all kinds of hair on that team
The Mountain Goats show was the kind of thing I'd drive four days without sleeping to see. Still and as ever. John D. is about a year removed from playing coffeeshops sitting on a stool, still amazed by the people screaming and the fact that the whole room knew the words to 'Color in Your Cheeks.'
I haven't been to an all ages show in years, but the high schoolers with black Xs on the backs of their hands hiked something out of the air, worked out all right. They don't know rock show code; you don't yell requests until the guy asks for them, okay, or until second encore when it's clear there is no longer a set list. Okay, that's not just the high schoolers, but they did call way more often than the 21+ show the night before.
By the time the opening band's drummer came out to fucking rage through 'Palmcorder Yajna,' it was kinda done for me, it was something else. I've been real tired for real long now.
*
In honor of No Longer Being in Last Place, and Eric Byrnes doing what he does, and these mere children making up our starting rotation, and the bitter'n'cynical grin on my face when Huddy went back on the DL (sorry, yo), and the F.P.W.N. having a nice lil four-game lead in the East, and everything else:
Carpet Burn
There’s this case of champagne under the kitchen table in the Walnut Creek house, the corners all kicked and smudged with shoeprints. Mulder thinks it was Zito’s originally, a gift from a local steakhouse after he won the Cy Young, but Zito doesn’t eat red meat or drink champagne, and somehow the case migrated into Mulder’s possession, and that’s where it’s been ever since.
Some number of beers already behind him, late in the season and a month since he’s won a game, Mulder drags the case out from under the table and cracks the fucker open with his keys. It’s only three bottles, but that’s enough.
It’s supposed to be quiet tonight, because Bobby flew home to Long Beach for the off-day and Melhuse only lives here in spirit, so Mulder sits himself down on the living room floor and drinks champagne out of a souvenir plastic cup with the season’s schedule printed on the side. He keeps getting mixed up, road trips they’ve been back from for months, short home-stands consisting of day games and heatstroke, stuff like that.
He’s gone, he’s in another time zone, and Rich Harden comes home, spinning his keys around his thumb, whistling tonelessly. Mulder waves his cup at Harden in greeting, sloshing over onto his hand. He rests his head on his knee for a minute, trying to get himself in order, and sucks at the hollow of his wrist, a fine sticky trail down his arm.
“Did you bring enough to share with the whole class?” Harden asks mildly, and Mulder smiles against his jeans, because Crosby would have knelt beside him with a laughably concerned expression on his face, and Melhuse would have yelled hi on the way to his room without even looking in on him. Harden’s the only one who would wash out a coffee mug and sit down beside him, his back scraping on the wall.
“Sit right down, stay awhile,” Mulder mumbles, rubbing his face on his knee, thinking, ‘lil richie harden,’ over and over again, though Harden is not little at all and sometimes gets really irritated when Mulder calls him Richie.
They finish one bottle, then another, and halfway through the last, Mulder’s mind is filled with kites and helicopters. Harden is quiet and companionable next to him, keeping pace without trouble because Mulder lost count an hour ago. Mulder flexes his hand, squeezing the cup and making the level of liquid rise and fall in time with Harden’s chest.
Harden’s eyes close halfway and that’s all that shows him to be mostly drunk, everything else is just slow and cool, just like normal.
“We drinking on the floor for a reason tonight?”
Mulder rolls his head on the wall and looks over. He likes the flush crawling up Harden’s face, another way he shows it, sure. He likes Harden’s thin-fingered hands and the dull blue of his eyes, and Mulder lets gravity fell him against Harden’s shoulder, braced with plaster in their hair.
“Floor’s a good place. Doesn’t get no credit.” Mulder taps at Harden’s coffee mug with his cup. “People don’t know, man, they got no idea.”
“No idea at all,” Harden agrees, mouth shaped like an asymmetrical bow, the default smirk.
Mulder likes most things about Harden, actually, but when he gets like this, he gets suspicious, thinks maybe Harden stole something from him and that’s the reason for all of this.
“If I said you had to give it back,” Mulder starts, but he gets distracted by Harden’s foot nudging at his own, Harden’s white socks and Mulder’s bare feet. He nudges back, and they kick and war for a minute, until Mulder starts giggling and almost loses his balance, a trick to do while sitting.
