren’t even speaking the same language.
The next time Mulder rolled in at two in the morning with his shirt half unbuttoned and a hickey on his throat, Crosby let him in even though Mulder smelled like bourbon, which, of all the people in the motherfucking world, happened to be Barry Zito’s favorite drink.
Crosby usually let Mulder do whatever he wanted.
*
None of them were gay, which was the weird thing. Well. One of the weird things. Zito still fucked models and people who were more famous than him, and no one was quite able to establish whether Alyssa Milano was his beard or he was hers, but the two of them seemed to share a comfortable, fuck-who-you-want-but-come-to-club-openings-with-me understanding of the situation, and it seemed to be working out okay.
Mulder, it turned out, hadn’t slept with a woman in almost a year. This according to Eric Chavez, who was the guy who would know. He explained it one night, not to Crosby but to Rich Harden-Crosby just happened to be right outside the open door.
“Mulder’s not a fag, he’s just tired of dealing with chicks. More effort, you know? Why bother when you get blown anyway?”
Crosby thought that sounded remarkably self-aware of Mulder, and therefore doubted the truth of it.
Anyway, pretty much the whole team knew about Mulder and Zito, except for Hudson, who steadfastly refused to even consider the idea of it. It was too fucked up for him, or maybe Hudson just knew how it was going to end and didn’t want to pay too much attention, in case he started to worry about the two of them.
Nobody really said anything, it was officially a secret, but everyone knew. That was another way Mulder and Zito weren’t like Mulder and Crosby. As far as Bobby could tell, Zito was the only man on the team who knew about them, and he only knew because Mulder didn’t lie to Zito, never had and probably never would.
Crosby was the real secret. But he was pretty sure that was only because everybody already cared about Mulder and Zito, had some vested interest in their fucking soap opera subplot, and nobody gave a shit about him.
Again, five months and five years. How could he even be expected to compete?
Crosby wasn’t sure why no one could tell about him, though. A spring and summer spent living right in the heart of this goddamn team, and he was still getting away with it. Chavez actually introduced him to his little sister, which, like, had never before happened to any boy, ever, in the history of time.
Fucking a teammate, a roommate, he’d done both those before, but never more than a one night stand sort of arrangement, a locker room, hotel room, hall closet existence, momentary and ill-considered. Long Beach State and the Pacific Coast League, but whatever he did back there was just short of violence, hardly counted at all. This should be some big gay revelation for Bobby Crosby, because he hadn’t fucked anyone other than Mark Mulder in almost two months. Pretty soon, this would be the kind of thing that was going to hurt.
Didn’t matter. It’d always been like this. From day one, not even at spring training this year, but last September, when he’d got called up after the ‘Cats won the title. And he’d seen Mark Mulder, sitting on the outfield grass watching the guys run, he’d seen Mark Mulder jumping off the bench to his feet without thinking when something good happened, until his hip splintered again and he got yelled at.
He’d seen Mark Mulder and that was pretty much it.
So, as long as the guys had known him, they’d known the Bobby Crosby who was totally helpless as far as Mulder was concerned, so this was definitely nothing new.
Crosby dreamt of switchblades, and woke up in Texas. They were back in their division again, right where they’d started, and they’d stay here until the end of the season. Crosby still couldn’t hit but there didn’t seem to be anything he could do that would keep him from getting the award.
Zito and Mulder came down in the elevator together, Zito smirking and winking at Crosby, but Mulder handed him a Powerbar on the bus like it was nothing, and ended up necking with Crosby in the equipment room at the Ballpark a couple hours later.
Things moved real fast here at the end. The angle of the incline kept getting sharper and sharper. Mulder shifted and gripped him like he was falling. Mulder pitched with this pained look on his face, and his back was fine, his hip was fine, he was fucking fine, so lay off.
No talking about Mulder’s latest outing or Joe Blanton, and no talking about Bobby’s strikeout total and drop in the order, just total focus on what they could do right, the last thing, the only thing they were any good at these days.
By the time they left Seattle, having gone 3-6 on the trip and heading home for the last weekend of the season, Crosby didn’t care who knew or what they called him. He could not go through this alone and he wasn’t going to try.
