beavers the size of moose
This was a request from owllover711. He wanted Harden/Dempster "welcome to the Cubs, fellow Canadian!" fic. And by welcoming, I mean sex... with slow undressing-- slow removal of one or more uniforms, not street clothes. With a little extra time taken to remove stuff below the waist.
Of course Harden is now on the Rangers, so let me take you back to the magical year of 2008...
It was pretty amazing to bang this out so quickly, after The Beast. Still, I remember when 7000 words felt like a longish story to me, and I can't help but wonder where it all went wrong.
pairing(s): Rich Harden/Bobby Crosby, Rich Harden/Ryan Dempster
rated: NC-17
word count: 7482
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. It is in no way a reflection on the actual life, behavior, or character of any of the people featured, and there is no connection or affiliation between this fictional story and the people or organizations it mentions. It was not written with any intent to slander or defame any of the people featured. No profit has been or ever will be made as a result of this story: it is solely for entertainment. And again, it is entirely fictional, i.e. not true.
beavers the size of moose
Nerves are not a factor here. This is his sixth professional season, and baseball is baseball. The ball weighs the same no matter where he is; the pitcher’s mound is always just so far away from home plate and no farther. He is switching leagues, so the rules are a little bit different, but most things are the same. The basic baseball stuff, the important things should be the same.
He’s just concerned. A little bit. All he’s ever known is Oakland, and he is aware that Oakland is a bit… well, a bit of an odd duck in the baseball world. He knows that when people list off teams, they tend to say things like BostonNewYorkChicagoTexasDetroitSeattle oh and Oakland. The A’s have always done things their own way-- or Billy Beane’s way, which amounts to the same thing-- and that has always meant doing things that are not what any of the other teams are doing. He is not unaware of the fact that there’s been trickle-down. Weirdness in the front office, weirdness in the clubhouse.
Guys who came into the Oakland clubhouse from elsewhere always seemed kind of surprised by it. Like the clubhouse arcade game tournaments were weird, or Zito’s enthusiastically hipsterish guitar jam sessions were somehow not quite normal. Like, who the hell played the guitar and didn't play country music? Harden had seen the scared-deer look in their eyes, the oh shit, what did I get myself into? face, something that they would have no reason to break out if their new clubhouse was at all similar to the one they had just left.
That Oakland weirdness is the totality of what he knows about professional clubhouse structure and behavior, which necessarily means that he was a pretty warped view of normal, for baseball. At least he is aware enough to realize it. In any event, it would all be just fine if he stayed in Oakland, played out the hopefully lengthy skein of his career in a series of commutes between Alameda County and British Columbia. But nobody stays in Oakland.
----
They give him some funny looks when he walks into the Chicago clubhouse. It’s one thing, he supposes, to sign with a team as a free agent, or to be traded in the offseason. You lose your buddies in the winter, but you get to work at making new ones from spring training on. Oakland has decided that it's most efficient to trade him smack dab in the middle of the season, though, so he is switching teams in the middle of July. Most of these Cubs have been playing together since February. Harden is coming out of nowhere, so far as these guys are concerned.
It would be easier if one of the players they traded away to get him had left a vaguely-Harden-shaped hole behind: if one of them was a young hard-throwing established starter, for instance. But two of the guys in the trade are outfielders and the one pitcher has only started a few games for the Cubs. Harden supposes he’s replacing the pitcher. It's not an equal value, one-for-one kind of trade, though. Harden is the centerpiece. The Cubs had to give up multiple players to get him, like trading four crappy baseball cards on the playground to get one really good card back. There is probably some specific way he’s supposed to behave in light of all this, but nobody ever bothered to tell him and he just knows that he is going to be at awkward loose ends. He’s going to overstep some invisible line and offend someone, or he will fail to live up to someone’s idea of appropriate hype, and he’ll offend them that way.
The clubhouse in Wrigley is not shaped like the one he’s used to in the Coliseum. It’s much narrower, more like an oversized hallway that someone had the bright idea of converting into a big league locker room. The trainer’s room, when they take him around to see it, is very small and cluttered, although all of the equipment is brand new and in gleaming pristine condition. In Oakland the room was bigger and the equipment shittier.
Bright blue is all over the place. It keeps throwing him off. It makes everything look smart and tidy and intentionally placed, and none of these are characteristics he is used to associating with big league clubhouses. Harden is used to seeing green and yellow thrown indiscriminately together, often in the service of really atrocious carpets, the kinds of carpets that cheap hotels probably rejected. He is used to seeing things shoehorned into the clubhouse simply because they had some combination of the right colors, not because they actually looked good or appropriate.
It is really obvious that the Cubs are willing to spend more than the A’s on décor, and it is equally obvious that the Cubs are willing to do this because they believe a nice clubhouse has some sort of positive psychological effect on the players. Harden isn’t quite sure how he feels about it. Maybe after he’s been here for a while, he’ll see if it really works or not. Maybe red, white, and blue are just always going to look cooler, neater, smarter than green, gold, and white will.
----
Three hours before gametime Zito sauntered in wearing a shirt with a pattern so eye-rending that it made Eric Chavez dry heave when he caught sight of it. Harden could only look at it by squinting, so as to reduce the amount of retinal area actually exposed to the shirt.
“Dude,” --it was kind of pandering to his madness, but Zito always responded well to ‘dude’-- “where the hell did that even come from?”
Zito stroked the front of the shirt lovingly. “This awesome little thrift store. Like, right on the waterfront? It totally doesn’t look like much so it’s totally, like, undiscovered and shit, but they always have the most amazing stuff.”
The shirt was shiny and polyester and wide-collared in a way that immediately marked its provenance in another era. Harden was a little dubious of Zito's amazing stuff declaration.
