fic: Trivia Questions (Cleveland Indians, Marson/Donald) PG-13
title: Trivia Questions
pairing/characters: Lou Marson/Jason Donald
word count: 2900
rating: PG-13, if that
notes: This was supposed to be one scene of a big story, but then it went and felt all complete on me. Oh, well. First posted fic in ages.
summary: No matter what he does the rest of his career, Jason Donald will be remembered for being called safe that one time.
If there is anything good about this whole night, it's that the game only lasted an hour and forty-some minutes.
Donald hides in his locker for a while, not even showering, back to the clubhouse. The rest of the team mostly ignores him, even Crowe, who has never left anyone alone in his life and has apparently chosen now as his moment to grow as a human being. Manny comes over and pats his back and says it's okay, but that doesn't really help much. Sometimes Donald thinks too many years of managing shitty teams have rotted Acta's brain a little.
Marson comes over to ask if he has the key card to their room because Marson lost his again. Marson's head is full of scouting reports and ways to deal with their pitching staff full of quirks and personality defects, no room for practical things. He loses everything, and he never even apologizes for it.
Donald hates being the responsible one very much, and he considers saying no just to fuck with him, but then Marson gives him that look he can never refuse, and then he can't very well refuse. "I hate you," he says sullenly.
Marson just smiles and pats his shoulder. Everyone else ignores them.
A little later, Marson comes back, bag over his shoulder and an unaffiliated blue hoodie on over his roadtrip clothes. "Come on," he says. "Come torture yourself away from where people can see it."
"Maybe I was safe," Donald says, standing up.
Marson blinks at him, like it takes him a second to attach meaning to the words, then he shakes his head slowly. "No, bro. No. I'm sorry."
A clubbie ushers them out a side door, saying no reason to cause a fuss. "Called for a cab earlier," Marson explains, shrugging. Donald smiles gratefully, not up for taking the team bus and passing a crowd of shattered Tigers fans yelling about history. Marson bumps his shoulder with his own and nods.
The ride to the hotel is mostly quiet, the driver giving them a long narrow look when Marson tells him their destination, suspicious of picking up two young men at the stadium and dropping them off at the visiting team's hotel. Luckily, they're both young and anonymous, playing for the youngest, most anonymous team in the league. Donald fidgets. The driver does his job without comment.
"It would have been the second-shortest perfect game in history," Marson says, looking up from his phone and grimacing.
"Can you maybe not read me trivia for once?" Donald says tiredly, resting his head on the window.
Marson apologizes and tucks his phone away. "How many messages do you have by now?" he asks instead, looking concerned.
"At least a hundred. Maybe more." Donald shrugs. He turned his phone off and hid it at the bottom of his bag after the fortieth or so.
"Anything interesting?"
"No."
Marson nods and looks out his own window, knows him well enough not to press it. Donald's mom probably started calling him after she realized she wasn't getting through to her own son.
They enter the hotel through another side door, bypassing the lobby. Marson keeps up a benign commentary about some game he has on his phone, something about Scrabble. Donald isn't listening. Marson is just antsy from not playing tonight. He always gets that after a night off, like he thinks he's going to be benched for a while, kind of hilariously paranoid sometimes. Or at least it was funny back when the idea was unthinkable, back when Marson was hitting minor league pitching and taking walks instead of batting under the Mendoza like he is. It's not so funny any more, to be honest.
"Do you want to go out?" Marson asks as they walk up the stairs. "C-Perez and Dave were talking about it. I'm not, I don't think, but figured I'd tell you in case you wanted to."
"Well, first, I'm going to take a shower," he says, patting down his pockets trying to remember where he put the key card. He finds it in his wallet, tucked in with his twenty-six dollars in cash and a ticket stub from seeing the new Iron Man in New York.
"Shower sounds good," Marson says, following him into the room, which they're sharing because the club is cheap and they're rookies. Donald doesn't care, glad he's with Marson and not someone else. Crowe's with Chris Perez, and god only knows what kind of crazy shit those two get to talking about. Perez's wife is pregnant, and Donald pretty much can't get his brain around the fact the dude is reproducing.