He found himself next to Mulder on the plane, and Mulder drank two rum and cokes in fifteen minutes and then fell asleep, breathing heavily and slouched over towards Crosby’s side. Crosby rested his head on the wall and stared out the little window, seeing the reflection of Mulder’s legs, his hands.
*
They didn’t make it. Crosby just sort of assumed that they would, postseason play was their due reward, their birthright, but probably that was the point of the lesson. Don’t count on anything.
Falling a single game short, that was a very long way from fair. That was this awful breaking thing, and even worse was the first game of the set against Anaheim, Mulder’s start at home, and everything that went wrong in that one.
They got home that night and Mulder holed up in his room, the door locked and Crosby knew he was wearing his headphones because he didn’t answer the knocking. Crosby lay in bed listening for sounds of life in the next room, and thought, ‘please zito please,’ and it was some kind of perfect for Crosby to be praying in Barry Zito’s name tonight, that the success or failure of Bobby Crosby’s rookie year was now resting on Zito’s shoulders, of everyone who could be responsible for this.
Mulder made no noise and didn’t crawl into Crosby’s bed in the middle of the night, and Zito lost the next day, and they were knocked out.
Mulder disappeared that night, too. Nobody wanted to go out or anything, and Hudson had intentionally spent time with both Mulder and Zito in the clubhouse after the game, clapping them on the shoulder and saying, “Boy, I tell ya,” and then nothing else. Crosby saw Mulder get in his car and drive without hesitation to the highway, taking the wrong exit and heading north, towards the bridge.
Crosby snuck into Mulder’s room after Harden passed out, hid in his bed and was woken up several hours later by Mulder’s hands rolling him over, Mulder whispering, “it’s over now, you know that, we’re done.” Mulder didn’t say “last time,” but it meant pretty much the same thing.
Crosby got them all tied together, legs and arms and Mulder’s hand pressed flat to the bare skin of Crosby’s back, his mouth open on Crosby’s shoulder.
They stayed there till morning, and Mulder didn’t even get mad at him for not going back to his own room. Mulder stirred against his back and a little time passed and then Mulder’s arm tightened and let go, pushing away from Crosby. Mulder petted him a few times on the head distractedly, then got up. Crosby kept his eyes shut and heard Mulder pulling on his sweats and a T-shirt, coughing and swearing softly under his breath.
Crosby waited till Mulder left the room, closing the door behind him, before nervously slipping out and back down the hall, collapsing into his own bed and imagining that he’d been here the whole night, never even moved.
*
The season was over and Mulder was back in Scottsdale by the end of the week and Bobby Crosby ended up watching the playoffs alone with Harden in their house, and he’d really expected this to be a bigger moment in his life, that being in pain like this would call a spotlight out of his heart, but actually he just felt invisible and so scared he couldn’t breathe, more tired than he’d ever been.
The Red Sox won the World Series, and Harden said, “huh.” Crosby nodded, watched the St. Louis Cardinals in a defeated row in their dugout, blood-red uniforms and hard veteran faces. The Cards were now trivia forever, who did the Sox beat to break the curse, except in New England where they’ll call it the Curse. Bobby thought that no one in the world could look good in that color red.
Midway through November, Mulder called and told him, “I’m in Van Nuys. You should come get me.”
Bobby was back in Long Beach by that time, and he didn’t even say anything, though it was two in the morning and Barry Zito lived in Van Nuys. He drove across the city and picked Mulder up at the gas station down the street from Zito’s house. Mulder had his medium-sized duffel with him, and he looked like he hadn’t shaved or showered in a week.
He slumped in the passenger’s seat and closed his eyes like he was asleep. Crosby kept fantasizing about the different ways Zito could have thrown him out. They were just south of Inglewood when Crosby said stupidly:
“You know, it’d be a lot simpler if he wasn’t involved.”
Mulder didn’t answer for awhile, and Crosby held the wheel so tight the leather creaked.
“He’s always gonna be involved. No matter what.”
Crosby swallowed. “For me, you know, it’s. It’s just you.”
Mulder sighed. “I know,” he said, and they stayed quiet until they were back at the ocean, Crosby tossing Mulder’s duffel on top of the dresser in his room and pushing Mulder onto the bed without even pulling the drapes closed first.