“Check this out,” Zito said. He strode into the locker room proper with the confident obliviousness of a man who really likes his shirt. Harden followed, shielding his eyes with one hand. There were exclamations of dismay from all around the room as other A's caught sight of the shirt, but Zito ignored them and sat down on the floor in front of his locker. He winked at Harden, lay back, and… disappeared.
The pattern on Zito’s new-old shirt was made up of a whole lot of different (fighting) elements, but most of them were various shades of green and golden yellow, and when Zito lay down on the carpet, the shirt turned into some freaky kind of camouflage. It was hideous and, Harden had to admit, kind of remarkable.
“As soon as I saw it I knew I had to get it,” Zito said. Harden laughed, shaking his head. If he glanced at Zito really quickly, it looked like Zito’s head and legs were floating free on the floor, his torso absent entirely. He couldn’t believe Zito, or the shirt, or the carpet-- any of it-- but then again this was Oakland, where this stuff just had to be accepted. You had to recognize that things would make some warped green-and-gold kind of sense.
----
The Cubs’ clubhouse carpet is dark blue with a sort of tan plaid pattern over it. Harden is pretty sure he could find a shirt to match, but it wouldn’t be a big deal or anything. It’s a common pattern in a common set of colors.
This is home now. This is home. It does not matter how many times he says it to himself; right now it still feels like he’s on a road trip, in the visitors' clubhouse, and it is probably going to take a while for him to get properly used to it.
----
The first guy who actually approaches him, as opposed to staring warily from across the room, looks friendly enough. He is about Harden’s height, maybe a little bit taller. He’s neither remarkably old nor remarkably young: his hair is starting to thin some on top, but it is all reddish-brown, with no gray that Harden can see. He has a largish nose and the big, meaty forearms of someone who is either a catcher or a pitcher-- though his fingernails, as Harden gets a better look, scream pitcher. He has a thick goatee.
“Hey,” he says. “How you doin’?”
It is cheesy to articulate it as such, but Harden cannot stop himself from thinking that his heart has just skipped a beat. This guy pronounces his vowels like a Canadian.
The guy keeps coming, getting right up close. Harden cannot peg the color of his eyes; every time the guy turns his head, they look like they’re a different color, or maybe just one un-color. Are they gray? Dark grayish-blue? Desaturated green? It is a little unsettling.
Eventually the guy just stops and stares at him. “I’m good, thanks,” Harden says. “Um, how are you?”
“Good,” the guy says. “You’re the Canadian we just got.” He's making a statement, not asking, so Harden nods without otherwise replying. The guy tilts his head minutely and looks Harden up and down. “I guess you’ll do.” He holds out a hand, although he is standing right next to Harden, so Harden has to kind of hunch up one shoulder and make his arm short like a T-rex to shake. “I’m Ryan Dempster.”
“Nice to meet you,” Harden says. Dempster, sure, he knows who Dempster is. Kind of. A righty, a starter, one who comes from-- “You’re from BC too, right?”
The other Cubs are still just standing around watching this happen, which is a little uncomfortable, but Harden cannot really fault them for it. He is an alien from a legendarily alien team in a suspiciously alien league; they simply don’t know what to do with him, and apparently Dempster has been deputized to make first contact. In Oakland they sent Huston Street to feel out the new guys, because Street believed in Jesus Christ and being nice to other people.
Dempster beams at him, stretching out that goatee. “Right! You too! Whereabouts in BC are you from?”
“Victoria.”
“Victoria!” Dempster is audibly scandalized. “That’s practically America!”
Harden rolls his eyes. “It’s really not. What, are you from Fort Nelson or something?” Victoria is on one of the inlet-style bodies of water that separates Canada from the United States in that part of the world, but it is a fairly significant body of water, and its American counterpart across the way is only Port Angeles, which is a tiny smear of a town compared to Victoria. It doesn’t exactly have Windsor or Niagra-levels of contamination.
Dempster sniffs. “I’m from Gibsons.”
“Gibsons? So that’s… you’re just north of Vancouver? Excuse me for not being impressed with your life in the farthest-flung reaches of Canada’s depths.”
“I’ve gone farther than you, Richie. Can I call you Richie? I’m going to call you Richie anyways, just so you know.” Dempster slings an arm familiarly around his shoulders, which gives Harden a little pang-- it strikes him as something that an Oakland Athletic would do. “Richie, I’ve seen things that you, with your metro-Victorian mind, can’t even imagine. Incredibly Canadian things. Smoked salmon piled so high it would take your breath away. I’ve seen beavers the size of moose and moose the size of… bigger moose. Once, I stabbed a Flames fan just to watch him die.”
Dempster’s arm is heavy across his shoulders. It feels nice, grounding. “I’ve seen moose. And actually, I’m… a Flames fan…”
“What? No.” Dempster draws back, face screwed up in theatrical horror. “It cannot be!”
“I lived in Calgary for a while, sorry, man.” He smirks at Dempster, who is cringing away and making warding gestures in his direction. “Does this make things weird?”
“I was so damn excited to get another Real Live Northerner around here, and when they said you were from BC, it was like all my prayers had been answered! But this! This is like a stab to the heart. I don’t know if I can go on. I don’t… a Flames fan. No, no, it’s too painful.” Dempster flings a hand up in front of his face. “Don’t look at me! I can’t stand the gaze of your cruel demon eyes.”
“I didn’t want to make it weird,” Harden says, as sorrowfully as he can manage. His mouth naturally falls into a smirk when he isn’t paying attention, he can’t help it. “But I just can’t stop… the flame burning in my heart.”