Harden tips his head back, offering his throat, and breathes out a laugh, his feet splayed. “What were you gonna say?” he asks, peeking at Mulder out of the corner of his eye.
“Don’t remember, never mind. Never never mind.” Mulder smiles at him, there’s not a thing Rich Harden could take from him, nothing that mattered, anyways.
Harden kills the last of his mug in one long swallow, his mouth and eyes shining. He cocks an eyebrow in Mulder’s direction. “How drunk are you?”
“Oh, pretty drunk, I’d say,” Mulder answers with his arms feeling loose in their sockets. “Not gonna remember a thing in the morning.”
Harden nods seriously. “Okay, then,” he says, and then half-turns, runs his hand up the inseam of Mulder’s jeans and starts to feel him up so casually Mulder doesn’t quite grasp what’s happening for a minute, until his heart racks against his breastbone and his whole body jerks.
Mulder makes a cut-off grunt of surprise, and drops his cup, wet on his hands and stomach, the cup rolling off on his other side. He hisses a breath in between his teeth, a single piercing note echoed like a pinprick in his ears, and stares in shock at Harden’s hand moving and pressing and rubbing him through his jeans, his other hand on Mulder’s thigh, holding his legs open.
“Fuck, what. Dude. Fuck,” Mulder says helplessly, aware in a tiny closed-off part of his brain that this needs to stop immediately, right this second, before he gives Harden something to work with (though it’s kinda already too late for that), before Harden goes for the buttons of his fly (though it’s kinda too late for that, too).
“quit it,” Mulder whispers, his hips pressing up against direct orders, and Harden snorts, as-fucking-if, man.
“Don’t even try, Mark,” Harden tells him, his eyes trained on his hand, the faded red of Mulder’s shorts against his pretty fingers. “You’re not gonna remember, what do you care?”
Mulder could argue, but then Harden slips his fingers in the opening in the front of Mulder’s boxers and hits skin, and Mulder can feel every rough tip and the bitten ends of Harden’s nails and the wide press of Harden’s palm through the fabric. Mulder won’t say a word, not ever again.
He lets Harden push him off the wall, his shoulder blades rasping as he tips over, and Harden lays him out on the floor, his right hand somehow never losing its grip, which is maybe not so surprising, considering the kind of pitcher Harden is. Mulder’s head caroms, his chest blasted with air and light. He’s hyperventilating, praying for a paper bag.
Harden shifts and settles down between his legs, his arm twisted awkwardly between them, the top of his head under Mulder’s chin. Mulder can smell shampoo and sweat and champagne, high and gold, real gold instead of the canary he’s used to, minute bubbles in his eyes. Harden’s tongue makes damp streaks on his shirt, wicked hot.
Mulder shakes, he gasps, and he jams a fist into Harden’s lower back, pressing him closer, grinding into his hand. Harden shoves Mulder’s jeans off his hips and gets free access, a clearer rhythm. Mulder can feel him grinning against his throat, teeth like chalk, smooth as pebbles.
It crosses Mulder’s mind, in the midst of a flurry worse than Illinois winters, that he doesn’t want it to happen like this, just a hand on his dick hasn’t gotten it done for him since he was sixteen years old, and no way is he gonna let Rich Harden fuck with that streak.
He drags his hands up Harden’s back and he touches Harden’s hair with a wince, his face sneering. He wants long hair, long soft hair smelling like roses, but for some idiotic reason that makes him think of Zito, which is even worse, and Mulder almost gags. Harden makes an inquisitive noise under his jaw, his hand tightening until Mulder loses focus, a low constant moan from the back of his throat.
Harden’s licking his neck, and Mulder has to keep reminding himself not to pull him up and kiss him, and wasn’t he supposed to be guiding Harden’s mouth downwards right about now? He can’t remember, it was so long ago.
It doesn’t matter, because Harden does this nifty little movement with his wrist and his thumb, sweet careful stroke of his palm, and the good of it slams whitely through Mulder’s body and he arcs up, if he could breathe he’d scream.