It was absolutely the best time Bobby Crosby could remember, it was this clear balance between Mulder being drunk and Crosby being half-asleep, both of them moving slowly, with all the world on their side, and Mulder smiling against his shoulder blade, licking the back of his neck.
And neither of them said it because neither of them knew, but, yeah, last time, for real.
*
Mulder went back to Scottsdale and they were just friends again, talking with no great urgency or obligation, and Crosby was still trying his best to be funny and cool and make Mulder like him, even after all this time, still just a dumb fucking kid with a crush.
When Hudson got traded, Mulder called him late on the night the news had broke, after Crosby had already talked to everybody else, talked to Hudson and heard him say in a strange uneven voice, “Don’t let them turn you all soft, kid, all right?” Crosby promised he wouldn’t. He decided that he was gonna miss the fuck out of Hudson.
Mulder called way after that and woke him up, and three a.m. phone calls were always either drunk friends or fatal car accidents, so Bobby was relieved to hear Mulder slurring and calling him “baby” the way he only did when he was too wrecked to stand.
Mulder tried to have phone sex with him and ended up falling asleep in the middle, and Crosby snickered, fell asleep grinning. The next day, he called Mulder and made fun of him and his hangover, and then they talked seriously about Tim Hudson and Mulder said, “I’m more worried about Barry, tell you the truth. It’s, like, his life goal to get Hudson to fuck him.”
“Jesus Christ.”
Mulder laughed. “Of course it’ll never happen. I mean, it was never gonna, even before this. Hudson doesn’t do that shit, but, well. You know Zito and his fucking reach-for-the-stars thing.”
Crosby closed his eyes and counted to three, before saying casually, “You should come see me.”
Mulder laughed again, sounding the exact same. “Hey man, I got a fucking rotation to lead now. You think I got time for your ass?”
Crosby stammered and felt sick, and changed the subject, hung up as soon as he could, and they didn’t talk again until Mulder got traded two days later.
*
Crosby drank for five solid hours, then somehow ended up at Zito’s house in Van Nuys, pounding on the door and hollering up at the windows, his throat feeling slick and smooth and every word rolling out on oiled bearings.
Zito opened the door in board shorts and nothing else, flopping long hair that hadn’t been cut since April, bare feet and the puka-shell bracelet around his wrist, but no watch, just the tan line.
Crosby almost fell into him, warm stomach-skin against his forearm and then Zito pushing him back up, balancing him carefully.
“What, what’re we,” Crosby mumbled, everything come loose from its fittings. “What’re we gonna do, man?”
Zito half-carried him down the hall and deposited him on the couch. “’Bout what?” he asked, yawning and rubbing a hand through his hair.
Crosby blinked wetly and tilted towards Zito, Zito would understand, Zito was the only other one who knew. “Without him. How’re we suppose’ta be, like, how we are?”
Zito looked at him for awhile, sorting that out, then smiled, rasping his hand across Crosby’s head. Crosby turned into it, a little bit, pushing his head forward and up into Zito’s palm, all broad and circling.
“Aw. You’re just all sorts of a mess.”
Crosby shook his head vehemently, knocking Zito’s hand off, and growled. “I. I am fine. Fine. It just seems. Like a big. Uh. Change. Real big.”
Not looking like he believed much of that, Zito got up and got Crosby a glass of water. He drank it messily, dripping off the line of his jaw and wetting the front of his shirt a bit. Zito leaned back against the couch arm and said with his arms crossed over his chest, “Look, it’s not, like, unheard of to be all fucked up because of Mark Mulder.”
Crosby put his glass on the coffee table and it promptly fell off the edge, rolling towards his feet. He looked down at it and he was for some reason blinking back tears. “I’m not. Listen. How do you-you’re just gonna let him go, aren’t you?”
“Don’t have a whole lot of choice, rook.”
“You can’t call me that anymore.” Zito rolled his eyes. Crosby continued haltingly, “You don’t. It’s like you don’t care. Which, like. How come you’ve been with him for so long?”
Zito shrugged, eyeing him intently. “I guess that is how.”
Crosby stared at his hands, and whispered, mostly to himself, “How the fuck do you do that?”