Dempster straightens up, his eyebrows settling down in a way that makes him look almost comically stern. “Richie, I’m sorry. But you’ve left me no choice. I’m going to need to stab you now.” He lunges the remaining few inches towards Harden, who tries to duck away, even though it is basically impossible for him to escape. Dempster gets him in a headlock and starts jabbing a finger into the soft spaces between Harden’s ribs, like the most annoying older brother on the planet.
Carlos Zambrano is frozen in front of his locker, watching them with incomprehension and horror fighting for territory on his face. Harden can see as he turns, all belligerent perplexity, to Ted Lilly, who has the locker next to his. “What the fuck?”
“Canada,” Lilly says, without missing a beat.
He is still being mercilessly and relentlessly poked, but Harden grins anyways. Dempster has given these guys a way to deal with him: instead of being an unknown, destined to fit into the team in some nerve-wrackingly unspecified way, Harden is now a tidy category in their minds. He’s Another Crazy Canadian. Of course he is not at all crazy in the way that Dempster so manifestly is, but that doesn’t really matter. The other guys know, or think they know, what to make of him now. The difficult part is over. Getting rid of the remainder of that awkwardness will just be a matter of details.
----
His first game as a Cub is in Wrigley, against the Giants. They leave him in long enough to get three at-bats. He strikes out in all three, but he doesn’t hurt himself, which is probably the most he can hope for. He gives up eight baserunners but no runs and although he gets a no-decision, the Cubs manage to eke out a one-run win in the eleventh. As first game impressions go, it’s not too bad.
Dempster pulls him aside in the clubhouse afterwards. “So, yeah, welcome to Chicago,” he says. “You know, officially and all that. As your new self-appointed best friend I’m required to say that if there’s en-eeeeee-thang you need to know, come to me first.”
He knows that Dempster is just joking around, but it still feels stupidly good to have someone here call him a friend. Harden nods. “That sounds great. Right now all I really need to know is, where do you go to get a Flames jers--“
Dempster tackles him to the ground. He presses a hand down over Harden’s mouth, sitting up to pin Harden’s biceps with his knees. Harden blinks at him, which is the most he can do without resorting to kicking. Man, and he’d thought the Athletics were a physical team. He hasn’t even been here a full week and already here he is, on his back with 200 pounds of pitcher sitting on his chest. The whole team is watching.
“Can I interest you in the Blackhawks?” Dempster asks. Conversationally; like he isn’t sitting on a fellow pitcher, not even a little bit. “Because I fear that we’re going to need some sort of compromise if you want to remain among the living and non-evil.”
Harden tries to answer, but Dempster’s hand is still covering the lower half of his face, so he just ends up mouthing Dempster’s palm. It is clean from the showers, and obviously Dempster rinses thoroughly; it doesn’t really taste like anything, not even salt or soap. Dempster doesn’t move his hand right away, grinning like mad because apparently it is funny to let Harden struggle. So, whatever: Harden licks him. Dempster’s eyebrows go up.
Harden licks him again, dragging his tongue down the center of Dempster’s palm much more deliberately, looking up at Dempster’s face the whole time. He thinks he has the situation pegged, but he has to be careful here; if he’s wrong, it won’t go well for him. Dempster stares right back at him though, and slowly draws one corner of his lower lip through his teeth. He’s not angry.
Maybe it would be smart for Harden to pretend that being pinned to the floor like this is not turning him on at all, but he kind of needs Dempster to realize it, because in another minute or so it is going to be very obvious to everyone on the team, and that needs to not happen. Dempster stares at him for a very long moment, long enough for Harden to start to get a little panicky, before he rocks back on his heels and sits down hard on Harden’s groin. Harden grunts at the impact and swats at Dempster like he’s annoyed. But his burgeoning erection is now crushed under Dempster, and while that is actually kind of hot, it’s also fairly painful, which is making the problem disappear. His arms, freed from the pressure of Dempster’s knees, are tingling.
“Gross!” Dempster says, taking his hand away from Harden’s face and waving it around with an expression of disgust. Harden smirks extra-widely at him and rubs at his own biceps to try to smooth the tingling away.
----
His second game as a Cub is in Arizona. The potential heat scares him a little, until he remembers that Chase Field is a retractable dome and they will close it if it seems like it will be too hot come gametime; also, it cannot possibly be worse than Texas, and he has pitched there plenty of times. He only gives up one run and he strikes out ten Diamondbacks, but he is going up against Randy Johnson, which is just unfair. The Cubs lose two-to-nothing. It feels like Oakland.
----
His third game is back in Chicago, against the Marlins. Dempster pitches the day before and gets screwed out of a win by the bullpen. Harden only goes five innings, but he strikes out ten guys again and leaves with a lead, which the bullpen promptly gives up. Chad Gaudin kind of loses his mind in the top of the twelfth, gives up a couple of doubles, and they lose.
Harden does not slam his glove around and act all pissed off after. He’s had three good outings with this team and does not yet have a win to show for it, but his years in Oakland have prepared him for that if nothing else. It will come when-- if-- it comes. All he can do is get himself ready to go back out there in five days.
The Cubs seem surprised, though-- they walk around him carefully after the game, shooting him little apologetic looks with every appearance of Giving Him Space if He Wants It. Harden is amused and kind of suspicious that it's some sort of new kid hazing, waiting for the other cleat to drop, right up until he sees Zambrano snap at Ryan Theriot, who was 0-for-5 on the day. It is very close to a literal snap, and Theriot leaps back as if he’s been bitten. Then Harden just feels sad. If the hitters are struggling, getting angry with them is not going to help.
“It’s not usually like this,” Dempster says. He is at the locker next to Harden, leaning in to speak quietly. “The guys are usually better’n this. Sorry you’re getting such a cruddy first look.”
Harden shakes his head. “It’s fine. I mean, I know. Rough patches happen, that’s just baseball.”
“That’s very polite of you,” Dempster says.