And anyway, it's not like he hasn't shared rooms with Marson in the past. They lived together for a while back in the Phillies organization, when their paths through the system crossed. Marson is used to his manic periods and tendency toward the dramatic, and Donald is even kind of fond Marson's dry sense of humor and geekiness for baseball history. Donald lost his toothpaste somewhere between leaving Cleveland and landing in New York a few days ago, so they're sharing Marson's old man Sensodyne. It's not that weird; one time in AA they shared a razor for an entire roadtrip because their manager was on an everyone-must-be-clean-shaven kick and Marson wouldn't spend his meal money to buy a new one before they got back to Reading.
He hears Marson drop his bag and then flop on a bed, the TV coming on, and he goes into the bathroom and closes the door. He takes a shower and comes back out feeling lighter and more like being friendly.
"Done? Good. That was fast." Marson gets up and takes his own shower.
Past midnight, they're slap-happy from vending machine soda and chips. Marson didn't want to go out, happy to spread out across one of the beds and eat junk food, both of them telling bad jokes and pretending they're somewhere in the past and today didn't mean anything.
Mostly, it's just that Donald would rather be with him doing nothing than out somewhere else, even if there's fun to be had wherever that is. He tries not to think about what that might mean.
Marson is laying on his stomach on Donald's bed, chin on his hands on the bedspread, eyes on the TV. Donald, sitting in a chair he stole from Crowe's room the night before, is flicking through channels like a hyperactive child. He pauses on ESPN, just long enough to catch a glimpse of Ken Griffey, Jr., announcing his retirement.
"I kinda feel bad for him," Marson says, pointing at the screen. "Like, he retired today, and tomorrow's going to be the first day in my lifetime that no one named Griffey is on a Major League roster. But no one cares because of our stupid game here in Detroit tonight. How about that."
ESPN moves on to other news. Donald winces and changes the channel.
They settle on the Food Network, because Marson loves that shit. Donald can't support Marson's love of Guy Fieri, but he'll never turn down a Giada DiLaurentiis marathon as long as he has eyes. And anyway, anything is better than watching his own foot hit the bag over and over, the look on Miguel Cabrera's face, Joyce's arms out to the sides like a little kid playing airplanes. All of this boils down to them watching an episode of Barefoot Contessa. Ina Garten is busy making some kind of baked pasta thing and looking smug. Marson loves this show, because he's secretly a forty-something woman.
"This is my trivia question," Donald says, because Marson's ignoring him and he can't not torture himself a little more. His chair is uncomfortable. Ina Garten looks too pleased with herself. "No matter what I do the rest of my career, this is what I'll be remembered for."
"Well, at least you'll get a trivia question," Marson says, not even looking over. And he doesn't even mean it in a bitter way. It wouldn't even occur to him to ask for more when he's already got so much more than most people, which makes Donald feel like a great big dick for wanting something else.
"I guess it could be worse," he says. "I mean, what if Dave really got hurt from the liner to the head? That would be his trivia question."
Marson finally lifts his chin at that and gives him a questioning look, which is frustrating. Donald hates when Marson plays dumb. "Explain."
"Like, okay. 'Name the Cleveland Indians pitcher who was seriously injured after taking a line drive to the temple off the bat of Alex Rodriguez in 2010.' That would be the sum total of Huff's career. 'Specially if that ended it, you know?"
"Well, okay," Marson says, looking sick at that thought like any good catcher. Donald remembers the look on Marson's face when it happened, his mask back on the ground at the plate, almost too shocked to jump up out of his crouch. "This isn't really the same thing, though. Like, at all."
"'Name the Indians batter who was erroneously called safe in the ninth inning of Detroit Tiger Armando Galarraga's perfect game on June third, 2010,'" Donald says in a trivia game show voice. It's not quite Alex Trebek. More like Regis Philbin. Marson grins. "Dude, I might play ten, fifteen more years if I'm lucky, and I'll never be known for anything as much as being the guy who Jim Joyce called safe at first with two down in the ninth."
