would you leave and so cripple me
hey, look, it's everything left to be said about mark mulder and barry zito. fuckin' took me long enough.
The backstory stays the same, it just gets longer.
Backstory
By Candle Beck
2000
In July, Zito makes the trip from Sacramento that Mulder made three months ago.
Tinderbox gold hills and fields of windmills line the highway. The temperature has cracked triple-digits for the fourth straight day, and the air conditioning on the bus is mostly useless, smelling like gasoline. Zito’s drenched in sweat by the time they roll into Oakland, shirt plastered to his back.
Six hours before the game, Zito doesn’t really want to bother with finding a hotel just yet, so he haunts the clubhouse. Someone’s in the cages, thwacking baseballs into the net. Zito’s locker is hastily put together, a swatch of duct tape with his name in black Sharpie slapped on top, three new white jerseys in a row.
Zito is shaking, pawing through his suitcase in search of a CD he lost two years ago. He calls his mom and his sister and half the guys from Trip-A, but his phone keeps cutting out and anyway, he doesn’t have much to say. Nothing’s happened yet-he’s just been called up.
The team starts to trickle in, familiar by name and face. Zito knows some of them from the system and others from television. They bang him on the shoulders and fuck with his hair and he smacks their hands away, curving his back, hissing.
Somebody puts on some rap music, and Zito has trouble hearing properly, catching the last half of sentences, a fuzz of words. He drinks a cup of coffee and fifteen minutes later, he’s wired worse than he’s ever been before, breaking mirrors with his bare hands.
Mulder arrives with his edges blurred. Zito sees the light in Mulder’s face when their eyes meet, because Cape Cod and Vancouver and Sacramento were important stops along the way, but Mulder skates by without a word. Like there’s nothing between them. Zito scowls, gnawing on his thumbnail. Mulder knows better than to play dumb.
Made brave by whatever the fuck is in that coffee, Zito crosses over to him and jabs Mulder’s arm. Mulder’s lip curls because he’s never liked being poked at, and Zito grins big.
“Mark fucking Mulder, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.”
Mulder gives him a look and takes off his shirt. Still skinny as all hell, hipbones and collarbones and ribs making him look dangerous, stupid spiky hair and Zito wonders at how half a season in the majors hasn’t changed him a bit.
“You just got in?” Mulder asks.
“Well. Few hours ago. But yeah.”
“Cool. Advice: don’t make eye contact with anyone until you’ve been here for at least a month.”
Zito nods and plops down on a chair, taking note of where Mulder’s jeans are tugged down and there’s an indentation in the skin of his hip. Mulder’s knuckles loom in his peripheral vision as he flips the collar of his shirt neatly down on the hanger. Zito has been chasing him since they were nineteen, though only in earnest for the past season and a half, when Mulder was the other lefty and never had to play in Visalia.
He clears his throat. They both turn to watch as Eric Chavez gets bear-hugged and lifted off his feet by Jason Giambi. Zito’s thumb starts bleeding where his teeth have torn too deep.
“We broke the windows of your old place the other night,” Zito tells him, distracted.
“Yeah?” Mulder lets that bemused, weirdly cocky grin break on his face, always hits Zito like lightning in water. “How come?”
Zito shrugs. Rocks don’t cut like baseballs, hard to aim, hard to paint the black. Zito had been top-flight drunk and burning, bus ticket folded in his front pocket, Mark Mulder’s silent Sacramento apartment building rising up in the moonlight like an army against him.
“Seemed like the thing to do.”
Mulder snorts. “Sure.” He hangs up his shirt in his locker and reveals a Texas-shaped bruise under his shoulder blade. “You should come out with us tonight. Get to know some of the guys.”
“I know you,” Zito says without thinking. His heart is going so fast.
“Barely,” Mulder answers, lying, and he cracks his knuckles on his hip. “And I think your locker’s over there, dude.”
Mulder is not-so-subtly trying to get rid of him, but he should have learned by now that it won’t work. Zito stretches his legs out and shakes his head to get his hair out of his eyes, smiles. “Think I like it better over here.”
Two weeks they spent together in Vancouver, three in Sacramento. Three years ago, one whole summer in Cape Cod. Mulder doesn’t like it when things get complicated. Zito once saw Mulder twisted like a rag on the floor of a hotel room somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, but it’s easy to forget stuff like that.
In Oakland, they have better than two months and a clean slate to fuck up, but Zito has never really believed in fate, anyway.
*
1997
Nineteen years old on a wooden float, bucked by the mild Atlantic waves, it was the day before the fourth of July and Zito was so happy. The Cape Cod Baseball League was for real, pitching workshops in the mornings and scouts in the stands. Three thousand miles away from school and everyone he loved, Zito wanted this summer to bead out forever.
The float was carpeted with slippery plastic grass, chafing Zito’s back and elbows. He’d been out here on the water for about an hour, listening to the finger-snaps of far-away convenience-store fireworks, kids starting the celebration early. His buddy had swam back in search of beer or a Ziploc in which to smuggle a joint and lighter, but Zito didn’t miss him much. The starchy sunlight sank so heavy into Zito’s eyes that everything turned white at the corners.
Cape Cod smelled like pollen and salt, fresh asphalt, and Zito had never let his own potential get to him. He could make friends anywhere, unburdened by expectation in the estimation of others, sure of himself.
The water broke, and Zito rose up onto his elbows. A pair of hands latched onto the side of the float, a vaguely familiar face rising from the ocean. Everyone in the Cape League looked like someone Zito knew.
“Hey,” the boy said, surprise in his wet blue eyes.
“Hello.”
The boy’s mouth thinned down to almost nothing. “Saw you from the beach. Thought you were. Thought you were someone else.”
Zito shrugged, what can I say, and the boy hiked himself out of the water and he wasn’t a boy at all, not with those shoulders, that washed chest. Zito swallowed, grinned as his companion knelt on the bright fake green, sat back on his heels.
“The fuck are you doing out here alone?”
Sitting all the way up, Zito shrugged again. “Waiting for beer.” He was graced with a quick smile, rolled eyes, kinda like getting gut-punched. The guy was wearing dark blue shorts and Zito could see their shirts together on the beach, blurry red alongside blurry yellow.
“I’ve seen you around,” the guy stated.
“Yeah, probably. Small world, etcetera.”
“You play for Wareham, yeah?”
Zito nodded and pushed his hair out of his eyes. Twenty minutes out of the water and he was baked, bone-dry. The guy was possibly the best thing he’d seen all day, and it’d been a pretty good day.
The guy looked off over the ocean, neat cut of his ribs around his side, short hair bristling. Zito wondered if he was an outfielder, those legs, or a first baseman, all that height folded up on the float. Zito wished it was tomorrow, nighttime and the fireworks, the black sky, the two of them on this float under different circumstances.
“I’m hungry,” Zito said, surprising himself. “Let’s go get a burger.”
The guy glanced at him, calculating and so cool it hurt. “What about your beer?”
“There’s beer on dry land.” Zito showed his very best look, young in the set of his mouth, the clarity of his forehead, canting his wrist so the sunlight hit the bracelet he wore, glass beads throwing specks of blue onto his face. He could do anything, pitch in the spotlight game and black out tonight and wake up into the Fourth of July.
The guy stood, water rolling off his shoulders. “Sure. Fuckin’ bored, anyway.”
Zito got up and offered him his hand. “Barry.”
Nice firm handshake, banker in another life. “Mark.”
Then he dove, swam like he was steam moving in skin.
*
Mulder lives in a brand-new condo near the bay, and he takes Zito back because Zito can’t remember how to get to his hotel. It’s Zito’s fourth day as a major league pitcher. He’s so drunk he might be dying.
“Mark, Mark,” he says, hanging onto Mulder’s arm for fear of being misplaced. “This is crazy.”
Mulder futilely attempts to shake him off, fumbling for his keys. He’s drunk too, not as bad as Zito, but Zito can tell by the way Mulder squints at the door like there are two of them. “You being drunk is not crazy.”
“I am not drunk,” Zito protests, but he’s giggling. He’s not proving anything. Mulder is warm under his shirt, Zito’s hand pushed up under his sleeve, and he doesn’t remember doing that. “I am a fucking major leaguer.”
Mulder sighs, his arm shifting under Zito’s hand. “Yeah, me too.” He finally gets the door open, and Zito gets an impression of gray shadow and a gleam of silver from what must be the kitchen, static-charged carpet.