He collapses. Again, a trick to do while already lying on the floor. But every string in him goes slack, and his stomach dives like driving through the city. There’s silver behind his eyes, a stung quartz stretch of shine and flare. And Mulder breathes in great tearing sheaves of air, and his skin is alight, his mind separated into individual electrons, careening around like pinballs.
Rich Harden is lying on top of him, sliding off to the side, and Mulder hisses as Harden slowly extracts his hand, wiping it off on Mulder’s shirt. Harden lifts himself up, and thumps down beside Mulder, his arm over Mulder’s stomach, getting heavier by the second as Mulder’s mind clears and fuses together again.
Mulder opens his eyes and he’s staring up at the ceiling, the blue gelatinous sticky hand that Crosby brought home one night and threw up there, the long string hanging down, and Mulder thinks they’ve got to get that shit down before the landlord comes by next week, they’ve got to put Crosby up on a chair and stand around him to make sure he won’t fall.
Harden’s kind of rocking against Mulder’s side, mouthing his arm through his T-shirt, but doing it so slowly and unobtrusively that Mulder can easily pretend it’s not happening. Mulder holds still and thinks, ‘if you don’t touch him it doesn’t count.’
Harden makes a little groan and Mulder sneaks a look down through his eyelashes. Harden’s got his eyes closed, the tip of his tongue poking out from between his lips, and his hand is inside his own pants now, and Mulder quickly looks back up at the ceiling.
Harden is up against his side, his free arm still over Mulder’s stomach, but Mulder’s hands are flat on the ground, so really he just happens to be here, he’s just a bystander, which is good.
Harden finishes up with a small shudder, and then catches his breath. In a second, Mulder’s gonna get up and go back to his room and force himself to dream about girls, but Harden actually beats him to it, sitting up and smirking down at Mulder. Mulder stares up at him, motionless, biting his tongue.
Harden reaches back and retrieves the last bottle of champagne, still a good quarter left in it. He pushes it into Mulder’s hand and says, “Keep drinking, man. It’s gonna be harder to forget than you think.”
Then Harden stands up and fixes his jeans, kicks Mulder lightly in the ribs, and walks away, leaving Mulder on the carpet, trying real hard to figure out what the fuck just happened.
THE END
I haven't been to an all ages show in years, but the high schoolers with black Xs on the backs of their hands hiked something out of the air, worked out all right. They don't know rock show code; you don't yell requests until the guy asks for them, okay, or until second encore when it's clear there is no longer a set list. Okay, that's not just the high schoolers, but they did call way more often than the 21+ show the night before.
By the time the opening band's drummer came out to fucking rage through 'Palmcorder Yajna,' it was kinda done for me, it was something else. I've been real tired for real long now.
*
In honor of No Longer Being in Last Place, and Eric Byrnes doing what he does, and these mere children making up our starting rotation, and the bitter'n'cynical grin on my face when Huddy went back on the DL (sorry, yo), and the F.P.W.N. having a nice lil four-game lead in the East, and everything else:
Carpet Burn
There’s this case of champagne under the kitchen table in the Walnut Creek house, the corners all kicked and smudged with shoeprints. Mulder thinks it was Zito’s originally, a gift from a local steakhouse after he won the Cy Young, but Zito doesn’t eat red meat or drink champagne, and somehow the case migrated into Mulder’s possession, and that’s where it’s been ever since.
Some number of beers already behind him, late in the season and a month since he’s won a game, Mulder drags the case out from under the table and cracks the fucker open with his keys. It’s only three bottles, but that’s enough.
It’s supposed to be quiet tonight, because Bobby flew home to Long Beach for the off-day and Melhuse only lives here in spirit, so Mulder sits himself down on the living room floor and drinks champagne out of a souvenir plastic cup with the season’s schedule printed on the side. He keeps getting mixed up, road trips they’ve been back from for months, short home-stands consisting of day games and heatstroke, stuff like that.
He’s gone, he’s in another time zone, and Rich Harden comes home, spinning his keys around his thumb, whistling tonelessly. Mulder waves his cup at Harden in greeting, sloshing over onto his hand. He rests his head on his knee for a minute, trying to get himself in order, and sucks at the hollow of his wrist, a fine sticky trail down his arm.
