theorizing that one could time travel within his own lifetime
Terrible week. Terrible! Seven-game losing streak and one for the last ten. Getting kicked around by the Cardinals. Losing faith in Huston Street--no! It's impossible. Six days at work and one day for a weekend. Fucking shower is FUCKING BROKEN. Which throws me off more than would be expected. I'm not getting enough sleep to be expected to face the day without clean hair. It's an abomination.
My mood is far too dependent on my teams doing well, but I've maintained outward calm and the kids are saving my life. Especially the seven year old boy who molested my boss today by being all, "Take off your belt and give me a kiss." (Swear to god, that's a direct quote.)
I'm about to be promoted, which is kind of weird. I don't really like the idea of not being able to run away in good conscience anymore. And this story was all I could think about and I couldn't stay up until four in the morning writing it like I used to, because fucking work in the morning. Still, it was nice wanting to write something so badly. I feel like it's been awhile, though that can't be true.
Overall, though, things are pretty good. First fireworks game tomorrow night, and my friends that I'm taking were wide-eyed and beyond excited to hear that they still let you lie down on the outfield grass at the Coliseum.
So I did it! I either improved it or fucked it up beyond measure. Is it a catastrophe like adding color to old films and changing the guns in 'E.T.' to walkie-talkies? Who can say. I'm not sure whether you have to read the original to get it, but it probably helps.
Striving to set right what once went wrong, etc etc. Only guide on this journey is Al. Appears in the form of a hologram! Next leap will be the leap home! Oookay. Never mind. That's for later.
the original
Clean Down To The Bone
Or, How To Do A Remix
It all went to hell because Zito was stupid.
He didn’t know the guy was a reporter, though Mulder wouldn’t believe that. Zito maybe didn’t really believe it himself, because the moon was gone from the sky and he’d been in the bar for fucking days.
The game had not been good. Mulder, visibly reeling from what Zito had done to him, left everything high and broken down the heart of the plate. Forty-three pitches got him through the first inning. Mulder messed up his hair something awful in the dugout, drilled his fists into his eyes and Zito could hear him talking to himself from all the way down the bench. Zito knew better than to go anywhere near him, saw him biting into the leather of his glove as he disappeared into the tunnel after getting pulled in the third.
So Zito had earned his nine beers tonight. Mulder’s disintegration was give or take sixty percent his fault. The chalk-written letters of the drink menu over the bar flipped over and turned into hieroglyphs, splinters in his hands and greased throat. Mulder was saying in his mind, you don’t know what you’re fucking talking about.
Zito knew, goddamn it. Better than a fastball on three-and-oh, better than the muscle memory of his best pitch. He knew what he was talking about better than he knew Mark Mulder, so there.
And Anthony Pearl came out of nowhere.
Jack-from-the-bar wouldn’t serve him anymore, and Zito wanted to cry. He wanted Mulder to be waiting for him when he got home, kept trying to remember if he’d made Mulder a spare key. In everything but name, they’d lived together in Zito’s apartment for three months, Mulder’s shoes by the door, Mulder’s freeze-dried coffee on top of the refrigerator, Mulder’s belt wrapped around the towel rack in the bathroom.
Mulder was in love with him. Zito was sure. He was going to write it in permanent marker on the wall of the bathroom, but Anthony Pearl was there instead.
Zito told him. Told him everything. Opened his mouth and let it fly out like he’d been waiting to do all season. Like he was holding a grudge, planning the perfect revenge. Want to deny me, want to pretend you don’t know how it is, fuck you then, and not in the good way. Zito hated him, told all his secrets and he knew in the back of his mind that he would pay for this in blood, every day until the sun exploded.
Pearl wrote nothing down, eyes scanning like recorder tape. He was going to ruin them, make them ash and leave nothing behind. Zito understood that, though only peripherally. His mouth was slippery and his heart a cracked and treacherous thing, stringing him out into a place that lacked gravity.
He went home alone, and stayed that way all night.
The hangover was terrible, and Zito didn’t remember anything from the night before. Mulder wasn’t there. Zito ghosted around his apartment, barefoot and dreaming of the day five months ago when he’d built his courage into a wall around him and pushed his hand into Mulder’s pants. Thinking fitfully that he was protected from on high, and Mulder couldn’t hurt him, bruises heal, fucking rookie journalists weren’t allowed to touch men like him.
Zito avoided the sports section, ripped it up into strips and scattered it to the wind for the birds to use in their nests. This wasn’t the life he wanted, though he was certain that Mulder would come back to him. Mulder was in love with him and Zito was the exact same, his muscles skipping at the sight of him, his world narrowed like a telescope turned around backwards.
Mulder didn’t want to say anything out loud. He didn’t want to speak Zito’s name or touch his face, but he did both, wincing because it came from somewhere beyond his control, and Mulder just fucking hated that. He wanted them to be fuckbuddies and not a moment more, but three months ago, he’d started spending the night in Zito’s bed and hanging around Zito’s place on long off-days with his bent knee resting atop Zito’s leg. Zito had started waking up with a curve of Mulder’s fingerprints on his sides.
Three months ago, Mulder started asking for Zito in his sleep, and Zito would put an arm across his chest and mutter, “god, shut up,” watching Mulder’s closed eyes flicker.
Zito lived for this. Baseball was a pale obsession; Mulder was everything.
Two nights before, Zito had been joyful and redeemed, because Mulder had laughed hard enough for Sprite to come out of his nose at something he’d said. Mulder’s eyes were bloodshot, and he was trembling, still kinda laughing.
Zito did not have a choice. You couldn’t kill yourself by holding your breath. He said it into Mulder’s neck, muffled and almost lost (and christ, imagine if Mulder had never heard, imagine if none of this had ever happened), “love you.”
Felt Mulder tense quick as a guitar string, big hands wide on Zito’s back, and Zito was happy for a moment because he’d said it and now it was in the air forever. It was out of him at last, no longer a cancer inside.
You don’t know what you’re fucking talking about.
Hungover, hiding from the sports page, Zito didn’t realize the world was ending outside until past dinnertime. He’d lost his cell phone at some point, it could be in Guam or his coat pocket, either way capturing message after dozen messages without his awareness. He was twisted up, leaving Mulder alone because Mulder needed some time to think, to get the fuck over himself, to realize that it was okay, being in love with a left-handed pitcher, it wasn’t all bad luck.
And you shouldn’t pitch angry or heartbroken, it was the only good rule.
Difficult, wanting Mulder in the palms of his hands and the beat of pulse in his temple. The drive over the bridge was like a six-mile drop out of the sky, end up on Mulder’s doorstep all fucked up and shirtless, stupid dreams that Zito had.
He found out from SportsCenter. Anthony Pearl was a reporter with a photographic memory and now Mulder and Zito were a punchline. Zito’s mouth stretched in a weird smile when the story came on, like that could remove the hallucination and wake him up in reality again. It wasn’t possible. No one knew. Even the two of them barely knew.