"You know what? I'm glad I didn't get into that game," Marson says after a second. He puts his chin back down and turns his eyes back to the TV. "I have enough oh-for games without contributing to some guy's stab at history."
"You probably would've gone two-for-three and we wouldn't be having this conversation," Donald says, leaning back in his chair. He stole it from Crowe's room because Crowe's a fucker, but it's starting to seem like that was a bad plan. The chair kind of sucks.
"Or I would've been making the twenty-seventh out," Marson says softly, eyes on the bedspread. "But, well. What can you do?"
"I see we've reached the maudlin part of the evening," Donald says, but he gets up and flops on the bed next to him, jabbing him in the side until he wiggles over to make room. Marson even rearranges his arms so his sharp stupid elbow isn't in Donald's face, because Marson is thoughtful like that.
"Are you seven? Stop it," Marson says without heat.
"Oh, whatever," Donald replies. This is another old conversation, dates back to crappy motels in gray Eastern League cities. Marson will be minding his own business and Donald, who went to college and had a lots of obnoxious teammates and rarely a moment for quiet reflection, will decide that Marson looks lonely. It doesn't even seem to annoy him anymore, which Donald counts as a victory.
Marson rolls his eyes. Donald can't actually see it, but he knows it happens. He also knows Marson's grinning, but that's because he can see Marson's starter crow's feet out of the corner of his eye. 'Twenty-three and already with crow's feet,' he teases him sometimes. 'Old man. You should stop squinting all the time.' Marson usually responds by narrowing his eyes some more and flipping him the bird.
The watch another episode. Ina makes a roast and continues to look smug, this time in a blue shirt. While the meat's in the oven, she makes some kind of cocktail with orange slices floating in it, and Donald gets an idea.
"I bet Crowe has whiskey left," he says.
"Yes, but then we'd have to move. And talk to Crowe." Marson doesn't really like Crowe for some reason. It's kind of mutual, too, Donald has noticed. He finds this a little disappointing, because it means he can't really hang out with them together or else they snipe at each other like jealous little girls who have to share a pony or something. Except that makes Donald the pony, and he's never really thought of himself like that before. He shakes his head and tries to focus on the TV instead.
He doesn't really want to move, either. Marson is warm and close, and he smells like clean laundry and Dial soap from his shower. "You have a point," Donald tells him, deflating again. On the screen, Ina takes a long, savoring bite of her roast, then chases it with a swig of her orangey cocktail. It's inspiring all over again. "We could go out after all," he says. "You know they're still out."
Marson turns his head and frowns at him. "I'm good here. You want to go, go."
"Nah, don't want to go by myself," Donald says, and Marson's frown melts away. "Detroit kind of scares me, anyway. Probably wants to set me on fire along with Jim Joyce."
Marson's gives him a bitch-please look. "I'm sorry, do you have to be crouched in front of the guy for nine innings tomorrow? No. Shut up."
Donald has to hide his face in the circle of his arms to keep from laughing in Marson's face. Marson doesn't appreciate that, he's learned. He always complains about a too-detailed view of Donald's tonsils. He usually adds something about it being rude to laugh in people's faces, but honestly, normal social cues are for people whose teams weren't just on the bad end of what is technically the twenty-first perfect game in Major League history.
"Crowe almost definitely still has whiskey," he says again, because if he knows one thing it's that Trevor Crowe always has whiskey.
"I'm fine like this," Marson says. "If you want to go have whiskey with Crowe, by all means, go. I'll be here with-oh, fuck you, Sandra Lee. I'm not watching you." He sits up and reaches over Donald's legs to retrieve the remote from the bedside table. He puts on CNN, because why not watch more depressing news about his racist home state or the oil killing the Gulf of Mexico or how there might be war between the Koreas. But none of that is the news of the night, and sure enough, there's Galarraga smiling helplessly, eyes shocked wide with disbelief. Donald looks up at Marson so he doesn't have to look at the screen.