Harden shrugs, then catches a glimpse of Dempster’s face. He turns to glare at him. Dempster is grinning, huge and toothy. The corners of his blue-gray-green eyes are crinkling up.
“I’m being reasonable. This is not about me being polite. This is not about how Canadian I am.”
“Of course it isn’t, Richie, of course it isn’t.” Dempster pats him on the shoulder. He begins to whistle a little tuneless nothing that quickly mutates into O Canada. Soon enough he is singing it, softly at first, then louder and louder, so that by the time he gets to the last we stand on guard for thee, he is shouting it lustily, hand over his heart.
There are smiles breaking out all over the clubhouse. They are guilty, reluctant, but irrepressible. Harden shakes his head again and couches his own reluctant smile in a smirk.
----
His fourth start is in Milwaukee. He is not getting any better at the plate-- he bunts into a double play, the exact sort of thing that National League pitchers should never do-- but the other Cubs back him this time, scoring five runs against the Brewers before he leaves the game.
The last batter he faces that day is Jason Kendall. Harden is tired, his pitch count up into triple digits for the first time since he joined this team, but he forces himself to work at a slow, deliberate pace, letting his arm rest as much as it possibly can between pitches. He has only given up one run so far and he does not intend to give up any more, not in this game. There is a man on second and he is pitching from the stretch, which is actually a bit of a relief; without his high leg kick, there are fewer muscles screaming at him as he launches forward across the mound.
Kendall sets his big square jaw and hoists his bat up over his shoulder. He always uses one of the pale bats, which Harden prefers; they are easier for him to see than the dark ones. He squints in for the sign from Geovany Soto, nods when he gets one that he likes, and forces himself into his pitching motion again.
When his arm comes up over his shoulder every separate part of it sings a little aria to pain, but he gets the ball on its way. Kendall swings so hard that he spins around on his heels at the plate, spraying up a little scrim of dirt. Strikeout number nine on the day.
He accepts high fives and handshakes from the guys in the dugout before trotting down the steps to the clubhouse, pulling the bottom hem of his jersey out of his pants, the first thing that every ballplayer does as soon as he is allowed. The game is over for him; he will watch the rest of it on one of the clubhouse monitors, sprawled on one of the squashy gray Milwaukee clubhouse couches, decompressing from his start and trying to act like he doesn’t miss the Oakland couches with their familiar midgame crowd of DL-crazed shortstops and pitchers with no sense of personal space.
The Cubs have some pretty intense ideas about The Concept of Team; management has 'strongly encouraged' everyone to stay up in the dugout or bullpen unless they have some incredibly pressing reason to not be there. In Oakland they were lucky if the guys who were playing that day stayed up in the dugout for the entire game.
He doesn’t get more than the top two buttons of his jersey undone before something thuds into the wall next to him. He looks up. Dempster is leaning one shoulder on the strip of wood that separates their lockers, grinning that toothy off-kilter grin. He makes a loose fist and thrusts it up to Harden’s chin, a little sports reporter interview routine. “So Richie, how does it feel to go seven innings for the first time as a Cub?”
“It feels good, Ryan, really good,” Harden says in his very best Pompous Ass voice, playing along. He pops the next button down without even thinking about it and is struck by the way Dempster’s eyes stutter. The hand holding the invisible microphone wavers slightly.
As an experiment, he plays his hands deliberately down the jersey placket and wriggles the next button out of its stitching-reinforced slot. The jersey is three-quarters of the way open now, hanging off of his shoulders, exposing most of the skintight royal blue compression tee he wears under it. Dempster drops his hand and stares at Harden, not joking anymore.
Harden swallows hard. He should stop and think about this. Definitely. There are all kinds of boundaries here, a near-infinite range of potential disastrous outcomes. There are a thousand unwritten rules of baseball teammate interaction to consider. He hasn’t even been here that long. He doesn’t even know Dempster that well! He has no idea what he’s getting into, really.
He thinks about it for maybe two seconds. He didn’t get to be a professional pitcher by using his brain, for God’s sake.
He undoes the remaining buttons on his jersey quickly, because the jersey is baggy and he wants to get rid of it fast. He shakes it off of his arms and lets it slide backwards to crumple on the floor of his locker. Dempster straightens up and leans more firmly on the locker partition. He has not taken his eyes off of Harden once. Harden isn’t even sure that he’s blinking. Dempster also hasn’t said anything, but that’s fine: they are not going to talk about this. What is there to say?
The shirt, he decides, can stay for now. He drops his hands to his belt, which is, surprise! bright blue. He had a dark green one in Oakland, which he liked better; in some lights it looked almost black, like a normal belt, and sometimes when he was packing lazy he would wear it out to bars on road trips. This Cubbie blue is much less versatile.
He unbuckles the belt and draws it slowly out of the wide gray belt loops of his uniform pants. He watches it for a second, kind of enjoying the slide of the dyed leather himself, but when he looks up at Dempster it’s even better. Dempster is chewing on his upper lip and, consequently, some of the reddish bristles growing there. One hand is still braced on the wall, but the other is hooked aggressively into his own belt, fingers dangling down to where his pants are becoming very obviously tented.
Harden works the flies of his pants open slowly, thumbing the button, teasing the zipper downwards in little fits and starts. When it’s halfway down he remembers that he’ll need to take his shoes off, so he does that hastily, toeing off each bright blue cleat and kicking them into the corner of his locker with his heels. He pinches that zipper pull between two fingers again and clicks it up and down a few times, like he is thinking about maybe re-zipping. His habitual smirk wants to come out full-force, and he sees no real reason to restrain it.
Dempster makes a little groaning sound, then clamps his mouth shut so hard that a muscle on the side of his jaw bulges momentarily. Harden has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from making any noise himself.