But it was right there in white letters on a red background, and some second baseman was talking about how it shouldn’t matter, some pitcher was saying that they should be kicked out of the game. Opinions were split, an online poll cut almost perfectly down the middle, like a fastball that got away.
Zito shook his head, his throat closed up tight enough that every breath whistled, and fuck oxygen for keeping him alive right now. It wasn’t possible.
A half-hour later, Mulder was slamming his fist on Zito’s door and the room shuddered. Zito did the same. Zito could feel the simple nature of his life-play baseball, be charming, be in love-slithering through his fingers.
Mulder’s face was torn and his eyes were crazy like the one time when Zito’s grip on the headboard had slipped and he’d caught his weight on Mulder’s left shoulder, thirty-six hours after Mulder’s last start. Zito had never been afraid of him, only wanted to keep him around every day and not miss a moment, but things were being upended. There were forces inside him that couldn’t be fought, and forces inside Mulder too, as Mulder threw him against the wall.
Funny to hear the crack of his back into the plaster more clearly than Mulder’s voice in that moment.
Zito couldn’t explain. He tried, his very best, nine beers, man, didn’t know he was a reporter, I don’t remember, I don’t think I said anything. But Pearl had recreated Zito’s inflection easily. Zito’s whole personality bled out of the newspaper. Mulder knew him better than anyone.
A cold thrill struck in Zito’s chest when Mulder told him, “It doesn’t matter what we do from now on, all that counts is that we fucked.” Mulder had admitted it, finally, finally, after all these months of showing up in Zito’s hotel room wordlessly, subtly moving into his house without ceremony, confirmation at last that it was real. It wasn’t just an incredibly elaborate daydream, as sometimes seemed the case when Mulder was mid-game and not looking at him.
Dumb thing to think, and Mulder was so angry with him, his voice creaking and scraped like limping on old floorboards: “You’ve ruined my life.”
Zito didn’t understand. They were going to be okay, this was just temporary, a four-game losing streak in May. They bounced back from shit like this. They’d always been a second-half team, anyway.
Mulder didn’t listen, he didn’t want to hear it. He wanted Zito to be something other than what he was, wanted to set the building on fire. Zito said hoarsely, “I can’t not be in love with you, man,” and saw something violent yank across Mulder’s face.
Zito could be just as angry. He could rage back, his fists on Mulder’s chest, his teeth biting centimeters from Mulder’s cheek, you love me too and you’re fucking well going to deal with it. I’m not going to let you leave until you promise nothing’s changed.
He could do that. The words were there, crystallized. Mulder was there, pressing him against the wall as he’d done a hundred times before. The scene was cleanly set, streetlight through the window, a sewed-up tear in the shoulder of Mulder’s shirt, an eyelash on his cheek.
But it was no good. Zito was frozen, sickly fascinated by the spectacle. Mulder wanted to hit him, disfigure him, and Zito kept waiting for it, tilting his chin up. Any damage Mulder’s hands could do to him would fade by morning; Zito’d always patched up quick.
Instead, Mulder left him, saying obscurely as he walked out, “Now I can never be sure of you again.”
Zito didn’t know what that meant. Zito had been a constant from day one, something to set your watch by, and all that had changed was the color of his hair. He cried out, “No, no, you motherfucker,” but of course that didn’t work. Of course Mulder was already gone.
And Zito was dead where he stood.
Swift turnaround to a new day, supposed to be born again but it didn’t count because he hadn’t slept. The reporters would find him, sniff him out, he’d be chased from his home. Billy Beane was going to destroy him. Zito thought for a very long time about running away. Idaho was lovely this time of year.
Trapped in a circuit, he went to the ballpark, crushed his way through the reporters and pretended he didn’t see anything. He walked the hollow tunnel and remembered that they hadn’t even been drunk the first time, though Mulder had long since blocked that out.
They’d been clean as the street after rain, five months ago in Phoenix when Zito had caught Mulder’s eyes and the same old desire grabbed him deep. His game was mental. There were moments when Zito did not believe he could be beaten, not even fouled off, everything was swung-through.
And this moment like all of those, in the orange light, in the kitchen of his rented spring training house with the tile coming up in pieces under his feet. Cracking as he crossed to where Mulder was standing, chill before the wedged-open refrigerator door. Zito had taken Mulder’s wrist and pinned it to the counter and pressed up against his back, his hand winding under the waistband of Mulder’s shorts. Mulder had gasped, dropped his Coke. Zito licked the back of his neck, soft bitter taste of sunscreen, felt Mulder’s back arch against his chest, and Zito held him still, fingers around Mulder’s wrist, fingers around Mulder’s cock, soda seeping through his socks.
But they hadn’t been drinking, which was the important thing to remember, more than the sunlight or the way the skin of Mulder’s stomach was so cold to the touch. They’d gotten started five months ago, in Phoenix, during spring training, and for that to go like this, to shatter like knuckles in a bar fight, it seemed unholy.
They’d been perfect for a very long time. Even wrapped up in violence and rivalry as they were, they’d melted down and been reformed and that was okay. The course of their season flowed up and sank down and Zito had woken up in the middle of the night to Mulder’s mouth open on his back, air warmed by his body.
Quick like that, over like this, and his teammates didn’t know what to say to him. Eric Chavez and Tim Hudson looked betrayed. Eric Byrnes combed his hair for fifteen minutes straight rather than coming over to play cards with him. Nobody would meet his eyes, and Zito barricaded himself away in a side room with his headphones on and the lights off. He could hear them talking out there in the pauses between songs, saying his name and Mulder’s name, saying, “Fuck, never would have thought.”
Staring hard at the vent high up on the wall, Zito wished himself forward, three months or so, to a place where it would have blown over and the season would be behind him. And he could put this behind him, too, like a bad start, a disastered training room. Develop willful unconsciousness, only come to once every five days.
They came and got him after the position players had gone up for infield practice. Shuffling and looking everywhere but at him, they said Beane was waiting for him and Zito rose without thought.
He would face it. He would get thrown off the team, kicked out of California, wander the earth. Never wear a uniform again. It was almost enough to look forward to.
But Mulder was up in Beane’s office too, of course, as he would be, and that shook Zito like dice. His resolve abruptly vanished. Mulder stood hard as a tree, hands deep in his pockets. Zito glanced at the flushed line of Mulder’s neck and then turned his eyes away.
Beane dismantled them efficiently. Broke them down until the situation was clear, and Mulder was glaring at Zito, fired into the side of his face. Zito was falling.
There was an instant, a breath, when he thought he’d be able to do it. Stand there next to Mulder and look Billy Beane in the eye and tell him, yes it’s true. Yes I love him. Forever and ever. Zito could remember being a kid and whispering that to himself, forever and ever, over and over again until the words lost all meaning.
He could have done it. He might even have lived. But Mulder would see him killed by nightfall, anyway, and so Zito lifted his head, steeled his gaze, smirked his mouth.