Zito touched his arm, stroked his fingers down to Crosby’s elbow. “Here, lemme-” and Zito cut himself off, leaned in and then he was kissing Crosby, stupid drunk Crosby with his sure-firing nerves and the weight of Zito’s hands on his stomach, Zito stripping off his shirt and saying into Crosby’s throat, “I’ll show you, pay attention, this is how.”
Crosby thought of all the things Zito could do that he couldn’t, leave and come back and lay his hands on Mulder in anger, and remember what Mulder was like at twenty-two years old, and know that everybody was fucking around on everybody else and still be able to sleep at night, and all Crosby could do was search for pieces of Mulder in Zito, thinking that with as much history as they shared, there had to be something left behind, there had to be a memory he could take home as his own.
*
Crosby left before morning, and cursed himself and wept on the highway. He went down to the beach two blocks away from his house and ran up and down the sand all afternoon, until his calves burned and his chest felt close to giving under the pressure.
He thought about three months from now, this suddenly unfamiliar team of his, and he thought of Zito twisting up and holding Crosby’s head in his hands and things that were different and things that were the same.
He tried to buy a bottle of whiskey and got carded, of all the idiotic things to happen. Of course he didn’t have his ID on him, he didn’t carry that shit during the off-season. He had to go all the way home and dig around for it, finding it eventually with some Polaroids in an inside pocket of his road trip bag, and it wasn’t until he was cracking the bottle at a stoplight that Mulder called, said dully, “You fucking piece of shit,” and then hung up.
And right there, mark it, Crosby’s life was over, because Barry Zito didn’t know how to recognize a fucking secret when it pushed him to his knees.
Crosby pulled into an empty parking lot, took a few pulls, and tried calling Mulder back for a half an hour with no luck, and then he called Zito and screamed into his voicemail, “You FUCK!” and then kind of broke down a little before he was able to get it together and drive home.
He kept trying to call Mulder and eventually Zito left a decidedly unapologetic message, “Dude, fucking chill, it’s not like he cares,” but that was the problem, that was the only problem that Bobby Crosby had ever had.
*
And so Crosby drove though the night to Arizona, with the moon falling away behind him, blind-drunk and numb and mostly crazy. He found Mulder’s condo, where Crosby was supposed to maybe-stay in the spring, the rooms he’d never be in again, the windows showing trees he’d never see. He punched the outside wall until his knuckles smeared over with blood, then passed out in front of the door, shaking because it was kinda cold out here at night.
Mulder came out at a little past ten in the morning, and Crosby opened his eyes to see Mulder standing with one leg to either side of his body, looking down at him and locking the door. Crosby put his hand on Mulder’s leg, scratching at his jeans, but Mulder kicked him away. He looked pretty pissed.
“Go home, Bobby,” Mulder told him, and stepped all the way over, chipping Crosby’s side with his shoe. “Get the fuck out of here.”
“Mulder,” Crosby said hoarsely, sitting up with the skin of his face flattened and raw from the ground. His shoulder hurt, his cheek hurt, and this was his life now, he couldn’t stand it. He wasn’t going to be able to take this much longer. “Hey man, wait, you gotta wait.”
But Mulder was already out in the sunshine, putting on his sunglasses and beeping his car unlocked, and he didn’t even look back, not once.
THE END
and okay. heh. this got wrote right after the, you know, tragedy. it was necessary, dude. i really had no choice about the matter. it didn't get posted then or in the successive weeks because, you know, the shame. but i've since decided that shame is for lameoids. i'll just be over here, hiding my face with my hands and whistling innocently when you call to me. i had nothing to do with it, i swear.
Timeline
By Candle Beck
1. After
Mulder gets up first, and his eyes are all fucked up, so he keeps them mostly closed. He kicks a pair of boxers and fishes them off his foot, sliding them on as he stumbles to the bathroom.
It’s not till he’s standing there waiting for the water to run hot, idly fiddling his thumb along the waistband and yawning, that pieces begin to come back to him, in fits and starts, like a bad dream he once had.
He watches his eyes open in the mirror, open very widely. He looks down and the boxers he’s wearing aren’t his. They’re tight, digging into his hips, red cotton and shorter than his and he recognizes them, because they’re Tim Hudson’s. The water pounding into the tub makes it hard to pay attention to anything else.