It is highly gratifying, though, Dempster’s reaction. Harden pulls the zipper the rest of the way down to show his appreciation. He shimmies his hips a little and lets his pants slide slowly down on their own. Dempster watches them the whole way down; his eyes do not work their way back upwards until the pants are puddled around Harden’s ankles. He steps out of them and kicks them back into his locker just like he did with his cleats. Normally he is much more careful about hanging up his gear, but right now he can make an exception.
He is down to the blue Under Armour shirt, his white sliding shorts, and the knee-high blue socks that he had on under his pant-legs. It’s kind of funny; he is used to wearing compression shorts, not the hip-and-thigh-padded sliding shorts, but since this is the National League and he is expected to at least try to get on base sometimes, he has to be prepared to run the bases, without regard for the inevitable disastrousness that would result. His jockstrap and cup are both still on under the shorts; he is rapidly becoming as hard as Dempster so evidently is, but the cup is holding him uncomfortably in check, while Dempster, who was of course not on the field today, is free to make a scene. If someone were to walk in right now, Harden would look perfectly normal, just undressing after a game. It’s Dempster who would be in trouble.
Harden reaches down and wraps a hand around his cup. He shifts it like he would during a game. Nothing untoward there, just resettling everything inside, although it is a token gesture at the moment: the state of his dick now is such that it simply cannot be comfortable so long as he keeps the cup on. Dempster’s hips twitch almost helplessly. Harden’s cup gets significantly more intolerable.
The thought of his jersey lying on the floor is at the back of his mind, driving him kind of crazy, which is maybe sort of sad, but it does give him an excuse to turn around and bend over. He can hear Dempster’s sharp intake of breath. Harden is not above showing off his ass, because he knows that it is one of his best features. He knows it’s a good ass because Zito used to tell him so, over and over again.
----
Zito had something to say about his ass pretty much every time Harden had it out of his pants, which was at least twice a day, every day during the season. Zito was fond of saying things like, “Look at that! Amazing!” and “Those have to be butt implants,” and “My God, I bet you could bounce sunflower seeds off of that ass.” Sometimes he did bounce sunflower seeds off it while Mulder covered his eyes and Hudson drawled something pithy and cutting about Zito needing to stop scaring the rookies.
Harden spent a lot of time rolling his eyes and saying, “Barr-eeeee, knock it off,” but he also never tried to get away when Zito was aiming sunflower seeds at his butt. Sometimes he flexed to make the seeds bounce farther.
There was a lot of talk there, but not a whole lot of action, and although Harden was pretty damn close to fearless on the field, he could be a little bit chicken when it came to some things. He started hooking up with Crosby after a while, for lack of anything better to do, and because Crosby seemed to be the only one who was actually interested in it. He had no idea if Zito ever noticed. But he thought that Hudson and Mulder probably figured it out before they were traded, so it stood to reason Zito would have known too. Which was fine, whatever. Like he cared.
The first time it happened Crosby put both of his hands square on the cheeks of Harden’s ass and squeezed blissfully. “Man,” he said, “this really is amazing. All this time he’s been teasin’, but Zito really was right.”
Harden closed his eyes and said, “Bobby. Can we really, just. Not talk about Zito?” Crosby took a good look at his face and shut up fast. In all the time they were to spend together away from the ballpark, he never brought Zito up again. Harden was a little bit disappointed and a little bit grateful. Eventually his mind filled up with Crosby and he forgot all about it.
----
The fabric of his jersey is heavy enough to pull the wrinkles out via gravity once it’s on the hanger. He smooths his hands down it again anyways, just in case. There is a small noise as Dempster moves in behind him. Harden takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. Dempster’s hands are surprisingly gentle as they curve around his sides.
He expects Dempster to say something now, but he doesn’t. He just leans close, so close that Harden can feel the heat of Dempster’s breath on the back of his neck. He is not pressing his hips into Harden, but he is close enough that Harden can feel the erection straining at Dempster’s pants. It seems enormous, but he is pretty sure that’s just his brain playing tricks on him.
“What d’you want?” he asks, but he asks it very quietly.
Instead of answering, Dempster slides one hand around to Harden’s stomach. He works his fingers under the tight spandex of Harden’s shirt so that he is touching skin. Harden shudders hard.
“You should shower. Before the game ends and it gets crowded. And, you know,” Dempster breathes, right in Harden’s ear, “full of sweaty gross ballplayers.” His hand keeps moving up, over Harden’s ribs, right up the center of his chest. Harden can feel goosebumps rising all over his skin. He raises his arms obediently so that Dempster can peel the t-shirt off of him. His right arm won’t go all the way up, but Dempster of course understands and anticipates that.
Dempster tilts his head and rests his lips on the side of Harden’s neck, just shy of a kiss. His fingers trail over Harden’s forearms, his biceps, skirting the edge of his armpit and up the rounded curve of his deltoids as Harden lowers his arms again. Dempster lets his hand drift down Harden’s bare side, scaring up a trail of goosebumps in its path, until it rejoins its mate back at the waistband of Harden’s sliding shorts.
If someone were to walk in at this point, they would both be in really, really big trouble.
Harden glances at the nearest tv monitor. Frequent pitching changes as both teams get into their bullpens have slowed the game down significantly; there are no outs yet in the bottom of the eighth. The raised letters spelling out CHICAGO across the front of Dempster’s jersey are scratchy against the skin of his back.
“Should get these off,” Dempster says. He gently digs his thumbs under the waistband of Harden’s shorts. “If you’re gonna shower.”
Harden tips his head back until Dempster’s nose is pressed to the back of his skull. He rests his hands on top of Dempster’s. “Yeah.” God. He cannot believe how much he has missed simply being touched, just having someone else's hands on his body like this.