“This is nice,” he remarks, nodding stupidly. Mulder deposits him on the couch and stumbles off. Zito stares up at the ceiling and thinks circularly that there’s no one in this city that he’s known longer than he’s known Mulder, and three years isn’t a very good narrative, but at twenty-two years old, Zito doesn’t know much about history, anyway.
Mulder returns with slick bottles of water and that’s just so perfectly Mulder, buying cases of water at Costco and carefully stocking his refrigerator, that Zito barks out a strange laugh and feels his eyes burn with tears.
Sprawling out beside Zito on the couch, Mulder presses the bottle to his forehead, his cheek. The air conditioning is humming and whirring, but the heat has come in with them, stuck in their pores, thick as wool. Zito stares without shame at the wet patches on Mulder’s face.
“You’re an idiot,” Mulder tells him, his head back and his face tilted up. “Can’t try and outdrink Huddy.”
“I’m bigger’n him,” Zito mumbles.
“Yeah, that really seemed to help you out.” Mulder’s mouth twists, though his voice doesn’t change inflection. It took Zito a long time to learn the signs of Mulder being sarcastic.
They rest for a moment, spinning idly in place. Mulder’s throat clicks as he swallows. Zito wants to talk, something about being here in the major leagues and how he says things and the next day it ends up in the newspaper. He spends his days watching tape and eating free candy bars, his mouth stained and sweet and his arms hanging loose from his shoulders. The field is perfect like nothing in his life has ever been.
Mulder doesn’t see the same things Zito does. Mulder takes it for granted, even with the wreck that his rookie year has been so far, even with Sacramento still just Billy Beane’s word and an hour’s drive away.
“Mark,” Zito says, tasting it carefully. Mulder hums. He’s not really paying attention. “Am I staying here tonight?”
“That was my understanding of the situation, yeah.”
Zito glances at him, Mulder’s neck and the powder burns on his shirt, the full collapse of Mulder with his legs spread apart and the bottle of water balanced neatly on his hip, fingers lightly keeping it upright.
“I didn’t mean to get so drunk.”
“You never do, man.”
“Talk like this happens all the time, like, like, a habit or something. You haven’t even seen me in three months.”
Rolling his head to the side, Mulder blinks at him slowly. He’s drunk too, he can’t say shit.
“You really broke my windows?”
Zito laughs into his hand, half-yawning. “They’re not your windows anymore.” He pictures himself, several years down the line, standing outside another one of Mulder’s apartments, pockets jammed with rocks, high gleam of destruction in his eyes.
Mulder’s falling asleep. They woke up nineteen hours ago in different places, long day behind them with a day game and paintball and dinner and bars and now they’re here. Zito’s on this weird track, has been for years now, can’t steer or stop or slow.
“I don’t have any extra blankets,” Mulder tells him foggily.
Zito shrugs. “Whatever. ‘s fine.” He kicks off his sneakers and lies down on the couch, knees bent and his feet against Mulder’s side. Mulder lets them stay like that for a moment, Zito wiggling his toes on Mulder’s ribs, then stands.
Zito watches as Mulder runs his hand through his hair, jackknife light from the hallway pressing dull gold into the angles of his body. The couch is long and soft and Zito could be okay right now, in the silence of the night shore, the cobwebs crowding into the corners of the ceiling.
Mulder leaves the room and Zito turns onto his side, nosing into the cushion. The light flicks off and all Zito can think is that it’s three in the morning and they’re alone here and nothing is going to happen between them, because nothing ever has.
A soft weight crashes down on him, a button clacking into his ear. Zito makes a surprised noise and pushes the sleeve off his face, looks up at Mulder, hovering above the couch and weaving on his feet. Mulder dumps another coat on Zito’s legs, nice gray suit jacket that Zito last saw on him the day he left Triple-A.
“Don’t have any blankets,” Mulder says again, the whites of his eyes sharp in the dark, and Zito’s speechless.
*
A week after Zito had talked Mulder off the float and into the Coastway Diner, they’d seen each other every day and Zito existed in a state of perpetual disbelief.
Mulder was a pitcher, maybe more of a pitcher than anyone Zito had ever met before. He kept his left shoulder taped up all the time, unless he was starting or going swimming, rubbed salve into his elbow and scraped up his fingertips with sandpaper. He came knocking at the door of Zito’s host family, and Zito came tapping on the window of Mulder’s own.
It could have been anything, Mulder under streetlamps with his back plank-straight and fighting the wind, Zito with restaurant peppermints crinkling in his pockets, the alcohol Mulder could buy because he looked about twenty-four years old when he hardened his jaw, the way Zito knew how to sneak into the movie theatre in Chatham.
Zito had never had a friend like this. Mulder made him six times cooler, six times more likely to stumble over what he was trying to say, six times more willing to wake up early in the morning to go for pancakes.
After the game, Mulder was leaning on the parking lot fence, far down the right field line. He’d been there since the seventh inning, and Zito wasn’t sure why Mulder hadn’t come in and found a seat in the stands. Zito had pitched into the ninth, and every time he set himself, his eyes flicked past the first baseman and crashed into Mulder, long figure chopped up by chain-link.
Mulder told him he’d looked good, and took Zito away to his adopted house, up three flights of stairs to the attic. Someone had committed suicide up there four decades ago, hung from the rafters, and Zito was leery, jumping at small noises and the whine of wood under his feet.
They lolled around under the skylight, half-heartedly playing videogames, drinking from unmarked bottles. Zito was exhausted, dragged down in his shoulders and legs.
“Are you going to that thing tonight?” Mulder asked him. “That kid from Atlanta?”
Zito lay down on the short rug, splinters in his hair from the bare wood floor. “You going?” He could hear the game music and under it, dogs barking outside.
Mulder shrugged, sitting on the couch above Zito. Zito was looking up at his sprawled jeaned legs like misplaced pieces of a bridge. “Thinking about it.”
“Maybe I’ll go, then.”
Zito had no intention of being anywhere that night that Mulder wasn’t. They weren’t much alike, but Mulder didn’t seem to mind when Zito laughed at his own jokes and lost his wallet five times a day.
Zito crawled up onto the couch next to Mulder, his foot wound in the videogame controller. The air was moted, tinned gold, stuffed with heat. Zito would put his hand on Mulder’s leg, high above his knee, or his stomach maybe, where Mulder’s shirt got hiked up and his belt buckle pressed a cold slash in the skin, but he was tired. His arm hurt.
“I don’t really like that kid from Atlanta, though,” Zito remarked.
“You’re thinking of someone else.”
“Am I?”
Mulder nodded. He was still playing the game, mercilessly whaling on Zito’s guy even though Zito had given up. “You’re thinking of that blonde guy.”
Zito’s lip sneered. “Hate that blonde guy.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know. Mortal enemies. That’s not the Atlanta kid, though.”
Zito was confused, baseball card photographs and half-blackout memories surfacing. Thick Southern accents and sunburned necks, Mulder next to him on the couch and Zito might fall asleep, wake up in time to give Mulder most of the money in his pockets and wait in the car while Mulder bought them liquor. Phase one in the front seat of Mulder’s car that he’d driven out here from Michigan, watching the color rise on Mulder’s face and Mulder’s spine giving out slowly. Best way to spend a night.
“How come you know who I don’t like and I don’t?” Zito asked, not really that interested.
“Because I pay attention, man. Because you are, like, window glass, see-through, it’s nothing.”
Zito scowled. Mulder was talking shit. If he could see through, he would see that Zito wanted to push his jeans off his hips and lick the dents and fissures of Mulder’s body, hold him down with a fist on Mulder’s leg and a fist on his chest. And if Mulder could see that, he would certainly do something about it, he would hit Zito or fuck him or carve his name into Zito’s back, something. But Mulder played so cool all the time.
Mulder grinned at him. Zito was in a bad place, ghosts in the edges of his vision, all obsessed with a brand-new friend, and that never lasted. Mulder lived in fucking Michigan, alien snow-baked terrain in Zito’s mind. One and a half months left here on the coast, then they were done for each other.
But Mulder had dust in his hair and the tag sticking out of the back of his shirt had his name written on it in black ink. Sometimes, Zito felt like whatever the fuck they were doing with each other was enough to slow time and stop the rotation of the earth, motionless right then in the attic room, planning their night.
*
By August, Zito is sick of telling people that it’s not his fault and he can’t be blamed. The American League hasn’t figured him out, but that’s surely in the mail, and meanwhile the Oakland A’s are further above .500 than they’ve been in better than a decade. Zito wears his amnesty on his sleeve, wide-eyed in interviews, just a punk kid rookie and I don’t know nothing.