Mulder turns slowly and the bathroom door is open a crack because he wasn’t even thinking about it. He angles to see through and sees a pair of legs hanging off the end of the bed, bare feet with the bones looking astonishingly prominent through the skin. There’s an arm too, slung over the legs with a hand cupped around a kneecap.
Mulder kicks the bathroom door shut, falls back against it. He thinks he might be about to throw up.
*
Zito and Hudson come down to breakfast on the same elevator, but Hudson walks in a few yards ahead of him, which is strange because Zito’s legs are longer and Hudson has a tendency to saunter.
Zito is pale, and his shirt is on inside-out. Hudson looks pissed off, and when Chavez elbows him in greeting, he flinches so hard he knocks a glass off the table. Crosby asks where Mulder is and neither of them answers. Zito keeps rolling the spoon on his folded napkin, his eyes cast down. He’s biting his lip, and Hudson is as far away from him as he can get while still being at the same table.
*
Hudson has to go back to the room because his wallet fell out of his back pocket. God knows when. He also needs to get his boxers. These are his oldest and best-worn jeans, but they’re chafing the shit out of him.
Zito watches him as he leaves, but Hudson doesn’t look back.
The door is open. Just a bit, there’s a sock in the bottom. Hudson’s boxers are neatly folded on the dresser and his wallet is on top, dead center. The bed has been made, or at least, the comforter tossed on a skewed angle so one corner brushes the carpet, and the pillows are smashed together against the headboard, leaning one against another like friends.
The lights are off, curtains drawn, but the bathroom door is half ajar and throwing a yellow wedge out across the room. Hudson tucks his wallet in his back pocket, his boxers in his front pocket, and sort of takes a look into the bathroom, though he meant to just grab his shit and go.
Mulder is sitting on the toilet with half his face covered by shaving cream, jeans on and no shirt, and he’s staring at nothing in particular, his razor in his hand resting on his knee, spots of white on his fingers and the back of his hand. He looks like he’s in shock.
“Mark, hey,” Hudson says, and Mulder jerks, dropping his razor. He looks over and Hudson barely recognizes him, half finished with his face smeared and a pinprick of blood on the line of his jaw.
“Get out.”
Hudson swallows, and leaves.
*
Zito goes to his own room after breakfast and calls his parents. He thinks he sounds remarkably normal, and makes his mom laugh, and scribbles down the dates they’ll be in San Francisco a few weeks from now on the palm of his hand. He’s always forgetting to transfer hand-notes to paper, until he looks down during the fourth inning and realizes the ink has faded and been sweated off and can’t be read anymore.
He sits at the table by the window and tries to figure out where he is. The East Coast, sure. Beyond that, he’s lost. Pretty sure it’s not Boston, almost positive it’s not New York. Nothing looks familiar, except this hotel room, that bed, these hands shaking slightly on the table top.
Zito makes fists, thinks sadly, ‘this is what casual sex gets you.’ Thinks what if one of them had something, VD or something, and they all came down with it and the trainers found out. Zito hears sneering jokes about sharing hookers in his mind, and then tries his very best to stop thinking about it.
Hudson’s room is right next to his. Zito hears him come in, the door slamming behind him. Zito watches the connecting door, hears the television go on. Zito gets up and gets his iPod and turns the volume up high enough that the loud songs fuzz with static at the corners, and looks out the window for awhile longer.
* * *
2. During
So, yeah. Drunk and then drunk some more. And every time Mulder moves, Zito gets scared that his shoulders are just going to crush him, flatten him down, because Mulder moves and his shoulders block out all the light.
And when he turns his head, there’s Hudson’s chest, bare chest with slight dark hair scattered around, and neither Mulder or Zito has hair on their chests, except Mulder, who has this little scruff right in the center, dirty blonde, so really it’s just Zito who doesn’t, but it’s okay.
Zito fits his mouth on Hudson’s chest, stunned that he is allowed, that this is actually happening, and he can pull his teeth across and leave small white scuffs on the skin, Hudson’s chest bumping his chin when Hudson breathes in real fast. Zito feels Mulder’s hand on his stomach, scratching lightly around his bellybutton and making Zito shiver and jerk because Mulder knows he’s ticklish, goddamn it. Hudson’s head is back, his hand in Zito’s hair. Mulder’s legs are all tied up with his own.