----
He had his own apartment. It should have been weird for him to sleep over at the house Crosby shared with Street and Duchscherer and Swisher: they had a spare bedroom, but Harden conspicuously never used it. Luckily, Duke didn’t give a shit, and Street was too embarrassed to ever say anything, and Swisher seemed to think it was just the normal state of things. Of course Swisher had first come up in 2004, so it was all he had ever really known.
In retrospect of course it was never really about luck. It was just another example of how weird Oakland was.
Crosby was easy and familiar. Harden knew exactly how to work his fingers in Crosby’s ass to make him come without touching his dick. He knew about the spot behind Crosby’s knees that would make him go from soft to hard in a second when it was bitten. When Crosby rolled over in the morning and started rubbing himself all over Harden, Harden knew how to slide under the warm covers and hold Crosby’s hips down with a sleep-heavy arm.
Crosby woke up bright and obnoxiously early every day; Harden liked staying up late, until all the major tv channels switched over to infomercials. They rarely wanted sex at the same times, but it was fine, because they could get each other off quickly and efficiently and it was like having a groupie on-call 24-7. It was better than that, actually, because they went on all the same road trips and knew all the same stupid in-jokes.
It was very easy to take it for granted.
----
Dempster slowly kneels, peeling Harden’s shorts down along with him. It must be tough on his knees; Harden probably could not do it, and is duly impressed. Dempster drops little kisses down Harden’s back as he goes: a light touch to Harden’s spine between his shoulderblades, another in the middle of his back, a kiss to the very top of Harden’s ass, right where the waistband of his jockstrap sits.
“Christ,” Dempster mutters. Harden looks back over his shoulder. His skin is pale-- none of them have time to lie out tanning in the middle of the season, although somehow Zito always seemed to find a way-- but the leg straps of his jock are white enough to show starkly against the curves of his ass anyways. Dempster’s face is nearly level with Harden’s ass, and he is staring at it with a dazed, fixed expression that makes the rigid cup completely, totally fucking unacceptable for one second longer.
He pulls the thick elastic waistband at the top of his jock away from his stomach, holding it out with one hand as he reaches in with the other to grab the cup. There should be a laundry bin around where he can drop it off for the poor clubhouse attendants to clean, but he doesn’t see one nearby, so he just chucks it into the corner of his locker. Whatever. It’s not like this is his home clubhouse.
“Better?” Dempster asks. He nips very lightly at Harden’s ass when Harden looks at him, then sits back on his heels and runs his tongue over his lower lip. There is a very small wet spot on the front of his pants.
Harden snaps his head forward to stare into his locker and tries to get his breathing under control. God. God. The eighth inning will be over soon.
“I think I better go in for that shower now. I-- shit,” he gasps. Dempster has leaned forward again. He reaches around Harden’s waist and starts groping him through the thin fabric of the jock. He presses his face to the upper curve of Harden’s ass, goatee scratching the skin there, and feels around blindly for a minute before he gets his bearings, slides his hand under the front pocket of the jock and starts to firmly stroke Harden’s cock.
Harden shakes hard and sways forward, his knees gone weak. He slams his hands into the walls on either side of his locker to hold his weight. Pain shoots through his right arm, but Dempster’s hand on his dick feels so amazing that even the pain is somehow translated into just another kind of intense pleasure. He knows that he will pay for it later, but it is not easy to think about that right now.
Dempster has a strong, sure grip, which is only logical, since he is a pitcher. It’s wrong, but Harden cannot stop himself from making comparisons to Crosby. Crosby had smaller hands, narrower fingers, and Crosby knew Harden’s dick almost as well as Harden does. Crosby’s handjobs had been highly efficient and almost instantly effective. Dempster is just now figuring out what works for Harden and what doesn’t, learning on the fly; his fingers are almost clumsy for all that his grip is firm.
“Come on,” Dempster says, his lips moving against Harden’s back, “come on, come on, before the game ends…” He trails off and speeds up the motion of his hand. His other hand cups Harden’s balls from outside of the jock. Harden gives up any pretense of self control and starts seriously fucking Dempster’s fist, which feels amazing.
Every time he pushes forward, a hot stab of pain radiates down from his shoulder. It’s fine. He’ll have the trainer pack it in ice after the game, he’ll rest it as thoroughly as he can before his next start. He’ll have the trainer massage it, he’ll try that stupid magnet therapy, whatever it takes, he doesn’t care, it doesn’t matter, because the only thing that matters right now is the way Dempster’s thumb slips on and off of the head of Harden’s cock as he thrusts, the way Dempster’s fingertips massage his balls through the damp cotton, the way Dempster, oh God, scrapes his teeth along the line of one leg strap, down one flexing cheek of Harden’s ass, the way he drops his head down even lower and rubs the rough bristles of his goatee on the back of Harden’s thigh as he squeezes the hand around Harden’s dick rhythmically, gently rolls Harden’s balls in his palm--
Harden comes so hard that he thinks he maybe loses consciousness for a few seconds: just total white-out in his head. When he returns to general awareness, Dempster has caught him by the waist and is basically holding up upright. In another minute he more-or-less gets his feet under him again and manages to turn his head to look back at Dempster with bleary gratitude.
Dempster stands, although it is obviously difficult. His erection has not flagged one bit. Despite this, or maybe because of it, he looks incredibly pleased with himself. “I’m just gonna go. Jerk off in one of the stalls, or something.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Harden says, as soon as he can draw enough breath again to speak. “You don’t have to-- I want to…”
Dempster grins wryly at him. “That's very polite of you, but the game's over. Congrats on your first big Cubbie W.” He leans in and kisses the corner of Harden’s mouth, right where the smirk tilts up. The goatee makes Harden’s lips twitch. As Dempster turns and awkwardly waddles towards the toilets, Harden can hear the first of the other players clattering down the clubhouse steps.