Marson glances at the TV, then down at Donald with a mildly disturbed look on his face.
"You're squinting at me," Donald accuses.
"You really ran hard out of the box," Marson says, settling back down on his stomach. He turns his head to he can keep his eyes on Donald. He looks tired. "You made a pretty routine play into something kind of interesting. I mean, yeah, you're still out. But you made it interesting."
Donald blinks, feeling a little betrayed. "I don't understand."
Marson frowns, the same look he always gets when he thinks Donald is being stupid on purpose. "It's just… a guy gets that far, he's kind of earned it, you know? Two down in the ninth, I mean."
"Are you saying I should've just let him have it?" Donald asks, horrified.
"It's the kind of history only a couple guys get to experience," Marson says irritably. It's Donald's favorite version of him, huffy and annoyed about something inconsequential.
"You spend too much time with pitchers," Donald says.
"Yeah, and?" Marson turns his head and looks at the TV instead, jaw tight and neck corded.
Donald doesn't say anything. He settles down against the bedspread, elbow fitting neatly in the space under Marson's armpit. Marson rolls his eyes, but shifts over to accommodate him then he goes back to flicking through channels.
"You know, technically, the Indians have still never been the victims of a perfect game," Marson says a while later, after Craig Ferguson. Donald is about ninety-five percent asleep, on his side with his forearms against Marson's ribs and one leg kicked over the backs of Marson's thighs. It's the vibration of Marson's voice in his chest that wakes Donald up more than the actual sound.
"Huh?" Donald says, cracking open one eye.
"So we have you to thank for that bit of history, I guess," he says, smiling softly. His skin is bluish from the television light. It's kind of eerie. Donald takes a moment to wonder if that's how Huff sees everything, people with dark eye-sockets and zombie skin, and if that's why he hates everyone. It would make a lot of sense.
"See, good thing I ran," Donald says, voice soft and sleepy. He closes his eyes again and creeps closer so that he can tuck his suddenly freezing nose against Marson's shoulder. He throws his arm over the small of Marson's back and hums.
"Good thing," Marson echoes.
pairing/characters: Lou Marson/Jason Donald
word count: 2900
rating: PG-13, if that
notes: This was supposed to be one scene of a big story, but then it went and felt all complete on me. Oh, well. First posted fic in ages.
summary: No matter what he does the rest of his career, Jason Donald will be remembered for being called safe that one time.
If there is anything good about this whole night, it's that the game only lasted an hour and forty-some minutes.
Donald hides in his locker for a while, not even showering, back to the clubhouse. The rest of the team mostly ignores him, even Crowe, who has never left anyone alone in his life and has apparently chosen now as his moment to grow as a human being. Manny comes over and pats his back and says it's okay, but that doesn't really help much. Sometimes Donald thinks too many years of managing shitty teams have rotted Acta's brain a little.
Marson comes over to ask if he has the key card to their room because Marson lost his again. Marson's head is full of scouting reports and ways to deal with their pitching staff full of quirks and personality defects, no room for practical things. He loses everything, and he never even apologizes for it.
Donald hates being the responsible one very much, and he considers saying no just to fuck with him, but then Marson gives him that look he can never refuse, and then he can't very well refuse. "I hate you," he says sullenly.
Marson just smiles and pats his shoulder. Everyone else ignores them.
A little later, Marson comes back, bag over his shoulder and an unaffiliated blue hoodie on over his roadtrip clothes. "Come on," he says. "Come torture yourself away from where people can see it."
"Maybe I was safe," Donald says, standing up.
Marson blinks at him, like it takes him a second to attach meaning to the words, then he shakes his head slowly. "No, bro. No. I'm sorry."
A clubbie ushers them out a side door, saying no reason to cause a fuss. "Called for a cab earlier," Marson explains, shrugging. Donald smiles gratefully, not up for taking the team bus and passing a crowd of shattered Tigers fans yelling about history. Marson bumps his shoulder with his own and nods.