There’s a moment, right before Mulder’s hand slides down and in and around and starts jerking him off, when all Zito can feel is total amazement.
*
Hudson watches Mulder’s hand disappear into Zito’s shorts and feels Zito’s breath blow out hot against a wetted spot of his chest, feels Zito’s teeth close down compulsively and Hudson moans.
He looks and Mulder’s eyes are on him, and everything in the room is blue right now, because that’s the color of the light drafting from the television, but Mulder’s eyes are always that color, really, Hudson should have noticed before. Mulder’s hand is moving in a careful slow rhythm, and Zito is gasping and arching slightly between them, but Mulder is watching Hudson.
Hudson leans across and kisses him. Zito cranes his head up and his mouth goes to Hudson’s throat, his arm around Hudson’s back. Mulder kisses him like he’s got nothing to do for the rest of his life except this. It’s like drowning or something, it’s like not caring that he can’t get any air.
There’s a moment when he’s got Mulder’s tongue in his mouth and Zito’s hand clumsily pulling open his belt, and Hudson thinks about a photo shoot four or five years ago, how perfect all three of them looked back then.
*
There are all these arms and legs and hands, it’s confusing the hell out of him. Everywhere Mulder turns, there’s more skin, another elbow, two more knees clocking into his own. They’re on top of the covers, crumpling it all up, and Mulder keeps thinking that there will be a breeze and they’ll get goosebumps, shiver and crush nearer to each other, but it’s all heat, heat and slick and sweat on Mulder’s forehead, down his back.
He watches Zito’s face when he comes, this look of clean surprise on his face, oh wow hey, with Zito’s shoulders tense and high before he sags back. Hudson is moving his mouth over Mulder’s shoulder, awkwardly positioned with his hand braced on the headboard. Hudson’s very close when he whispers in Mulder’s ear, “Fuck him.”
Mulder’s whole world ends, right then, hearing Hudson say that to him and understanding it so clearly, the picture of it slamming into his mind and taking his breath away. Hudson kisses him, and helps him roll Zito onto his side.
Mulder’s hands are shaking pretty badly, the entire time. Hudson presses things into his hands, and Mulder wants to ask how Hudson knows about the little inside pocket of Mulder’s suitcase where he keeps that stuff, and Mulder absurdly wants to stop and carefully explain to Hudson that he only uses that for jacking off, because god knows Mulder doesn’t fuck around with guys. But Hudson’s fingers are fumbling with his, so slippery it’s like they’re both made of water, and Hudson is rocking against Zito, so Mulder figures maybe he should just roll with it.
He’s listening to Zito curse softly, his face turned into the pillow, and watching Zito’s hand run up and down Hudson’s side, watching Hudson kiss him over and over again. Hudson slips his boxers off and angles against Zito, moving in time with their chests together, snapping his hips. Mulder presses in and Zito sounds like he’s in pain, but his hand winds around Hudson’s back and he pushes back against Mulder and says, very quietly, “please.”
There’s a moment, when Mulder’s fucking Zito and Hudson is whispering things into Zito’s ear that make Zito shudder and tighten and whimper (“next mulder’s gonna suck my dick and you can watch, man, yeah?” and then Mulder tries to stop listening because he won’t be able to hold out if he hears any more of that), Hudson’s hand on Zito’s face and Mulder’s hand on Hudson’s hip, and Mulder opens his mouth on Zito’s shoulder blade, wanting no part of a life where this is denied him.
* * *
3. Before
There was a bar. That’s pretty clear. But it was just a regular bar, East Coast bar with smoke in Mulder’s eyes and girls looking up at him, tipping their heads back. A sweet-faced boy, a hard good-looking man, and Mulder’s eyes cleared, realized that was Zito on his left and Hudson on his right, and Mulder laughed.
They went back to the hotel and the others were behind some door, happy excited sounds coming out into the hall, but Zito walked right past like he knew where he was going, and leaned against his shoulder on the door to Mulder’s room.
Hudson was walking along beside him and sometimes their arms touched, when one of them sort of lost his balance and tilted in. Zito was yawning, watching them come.