He wraps a towel around his waist, gathers the clothing out of his locker, and goes looking for the laundry hamper. He finally finds it, all the way on the other side of the clubhouse, behind a supporting beam. He dumps everything in except for the jock, which he holds up by one of the leg straps and examines ruefully. It is a mess. Leaving it for the clubbies to deal with would be… well, it would just be unpardonably rude, and he cannot bring himself to do it. He finds an empty sunflower seed bag in Zambrano’s locker, wads the jockstrap into it, and throws it into the trash.
By the time he gets to the showers, half the team is already there, flicking water at each other, clogging up the drains with grass and dirt. He unwraps his towel and walks in with his head held high, trying as hard as he can to not look like a guy who just got a handjob from another pitcher, whatever that looks like. He mostly tries to not think about what just happened. There is one closed stall door in the line of toilets. He knows that Dempster is in there. He tries to not think about that either.
It immediately goes wrong: Derrek Lee and Aramis Ramirez nearly laugh him out of the showers, because he has forgotten to take his socks off. Harden can feel his face turning brilliantly, scaldingly red. “Maybe I wanted to try showering with the socks,” he says, trying to make the best of it. “As… as an experiment, you know.”
“God!” Lee shouts. “Fuckin’ Canadians!”
“What the hell does that even mean?” Harden asks plaintively. What would wearing socks in the shower have to do with being Canadian? Someone needs to explain this to him. Seriously.
The rest of the team is laughing, and he knows, he just knows that he is going to wake up to wet baseball socks draped over his face the next time he falls asleep on the team plane, and what the hell. He shakes his head under the spray of his showerhead, smirks and snickers a little. It is kind of funny. OK, OK, what the hell. He can be the weird Canadian.
It doesn’t feel anything like Oakland. But that’s all right. It's high time he learned a new way to play anyways.
Of course Harden is now on the Rangers, so let me take you back to the magical year of 2008...
It was pretty amazing to bang this out so quickly, after The Beast. Still, I remember when 7000 words felt like a longish story to me, and I can't help but wonder where it all went wrong.
pairing(s): Rich Harden/Bobby Crosby, Rich Harden/Ryan Dempster
rated: NC-17
word count: 7482
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. It is in no way a reflection on the actual life, behavior, or character of any of the people featured, and there is no connection or affiliation between this fictional story and the people or organizations it mentions. It was not written with any intent to slander or defame any of the people featured. No profit has been or ever will be made as a result of this story: it is solely for entertainment. And again, it is entirely fictional, i.e. not true.
beavers the size of moose
Nerves are not a factor here. This is his sixth professional season, and baseball is baseball. The ball weighs the same no matter where he is; the pitcher’s mound is always just so far away from home plate and no farther. He is switching leagues, so the rules are a little bit different, but most things are the same. The basic baseball stuff, the important things should be the same.
He’s just concerned. A little bit. All he’s ever known is Oakland, and he is aware that Oakland is a bit… well, a bit of an odd duck in the baseball world. He knows that when people list off teams, they tend to say things like BostonNewYorkChicagoTexasDetroitSeattle oh and Oakland. The A’s have always done things their own way-- or Billy Beane’s way, which amounts to the same thing-- and that has always meant doing things that are not what any of the other teams are doing. He is not unaware of the fact that there’s been trickle-down. Weirdness in the front office, weirdness in the clubhouse.
Guys who came into the Oakland clubhouse from elsewhere always seemed kind of surprised by it. Like the clubhouse arcade game tournaments were weird, or Zito’s enthusiastically hipsterish guitar jam sessions were somehow not quite normal. Like, who the hell played the guitar and didn't play country music? Harden had seen the scared-deer look in their eyes, the oh shit, what did I get myself into? face, something that they would have no reason to break out if their new clubhouse was at all similar to the one they had just left.
That Oakland weirdness is the totality of what he knows about professional clubhouse structure and behavior, which necessarily means that he was a pretty warped view of normal, for baseball. At least he is aware enough to realize it. In any event, it would all be just fine if he stayed in Oakland, played out the hopefully lengthy skein of his career in a series of commutes between Alameda County and British Columbia. But nobody stays in Oakland.
----
They give him some funny looks when he walks into the Chicago clubhouse. It’s one thing, he supposes, to sign with a team as a free agent, or to be traded in the offseason. You lose your buddies in the winter, but you get to work at making new ones from spring training on. Oakland has decided that it's most efficient to trade him smack dab in the middle of the season, though, so he is switching teams in the middle of July. Most of these Cubs have been playing together since February. Harden is coming out of nowhere, so far as these guys are concerned.
It would be easier if one of the players they traded away to get him had left a vaguely-Harden-shaped hole behind: if one of them was a young hard-throwing established starter, for instance. But two of the guys in the trade are outfielders and the one pitcher has only started a few games for the Cubs. Harden supposes he’s replacing the pitcher. It's not an equal value, one-for-one kind of trade, though. Harden is the centerpiece. The Cubs had to give up multiple players to get him, like trading four crappy baseball cards on the playground to get one really good card back. There is probably some specific way he’s supposed to behave in light of all this, but nobody ever bothered to tell him and he just knows that he is going to be at awkward loose ends. He’s going to overstep some invisible line and offend someone, or he will fail to live up to someone’s idea of appropriate hype, and he’ll offend them that way.
The clubhouse in Wrigley is not shaped like the one he’s used to in the Coliseum. It’s much narrower, more like an oversized hallway that someone had the bright idea of converting into a big league locker room. The trainer’s room, when they take him around to see it, is very small and cluttered, although all of the equipment is brand new and in gleaming pristine condition. In Oakland the room was bigger and the equipment shittier.