They go to Seattle and that’s something else, wind and rain, loud clocks in the hotel rooms and Mulder’s hurt. He’s pretending he’s not, rolling his shoulder, twisting his back, going through his delivery in slow-motion in search of mechanical difficulties. Zito starts to see everything in quartered time. Mulder moves two inches a second and Zito misjudges the speed of taxis sheering towards him.
He sits in the hallway outside the trainer’s room, making up new knots with his own shoelaces. He can hear Mulder inside, answering in fragments, can imagine him shrugging the way he does when he’s talking to the press.
Mulder says his arm’s a little tight, of course it’s sore, he pitched two fucking days ago, was it supposed to be something other than sore? Mulder gets angry in a build, his forehead goes taut and then his mouth and then his neck, and if you’re not paying attention, you might not see it until it’s too late. His voice is the last thing, it’s all downhill from there.
The door swings open and Zito’s caught off-guard. Mulder is buttoning up his shirt and sneering. Life is an awful joke when he can’t locate.
“Get the fuck off the ground, c’mon.”
Zito takes off his shoes rather than untying them, lets Mulder lead him down the hall and back to the clubhouse, where they grab their bags and vacate the building. Soaked concrete and Zito’s socks are ruined, his shoes slung over his shoulder like a rifle.
“Nice night,” he remarks.
Mulder glowers at him. “I’m gonna need like four beers before I find you amusing.”
Zito nods, willing to accept that, not telling Mulder that he missed a button at the place where his ribs meet his stomach. “’Kay.”
It only takes Mulder two beers, though, which Zito thinks he can count as a victory. Mulder’s shoulders come down and the lines around his mouth disappear. His upper lip shines, licked clean, and in the length of the day, Zito has wondered maybe a million times where the damage is in Mulder, his arm or his head.
But Mulder’s okay now, laughing and calling the waitress sweetheart and kicking Zito under the table. He’s forgotten the game two days ago, the six runs and the way the plate danced away from him. It’s not right, watching Mulder struggle, dirt in his mouth and sunflower salt under his nails. Zito’s living in some fucked-up fantasy world, pitching better than Mulder like the moon has turned red, other impossible things.
It’s not yet past curfew, and Zito drags Mulder back to the hotel, through the rain. Slipping on the waxy marble floor of the lobby, Zito’s snapped shoelaces trail behind him and Mulder is muttering against the side of Zito’s head, arm heavy on Zito’s shoulder. Zito props him against the wall of the elevator and steps away, shivering and smiling.
“You’re such a fucking mess, man.”
Mulder rolls his eyes, squeaking his wet fingers on the brass rail. “It’s your fault, anyway.”
“Sure, sure, blame me for everything. That’s great.”
Mulder leaves slim translucent fingerprints on everything he touches. Zito helps him locate his room and hangs around as Mulder changes into dry clothes, hanging his jeans neatly over the shower rod. Zito is trying to work out how he can smuggle himself into the left side of Mulder’s bed without Mulder noticing.
Mulder collapses. Zito hovers above him, runed plane of Mulder’s back, push of one shoulder blade higher than the other.
“You gonna be okay?” he asks idiotically.
Mulder turns his face to the side, single blue eye half-closed and half-focused on Zito. “Did good, went out and got me drunk. Did right by me.”
“Yeah?”
Smiling, Mulder noses into the pillow again. “Now I only gotta worry about the fuckin’ room. Fuckin’ spinny room.”
Zito laughs. “All right then. Night, dude.”
But he’s not leaving because he’s not drunk enough to leave, or too drunk, really fucked up right about now with Mulder face-down on the bed and his arm badly twisted under him, big hand curled and sticking out.
“Hey,” Zito says, throat dried up. He lays his hand on Mulder’s wrist and tells him softly, “C’mon, man, roll over, you can’t sleep like that.”
Zito tugs and Mulder moves without resistance, smooth onto his back and his eyes are closed. He’s smiling still and Zito’s not beyond anything, never had any fucking will power and can’t take no for an answer. He leans down and kisses Mulder, not the first time but maybe Zito will be able to count this one, if Mulder looks him in the eye tomorrow, if Mulder kisses him back but doesn’t stop this time.
Mulder makes a high surprised noise and tips his head to the side and Zito changes his angle, holding onto Mulder’s wrist. Mulder goes loose beneath him and his lips part and he sorta breathes into Zito. Scuffed left hand alights on Zito’s neck and Mulder kisses him so hard, like Zito’s a cure for all the things Mulder can’t do anymore.
Unable to believe it, Zito puts his hand on Mulder’s hip, shifting slowly onto Mulder’s body. Mulder stretches, making room for him. Zito has been saving a place for this inside himself for so long that the absence has become a tangible part of him, as real and familiar as his birthmark, and for a hysterical moment, he’s heartbroken at the loss.
*
At the end of the summer, there was a bonfire at the beach and the whole world was there. Driftwood was dragged through the sand and arranged in a lopsided circle around the fire, and the boys of the Cape Cod Baseball League sat with beers and joints, watched the smoke stagger into the black sky. Zito’s lungs hurt from breathing it in.
He was the center of everything, though, the moon a milky thumbprint in the sky and crowds of people drifting to and from him like a tide. The sand crawled into his sneakers; he wasn’t wearing socks and he wasn’t wearing a shirt and the ocean was almost overpowering.
Zito’s handwriting had changed over the course of the summer, along with his speech patterns and command with a full count. Everyone was a grown-up Little Leaguer, calling his name and Zito was just looking for Mulder.
They were leaving tomorrow. Sunlight the color and consistency of oil awaited them both on the other side of tonight, buses and airports and planes, splitting apart from each other on separate flight paths somewhere over Ohio. People were dying from the heat in Chicago and Zito was baselessly worried, Mulder so skinny, so vulnerable to shifts in temperature.
Zito found him far down the beach. The bonfire was match-light, the laughs and shouts of the kids tinny and echoed. Mulder had his feet in the sand and Zito fell down next to him with a forty and weird promises that he meant to keep echoing in his mind.
“Dude.”
Mulder kinda smiled. His profile was indistinct, hard to figure.
“The fuck are you, like, man. Way out here, what are you doing?” Zito counted his fingers quickly. He was drunk.
Mulder shrugged. “Tired, you know? Too much going on back there.”
“It’s a party.”
“Thanks. Lemme have some of that.”
Zito handed him the forty. Mulder took a long drink and the starlight, moonlight, firelight, shone off the glass and touched gold on his neck. Zito settled in, digging his hands into the sand.
They traded the bottle back and forth, talking about simple stuff. Would you rather be attacked by a shark or a lion? Would you rather die of thirst or starvation? Would you trade baseball for the ability to fly? Zito could feel the night draining down and away, the summer with it, Mulder right there on the beach near where a piece of sand had been fused into black glass.
Sunrise was four hours away. Zito was weaving, losing his train of thought and Mulder said things that flickered through him and were immediately forgotten.
He shifted, placing his shoulder neatly against Mulder’s. “Be strange, going back to school like this.”
“Like. Like what?” Mulder was drunk too, talking very carefully.
Zito showed the world with his hand, the empty bottle sparkling. “I was here and I know everything. Get back, it’s just another fucking summer. Oh, I was in Massachusetts. I played in the Cape League. I, I. I got wasted on a beach with Mark and that’s all.”
Mulder started to laugh. His shoulders curved up and in, bony knobs of his spine pressing up under his T-shirt, in the column of sweat that had formed. He touched his forehead to his knees, air whistling between his teeth.
“That’s, god, that’s all? Drunk on a beach with me, and that’s your summer?” Mulder lifted his face, grinning.
Zito hooked a finger in the back of Mulder’s shirt, roughing his knuckle on the high break where his back met his neck. Not his whole summer, just the part that counted. What he’d remember when he thought about nineteen years old, when he saw a bonfire on the beach, when he tasted malt liquor.
“And, what?” Zito asked. “You’ll go back to East Lansing. I’ll go back to L.A. You’re a fucking dream I had once. Never see you again.”
Mulder quieted, looking out at the water. The back of his hand was canted against Zito’s knee. Zito was closely aware of not wearing a shirt, of Mulder not pulling away from Zito’s hand on his neck.
After a long time, Mulder glanced at him, the edge of his mouth tweaked upwards. “That’s only a best guess. You don’t know what’s gonna happen.”