Told Beane that it had just been a joke.
Zito sold it. Pitching was mental, and pitching was deception, and this was the best change-up the world had ever seen. Mulder was staring at him in shock, as Zito shrugged bashfully and apologized for fucking with the press. Though both their eyes were stark and bright upon him, Zito couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being slowly erased.
Beane took a huge too-early hack, believing all of it, and laughed, clapped Zito’s arm in relief, planning the press conference out loud. Zito’s legs held up until Beane was out of the room, and then he fell, crumpled like paper on the floor.
And Mulder was saying his name, awkward crouching shadow beside him, his hand hovering and Zito twisted, tunneled into Mulder’s touch. Mulder’s hand clung, surprised for a moment in Zito’s hair, before he jerked away. Zito hissed at the pain, balled up around his knees. Zito swore out loud that he hated him, said it until the words echoed around his mind and Mulder’s face was stricken.
Mulder thanked him anyway, brushed his fingertips on the back of Zito’s neck, dug the spurs in clean down to the bone.
Days passed. Zito wasn’t sure. Professional baseball and the national press took him at his word; Zito was not used to that. Mulder followed along admirably, smiling when Zito smiled, nodding in rhythm, agreeing with everything: of course it’s ridiculous, of course he was kidding.
Of course. Zito recognized the strain of self-destruction that pulled him back by the hair occasionally, and he’d searched for it desperately when he and Mulder had first gotten started. He’d expected to find linked sixes behind Mulder’s ear, skywriting to show him the way, prophetic dreams of fire. It would have made more sense if Mulder was just another symptom of Zito being not quite sane. It would have been easier to deal with.
But Mulder had growled at him when Zito stole pillows. Mulder had made hotel rooms feel new and exciting again, sucking on Zito’s hip, skidding his hands on the sheets. Mulder had been bad luck, wasted Zito’s time and ate his food, but at the end of the day Mulder would still be close enough to touch.
Mulder wasn’t a suicidal tendency at all. He was the fucking love of Zito’s life. Zito wasn’t anything anymore.
They came home to fog and Zito couldn’t remember sleeping, or whether the sun had risen that morning. Mulder was tall enough to be seen over everyone else, and Zito kept scrunching one eye closed. Bam, and you’ve disappeared. Bam, and there’s not even smoke left where you used to be.
Stretched high and thin by the strain of each day, Zito couldn’t catch his hands on anything. Mulder was watching him with burnt shadows under his eyes, licking his lips and Zito was obsessed with his mouth. Sometimes Mulder tilted towards him like his equilibrium was fucked up, like drunk was the best way to be.
Zito dreamt of coming home one night and finding Mulder asleep on his front steps. Cubed blue pieces of windshield glass on the streets, big full autumn moon shining through Mulder’s fingers, tattered duct tape holding Zito’s shoes together.
But it wasn’t going to be like that. It wasn’t a fucking fairy tale and there’d never been anywhere for them to go together, anyway. They just happened to be on the same team; it didn’t mean anything.
None of it meant anything. Zito could learn to accept that, if Mulder would just give him some time and quit looking at him when he thought Zito wasn’t paying attention.
They backslid in September, better than a month after Zito had wrecked everything.
They were in some East Coast city that looked familiar. The fans yelled ‘faggot’ and even worse things at Zito as he took the field, which made him very tired. They only rarely yelled the same at Mulder, and that didn’t seem particularly fair.
Neither of them pitched, and the game was lost. They were doing that a lot lately. There was a minor lightning storm that scissored the sky and made the air smell like sulfur, and Zito couldn’t keep his distance at the bar. He’d had years of Mulder always within arm’s reach, like his shadow glued to his feet, the birthmark painted on his wrist, the idiotic doubt that turned him inward and made his curve go flat.
Mulder, his single worst shortcoming. Couldn’t even fall in love with a regular person. Had to try for a hundred miles too high. Story of his fucking life.
So maybe it was okay that Zito leaned into him and rested his cheek on Mulder’s back and pretended that they weren’t enemies. It was definitely okay that Chavez yanked Zito off, muttering hotly under his breath about appearances and you want to get into fucking trouble again?
Mulder looked back at him with something banked in his eyes like clouds holding back rain. Used to seeing pure anger in there, Zito smiled at him, vaguely wanting to cry. Mulder flushed and jerked his head away.
Two hours later, Mulder found him in the corner and stared at the floor, mumbled something about watching tape. Zito wanted to laugh, scratch Mulder’s eyes out, something like that. As if Zito didn’t know that look on Mulder’s downturned face, the bunch of his hands in his pockets, the fault line across his forehead. Mulder was unsteady and miserable and wanted to fuck Zito again. Zito’d seen it a million times.
He might have done anything, but instead he just agreed too fast, ignoring the huddled tension in Mulder’s back and the fact that they were both kinda drunk. They walked back to the hotel in silence.
Dry brown leaves in his hair, Zito thought that it wasn’t right. If it was gonna happen, it should be sudden and without warning. They should be drunker than they were and far gone from their senses, something to blame in the morning. This was too premeditated. They were taking too much time.
Mulder put the tape in and sat cross-legged on the bed. Zito got the Elmer’s glue that Mulder put on his blisters and took the chair, carefully applying the glue to his fingertips, blowing to make it dry. He wasn’t paying attention to anything, and Mulder said his name low in the old way, as Zito had known he would. Zito wouldn’t look back at him. They hated each other. They were relearning friendship, or maybe learning it for the first time. Either way.
Mulder had made him smile into the cameras and deny it. Zito didn’t even want to forgive him.
Zito peeled off the pieces of dried glue and laid them out in an arch on the table, a rainbow of his fingerprints. Looking at them made his throat hurt in a weird way, thinking that this was the only part of him that was unique from everybody else. The whole world knew about not being able to wake up all the way up, about not being able to stay away. Heartbreak didn’t make him special. He swallowed with a click and lowered his head into his hands.
Mulder said his name again, stirred behind him. Zito dug his fingers through his hair, trembling fast and drunk, not drunk enough. Mulder put his hand on Zito’s back and Zito flinched so hard he almost fell out of the chair.
“No, hey,” Mulder said, and kissed the back of his neck. Zito shuddered, turning into it, and Mulder’s mouth was on his throat, under his ear.
“Can we just,” Mulder started, then stopped. He tugged at Zito’s arm, trying to get him to drop his hands, but Zito was safe like this, nobody could see him. He wondered if he could get Mulder to fuck him with his hands still over his face. He thought Mulder probably would.
But Mulder whispered, “please,” with his thumbs in the spaces between Zito’s fingers, touching his eyelids, and Zito couldn’t stand hearing him say that, flat and dull like it had been recorded off the radio. He took down his hands. Kissed Mulder until the room shook.
Fell down onto the carpet with him and forgot for a little while.