“Did you bring enough to share with the whole class?” Harden asks mildly, and Mulder smiles against his jeans, because Crosby would have knelt beside him with a laughably concerned expression on his face, and Melhuse would have yelled hi on the way to his room without even looking in on him. Harden’s the only one who would wash out a coffee mug and sit down beside him, his back scraping on the wall.
“Sit right down, stay awhile,” Mulder mumbles, rubbing his face on his knee, thinking, ‘lil richie harden,’ over and over again, though Harden is not little at all and sometimes gets really irritated when Mulder calls him Richie.
They finish one bottle, then another, and halfway through the last, Mulder’s mind is filled with kites and helicopters. Harden is quiet and companionable next to him, keeping pace without trouble because Mulder lost count an hour ago. Mulder flexes his hand, squeezing the cup and making the level of liquid rise and fall in time with Harden’s chest.
Harden’s eyes close halfway and that’s all that shows him to be mostly drunk, everything else is just slow and cool, just like normal.
“We drinking on the floor for a reason tonight?”
Mulder rolls his head on the wall and looks over. He likes the flush crawling up Harden’s face, another way he shows it, sure. He likes Harden’s thin-fingered hands and the dull blue of his eyes, and Mulder lets gravity fell him against Harden’s shoulder, braced with plaster in their hair.
“Floor’s a good place. Doesn’t get no credit.” Mulder taps at Harden’s coffee mug with his cup. “People don’t know, man, they got no idea.”
“No idea at all,” Harden agrees, mouth shaped like an asymmetrical bow, the default smirk.
Mulder likes most things about Harden, actually, but when he gets like this, he gets suspicious, thinks maybe Harden stole something from him and that’s the reason for all of this.
“If I said you had to give it back,” Mulder starts, but he gets distracted by Harden’s foot nudging at his own, Harden’s white socks and Mulder’s bare feet. He nudges back, and they kick and war for a minute, until Mulder starts giggling and almost loses his balance, a trick to do while sitting.
Harden tips his head back, offering his throat, and breathes out a laugh, his feet splayed. “What were you gonna say?” he asks, peeking at Mulder out of the corner of his eye.
“Don’t remember, never mind. Never never mind.” Mulder smiles at him, there’s not a thing Rich Harden could take from him, nothing that mattered, anyways.
Harden kills the last of his mug in one long swallow, his mouth and eyes shining. He cocks an eyebrow in Mulder’s direction. “How drunk are you?”
“Oh, pretty drunk, I’d say,” Mulder answers with his arms feeling loose in their sockets. “Not gonna remember a thing in the morning.”
Harden nods seriously. “Okay, then,” he says, and then half-turns, runs his hand up the inseam of Mulder’s jeans and starts to feel him up so casually Mulder doesn’t quite grasp what’s happening for a minute, until his heart racks against his breastbone and his whole body jerks.
Mulder makes a cut-off grunt of surprise, and drops his cup, wet on his hands and stomach, the cup rolling off on his other side. He hisses a breath in between his teeth, a single piercing note echoed like a pinprick in his ears, and stares in shock at Harden’s hand moving and pressing and rubbing him through his jeans, his other hand on Mulder’s thigh, holding his legs open.
“Fuck, what. Dude. Fuck,” Mulder says helplessly, aware in a tiny closed-off part of his brain that this needs to stop immediately, right this second, before he gives Harden something to work with (though it’s kinda already too late for that), before Harden goes for the buttons of his fly (though it’s kinda too late for that, too).
“quit it,” Mulder whispers, his hips pressing up against direct orders, and Harden snorts, as-fucking-if, man.
“Don’t even try, Mark,” Harden tells him, his eyes trained on his hand, the faded red of Mulder’s shorts against his pretty fingers. “You’re not gonna remember, what do you care?”
Mulder could argue, but then Harden slips his fingers in the opening in the front of Mulder’s boxers and hits skin, and Mulder can feel every rough tip and the bitten ends of Harden’s nails and the wide press of Harden’s palm through the fabric. Mulder won’t say a word, not ever again.