Zito nodded, tightening his hold, his throat constricting. He kept Mulder still and closed the distance between them, fitting them mouth-to-mouth. It happened quick enough that Mulder couldn’t pull away, and Zito gripped the back of his neck, licked his way into Mulder’s mouth and Mulder kissed him back like it was brand-new.
Five seconds like that, maybe ten, Mulder’s hair sticky with gel and salt spray, Mulder’s long chest warm under Zito’s free hand. Mulder was in it, five seconds, maybe ten, his tongue in Zito’s mouth, his small choked sounds cutting right through. His hand clenched on Zito’s arm, thumbnail driving into the bone of Zito’s elbow.
Five seconds, maybe ten, and Zito was so drunk, blank with joy, and then Mulder pushed him away.
Breathing heavily, hard glitter in his eyes, Mulder shook his head and stuttered something about, no, sorry, not, can’t, Barry, and Zito was motionless, watching Mulder’s lips move without hearing a word.
“It’s okay,” he heard himself saying, seeing the panic rising in Mulder’s face, his hands starting to shake. Zito forced himself to smile. “It’s okay, my fault.”
He drew away from Mulder, setting a length of sand between them. He said again, to make sure Mulder understood: “My fault.”
And Mulder stared at him without blinking, his hands shuddering, spilling fingerprints all over the beach.
*
In the morning, Zito wakes up in the perfect place between dreams when he’s missed nothing, and he brushes his teeth, white light in thin lines through the cracked curtains. It’s early, too early, really, to be up, but he’s up.
Mulder’s still in bed. He’s got torn pieces of foil in his hair and the sheets are thrown back, Mulder’s hand in the dent where Zito’s body used to be.
One month to the day since Zito got him drunk and took advantage. Zito can’t get right, can’t acclimate to Mulder stripped down to skin and asleep in his bed. Fresh-mouthed, slick-toothed, light-wired, Zito turns the TV on, mutes the volume and sits on the floor at the foot of the bed to watch cartoons.
Mulder sprawls out slowly across the whole bed, process of osmosis like he can’t help filling every empty space. His foot nudges Zito’s head, and Zito is half-sleepy, half-happy.
It’s quick when Mulder wakes up, snatch of breath and then the rustle of him sitting up. Zito has seen it happen from six inches away, but Mulder doesn’t like to wake up with Zito watching him, almost blacked Zito’s eye the last time.
“Hey,” Mulder says. Zito waves over his shoulder, feeling nailed to the floor. He can picture Mulder, sheets down to his waist, jammed hair and stiff ears. “Fucking time is it, man?”
“See that thing with the glowing red numbers to your left?”
“God, just asked a simple question.”
Zito grins at nothing in particular. He peeks back, rumpled landscape of the bedcovers, Mulder bleary and attempting to summon a glare. Zito gets up and wants to slide in with Mulder again, wants it kinda terribly like swimming deep enough to pop his ears and looking up for sunlight through the water. But this is all new and so fucking weird. Zito keeps expecting to look out the window and find that the street signs have changed in the night.
“I’ll make some coffee,” Zito offers, and vanishes himself down the hall, breathing easier. They’re closing in on October, feeling like they’ve been lit on fire. Mulder’s hurt most of the time but not saying anything about it.
As he screws around in the kitchen, opening cabinets and rearranging things, he can hear Mulder taking a shower, superspeed as always because he grew up with two brothers and a limited amount of hot water. Zito is sometimes struck in the face with reminders of everything that he knows about Mulder.
The coffee’s ready, Mulder’s wandering in, damp T-shirt and bare feet, and Zito is scared nearly to death, because he’s seen this just shy of a dozen times now and it’s killing him.
“Red mug’s in the dishwasher,” he says without thinking. He takes out cereal and puts some popcorn in the microwave. Mulder calls him a freak, hip-cocked and cradling his coffee with both hands. Zito tells him to shut the fuck up, absently tracking the thud of his pulse in his wrist, pressed down on the counter.
“I figured out who you remind me of, by the way.”
Zito lifts his eyebrows. “Took you three years?”
Shaking his head, Mulder blows across the top of his coffee. “I haven’t known you three years. I’ve known you, like, five months, it’s just been broken up over time.”
“So that’s how it is.” Zito smirks. The popcorn starts to sound in the microwave, slow at first. “Here I’ve been fucking pining away.”
Mulder looks at him in surprise. “Really?”
“Of course not.”
Mulder rolls his eyes, skidding his heel on the tile. Zito took him home last night, curled up in the back of his car, knees against the back windshield. Mulder hadn’t gotten much sleep on the road trip and he was secretly afraid of heights, hated driving over the bridge or even just riding shotgun. He napped with Zito’s surfboard blanket under his head, stumbled out with sand on his face. Zito had torn Mulder’s shirt off him in the front hallway when Mulder was still half-asleep.
“There was this crazy guy, hung out outside the 7-11,” Mulder tells him, taking a seat at the table and talking over the rise of the popcorn. “Always talking about, I don’t know. Missiles and stuff. The sky was falling. There was something dangerous under the street. Like that. Anyway. You remind me of him.”
Zito blinks slowly. “Okay.” Mulder shrugs, like, that’s it, nothing more to see here. The steam from the coffee winds thick in the bars of sunlight through the blinds. Zito gets the popcorn and singes his fingers pulling it open.
Though he made fun, Mulder still steals some of Zito’s popcorn, and Zito gets to see his fingers shine with fake butter and salt. Mulder’s talking about something, unconsciously slipping down in the chair, his feet bumping into Zito’s. Zito picks up on the ends of things: so, like, you know. You remember that, right? Which is why I don’t talk to him anymore.
Mulder smiles on occasion and the wet spots on his shirt are drying up. He asks Zito where they’re going after the game and Zito’s not listening.
“Dude, hey.” Mulder kicks him.
Zito looks up sharply, wounded, and says fast, “The hell are you doing here, Mark?”
Mulder gives him a look, mix of amusement and exasperation. “Having breakfast, you fucking nutcase.”
Shaking his head, Zito kicks him back, sees Mulder suck in a breath between his teeth. “This, like, you and me and, and, you’re spending the night now? Really?”
Mulder half-laughs. “Are you okay?” Zito shakes his head again, staring down at the places where he picked chips of laminate off the table, because Zito’s always been kinda fidgety. “You want me to go or something?”
Zito stands. “No,” he says briefly, and walks out of the room. His head hurts, too much going on inside. For three years, Mulder has been five or ten seconds of the best summer of his life, and now he’s there every time Zito turns around, and Zito’s kissed him drunk and sober and sick with exhaustion, too tired to kiss him back. Zito’s had his hands on every part of him. Mulder’s got a scar on the back of his arm that looks like a shrouded figure; he got it setting off fireworks when he was twelve years old.
Zito thumps down on the couch, thinking that he woke up too fucking early. The season’s been so long; he keeps forgetting that he started out in Sacramento.
He waits for Mulder to pass through on his way to the bedroom, waits for Mulder to get his stuff together and take off, no matter what Zito said. Mulder can deal with a lot because he doesn’t really care, but Zito has tested better patience than this.
Instead, though, Mulder calls from the kitchen, “Where’s the real sugar, man?”
Zito bites on his fingernail and doesn’t answer. Mulder appears, tall in the doorway. “Are you having a breakdown, or what?”
Zito scowls at him. “No.” He’s aware that he’s gone inside his head again, old habit and maybe the worst one he’s got. In pretty much every way that counts, it makes much more sense for Mulder to be a five or ten second misjudgment three years ago than for him to be here in Zito’s apartment at eight in the morning.
“Then what the fuck?” Mulder sighs extravagantly and drops down next to Zito, holding a spoon in one hand and bouncing silvery reflections off the ceiling. His leg rests easily against Zito’s own. Zito eyes it with suspicion.
“You’re here all the time.”
Mulder leans his head against the back of the couch and hums, his eyes closed. “Yeah.”
“And it really hasn’t been three years?”
“God.” Mulder’s hand crawls and latches onto Zito’s shirt, neat nails in Zito’s shoulder. Zito tastes blood, lets himself get tugged closer. “I’m here. It doesn’t fucking matter how long it’s been.”
Mulder’s legs fold over Zito’s lap. He pushes his hand into Zito’s hair and leaves it there. Mulder exhales and they’re motionless for a long time, and then Mulder’s asleep again, spoon sliding out of his free hand to tumble to the floor. Zito can lean into him without fear. Zito stays watchful, Mulder’s thumb twitching on his ear.
Zito can believe this, for now at least. One thing at a time, and all he really has to do is keep waking up with Mulder nearby, days stacking up and eventually it’ll be a lifelong kinda thing.