Zito awoke in the bed, sore and wrung out. He found bruises on the backs of his arms and the insides of his thighs, tumbling his fingers over them like calligraphy. There was a shuffle in Zito’s chest, mix-up of sadness and joy and the groundless feeling of being forgiven. He could hear Mulder in the shower.
For a minute or two, Zito imagined staying. Seeing Mulder emerge wet and red-skinned in a cloud of steam, smile and use his hands and mouth until Mulder agreed to go in reverse.
But it would never work. Mulder was as stubborn as wood and Zito couldn’t believe in something that had already been disproved. He needed to get out of here. He was supposed to be in recovery, not in Mulder’s hotel room.
Zito got up and dressed quickly, treacherous hands remembering the slide of Mulder’s back. Zito wanted to be worked over as a crime scene, DNA evidence to prove that Mulder had touched him again. He was halfway out the door when a humid wave from the shower hit him and Mulder was asking easily, “Where are you-” before he remembered and cut himself short.
Resting his forehead on the door, Zito catalogued the many ways that Mulder was still on him. Teethmarks, fingerprints, bruises from Mulder’s hands and hipbones, his voice echoing, his breath crashing like laughter into Zito’s neck.
Mulder cleared his throat. “You going, or what?”
Zito shook his head, but that didn’t make anything clear. He wondered if Mulder was in a towel or boxers or what, standing in the bathroom doorway behind him. He wondered what Mulder would say if he turned around and asked, what if I’d never met Anthony Pearl and never fucked it up, what would you have promised me?
But how could Mulder know the answer to that? Mulder wasn’t that smart, couldn’t see the future or change it or block it out, and every time Zito had woken up, all night long, Mulder had been motionless and wide-eyed in the bed next to him, looking like he hadn’t slept in a month either. Maybe everybody was going crazy. Maybe it was a virus.
Zito whispered too low for Mulder to hear, “Yeah, I’m going,” and walked out on him.
Continue on like this, drag the days like dead cars, and Zito was living for the next time that they would be drunk as the planets aligned and the second full moon of the month filled up the sky all blue and solemn. Most people only get one extra night after the end of everything, but the two of them had never really been on the same kind of clock.
Mulder got better at being in Zito’s proximity, anxiety smoothed like a palm over wet hair. That was probably just a good act, but Zito could barely keep himself upright, so he was hardly in a place to nitpick. Mulder was slowly transforming back into the man Zito had first met, shoulders blocking out huge chunks of the ceiling, flicker-free eyes colored like faded sunbleached blue paint.
Zito was terrified. Mulder would heal, pretend he was okay until it was true, and Zito would still be right here.
He found himself at Anthony Pearl’s apartment very late one night. He wasn’t there for revenge, though it took a long time to convince the reporter of that. Zito knocked over a stack of books and asked him why, why’d you write that fucking story, ruining Mark Mulder’s career for the second time in one season. But Anthony Pearl had been reduced to covering the Rivercats, and with his own disillusionment shining bright, he made a good case for love and other things that couldn’t be harmed by the press.
Zito knew that there weren’t guidelines for what could hurt you and what couldn’t. Life was forever kicking him in the shins. Even dumb things made him want to break down, as if beauty wasn’t enough and neither was happiness and neither was baseball. Even off-speed pitches thocked into his heart. His body was carved over with landmarks from every one.
But Pearl told him, “You love him and he loves you and I couldn’t touch that,” believing it plainly with his eyes magnified through his glasses.
Zito rolled it over in his mind, I love him and he loves me and they can’t touch that. It didn’t sound right.
Gut-shot, Zito wanted to know what he should do. Pearl said like it was so self-evident, like maybe Zito was a little slow, “You make it right again, man. You go and get him back,” and that sounded better.
Across the bridge one more time in the wicked autumn wind, Zito was raised high up and the magic of it, this pretty Hollywood moment, fled through him like brand-new blood. He was going to set everything straight and make it clear to Mulder that he wasn’t going to allow them to be without each other anymore. The option was no longer on the table.
He could think of a thousand other means by which their repair might have come, most of them involving Mulder coming to find him and professing some impossibly out-of-character speech about true love and regret, but this had been written out for him. Zito was going through the motions, smiling only when he was cued.
Zito didn’t want to wake up the whole house, so he shimmied through the kitchen window and left his shoes by the refrigerator. Padding silently down the hall, his pulse bumped in his throat. He repeated to himself on a loop, I love him and he loves me and they can’t touch that. He would pretend until it was true.
Mulder wasn’t asleep. He jerked up when Zito snuck into his room, firelight whites of his eyes reflecting the red of the alarm clock. Mulder’s mouth moved without sound in the shape of Zito’s name, his hands wrenched in the sheets.
Zito crawled right onto the bed, paying no attention to the way Mulder snatched away from him.
“I figured it out,” Zito told him, very quietly. “This was an awful idea. You don’t hate me at all.”
Mulder gaped at him. Zito had always liked that look on him, and he grinned, leaned down to kiss Mulder’s elbow, which was closest to him.
“It’s okay that I fucked up, dude, can’t you see? Because we can’t live like this, and now we know. It would have taken us years otherwise. But, look.”
Zito tunneled his hand under the covers and laid his fingers on Mulder’s stomach, skidding under the waistband of Mulder’s boxers and touching the indented skin there. He made his eyes go wide, waiting for Mulder to fall in.
“I don’t need anything from you. I did a terrible thing, but you did too, so, now we go back, okay? Now we’re even.”
Mulder put his hand on Zito’s, stopping him when Zito might have gone farther down. Zito felt the supports in his chest being knocked out one by one, his throat shrinking down to nothing. Mulder was staring at him like a front-row seat to the end of the world.
“Barry,” Mulder breathed out, and Zito panicked, because Mulder never called him by his first name. They weren’t friends. “You can’t, just. You can’t.”
Zito bit the insides of his cheeks hard, clenching Mulder’s hip, hating that he couldn’t see it. His knees were starting to ache from kneeling on the bed. “I already did. This, Mulder, please. Love you. Like nothing else. And. You too. Please. This is how I get you back.”
And Mulder blinked, something cold and blue shattered clean in his eyes. He pulled Zito’s hand off him. He shook his head. “You never had me in the first place, babe,” he told Zito softly. “We weren’t. What you thought.”
He touched his fingertips on Zito’s chest and sucked his cheek in and that meant he was lying. Zito knew all the signs. But vision was for shit because Mulder was saying, “So go home and sleep it off, okay?” and pushing Zito away from him, five small spots of pressure the size of dimes and hot as iron, forming a semi-circle around Zito’s heart.
Zito would have it with him forever, stumbling out of the house in shock with his ribs crushed. Zito knew how to pitch on two-and-oh and how to walk off the field after allowing six runs. He knew how to tell when Mulder wanted to fuck him and how to tell when Mulder was lying, how to break a fall and how to get home from here. All of that had gotten him so far, and it was too late to realize now that he’d never learned how to breathe with this much water over his head.