The ride to the hotel is mostly quiet, the driver giving them a long narrow look when Marson tells him their destination, suspicious of picking up two young men at the stadium and dropping them off at the visiting team's hotel. Luckily, they're both young and anonymous, playing for the youngest, most anonymous team in the league. Donald fidgets. The driver does his job without comment.
"It would have been the second-shortest perfect game in history," Marson says, looking up from his phone and grimacing.
"Can you maybe not read me trivia for once?" Donald says tiredly, resting his head on the window.
Marson apologizes and tucks his phone away. "How many messages do you have by now?" he asks instead, looking concerned.
"At least a hundred. Maybe more." Donald shrugs. He turned his phone off and hid it at the bottom of his bag after the fortieth or so.
"Anything interesting?"
"No."
Marson nods and looks out his own window, knows him well enough not to press it. Donald's mom probably started calling him after she realized she wasn't getting through to her own son.
They enter the hotel through another side door, bypassing the lobby. Marson keeps up a benign commentary about some game he has on his phone, something about Scrabble. Donald isn't listening. Marson is just antsy from not playing tonight. He always gets that after a night off, like he thinks he's going to be benched for a while, kind of hilariously paranoid sometimes. Or at least it was funny back when the idea was unthinkable, back when Marson was hitting minor league pitching and taking walks instead of batting under the Mendoza like he is. It's not so funny any more, to be honest.
"Do you want to go out?" Marson asks as they walk up the stairs. "C-Perez and Dave were talking about it. I'm not, I don't think, but figured I'd tell you in case you wanted to."
"Well, first, I'm going to take a shower," he says, patting down his pockets trying to remember where he put the key card. He finds it in his wallet, tucked in with his twenty-six dollars in cash and a ticket stub from seeing the new Iron Man in New York.
"Shower sounds good," Marson says, following him into the room, which they're sharing because the club is cheap and they're rookies. Donald doesn't care, glad he's with Marson and not someone else. Crowe's with Chris Perez, and god only knows what kind of crazy shit those two get to talking about. Perez's wife is pregnant, and Donald pretty much can't get his brain around the fact the dude is reproducing.
And anyway, it's not like he hasn't shared rooms with Marson in the past. They lived together for a while back in the Phillies organization, when their paths through the system crossed. Marson is used to his manic periods and tendency toward the dramatic, and Donald is even kind of fond Marson's dry sense of humor and geekiness for baseball history. Donald lost his toothpaste somewhere between leaving Cleveland and landing in New York a few days ago, so they're sharing Marson's old man Sensodyne. It's not that weird; one time in AA they shared a razor for an entire roadtrip because their manager was on an everyone-must-be-clean-shaven kick and Marson wouldn't spend his meal money to buy a new one before they got back to Reading.
He hears Marson drop his bag and then flop on a bed, the TV coming on, and he goes into the bathroom and closes the door. He takes a shower and comes back out feeling lighter and more like being friendly.
"Done? Good. That was fast." Marson gets up and takes his own shower.
Past midnight, they're slap-happy from vending machine soda and chips. Marson didn't want to go out, happy to spread out across one of the beds and eat junk food, both of them telling bad jokes and pretending they're somewhere in the past and today didn't mean anything.
Mostly, it's just that Donald would rather be with him doing nothing than out somewhere else, even if there's fun to be had wherever that is. He tries not to think about what that might mean.
Marson is laying on his stomach on Donald's bed, chin on his hands on the bedspread, eyes on the TV. Donald, sitting in a chair he stole from Crowe's room the night before, is flicking through channels like a hyperactive child. He pauses on ESPN, just long enough to catch a glimpse of Ken Griffey, Jr., announcing his retirement.
"I kinda feel bad for him," Marson says, pointing at the screen. "Like, he retired today, and tomorrow's going to be the first day in my lifetime that no one named Griffey is on a Major League roster. But no one cares because of our stupid game here in Detroit tonight. How about that."
ESPN moves on to other news. Donald winces and changes the channel.