*
*
*
onwards
The backstory stays the same, it just gets longer.
Backstory
By Candle Beck
2000
In July, Zito makes the trip from Sacramento that Mulder made three months ago.
Tinderbox gold hills and fields of windmills line the highway. The temperature has cracked triple-digits for the fourth straight day, and the air conditioning on the bus is mostly useless, smelling like gasoline. Zito’s drenched in sweat by the time they roll into Oakland, shirt plastered to his back.
Six hours before the game, Zito doesn’t really want to bother with finding a hotel just yet, so he haunts the clubhouse. Someone’s in the cages, thwacking baseballs into the net. Zito’s locker is hastily put together, a swatch of duct tape with his name in black Sharpie slapped on top, three new white jerseys in a row.
Zito is shaking, pawing through his suitcase in search of a CD he lost two years ago. He calls his mom and his sister and half the guys from Trip-A, but his phone keeps cutting out and anyway, he doesn’t have much to say. Nothing’s happened yet-he’s just been called up.
The team starts to trickle in, familiar by name and face. Zito knows some of them from the system and others from television. They bang him on the shoulders and fuck with his hair and he smacks their hands away, curving his back, hissing.
Somebody puts on some rap music, and Zito has trouble hearing properly, catching the last half of sentences, a fuzz of words. He drinks a cup of coffee and fifteen minutes later, he’s wired worse than he’s ever been before, breaking mirrors with his bare hands.
Mulder arrives with his edges blurred. Zito sees the light in Mulder’s face when their eyes meet, because Cape Cod and Vancouver and Sacramento were important stops along the way, but Mulder skates by without a word. Like there’s nothing between them. Zito scowls, gnawing on his thumbnail. Mulder knows better than to play dumb.
Made brave by whatever the fuck is in that coffee, Zito crosses over to him and jabs Mulder’s arm. Mulder’s lip curls because he’s never liked being poked at, and Zito grins big.
“Mark fucking Mulder, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.”
Mulder gives him a look and takes off his shirt. Still skinny as all hell, hipbones and collarbones and ribs making him look dangerous, stupid spiky hair and Zito wonders at how half a season in the majors hasn’t changed him a bit.
“You just got in?” Mulder asks.
“Well. Few hours ago. But yeah.”
“Cool. Advice: don’t make eye contact with anyone until you’ve been here for at least a month.”
Zito nods and plops down on a chair, taking note of where Mulder’s jeans are tugged down and there’s an indentation in the skin of his hip. Mulder’s knuckles loom in his peripheral vision as he flips the collar of his shirt neatly down on the hanger. Zito has been chasing him since they were nineteen, though only in earnest for the past season and a half, when Mulder was the other lefty and never had to play in Visalia.
He clears his throat. They both turn to watch as Eric Chavez gets bear-hugged and lifted off his feet by Jason Giambi. Zito’s thumb starts bleeding where his teeth have torn too deep.
“We broke the windows of your old place the other night,” Zito tells him, distracted.
“Yeah?” Mulder lets that bemused, weirdly cocky grin break on his face, always hits Zito like lightning in water. “How come?”
Zito shrugs. Rocks don’t cut like baseballs, hard to aim, hard to paint the black. Zito had been top-flight drunk and burning, bus ticket folded in his front pocket, Mark Mulder’s silent Sacramento apartment building rising up in the moonlight like an army against him.
“Seemed like the thing to do.”
Mulder snorts. “Sure.” He hangs up his shirt in his locker and reveals a Texas-shaped bruise under his shoulder blade. “You should come out with us tonight. Get to know some of the guys.”
“I know you,” Zito says without thinking. His heart is going so fast.
“Barely,” Mulder answers, lying, and he cracks his knuckles on his hip. “And I think your locker’s over there, dude.”
Mulder is not-so-subtly trying to get rid of him, but he should have learned by now that it won’t work. Zito stretches his legs out and shakes his head to get his hair out of his eyes, smiles. “Think I like it better over here.”
Two weeks they spent together in Vancouver, three in Sacramento. Three years ago, one whole summer in Cape Cod. Mulder doesn’t like it when things get complicated. Zito once saw Mulder twisted like a rag on the floor of a hotel room somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, but it’s easy to forget stuff like that.
In Oakland, they have better than two months and a clean slate to fuck up, but Zito has never really believed in fate, anyway.
*
1997
Nineteen years old on a wooden float, bucked by the mild Atlantic waves, it was the day before the fourth of July and Zito was so happy. The Cape Cod Baseball League was for real, pitching workshops in the mornings and scouts in the stands. Three thousand miles away from school and everyone he loved, Zito wanted this summer to bead out forever.
The float was carpeted with slippery plastic grass, chafing Zito’s back and elbows. He’d been out here on the water for about an hour, listening to the finger-snaps of far-away convenience-store fireworks, kids starting the celebration early. His buddy had swam back in search of beer or a Ziploc in which to smuggle a joint and lighter, but Zito didn’t miss him much. The starchy sunlight sank so heavy into Zito’s eyes that everything turned white at the corners.
Cape Cod smelled like pollen and salt, fresh asphalt, and Zito had never let his own potential get to him. He could make friends anywhere, unburdened by expectation in the estimation of others, sure of himself.
The water broke, and Zito rose up onto his elbows. A pair of hands latched onto the side of the float, a vaguely familiar face rising from the ocean. Everyone in the Cape League looked like someone Zito knew.
“Hey,” the boy said, surprise in his wet blue eyes.
“Hello.”
The boy’s mouth thinned down to almost nothing. “Saw you from the beach. Thought you were. Thought you were someone else.”
Zito shrugged, what can I say, and the boy hiked himself out of the water and he wasn’t a boy at all, not with those shoulders, that washed chest. Zito swallowed, grinned as his companion knelt on the bright fake green, sat back on his heels.
“The fuck are you doing out here alone?”
Sitting all the way up, Zito shrugged again. “Waiting for beer.” He was graced with a quick smile, rolled eyes, kinda like getting gut-punched. The guy was wearing dark blue shorts and Zito could see their shirts together on the beach, blurry red alongside blurry yellow.
“I’ve seen you around,” the guy stated.
“Yeah, probably. Small world, etcetera.”
“You play for Wareham, yeah?”
Zito nodded and pushed his hair out of his eyes. Twenty minutes out of the water and he was baked, bone-dry. The guy was possibly the best thing he’d seen all day, and it’d been a pretty good day.
The guy looked off over the ocean, neat cut of his ribs around his side, short hair bristling. Zito wondered if he was an outfielder, those legs, or a first baseman, all that height folded up on the float. Zito wished it was tomorrow, nighttime and the fireworks, the black sky, the two of them on this float under different circumstances.
“I’m hungry,” Zito said, surprising himself. “Let’s go get a burger.”
The guy glanced at him, calculating and so cool it hurt. “What about your beer?”
“There’s beer on dry land.” Zito showed his very best look, young in the set of his mouth, the clarity of his forehead, canting his wrist so the sunlight hit the bracelet he wore, glass beads throwing specks of blue onto his face. He could do anything, pitch in the spotlight game and black out tonight and wake up into the Fourth of July.
The guy stood, water rolling off his shoulders. “Sure. Fuckin’ bored, anyway.”
Zito got up and offered him his hand. “Barry.”
Nice firm handshake, banker in another life. “Mark.”
Then he dove, swam like he was steam moving in skin.
*
Mulder lives in a brand-new condo near the bay, and he takes Zito back because Zito can’t remember how to get to his hotel. It’s Zito’s fourth day as a major league pitcher. He’s so drunk he might be dying.
“Mark, Mark,” he says, hanging onto Mulder’s arm for fear of being misplaced. “This is crazy.”
Mulder futilely attempts to shake him off, fumbling for his keys. He’s drunk too, not as bad as Zito, but Zito can tell by the way Mulder squints at the door like there are two of them. “You being drunk is not crazy.”
“I am not drunk,” Zito protests, but he’s giggling. He’s not proving anything. Mulder is warm under his shirt, Zito’s hand pushed up under his sleeve, and he doesn’t remember doing that. “I am a fucking major leaguer.”
Mulder sighs, his arm shifting under Zito’s hand. “Yeah, me too.” He finally gets the door open, and Zito gets an impression of gray shadow and a gleam of silver from what must be the kitchen, static-charged carpet.