THE END
Endnotes: Title and the line from whence it came borrowed from the saddest Mountain Goats song of them all. And it’s not even about love. But then, neither is this.
My mood is far too dependent on my teams doing well, but I've maintained outward calm and the kids are saving my life. Especially the seven year old boy who molested my boss today by being all, "Take off your belt and give me a kiss." (Swear to god, that's a direct quote.)
I'm about to be promoted, which is kind of weird. I don't really like the idea of not being able to run away in good conscience anymore. And this story was all I could think about and I couldn't stay up until four in the morning writing it like I used to, because fucking work in the morning. Still, it was nice wanting to write something so badly. I feel like it's been awhile, though that can't be true.
Overall, though, things are pretty good. First fireworks game tomorrow night, and my friends that I'm taking were wide-eyed and beyond excited to hear that they still let you lie down on the outfield grass at the Coliseum.
So I did it! I either improved it or fucked it up beyond measure. Is it a catastrophe like adding color to old films and changing the guns in 'E.T.' to walkie-talkies? Who can say. I'm not sure whether you have to read the original to get it, but it probably helps.
Striving to set right what once went wrong, etc etc. Only guide on this journey is Al. Appears in the form of a hologram! Next leap will be the leap home! Oookay. Never mind. That's for later.
the original
Clean Down To The Bone
Or, How To Do A Remix
It all went to hell because Zito was stupid.
He didn’t know the guy was a reporter, though Mulder wouldn’t believe that. Zito maybe didn’t really believe it himself, because the moon was gone from the sky and he’d been in the bar for fucking days.
The game had not been good. Mulder, visibly reeling from what Zito had done to him, left everything high and broken down the heart of the plate. Forty-three pitches got him through the first inning. Mulder messed up his hair something awful in the dugout, drilled his fists into his eyes and Zito could hear him talking to himself from all the way down the bench. Zito knew better than to go anywhere near him, saw him biting into the leather of his glove as he disappeared into the tunnel after getting pulled in the third.
So Zito had earned his nine beers tonight. Mulder’s disintegration was give or take sixty percent his fault. The chalk-written letters of the drink menu over the bar flipped over and turned into hieroglyphs, splinters in his hands and greased throat. Mulder was saying in his mind, you don’t know what you’re fucking talking about.
Zito knew, goddamn it. Better than a fastball on three-and-oh, better than the muscle memory of his best pitch. He knew what he was talking about better than he knew Mark Mulder, so there.
And Anthony Pearl came out of nowhere.
Jack-from-the-bar wouldn’t serve him anymore, and Zito wanted to cry. He wanted Mulder to be waiting for him when he got home, kept trying to remember if he’d made Mulder a spare key. In everything but name, they’d lived together in Zito’s apartment for three months, Mulder’s shoes by the door, Mulder’s freeze-dried coffee on top of the refrigerator, Mulder’s belt wrapped around the towel rack in the bathroom.
Mulder was in love with him. Zito was sure. He was going to write it in permanent marker on the wall of the bathroom, but Anthony Pearl was there instead.
Zito told him. Told him everything. Opened his mouth and let it fly out like he’d been waiting to do all season. Like he was holding a grudge, planning the perfect revenge. Want to deny me, want to pretend you don’t know how it is, fuck you then, and not in the good way. Zito hated him, told all his secrets and he knew in the back of his mind that he would pay for this in blood, every day until the sun exploded.
Pearl wrote nothing down, eyes scanning like recorder tape. He was going to ruin them, make them ash and leave nothing behind. Zito understood that, though only peripherally. His mouth was slippery and his heart a cracked and treacherous thing, stringing him out into a place that lacked gravity.
He went home alone, and stayed that way all night.
The hangover was terrible, and Zito didn’t remember anything from the night before. Mulder wasn’t there. Zito ghosted around his apartment, barefoot and dreaming of the day five months ago when he’d built his courage into a wall around him and pushed his hand into Mulder’s pants. Thinking fitfully that he was protected from on high, and Mulder couldn’t hurt him, bruises heal, fucking rookie journalists weren’t allowed to touch men like him.
Zito avoided the sports section, ripped it up into strips and scattered it to the wind for the birds to use in their nests. This wasn’t the life he wanted, though he was certain that Mulder would come back to him. Mulder was in love with him and Zito was the exact same, his muscles skipping at the sight of him, his world narrowed like a telescope turned around backwards.
Mulder didn’t want to say anything out loud. He didn’t want to speak Zito’s name or touch his face, but he did both, wincing because it came from somewhere beyond his control, and Mulder just fucking hated that. He wanted them to be fuckbuddies and not a moment more, but three months ago, he’d started spending the night in Zito’s bed and hanging around Zito’s place on long off-days with his bent knee resting atop Zito’s leg. Zito had started waking up with a curve of Mulder’s fingerprints on his sides.
Three months ago, Mulder started asking for Zito in his sleep, and Zito would put an arm across his chest and mutter, “god, shut up,” watching Mulder’s closed eyes flicker.
Zito lived for this. Baseball was a pale obsession; Mulder was everything.
Two nights before, Zito had been joyful and redeemed, because Mulder had laughed hard enough for Sprite to come out of his nose at something he’d said. Mulder’s eyes were bloodshot, and he was trembling, still kinda laughing.
Zito did not have a choice. You couldn’t kill yourself by holding your breath. He said it into Mulder’s neck, muffled and almost lost (and christ, imagine if Mulder had never heard, imagine if none of this had ever happened), “love you.”
Felt Mulder tense quick as a guitar string, big hands wide on Zito’s back, and Zito was happy for a moment because he’d said it and now it was in the air forever. It was out of him at last, no longer a cancer inside.
You don’t know what you’re fucking talking about.
Hungover, hiding from the sports page, Zito didn’t realize the world was ending outside until past dinnertime. He’d lost his cell phone at some point, it could be in Guam or his coat pocket, either way capturing message after dozen messages without his awareness. He was twisted up, leaving Mulder alone because Mulder needed some time to think, to get the fuck over himself, to realize that it was okay, being in love with a left-handed pitcher, it wasn’t all bad luck.
And you shouldn’t pitch angry or heartbroken, it was the only good rule.
Difficult, wanting Mulder in the palms of his hands and the beat of pulse in his temple. The drive over the bridge was like a six-mile drop out of the sky, end up on Mulder’s doorstep all fucked up and shirtless, stupid dreams that Zito had.
He found out from SportsCenter. Anthony Pearl was a reporter with a photographic memory and now Mulder and Zito were a punchline. Zito’s mouth stretched in a weird smile when the story came on, like that could remove the hallucination and wake him up in reality again. It wasn’t possible. No one knew. Even the two of them barely knew.
But it was right there in white letters on a red background, and some second baseman was talking about how it shouldn’t matter, some pitcher was saying that they should be kicked out of the game. Opinions were split, an online poll cut almost perfectly down the middle, like a fastball that got away.