He lets Harden push him off the wall, his shoulder blades rasping as he tips over, and Harden lays him out on the floor, his right hand somehow never losing its grip, which is maybe not so surprising, considering the kind of pitcher Harden is. Mulder’s head caroms, his chest blasted with air and light. He’s hyperventilating, praying for a paper bag.
Harden shifts and settles down between his legs, his arm twisted awkwardly between them, the top of his head under Mulder’s chin. Mulder can smell shampoo and sweat and champagne, high and gold, real gold instead of the canary he’s used to, minute bubbles in his eyes. Harden’s tongue makes damp streaks on his shirt, wicked hot.
Mulder shakes, he gasps, and he jams a fist into Harden’s lower back, pressing him closer, grinding into his hand. Harden shoves Mulder’s jeans off his hips and gets free access, a clearer rhythm. Mulder can feel him grinning against his throat, teeth like chalk, smooth as pebbles.
It crosses Mulder’s mind, in the midst of a flurry worse than Illinois winters, that he doesn’t want it to happen like this, just a hand on his dick hasn’t gotten it done for him since he was sixteen years old, and no way is he gonna let Rich Harden fuck with that streak.
He drags his hands up Harden’s back and he touches Harden’s hair with a wince, his face sneering. He wants long hair, long soft hair smelling like roses, but for some idiotic reason that makes him think of Zito, which is even worse, and Mulder almost gags. Harden makes an inquisitive noise under his jaw, his hand tightening until Mulder loses focus, a low constant moan from the back of his throat.
Harden’s licking his neck, and Mulder has to keep reminding himself not to pull him up and kiss him, and wasn’t he supposed to be guiding Harden’s mouth downwards right about now? He can’t remember, it was so long ago.
It doesn’t matter, because Harden does this nifty little movement with his wrist and his thumb, sweet careful stroke of his palm, and the good of it slams whitely through Mulder’s body and he arcs up, if he could breathe he’d scream.
He collapses. Again, a trick to do while already lying on the floor. But every string in him goes slack, and his stomach dives like driving through the city. There’s silver behind his eyes, a stung quartz stretch of shine and flare. And Mulder breathes in great tearing sheaves of air, and his skin is alight, his mind separated into individual electrons, careening around like pinballs.
Rich Harden is lying on top of him, sliding off to the side, and Mulder hisses as Harden slowly extracts his hand, wiping it off on Mulder’s shirt. Harden lifts himself up, and thumps down beside Mulder, his arm over Mulder’s stomach, getting heavier by the second as Mulder’s mind clears and fuses together again.
Mulder opens his eyes and he’s staring up at the ceiling, the blue gelatinous sticky hand that Crosby brought home one night and threw up there, the long string hanging down, and Mulder thinks they’ve got to get that shit down before the landlord comes by next week, they’ve got to put Crosby up on a chair and stand around him to make sure he won’t fall.
Harden’s kind of rocking against Mulder’s side, mouthing his arm through his T-shirt, but doing it so slowly and unobtrusively that Mulder can easily pretend it’s not happening. Mulder holds still and thinks, ‘if you don’t touch him it doesn’t count.’
Harden makes a little groan and Mulder sneaks a look down through his eyelashes. Harden’s got his eyes closed, the tip of his tongue poking out from between his lips, and his hand is inside his own pants now, and Mulder quickly looks back up at the ceiling.
Harden is up against his side, his free arm still over Mulder’s stomach, but Mulder’s hands are flat on the ground, so really he just happens to be here, he’s just a bystander, which is good.
Harden finishes up with a small shudder, and then catches his breath. In a second, Mulder’s gonna get up and go back to his room and force himself to dream about girls, but Harden actually beats him to it, sitting up and smirking down at Mulder. Mulder stares up at him, motionless, biting his tongue.
Harden reaches back and retrieves the last bottle of champagne, still a good quarter left in it. He pushes it into Mulder’s hand and says, “Keep drinking, man. It’s gonna be harder to forget than you think.”
Then Harden stands up and fixes his jeans, kicks Mulder lightly in the ribs, and walks away, leaving Mulder on the carpet, trying real hard to figure out what the fuck just happened.
THE END