“This is nice,” he remarks, nodding stupidly. Mulder deposits him on the couch and stumbles off. Zito stares up at the ceiling and thinks circularly that there’s no one in this city that he’s known longer than he’s known Mulder, and three years isn’t a very good narrative, but at twenty-two years old, Zito doesn’t know much about history, anyway.
Mulder returns with slick bottles of water and that’s just so perfectly Mulder, buying cases of water at Costco and carefully stocking his refrigerator, that Zito barks out a strange laugh and feels his eyes burn with tears.
Sprawling out beside Zito on the couch, Mulder presses the bottle to his forehead, his cheek. The air conditioning is humming and whirring, but the heat has come in with them, stuck in their pores, thick as wool. Zito stares without shame at the wet patches on Mulder’s face.
“You’re an idiot,” Mulder tells him, his head back and his face tilted up. “Can’t try and outdrink Huddy.”
“I’m bigger’n him,” Zito mumbles.
“Yeah, that really seemed to help you out.” Mulder’s mouth twists, though his voice doesn’t change inflection. It took Zito a long time to learn the signs of Mulder being sarcastic.
They rest for a moment, spinning idly in place. Mulder’s throat clicks as he swallows. Zito wants to talk, something about being here in the major leagues and how he says things and the next day it ends up in the newspaper. He spends his days watching tape and eating free candy bars, his mouth stained and sweet and his arms hanging loose from his shoulders. The field is perfect like nothing in his life has ever been.
Mulder doesn’t see the same things Zito does. Mulder takes it for granted, even with the wreck that his rookie year has been so far, even with Sacramento still just Billy Beane’s word and an hour’s drive away.
“Mark,” Zito says, tasting it carefully. Mulder hums. He’s not really paying attention. “Am I staying here tonight?”
“That was my understanding of the situation, yeah.”
Zito glances at him, Mulder’s neck and the powder burns on his shirt, the full collapse of Mulder with his legs spread apart and the bottle of water balanced neatly on his hip, fingers lightly keeping it upright.
“I didn’t mean to get so drunk.”
“You never do, man.”
“Talk like this happens all the time, like, like, a habit or something. You haven’t even seen me in three months.”
Rolling his head to the side, Mulder blinks at him slowly. He’s drunk too, he can’t say shit.
“You really broke my windows?”
Zito laughs into his hand, half-yawning. “They’re not your windows anymore.” He pictures himself, several years down the line, standing outside another one of Mulder’s apartments, pockets jammed with rocks, high gleam of destruction in his eyes.
Mulder’s falling asleep. They woke up nineteen hours ago in different places, long day behind them with a day game and paintball and dinner and bars and now they’re here. Zito’s on this weird track, has been for years now, can’t steer or stop or slow.
“I don’t have any extra blankets,” Mulder tells him foggily.
Zito shrugs. “Whatever. ‘s fine.” He kicks off his sneakers and lies down on the couch, knees bent and his feet against Mulder’s side. Mulder lets them stay like that for a moment, Zito wiggling his toes on Mulder’s ribs, then stands.
Zito watches as Mulder runs his hand through his hair, jackknife light from the hallway pressing dull gold into the angles of his body. The couch is long and soft and Zito could be okay right now, in the silence of the night shore, the cobwebs crowding into the corners of the ceiling.
Mulder leaves the room and Zito turns onto his side, nosing into the cushion. The light flicks off and all Zito can think is that it’s three in the morning and they’re alone here and nothing is going to happen between them, because nothing ever has.
A soft weight crashes down on him, a button clacking into his ear. Zito makes a surprised noise and pushes the sleeve off his face, looks up at Mulder, hovering above the couch and weaving on his feet. Mulder dumps another coat on Zito’s legs, nice gray suit jacket that Zito last saw on him the day he left Triple-A.
“Don’t have any blankets,” Mulder says again, the whites of his eyes sharp in the dark, and Zito’s speechless.
*
A week after Zito had talked Mulder off the float and into the Coastway Diner, they’d seen each other every day and Zito existed in a state of perpetual disbelief.
Mulder was a pitcher, maybe more of a pitcher than anyone Zito had ever met before. He kept his left shoulder taped up all the time, unless he was starting or going swimming, rubbed salve into his elbow and scraped up his fingertips with sandpaper. He came knocking at the door of Zito’s host family, and Zito came tapping on the window of Mulder’s own.
It could have been anything, Mulder under streetlamps with his back plank-straight and fighting the wind, Zito with restaurant peppermints crinkling in his pockets, the alcohol Mulder could buy because he looked about twenty-four years old when he hardened his jaw, the way Zito knew how to sneak into the movie theatre in Chatham.
Zito had never had a friend like this. Mulder made him six times cooler, six times more likely to stumble over what he was trying to say, six times more willing to wake up early in the morning to go for pancakes.
After the game, Mulder was leaning on the parking lot fence, far down the right field line. He’d been there since the seventh inning, and Zito wasn’t sure why Mulder hadn’t come in and found a seat in the stands. Zito had pitched into the ninth, and every time he set himself, his eyes flicked past the first baseman and crashed into Mulder, long figure chopped up by chain-link.
Mulder told him he’d looked good, and took Zito away to his adopted house, up three flights of stairs to the attic. Someone had committed suicide up there four decades ago, hung from the rafters, and Zito was leery, jumping at small noises and the whine of wood under his feet.
They lolled around under the skylight, half-heartedly playing videogames, drinking from unmarked bottles. Zito was exhausted, dragged down in his shoulders and legs.
“Are you going to that thing tonight?” Mulder asked him. “That kid from Atlanta?”
Zito lay down on the short rug, splinters in his hair from the bare wood floor. “You going?” He could hear the game music and under it, dogs barking outside.
Mulder shrugged, sitting on the couch above Zito. Zito was looking up at his sprawled jeaned legs like misplaced pieces of a bridge. “Thinking about it.”
“Maybe I’ll go, then.”
Zito had no intention of being anywhere that night that Mulder wasn’t. They weren’t much alike, but Mulder didn’t seem to mind when Zito laughed at his own jokes and lost his wallet five times a day.
Zito crawled up onto the couch next to Mulder, his foot wound in the videogame controller. The air was moted, tinned gold, stuffed with heat. Zito would put his hand on Mulder’s leg, high above his knee, or his stomach maybe, where Mulder’s shirt got hiked up and his belt buckle pressed a cold slash in the skin, but he was tired. His arm hurt.
“I don’t really like that kid from Atlanta, though,” Zito remarked.
“You’re thinking of someone else.”
“Am I?”
Mulder nodded. He was still playing the game, mercilessly whaling on Zito’s guy even though Zito had given up. “You’re thinking of that blonde guy.”
Zito’s lip sneered. “Hate that blonde guy.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know. Mortal enemies. That’s not the Atlanta kid, though.”
Zito was confused, baseball card photographs and half-blackout memories surfacing. Thick Southern accents and sunburned necks, Mulder next to him on the couch and Zito might fall asleep, wake up in time to give Mulder most of the money in his pockets and wait in the car while Mulder bought them liquor. Phase one in the front seat of Mulder’s car that he’d driven out here from Michigan, watching the color rise on Mulder’s face and Mulder’s spine giving out slowly. Best way to spend a night.
“How come you know who I don’t like and I don’t?” Zito asked, not really that interested.
“Because I pay attention, man. Because you are, like, window glass, see-through, it’s nothing.”
Zito scowled. Mulder was talking shit. If he could see through, he would see that Zito wanted to push his jeans off his hips and lick the dents and fissures of Mulder’s body, hold him down with a fist on Mulder’s leg and a fist on his chest. And if Mulder could see that, he would certainly do something about it, he would hit Zito or fuck him or carve his name into Zito’s back, something. But Mulder played so cool all the time.
Mulder grinned at him. Zito was in a bad place, ghosts in the edges of his vision, all obsessed with a brand-new friend, and that never lasted. Mulder lived in fucking Michigan, alien snow-baked terrain in Zito’s mind. One and a half months left here on the coast, then they were done for each other.
But Mulder had dust in his hair and the tag sticking out of the back of his shirt had his name written on it in black ink. Sometimes, Zito felt like whatever the fuck they were doing with each other was enough to slow time and stop the rotation of the earth, motionless right then in the attic room, planning their night.
*
By August, Zito is sick of telling people that it’s not his fault and he can’t be blamed. The American League hasn’t figured him out, but that’s surely in the mail, and meanwhile the Oakland A’s are further above .500 than they’ve been in better than a decade. Zito wears his amnesty on his sleeve, wide-eyed in interviews, just a punk kid rookie and I don’t know nothing.