Zito shook his head, his throat closed up tight enough that every breath whistled, and fuck oxygen for keeping him alive right now. It wasn’t possible.
A half-hour later, Mulder was slamming his fist on Zito’s door and the room shuddered. Zito did the same. Zito could feel the simple nature of his life-play baseball, be charming, be in love-slithering through his fingers.
Mulder’s face was torn and his eyes were crazy like the one time when Zito’s grip on the headboard had slipped and he’d caught his weight on Mulder’s left shoulder, thirty-six hours after Mulder’s last start. Zito had never been afraid of him, only wanted to keep him around every day and not miss a moment, but things were being upended. There were forces inside him that couldn’t be fought, and forces inside Mulder too, as Mulder threw him against the wall.
Funny to hear the crack of his back into the plaster more clearly than Mulder’s voice in that moment.
Zito couldn’t explain. He tried, his very best, nine beers, man, didn’t know he was a reporter, I don’t remember, I don’t think I said anything. But Pearl had recreated Zito’s inflection easily. Zito’s whole personality bled out of the newspaper. Mulder knew him better than anyone.
A cold thrill struck in Zito’s chest when Mulder told him, “It doesn’t matter what we do from now on, all that counts is that we fucked.” Mulder had admitted it, finally, finally, after all these months of showing up in Zito’s hotel room wordlessly, subtly moving into his house without ceremony, confirmation at last that it was real. It wasn’t just an incredibly elaborate daydream, as sometimes seemed the case when Mulder was mid-game and not looking at him.
Dumb thing to think, and Mulder was so angry with him, his voice creaking and scraped like limping on old floorboards: “You’ve ruined my life.”
Zito didn’t understand. They were going to be okay, this was just temporary, a four-game losing streak in May. They bounced back from shit like this. They’d always been a second-half team, anyway.
Mulder didn’t listen, he didn’t want to hear it. He wanted Zito to be something other than what he was, wanted to set the building on fire. Zito said hoarsely, “I can’t not be in love with you, man,” and saw something violent yank across Mulder’s face.
Zito could be just as angry. He could rage back, his fists on Mulder’s chest, his teeth biting centimeters from Mulder’s cheek, you love me too and you’re fucking well going to deal with it. I’m not going to let you leave until you promise nothing’s changed.
He could do that. The words were there, crystallized. Mulder was there, pressing him against the wall as he’d done a hundred times before. The scene was cleanly set, streetlight through the window, a sewed-up tear in the shoulder of Mulder’s shirt, an eyelash on his cheek.
But it was no good. Zito was frozen, sickly fascinated by the spectacle. Mulder wanted to hit him, disfigure him, and Zito kept waiting for it, tilting his chin up. Any damage Mulder’s hands could do to him would fade by morning; Zito’d always patched up quick.
Instead, Mulder left him, saying obscurely as he walked out, “Now I can never be sure of you again.”
Zito didn’t know what that meant. Zito had been a constant from day one, something to set your watch by, and all that had changed was the color of his hair. He cried out, “No, no, you motherfucker,” but of course that didn’t work. Of course Mulder was already gone.
And Zito was dead where he stood.
Swift turnaround to a new day, supposed to be born again but it didn’t count because he hadn’t slept. The reporters would find him, sniff him out, he’d be chased from his home. Billy Beane was going to destroy him. Zito thought for a very long time about running away. Idaho was lovely this time of year.
Trapped in a circuit, he went to the ballpark, crushed his way through the reporters and pretended he didn’t see anything. He walked the hollow tunnel and remembered that they hadn’t even been drunk the first time, though Mulder had long since blocked that out.
They’d been clean as the street after rain, five months ago in Phoenix when Zito had caught Mulder’s eyes and the same old desire grabbed him deep. His game was mental. There were moments when Zito did not believe he could be beaten, not even fouled off, everything was swung-through.
And this moment like all of those, in the orange light, in the kitchen of his rented spring training house with the tile coming up in pieces under his feet. Cracking as he crossed to where Mulder was standing, chill before the wedged-open refrigerator door. Zito had taken Mulder’s wrist and pinned it to the counter and pressed up against his back, his hand winding under the waistband of Mulder’s shorts. Mulder had gasped, dropped his Coke. Zito licked the back of his neck, soft bitter taste of sunscreen, felt Mulder’s back arch against his chest, and Zito held him still, fingers around Mulder’s wrist, fingers around Mulder’s cock, soda seeping through his socks.
But they hadn’t been drinking, which was the important thing to remember, more than the sunlight or the way the skin of Mulder’s stomach was so cold to the touch. They’d gotten started five months ago, in Phoenix, during spring training, and for that to go like this, to shatter like knuckles in a bar fight, it seemed unholy.
They’d been perfect for a very long time. Even wrapped up in violence and rivalry as they were, they’d melted down and been reformed and that was okay. The course of their season flowed up and sank down and Zito had woken up in the middle of the night to Mulder’s mouth open on his back, air warmed by his body.
Quick like that, over like this, and his teammates didn’t know what to say to him. Eric Chavez and Tim Hudson looked betrayed. Eric Byrnes combed his hair for fifteen minutes straight rather than coming over to play cards with him. Nobody would meet his eyes, and Zito barricaded himself away in a side room with his headphones on and the lights off. He could hear them talking out there in the pauses between songs, saying his name and Mulder’s name, saying, “Fuck, never would have thought.”
Staring hard at the vent high up on the wall, Zito wished himself forward, three months or so, to a place where it would have blown over and the season would be behind him. And he could put this behind him, too, like a bad start, a disastered training room. Develop willful unconsciousness, only come to once every five days.
They came and got him after the position players had gone up for infield practice. Shuffling and looking everywhere but at him, they said Beane was waiting for him and Zito rose without thought.
He would face it. He would get thrown off the team, kicked out of California, wander the earth. Never wear a uniform again. It was almost enough to look forward to.
But Mulder was up in Beane’s office too, of course, as he would be, and that shook Zito like dice. His resolve abruptly vanished. Mulder stood hard as a tree, hands deep in his pockets. Zito glanced at the flushed line of Mulder’s neck and then turned his eyes away.
Beane dismantled them efficiently. Broke them down until the situation was clear, and Mulder was glaring at Zito, fired into the side of his face. Zito was falling.
There was an instant, a breath, when he thought he’d be able to do it. Stand there next to Mulder and look Billy Beane in the eye and tell him, yes it’s true. Yes I love him. Forever and ever. Zito could remember being a kid and whispering that to himself, forever and ever, over and over again until the words lost all meaning.
He could have done it. He might even have lived. But Mulder would see him killed by nightfall, anyway, and so Zito lifted his head, steeled his gaze, smirked his mouth.
Told Beane that it had just been a joke.