Hudson was drunk because he was talking even slower than usual, and Zito was drunk because he was running the tip of his tongue over his lips and yawning. Mulder was drunk because he was noticing stuff like that.
Mulder fumbled for the key and Hudson put his hand on Zito’s arm to pull him off the door and Mulder was looking at Hudson’s hand, perfectly formed and everything just right, so that Mulder could see the knuckles and the tendons and the small dent on the inside of Hudson’s wrist. Zito’s fingers were all chewed up, and Mulder had these gawky oversized hands that were like something out of a cartoon, but Hudson’s hands looked exactly like they should.
He let them into the room, and Zito crawled onto the bed first thing, because for Zito, any time that was spent standing could be better spent sitting, and any time that was spent sitting could be better spent lying down. Hudson crouched in front of the minibar and was pulling out all the little bottles, lining them up by order of height. Mulder turned on the television and sat on the end of the bed.
It was strange, because almost always one of them went to whatever room the party was in, and Hudson usually got to bed earlier than Mulder or Zito, and no matter what the press wanted to think, the three of them were hardly inseparable. They didn’t usually hang out, just the three of them.
But it was okay. Hudson was saying, “You want the whiskey or the vodka, man?” and Zito was chanting behind him, “Bailey’s Bailey’s Bailey’s, I get the Bailey’s,” and Mulder was thinking that whoever had invented a liquor that tasted like candy might as well have just named it ‘To Get Barry Zito Hammered.’
Zito kicked him in the back so that he’d move because that Heineken commercial he liked was on, and Mulder scootched back on the bed until he was sitting against the headboard and Zito’s head was by his elbow, a pillow punched into shape. Hudson sat cross-legged by Mulder’s feet and there was a little pick-up-stick pile of miniature liquor bottles on the bed in front of him, his fingers playing across them and Hudson was smiling a little bit, looking tired and cool and glad to be where he was.
Mulder took the vodka, and he was drunk enough that it didn’t even hurt going down. Hudson sipped the whiskey like he was on a back porch or something, all the time in the world, and Zito happily licked at the tiny mouth of the Bailey’s, humming and his tongue flickering out between his lips over and over again.
They watched some bad television and talked in circles about Mulder’s new car, pretty dark-green Jaguar, and what they were gonna do for Mulder’s birthday (strip club, was the general consensus, because that’s what Kielty wanted to do, and it was his birthday too, and Mulder was always down with the strip club. “’Kay, but lame,” Zito kept saying, totally unoriginal, we can do that anytime, and Mulder kept elbowing him in the head, telling him, “didn’t we take you to Lazer-Tag and buy you Slurpees on your birthday, didn’t we do that? You’ll get a lapdance and be happy about it, punk”). They talked about a lot of stuff that got confused and didn’t make much sense, and Zito would end up giggling and pressing his face into Mulder’s arm, and Mulder would roll his eyes to see Hudson smirk.
There were small empty bottles on the bed, and Mulder realized that Zito’s face was still against his arm, though Zito wasn’t laughing anymore. Hudson was looking at the television, rubbing his knuckles thoughtfully across his chin. Mulder poked Zito’s head. Zito’s eyes were closed, and he mumbled something, turning his head so that his mouth was on the sleeve of Mulder’s shirt, and Mulder could feel Zito’s teeth even and sharp.
Mulder made some kind of sound, something like hey or quit it, something not like either of those at all, and then Zito pushed up and did this lazy kind of roll with his whole body so that he was on his side, pressed all along the line of Mulder, and then he was dragging his mouth across Mulder’s shoulder. His eyes were still closed.
Mulder just stared, his stomach all hot and in knots and his mind cut loose like a helium balloon. Zito’s hand was crawling up his arm, brushing his chest, and pulling his shirt away from his neck, and then Zito’s mouth was on bare skin, licking like Mulder was made of chocolaty liquor, and Mulder felt the gasp slice into his lungs, but didn’t hear it.
Hudson did, though. And when Mulder shot a panicked glance his way, Hudson was just watching them, very still with his hand half-curled into a fist and resting on his knee. His eyes looked hard and flat and the color of slate. Zito bit Mulder’s throat and pushed his hand across Mulder’s stomach. Mulder watched Hudson’s throat swallow.