They go to Seattle and that’s something else, wind and rain, loud clocks in the hotel rooms and Mulder’s hurt. He’s pretending he’s not, rolling his shoulder, twisting his back, going through his delivery in slow-motion in search of mechanical difficulties. Zito starts to see everything in quartered time. Mulder moves two inches a second and Zito misjudges the speed of taxis sheering towards him.
He sits in the hallway outside the trainer’s room, making up new knots with his own shoelaces. He can hear Mulder inside, answering in fragments, can imagine him shrugging the way he does when he’s talking to the press.
Mulder says his arm’s a little tight, of course it’s sore, he pitched two fucking days ago, was it supposed to be something other than sore? Mulder gets angry in a build, his forehead goes taut and then his mouth and then his neck, and if you’re not paying attention, you might not see it until it’s too late. His voice is the last thing, it’s all downhill from there.
The door swings open and Zito’s caught off-guard. Mulder is buttoning up his shirt and sneering. Life is an awful joke when he can’t locate.
“Get the fuck off the ground, c’mon.”
Zito takes off his shoes rather than untying them, lets Mulder lead him down the hall and back to the clubhouse, where they grab their bags and vacate the building. Soaked concrete and Zito’s socks are ruined, his shoes slung over his shoulder like a rifle.
“Nice night,” he remarks.
Mulder glowers at him. “I’m gonna need like four beers before I find you amusing.”
Zito nods, willing to accept that, not telling Mulder that he missed a button at the place where his ribs meet his stomach. “’Kay.”
It only takes Mulder two beers, though, which Zito thinks he can count as a victory. Mulder’s shoulders come down and the lines around his mouth disappear. His upper lip shines, licked clean, and in the length of the day, Zito has wondered maybe a million times where the damage is in Mulder, his arm or his head.
But Mulder’s okay now, laughing and calling the waitress sweetheart and kicking Zito under the table. He’s forgotten the game two days ago, the six runs and the way the plate danced away from him. It’s not right, watching Mulder struggle, dirt in his mouth and sunflower salt under his nails. Zito’s living in some fucked-up fantasy world, pitching better than Mulder like the moon has turned red, other impossible things.
It’s not yet past curfew, and Zito drags Mulder back to the hotel, through the rain. Slipping on the waxy marble floor of the lobby, Zito’s snapped shoelaces trail behind him and Mulder is muttering against the side of Zito’s head, arm heavy on Zito’s shoulder. Zito props him against the wall of the elevator and steps away, shivering and smiling.
“You’re such a fucking mess, man.”
Mulder rolls his eyes, squeaking his wet fingers on the brass rail. “It’s your fault, anyway.”
“Sure, sure, blame me for everything. That’s great.”
Mulder leaves slim translucent fingerprints on everything he touches. Zito helps him locate his room and hangs around as Mulder changes into dry clothes, hanging his jeans neatly over the shower rod. Zito is trying to work out how he can smuggle himself into the left side of Mulder’s bed without Mulder noticing.
Mulder collapses. Zito hovers above him, runed plane of Mulder’s back, push of one shoulder blade higher than the other.
“You gonna be okay?” he asks idiotically.
Mulder turns his face to the side, single blue eye half-closed and half-focused on Zito. “Did good, went out and got me drunk. Did right by me.”
“Yeah?”
Smiling, Mulder noses into the pillow again. “Now I only gotta worry about the fuckin’ room. Fuckin’ spinny room.”
Zito laughs. “All right then. Night, dude.”
But he’s not leaving because he’s not drunk enough to leave, or too drunk, really fucked up right about now with Mulder face-down on the bed and his arm badly twisted under him, big hand curled and sticking out.
“Hey,” Zito says, throat dried up. He lays his hand on Mulder’s wrist and tells him softly, “C’mon, man, roll over, you can’t sleep like that.”
Zito tugs and Mulder moves without resistance, smooth onto his back and his eyes are closed. He’s smiling still and Zito’s not beyond anything, never had any fucking will power and can’t take no for an answer. He leans down and kisses Mulder, not the first time but maybe Zito will be able to count this one, if Mulder looks him in the eye tomorrow, if Mulder kisses him back but doesn’t stop this time.
Mulder makes a high surprised noise and tips his head to the side and Zito changes his angle, holding onto Mulder’s wrist. Mulder goes loose beneath him and his lips part and he sorta breathes into Zito. Scuffed left hand alights on Zito’s neck and Mulder kisses him so hard, like Zito’s a cure for all the things Mulder can’t do anymore.
Unable to believe it, Zito puts his hand on Mulder’s hip, shifting slowly onto Mulder’s body. Mulder stretches, making room for him. Zito has been saving a place for this inside himself for so long that the absence has become a tangible part of him, as real and familiar as his birthmark, and for a hysterical moment, he’s heartbroken at the loss.
*
At the end of the summer, there was a bonfire at the beach and the whole world was there. Driftwood was dragged through the sand and arranged in a lopsided circle around the fire, and the boys of the Cape Cod Baseball League sat with beers and joints, watched the smoke stagger into the black sky. Zito’s lungs hurt from breathing it in.
He was the center of everything, though, the moon a milky thumbprint in the sky and crowds of people drifting to and from him like a tide. The sand crawled into his sneakers; he wasn’t wearing socks and he wasn’t wearing a shirt and the ocean was almost overpowering.
Zito’s handwriting had changed over the course of the summer, along with his speech patterns and command with a full count. Everyone was a grown-up Little Leaguer, calling his name and Zito was just looking for Mulder.
They were leaving tomorrow. Sunlight the color and consistency of oil awaited them both on the other side of tonight, buses and airports and planes, splitting apart from each other on separate flight paths somewhere over Ohio. People were dying from the heat in Chicago and Zito was baselessly worried, Mulder so skinny, so vulnerable to shifts in temperature.
Zito found him far down the beach. The bonfire was match-light, the laughs and shouts of the kids tinny and echoed. Mulder had his feet in the sand and Zito fell down next to him with a forty and weird promises that he meant to keep echoing in his mind.
“Dude.”
Mulder kinda smiled. His profile was indistinct, hard to figure.
“The fuck are you, like, man. Way out here, what are you doing?” Zito counted his fingers quickly. He was drunk.
Mulder shrugged. “Tired, you know? Too much going on back there.”
“It’s a party.”
“Thanks. Lemme have some of that.”
Zito handed him the forty. Mulder took a long drink and the starlight, moonlight, firelight, shone off the glass and touched gold on his neck. Zito settled in, digging his hands into the sand.
They traded the bottle back and forth, talking about simple stuff. Would you rather be attacked by a shark or a lion? Would you rather die of thirst or starvation? Would you trade baseball for the ability to fly? Zito could feel the night draining down and away, the summer with it, Mulder right there on the beach near where a piece of sand had been fused into black glass.
Sunrise was four hours away. Zito was weaving, losing his train of thought and Mulder said things that flickered through him and were immediately forgotten.
He shifted, placing his shoulder neatly against Mulder’s. “Be strange, going back to school like this.”
“Like. Like what?” Mulder was drunk too, talking very carefully.
Zito showed the world with his hand, the empty bottle sparkling. “I was here and I know everything. Get back, it’s just another fucking summer. Oh, I was in Massachusetts. I played in the Cape League. I, I. I got wasted on a beach with Mark and that’s all.”
Mulder started to laugh. His shoulders curved up and in, bony knobs of his spine pressing up under his T-shirt, in the column of sweat that had formed. He touched his forehead to his knees, air whistling between his teeth.
“That’s, god, that’s all? Drunk on a beach with me, and that’s your summer?” Mulder lifted his face, grinning.
Zito hooked a finger in the back of Mulder’s shirt, roughing his knuckle on the high break where his back met his neck. Not his whole summer, just the part that counted. What he’d remember when he thought about nineteen years old, when he saw a bonfire on the beach, when he tasted malt liquor.
“And, what?” Zito asked. “You’ll go back to East Lansing. I’ll go back to L.A. You’re a fucking dream I had once. Never see you again.”
Mulder quieted, looking out at the water. The back of his hand was canted against Zito’s knee. Zito was closely aware of not wearing a shirt, of Mulder not pulling away from Zito’s hand on his neck.
After a long time, Mulder glanced at him, the edge of his mouth tweaked upwards. “That’s only a best guess. You don’t know what’s gonna happen.”
Zito nodded, tightening his hold, his throat constricting. He kept Mulder still and closed the distance between them, fitting them mouth-to-mouth. It happened quick enough that Mulder couldn’t pull away, and Zito gripped the back of his neck, licked his way into Mulder’s mouth and Mulder kissed him back like it was brand-new.