Zito sold it. Pitching was mental, and pitching was deception, and this was the best change-up the world had ever seen. Mulder was staring at him in shock, as Zito shrugged bashfully and apologized for fucking with the press. Though both their eyes were stark and bright upon him, Zito couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being slowly erased.
Beane took a huge too-early hack, believing all of it, and laughed, clapped Zito’s arm in relief, planning the press conference out loud. Zito’s legs held up until Beane was out of the room, and then he fell, crumpled like paper on the floor.
And Mulder was saying his name, awkward crouching shadow beside him, his hand hovering and Zito twisted, tunneled into Mulder’s touch. Mulder’s hand clung, surprised for a moment in Zito’s hair, before he jerked away. Zito hissed at the pain, balled up around his knees. Zito swore out loud that he hated him, said it until the words echoed around his mind and Mulder’s face was stricken.
Mulder thanked him anyway, brushed his fingertips on the back of Zito’s neck, dug the spurs in clean down to the bone.
Days passed. Zito wasn’t sure. Professional baseball and the national press took him at his word; Zito was not used to that. Mulder followed along admirably, smiling when Zito smiled, nodding in rhythm, agreeing with everything: of course it’s ridiculous, of course he was kidding.
Of course. Zito recognized the strain of self-destruction that pulled him back by the hair occasionally, and he’d searched for it desperately when he and Mulder had first gotten started. He’d expected to find linked sixes behind Mulder’s ear, skywriting to show him the way, prophetic dreams of fire. It would have made more sense if Mulder was just another symptom of Zito being not quite sane. It would have been easier to deal with.
But Mulder had growled at him when Zito stole pillows. Mulder had made hotel rooms feel new and exciting again, sucking on Zito’s hip, skidding his hands on the sheets. Mulder had been bad luck, wasted Zito’s time and ate his food, but at the end of the day Mulder would still be close enough to touch.
Mulder wasn’t a suicidal tendency at all. He was the fucking love of Zito’s life. Zito wasn’t anything anymore.
They came home to fog and Zito couldn’t remember sleeping, or whether the sun had risen that morning. Mulder was tall enough to be seen over everyone else, and Zito kept scrunching one eye closed. Bam, and you’ve disappeared. Bam, and there’s not even smoke left where you used to be.
Stretched high and thin by the strain of each day, Zito couldn’t catch his hands on anything. Mulder was watching him with burnt shadows under his eyes, licking his lips and Zito was obsessed with his mouth. Sometimes Mulder tilted towards him like his equilibrium was fucked up, like drunk was the best way to be.
Zito dreamt of coming home one night and finding Mulder asleep on his front steps. Cubed blue pieces of windshield glass on the streets, big full autumn moon shining through Mulder’s fingers, tattered duct tape holding Zito’s shoes together.
But it wasn’t going to be like that. It wasn’t a fucking fairy tale and there’d never been anywhere for them to go together, anyway. They just happened to be on the same team; it didn’t mean anything.
None of it meant anything. Zito could learn to accept that, if Mulder would just give him some time and quit looking at him when he thought Zito wasn’t paying attention.
They backslid in September, better than a month after Zito had wrecked everything.
They were in some East Coast city that looked familiar. The fans yelled ‘faggot’ and even worse things at Zito as he took the field, which made him very tired. They only rarely yelled the same at Mulder, and that didn’t seem particularly fair.
Neither of them pitched, and the game was lost. They were doing that a lot lately. There was a minor lightning storm that scissored the sky and made the air smell like sulfur, and Zito couldn’t keep his distance at the bar. He’d had years of Mulder always within arm’s reach, like his shadow glued to his feet, the birthmark painted on his wrist, the idiotic doubt that turned him inward and made his curve go flat.
Mulder, his single worst shortcoming. Couldn’t even fall in love with a regular person. Had to try for a hundred miles too high. Story of his fucking life.
So maybe it was okay that Zito leaned into him and rested his cheek on Mulder’s back and pretended that they weren’t enemies. It was definitely okay that Chavez yanked Zito off, muttering hotly under his breath about appearances and you want to get into fucking trouble again?
Mulder looked back at him with something banked in his eyes like clouds holding back rain. Used to seeing pure anger in there, Zito smiled at him, vaguely wanting to cry. Mulder flushed and jerked his head away.
Two hours later, Mulder found him in the corner and stared at the floor, mumbled something about watching tape. Zito wanted to laugh, scratch Mulder’s eyes out, something like that. As if Zito didn’t know that look on Mulder’s downturned face, the bunch of his hands in his pockets, the fault line across his forehead. Mulder was unsteady and miserable and wanted to fuck Zito again. Zito’d seen it a million times.
He might have done anything, but instead he just agreed too fast, ignoring the huddled tension in Mulder’s back and the fact that they were both kinda drunk. They walked back to the hotel in silence.
Dry brown leaves in his hair, Zito thought that it wasn’t right. If it was gonna happen, it should be sudden and without warning. They should be drunker than they were and far gone from their senses, something to blame in the morning. This was too premeditated. They were taking too much time.
Mulder put the tape in and sat cross-legged on the bed. Zito got the Elmer’s glue that Mulder put on his blisters and took the chair, carefully applying the glue to his fingertips, blowing to make it dry. He wasn’t paying attention to anything, and Mulder said his name low in the old way, as Zito had known he would. Zito wouldn’t look back at him. They hated each other. They were relearning friendship, or maybe learning it for the first time. Either way.
Mulder had made him smile into the cameras and deny it. Zito didn’t even want to forgive him.
Zito peeled off the pieces of dried glue and laid them out in an arch on the table, a rainbow of his fingerprints. Looking at them made his throat hurt in a weird way, thinking that this was the only part of him that was unique from everybody else. The whole world knew about not being able to wake up all the way up, about not being able to stay away. Heartbreak didn’t make him special. He swallowed with a click and lowered his head into his hands.
Mulder said his name again, stirred behind him. Zito dug his fingers through his hair, trembling fast and drunk, not drunk enough. Mulder put his hand on Zito’s back and Zito flinched so hard he almost fell out of the chair.
“No, hey,” Mulder said, and kissed the back of his neck. Zito shuddered, turning into it, and Mulder’s mouth was on his throat, under his ear.
“Can we just,” Mulder started, then stopped. He tugged at Zito’s arm, trying to get him to drop his hands, but Zito was safe like this, nobody could see him. He wondered if he could get Mulder to fuck him with his hands still over his face. He thought Mulder probably would.
But Mulder whispered, “please,” with his thumbs in the spaces between Zito’s fingers, touching his eyelids, and Zito couldn’t stand hearing him say that, flat and dull like it had been recorded off the radio. He took down his hands. Kissed Mulder until the room shook.
Fell down onto the carpet with him and forgot for a little while.
Zito awoke in the bed, sore and wrung out. He found bruises on the backs of his arms and the insides of his thighs, tumbling his fingers over them like calligraphy. There was a shuffle in Zito’s chest, mix-up of sadness and joy and the groundless feeling of being forgiven. He could hear Mulder in the shower.