They settle on the Food Network, because Marson loves that shit. Donald can't support Marson's love of Guy Fieri, but he'll never turn down a Giada DiLaurentiis marathon as long as he has eyes. And anyway, anything is better than watching his own foot hit the bag over and over, the look on Miguel Cabrera's face, Joyce's arms out to the sides like a little kid playing airplanes. All of this boils down to them watching an episode of Barefoot Contessa. Ina Garten is busy making some kind of baked pasta thing and looking smug. Marson loves this show, because he's secretly a forty-something woman.
"This is my trivia question," Donald says, because Marson's ignoring him and he can't not torture himself a little more. His chair is uncomfortable. Ina Garten looks too pleased with herself. "No matter what I do the rest of my career, this is what I'll be remembered for."
"Well, at least you'll get a trivia question," Marson says, not even looking over. And he doesn't even mean it in a bitter way. It wouldn't even occur to him to ask for more when he's already got so much more than most people, which makes Donald feel like a great big dick for wanting something else.
"I guess it could be worse," he says. "I mean, what if Dave really got hurt from the liner to the head? That would be his trivia question."
Marson finally lifts his chin at that and gives him a questioning look, which is frustrating. Donald hates when Marson plays dumb. "Explain."
"Like, okay. 'Name the Cleveland Indians pitcher who was seriously injured after taking a line drive to the temple off the bat of Alex Rodriguez in 2010.' That would be the sum total of Huff's career. 'Specially if that ended it, you know?"
"Well, okay," Marson says, looking sick at that thought like any good catcher. Donald remembers the look on Marson's face when it happened, his mask back on the ground at the plate, almost too shocked to jump up out of his crouch. "This isn't really the same thing, though. Like, at all."
"'Name the Indians batter who was erroneously called safe in the ninth inning of Detroit Tiger Armando Galarraga's perfect game on June third, 2010,'" Donald says in a trivia game show voice. It's not quite Alex Trebek. More like Regis Philbin. Marson grins. "Dude, I might play ten, fifteen more years if I'm lucky, and I'll never be known for anything as much as being the guy who Jim Joyce called safe at first with two down in the ninth."
"You know what? I'm glad I didn't get into that game," Marson says after a second. He puts his chin back down and turns his eyes back to the TV. "I have enough oh-for games without contributing to some guy's stab at history."
"You probably would've gone two-for-three and we wouldn't be having this conversation," Donald says, leaning back in his chair. He stole it from Crowe's room because Crowe's a fucker, but it's starting to seem like that was a bad plan. The chair kind of sucks.
"Or I would've been making the twenty-seventh out," Marson says softly, eyes on the bedspread. "But, well. What can you do?"
"I see we've reached the maudlin part of the evening," Donald says, but he gets up and flops on the bed next to him, jabbing him in the side until he wiggles over to make room. Marson even rearranges his arms so his sharp stupid elbow isn't in Donald's face, because Marson is thoughtful like that.
"Are you seven? Stop it," Marson says without heat.
"Oh, whatever," Donald replies. This is another old conversation, dates back to crappy motels in gray Eastern League cities. Marson will be minding his own business and Donald, who went to college and had a lots of obnoxious teammates and rarely a moment for quiet reflection, will decide that Marson looks lonely. It doesn't even seem to annoy him anymore, which Donald counts as a victory.
Marson rolls his eyes. Donald can't actually see it, but he knows it happens. He also knows Marson's grinning, but that's because he can see Marson's starter crow's feet out of the corner of his eye. 'Twenty-three and already with crow's feet,' he teases him sometimes. 'Old man. You should stop squinting all the time.' Marson usually responds by narrowing his eyes some more and flipping him the bird.
The watch another episode. Ina makes a roast and continues to look smug, this time in a blue shirt. While the meat's in the oven, she makes some kind of cocktail with orange slices floating in it, and Donald gets an idea.
"I bet Crowe has whiskey left," he says.
"Yes, but then we'd have to move. And talk to Crowe." Marson doesn't really like Crowe for some reason. It's kind of mutual, too, Donald has noticed. He finds this a little disappointing, because it means he can't really hang out with them together or else they snipe at each other like jealous little girls who have to share a pony or something. Except that makes Donald the pony, and he's never really thought of himself like that before. He shakes his head and tries to focus on the TV instead.