Five seconds like that, maybe ten, Mulder’s hair sticky with gel and salt spray, Mulder’s long chest warm under Zito’s free hand. Mulder was in it, five seconds, maybe ten, his tongue in Zito’s mouth, his small choked sounds cutting right through. His hand clenched on Zito’s arm, thumbnail driving into the bone of Zito’s elbow.
Five seconds, maybe ten, and Zito was so drunk, blank with joy, and then Mulder pushed him away.
Breathing heavily, hard glitter in his eyes, Mulder shook his head and stuttered something about, no, sorry, not, can’t, Barry, and Zito was motionless, watching Mulder’s lips move without hearing a word.
“It’s okay,” he heard himself saying, seeing the panic rising in Mulder’s face, his hands starting to shake. Zito forced himself to smile. “It’s okay, my fault.”
He drew away from Mulder, setting a length of sand between them. He said again, to make sure Mulder understood: “My fault.”
And Mulder stared at him without blinking, his hands shuddering, spilling fingerprints all over the beach.
*
In the morning, Zito wakes up in the perfect place between dreams when he’s missed nothing, and he brushes his teeth, white light in thin lines through the cracked curtains. It’s early, too early, really, to be up, but he’s up.
Mulder’s still in bed. He’s got torn pieces of foil in his hair and the sheets are thrown back, Mulder’s hand in the dent where Zito’s body used to be.
One month to the day since Zito got him drunk and took advantage. Zito can’t get right, can’t acclimate to Mulder stripped down to skin and asleep in his bed. Fresh-mouthed, slick-toothed, light-wired, Zito turns the TV on, mutes the volume and sits on the floor at the foot of the bed to watch cartoons.
Mulder sprawls out slowly across the whole bed, process of osmosis like he can’t help filling every empty space. His foot nudges Zito’s head, and Zito is half-sleepy, half-happy.
It’s quick when Mulder wakes up, snatch of breath and then the rustle of him sitting up. Zito has seen it happen from six inches away, but Mulder doesn’t like to wake up with Zito watching him, almost blacked Zito’s eye the last time.
“Hey,” Mulder says. Zito waves over his shoulder, feeling nailed to the floor. He can picture Mulder, sheets down to his waist, jammed hair and stiff ears. “Fucking time is it, man?”
“See that thing with the glowing red numbers to your left?”
“God, just asked a simple question.”
Zito grins at nothing in particular. He peeks back, rumpled landscape of the bedcovers, Mulder bleary and attempting to summon a glare. Zito gets up and wants to slide in with Mulder again, wants it kinda terribly like swimming deep enough to pop his ears and looking up for sunlight through the water. But this is all new and so fucking weird. Zito keeps expecting to look out the window and find that the street signs have changed in the night.
“I’ll make some coffee,” Zito offers, and vanishes himself down the hall, breathing easier. They’re closing in on October, feeling like they’ve been lit on fire. Mulder’s hurt most of the time but not saying anything about it.
As he screws around in the kitchen, opening cabinets and rearranging things, he can hear Mulder taking a shower, superspeed as always because he grew up with two brothers and a limited amount of hot water. Zito is sometimes struck in the face with reminders of everything that he knows about Mulder.
The coffee’s ready, Mulder’s wandering in, damp T-shirt and bare feet, and Zito is scared nearly to death, because he’s seen this just shy of a dozen times now and it’s killing him.
“Red mug’s in the dishwasher,” he says without thinking. He takes out cereal and puts some popcorn in the microwave. Mulder calls him a freak, hip-cocked and cradling his coffee with both hands. Zito tells him to shut the fuck up, absently tracking the thud of his pulse in his wrist, pressed down on the counter.
“I figured out who you remind me of, by the way.”
Zito lifts his eyebrows. “Took you three years?”
Shaking his head, Mulder blows across the top of his coffee. “I haven’t known you three years. I’ve known you, like, five months, it’s just been broken up over time.”
“So that’s how it is.” Zito smirks. The popcorn starts to sound in the microwave, slow at first. “Here I’ve been fucking pining away.”
Mulder looks at him in surprise. “Really?”
“Of course not.”
Mulder rolls his eyes, skidding his heel on the tile. Zito took him home last night, curled up in the back of his car, knees against the back windshield. Mulder hadn’t gotten much sleep on the road trip and he was secretly afraid of heights, hated driving over the bridge or even just riding shotgun. He napped with Zito’s surfboard blanket under his head, stumbled out with sand on his face. Zito had torn Mulder’s shirt off him in the front hallway when Mulder was still half-asleep.
“There was this crazy guy, hung out outside the 7-11,” Mulder tells him, taking a seat at the table and talking over the rise of the popcorn. “Always talking about, I don’t know. Missiles and stuff. The sky was falling. There was something dangerous under the street. Like that. Anyway. You remind me of him.”
Zito blinks slowly. “Okay.” Mulder shrugs, like, that’s it, nothing more to see here. The steam from the coffee winds thick in the bars of sunlight through the blinds. Zito gets the popcorn and singes his fingers pulling it open.
Though he made fun, Mulder still steals some of Zito’s popcorn, and Zito gets to see his fingers shine with fake butter and salt. Mulder’s talking about something, unconsciously slipping down in the chair, his feet bumping into Zito’s. Zito picks up on the ends of things: so, like, you know. You remember that, right? Which is why I don’t talk to him anymore.
Mulder smiles on occasion and the wet spots on his shirt are drying up. He asks Zito where they’re going after the game and Zito’s not listening.
“Dude, hey.” Mulder kicks him.
Zito looks up sharply, wounded, and says fast, “The hell are you doing here, Mark?”
Mulder gives him a look, mix of amusement and exasperation. “Having breakfast, you fucking nutcase.”
Shaking his head, Zito kicks him back, sees Mulder suck in a breath between his teeth. “This, like, you and me and, and, you’re spending the night now? Really?”
Mulder half-laughs. “Are you okay?” Zito shakes his head again, staring down at the places where he picked chips of laminate off the table, because Zito’s always been kinda fidgety. “You want me to go or something?”
Zito stands. “No,” he says briefly, and walks out of the room. His head hurts, too much going on inside. For three years, Mulder has been five or ten seconds of the best summer of his life, and now he’s there every time Zito turns around, and Zito’s kissed him drunk and sober and sick with exhaustion, too tired to kiss him back. Zito’s had his hands on every part of him. Mulder’s got a scar on the back of his arm that looks like a shrouded figure; he got it setting off fireworks when he was twelve years old.
Zito thumps down on the couch, thinking that he woke up too fucking early. The season’s been so long; he keeps forgetting that he started out in Sacramento.
He waits for Mulder to pass through on his way to the bedroom, waits for Mulder to get his stuff together and take off, no matter what Zito said. Mulder can deal with a lot because he doesn’t really care, but Zito has tested better patience than this.
Instead, though, Mulder calls from the kitchen, “Where’s the real sugar, man?”
Zito bites on his fingernail and doesn’t answer. Mulder appears, tall in the doorway. “Are you having a breakdown, or what?”
Zito scowls at him. “No.” He’s aware that he’s gone inside his head again, old habit and maybe the worst one he’s got. In pretty much every way that counts, it makes much more sense for Mulder to be a five or ten second misjudgment three years ago than for him to be here in Zito’s apartment at eight in the morning.
“Then what the fuck?” Mulder sighs extravagantly and drops down next to Zito, holding a spoon in one hand and bouncing silvery reflections off the ceiling. His leg rests easily against Zito’s own. Zito eyes it with suspicion.
“You’re here all the time.”
Mulder leans his head against the back of the couch and hums, his eyes closed. “Yeah.”
“And it really hasn’t been three years?”
“God.” Mulder’s hand crawls and latches onto Zito’s shirt, neat nails in Zito’s shoulder. Zito tastes blood, lets himself get tugged closer. “I’m here. It doesn’t fucking matter how long it’s been.”
Mulder’s legs fold over Zito’s lap. He pushes his hand into Zito’s hair and leaves it there. Mulder exhales and they’re motionless for a long time, and then Mulder’s asleep again, spoon sliding out of his free hand to tumble to the floor. Zito can lean into him without fear. Zito stays watchful, Mulder’s thumb twitching on his ear.
Zito can believe this, for now at least. One thing at a time, and all he really has to do is keep waking up with Mulder nearby, days stacking up and eventually it’ll be a lifelong kinda thing.
*
*
*
onwards