For a minute or two, Zito imagined staying. Seeing Mulder emerge wet and red-skinned in a cloud of steam, smile and use his hands and mouth until Mulder agreed to go in reverse.
But it would never work. Mulder was as stubborn as wood and Zito couldn’t believe in something that had already been disproved. He needed to get out of here. He was supposed to be in recovery, not in Mulder’s hotel room.
Zito got up and dressed quickly, treacherous hands remembering the slide of Mulder’s back. Zito wanted to be worked over as a crime scene, DNA evidence to prove that Mulder had touched him again. He was halfway out the door when a humid wave from the shower hit him and Mulder was asking easily, “Where are you-” before he remembered and cut himself short.
Resting his forehead on the door, Zito catalogued the many ways that Mulder was still on him. Teethmarks, fingerprints, bruises from Mulder’s hands and hipbones, his voice echoing, his breath crashing like laughter into Zito’s neck.
Mulder cleared his throat. “You going, or what?”
Zito shook his head, but that didn’t make anything clear. He wondered if Mulder was in a towel or boxers or what, standing in the bathroom doorway behind him. He wondered what Mulder would say if he turned around and asked, what if I’d never met Anthony Pearl and never fucked it up, what would you have promised me?
But how could Mulder know the answer to that? Mulder wasn’t that smart, couldn’t see the future or change it or block it out, and every time Zito had woken up, all night long, Mulder had been motionless and wide-eyed in the bed next to him, looking like he hadn’t slept in a month either. Maybe everybody was going crazy. Maybe it was a virus.
Zito whispered too low for Mulder to hear, “Yeah, I’m going,” and walked out on him.
Continue on like this, drag the days like dead cars, and Zito was living for the next time that they would be drunk as the planets aligned and the second full moon of the month filled up the sky all blue and solemn. Most people only get one extra night after the end of everything, but the two of them had never really been on the same kind of clock.
Mulder got better at being in Zito’s proximity, anxiety smoothed like a palm over wet hair. That was probably just a good act, but Zito could barely keep himself upright, so he was hardly in a place to nitpick. Mulder was slowly transforming back into the man Zito had first met, shoulders blocking out huge chunks of the ceiling, flicker-free eyes colored like faded sunbleached blue paint.
Zito was terrified. Mulder would heal, pretend he was okay until it was true, and Zito would still be right here.
He found himself at Anthony Pearl’s apartment very late one night. He wasn’t there for revenge, though it took a long time to convince the reporter of that. Zito knocked over a stack of books and asked him why, why’d you write that fucking story, ruining Mark Mulder’s career for the second time in one season. But Anthony Pearl had been reduced to covering the Rivercats, and with his own disillusionment shining bright, he made a good case for love and other things that couldn’t be harmed by the press.
Zito knew that there weren’t guidelines for what could hurt you and what couldn’t. Life was forever kicking him in the shins. Even dumb things made him want to break down, as if beauty wasn’t enough and neither was happiness and neither was baseball. Even off-speed pitches thocked into his heart. His body was carved over with landmarks from every one.
But Pearl told him, “You love him and he loves you and I couldn’t touch that,” believing it plainly with his eyes magnified through his glasses.
Zito rolled it over in his mind, I love him and he loves me and they can’t touch that. It didn’t sound right.
Gut-shot, Zito wanted to know what he should do. Pearl said like it was so self-evident, like maybe Zito was a little slow, “You make it right again, man. You go and get him back,” and that sounded better.
Across the bridge one more time in the wicked autumn wind, Zito was raised high up and the magic of it, this pretty Hollywood moment, fled through him like brand-new blood. He was going to set everything straight and make it clear to Mulder that he wasn’t going to allow them to be without each other anymore. The option was no longer on the table.
He could think of a thousand other means by which their repair might have come, most of them involving Mulder coming to find him and professing some impossibly out-of-character speech about true love and regret, but this had been written out for him. Zito was going through the motions, smiling only when he was cued.
Zito didn’t want to wake up the whole house, so he shimmied through the kitchen window and left his shoes by the refrigerator. Padding silently down the hall, his pulse bumped in his throat. He repeated to himself on a loop, I love him and he loves me and they can’t touch that. He would pretend until it was true.
Mulder wasn’t asleep. He jerked up when Zito snuck into his room, firelight whites of his eyes reflecting the red of the alarm clock. Mulder’s mouth moved without sound in the shape of Zito’s name, his hands wrenched in the sheets.
Zito crawled right onto the bed, paying no attention to the way Mulder snatched away from him.
“I figured it out,” Zito told him, very quietly. “This was an awful idea. You don’t hate me at all.”
Mulder gaped at him. Zito had always liked that look on him, and he grinned, leaned down to kiss Mulder’s elbow, which was closest to him.
“It’s okay that I fucked up, dude, can’t you see? Because we can’t live like this, and now we know. It would have taken us years otherwise. But, look.”
Zito tunneled his hand under the covers and laid his fingers on Mulder’s stomach, skidding under the waistband of Mulder’s boxers and touching the indented skin there. He made his eyes go wide, waiting for Mulder to fall in.
“I don’t need anything from you. I did a terrible thing, but you did too, so, now we go back, okay? Now we’re even.”
Mulder put his hand on Zito’s, stopping him when Zito might have gone farther down. Zito felt the supports in his chest being knocked out one by one, his throat shrinking down to nothing. Mulder was staring at him like a front-row seat to the end of the world.
“Barry,” Mulder breathed out, and Zito panicked, because Mulder never called him by his first name. They weren’t friends. “You can’t, just. You can’t.”
Zito bit the insides of his cheeks hard, clenching Mulder’s hip, hating that he couldn’t see it. His knees were starting to ache from kneeling on the bed. “I already did. This, Mulder, please. Love you. Like nothing else. And. You too. Please. This is how I get you back.”
And Mulder blinked, something cold and blue shattered clean in his eyes. He pulled Zito’s hand off him. He shook his head. “You never had me in the first place, babe,” he told Zito softly. “We weren’t. What you thought.”
He touched his fingertips on Zito’s chest and sucked his cheek in and that meant he was lying. Zito knew all the signs. But vision was for shit because Mulder was saying, “So go home and sleep it off, okay?” and pushing Zito away from him, five small spots of pressure the size of dimes and hot as iron, forming a semi-circle around Zito’s heart.
Zito would have it with him forever, stumbling out of the house in shock with his ribs crushed. Zito knew how to pitch on two-and-oh and how to walk off the field after allowing six runs. He knew how to tell when Mulder wanted to fuck him and how to tell when Mulder was lying, how to break a fall and how to get home from here. All of that had gotten him so far, and it was too late to realize now that he’d never learned how to breathe with this much water over his head.
THE END
Endnotes: Title and the line from whence it came borrowed from the saddest Mountain Goats song of them all. And it’s not even about love. But then, neither is this.