“Tim.”
Later, Mulder would have no idea whether it was him or Zito who’d said that. Later, he decided that it probably didn’t matter.
Hudson winced like he’d be stung, and his hands were fiddling with one of the bottles. Zito was up to Mulder’s face, almost, quick sucking kisses under his jaw and his fingers tapping messages on Mulder’s cheek. Hudson’s eyes shot away and looked at the window, but the shades were drawn. It was only television light, whisking along unnoticed, and Hudson said with his voice very tight, “Right, well, I’ll. Go on an’. Go. If y’all are. Um. I’ll go.”
And Mulder was about to say, fuck man, I’ll go with you, because what the fuck, but then Zito hit a specific spot that Mulder had never told anybody about ever, because saying stuff like, please right there, embarrassed the fuck out of him. It’s just under his ear, for future reference. Just where his jaw meets his throat.
Zito hit it perfectly with teeth and tongue and Mulder short-circuited, and turned, and kissed him, kissed him hard and pressed Zito down into the bed. Zito tasted very sweet and very warm, and he was eager and open beneath him. When Mulder pulled off, his head carbonated, Hudson was still on the end of the bed, staring with his mouth open a little bit, wet like he’d licked his lips.
Zito’s arm was around the back of Mulder’s neck, and he was shifting impossibly up against him, twisting his hips and smiling. He pulled Mulder down and whispered in his ear, “Get him over here, dude.” He slid his hand down the back of Mulder’s shirt, wide flat hand on Mulder’s back and Mulder kissed him again, bit his lip.
Then he pulled away, and sat up, and grabbed a fistful of Tim Hudson’s shirt and hauled him across the bed, because if you’re gonna fuck up a little, you should fuck up a lot.
* * *
4. Order of Things
Chavez says to Zito, “What the fuck?” sometime before batting practice, his eyes caught like lint on Zito’s neck, pulling Zito’s collar out. Zito hits his hand away, and Chavez leers at him.
“When did you get lucky, fuckin’ holding out on me now?”
Over Chavez’s shoulder, Mulder is watching them, his mouth small. Zito shrugs and makes sure his collar is over the mark (the mark, what, and Mark over there, and Zito’s hungover enough for his head to be hurting just thinking about all this), and mutters something that probably doesn’t make much sense.
He sees Mulder turn away. Zito thinks futilely that Mulder knows Zito’s a tactile drunk, always rubbing up against people and folding against them on couches. Mulder should have known better than to let him get that drunk when they were all on the bed together.
Zito remembers most of it now. He’s pretty sure it was his fault.
*
Mulder runs into him in the trainer’s room. Mulder is just there getting some tape. Zito’s at the table with a heat pack on his back. Mulder comes in and Zito’s head turns and Zito looks at him with an expression of clean surprise, very familiar, and Mulder blinks, takes his eyes away.
Mulder’s working on breathing, his hands in the cabinet, when Zito says low, “I’m sorry.”
Mulder freezes, but then his shoulders fall and he turns. Zito is staring somewhere to the left of him. His face looks strange and hard. “I’m really sorry.”
Zito’s wearing his wristwatch and no shirt, the strap of the heat pack across his stomach and his chest looking smooth and untouched. With a roll of tape around his wrist, Mulder steps to him and says, “Listen-”
But Zito’s already up and moving, fluttering newspaper pages in his wake, and Mulder’s left standing there.
*
Hudson pitches and not much happens. Zito chews his nails at one end of the dugout and Mulder tears up a bunch of Gatorade cups at the other. Hudson doesn’t look at either of them.
After the game, he takes his wedding ring out of the little zip pocket he keeps it in on road trips, and slides it back on. He’s watching SportsCenter in the lounge, waiting for the bus to come to take them to the airport, and Zito comes in and sits next to him on the couch.
Zito’s quiet for two commercial breaks, then he reaches and touches the back of Hudson’s hand, two fingertips careful on the ring, and Hudson closes his eyes, doesn’t open them until he’s sure Zito is gone.
*
They never mention it again.
THE END
eta, four freakin' years later, okay all right fine: they mentioned it again.