He doesn't really want to move, either. Marson is warm and close, and he smells like clean laundry and Dial soap from his shower. "You have a point," Donald tells him, deflating again. On the screen, Ina takes a long, savoring bite of her roast, then chases it with a swig of her orangey cocktail. It's inspiring all over again. "We could go out after all," he says. "You know they're still out."
Marson turns his head and frowns at him. "I'm good here. You want to go, go."
"Nah, don't want to go by myself," Donald says, and Marson's frown melts away. "Detroit kind of scares me, anyway. Probably wants to set me on fire along with Jim Joyce."
Marson's gives him a bitch-please look. "I'm sorry, do you have to be crouched in front of the guy for nine innings tomorrow? No. Shut up."
Donald has to hide his face in the circle of his arms to keep from laughing in Marson's face. Marson doesn't appreciate that, he's learned. He always complains about a too-detailed view of Donald's tonsils. He usually adds something about it being rude to laugh in people's faces, but honestly, normal social cues are for people whose teams weren't just on the bad end of what is technically the twenty-first perfect game in Major League history.
"Crowe almost definitely still has whiskey," he says again, because if he knows one thing it's that Trevor Crowe always has whiskey.
"I'm fine like this," Marson says. "If you want to go have whiskey with Crowe, by all means, go. I'll be here with-oh, fuck you, Sandra Lee. I'm not watching you." He sits up and reaches over Donald's legs to retrieve the remote from the bedside table. He puts on CNN, because why not watch more depressing news about his racist home state or the oil killing the Gulf of Mexico or how there might be war between the Koreas. But none of that is the news of the night, and sure enough, there's Galarraga smiling helplessly, eyes shocked wide with disbelief. Donald looks up at Marson so he doesn't have to look at the screen.
Marson glances at the TV, then down at Donald with a mildly disturbed look on his face.
"You're squinting at me," Donald accuses.
"You really ran hard out of the box," Marson says, settling back down on his stomach. He turns his head to he can keep his eyes on Donald. He looks tired. "You made a pretty routine play into something kind of interesting. I mean, yeah, you're still out. But you made it interesting."
Donald blinks, feeling a little betrayed. "I don't understand."
Marson frowns, the same look he always gets when he thinks Donald is being stupid on purpose. "It's just… a guy gets that far, he's kind of earned it, you know? Two down in the ninth, I mean."
"Are you saying I should've just let him have it?" Donald asks, horrified.
"It's the kind of history only a couple guys get to experience," Marson says irritably. It's Donald's favorite version of him, huffy and annoyed about something inconsequential.
"You spend too much time with pitchers," Donald says.
"Yeah, and?" Marson turns his head and looks at the TV instead, jaw tight and neck corded.
Donald doesn't say anything. He settles down against the bedspread, elbow fitting neatly in the space under Marson's armpit. Marson rolls his eyes, but shifts over to accommodate him then he goes back to flicking through channels.
"You know, technically, the Indians have still never been the victims of a perfect game," Marson says a while later, after Craig Ferguson. Donald is about ninety-five percent asleep, on his side with his forearms against Marson's ribs and one leg kicked over the backs of Marson's thighs. It's the vibration of Marson's voice in his chest that wakes Donald up more than the actual sound.
"Huh?" Donald says, cracking open one eye.
"So we have you to thank for that bit of history, I guess," he says, smiling softly. His skin is bluish from the television light. It's kind of eerie. Donald takes a moment to wonder if that's how Huff sees everything, people with dark eye-sockets and zombie skin, and if that's why he hates everyone. It would make a lot of sense.
"See, good thing I ran," Donald says, voice soft and sleepy. He closes his eyes again and creeps closer so that he can tuck his suddenly freezing nose against Marson's shoulder. He throws his arm over the small of Marson's back and hums.
"Good thing," Marson echoes.