Bright blue is all over the place. It keeps throwing him off. It makes everything look smart and tidy and intentionally placed, and none of these are characteristics he is used to associating with big league clubhouses. Harden is used to seeing green and yellow thrown indiscriminately together, often in the service of really atrocious carpets, the kinds of carpets that cheap hotels probably rejected. He is used to seeing things shoehorned into the clubhouse simply because they had some combination of the right colors, not because they actually looked good or appropriate.
It is really obvious that the Cubs are willing to spend more than the A’s on décor, and it is equally obvious that the Cubs are willing to do this because they believe a nice clubhouse has some sort of positive psychological effect on the players. Harden isn’t quite sure how he feels about it. Maybe after he’s been here for a while, he’ll see if it really works or not. Maybe red, white, and blue are just always going to look cooler, neater, smarter than green, gold, and white will.
----
Three hours before gametime Zito sauntered in wearing a shirt with a pattern so eye-rending that it made Eric Chavez dry heave when he caught sight of it. Harden could only look at it by squinting, so as to reduce the amount of retinal area actually exposed to the shirt.
“Dude,” --it was kind of pandering to his madness, but Zito always responded well to ‘dude’-- “where the hell did that even come from?”
Zito stroked the front of the shirt lovingly. “This awesome little thrift store. Like, right on the waterfront? It totally doesn’t look like much so it’s totally, like, undiscovered and shit, but they always have the most amazing stuff.”
The shirt was shiny and polyester and wide-collared in a way that immediately marked its provenance in another era. Harden was a little dubious of Zito's amazing stuff declaration.
“Check this out,” Zito said. He strode into the locker room proper with the confident obliviousness of a man who really likes his shirt. Harden followed, shielding his eyes with one hand. There were exclamations of dismay from all around the room as other A's caught sight of the shirt, but Zito ignored them and sat down on the floor in front of his locker. He winked at Harden, lay back, and… disappeared.
The pattern on Zito’s new-old shirt was made up of a whole lot of different (fighting) elements, but most of them were various shades of green and golden yellow, and when Zito lay down on the carpet, the shirt turned into some freaky kind of camouflage. It was hideous and, Harden had to admit, kind of remarkable.
“As soon as I saw it I knew I had to get it,” Zito said. Harden laughed, shaking his head. If he glanced at Zito really quickly, it looked like Zito’s head and legs were floating free on the floor, his torso absent entirely. He couldn’t believe Zito, or the shirt, or the carpet-- any of it-- but then again this was Oakland, where this stuff just had to be accepted. You had to recognize that things would make some warped green-and-gold kind of sense.
----
The Cubs’ clubhouse carpet is dark blue with a sort of tan plaid pattern over it. Harden is pretty sure he could find a shirt to match, but it wouldn’t be a big deal or anything. It’s a common pattern in a common set of colors.
This is home now. This is home. It does not matter how many times he says it to himself; right now it still feels like he’s on a road trip, in the visitors' clubhouse, and it is probably going to take a while for him to get properly used to it.
----
The first guy who actually approaches him, as opposed to staring warily from across the room, looks friendly enough. He is about Harden’s height, maybe a little bit taller. He’s neither remarkably old nor remarkably young: his hair is starting to thin some on top, but it is all reddish-brown, with no gray that Harden can see. He has a largish nose and the big, meaty forearms of someone who is either a catcher or a pitcher-- though his fingernails, as Harden gets a better look, scream pitcher. He has a thick goatee.
“Hey,” he says. “How you doin’?”
It is cheesy to articulate it as such, but Harden cannot stop himself from thinking that his heart has just skipped a beat. This guy pronounces his vowels like a Canadian.
The guy keeps coming, getting right up close. Harden cannot peg the color of his eyes; every time the guy turns his head, they look like they’re a different color, or maybe just one un-color. Are they gray? Dark grayish-blue? Desaturated green? It is a little unsettling.
Eventually the guy just stops and stares at him. “I’m good, thanks,” Harden says. “Um, how are you?”
“Good,” the guy says. “You’re the Canadian we just got.” He's making a statement, not asking, so Harden nods without otherwise replying. The guy tilts his head minutely and looks Harden up and down. “I guess you’ll do.” He holds out a hand, although he is standing right next to Harden, so Harden has to kind of hunch up one shoulder and make his arm short like a T-rex to shake. “I’m Ryan Dempster.”
“Nice to meet you,” Harden says. Dempster, sure, he knows who Dempster is. Kind of. A righty, a starter, one who comes from-- “You’re from BC too, right?”
The other Cubs are still just standing around watching this happen, which is a little uncomfortable, but Harden cannot really fault them for it. He is an alien from a legendarily alien team in a suspiciously alien league; they simply don’t know what to do with him, and apparently Dempster has been deputized to make first contact. In Oakland they sent Huston Street to feel out the new guys, because Street believed in Jesus Christ and being nice to other people.
Dempster beams at him, stretching out that goatee. “Right! You too! Whereabouts in BC are you from?”
“Victoria.”
“Victoria!” Dempster is audibly scandalized. “That’s practically America!”
Harden rolls his eyes. “It’s really not. What, are you from Fort Nelson or something?” Victoria is on one of the inlet-style bodies of water that separates Canada from the United States in that part of the world, but it is a fairly significant body of water, and its American counterpart across the way is only Port Angeles, which is a tiny smear of a town compared to Victoria. It doesn’t exactly have Windsor or Niagra-levels of contamination.
Dempster sniffs. “I’m from Gibsons.”
“Gibsons? So that’s… you’re just north of Vancouver? Excuse me for not being impressed with your life in the farthest-flung reaches of Canada’s depths.”
“I’ve gone farther than you, Richie. Can I call you Richie? I’m going to call you Richie anyways, just so you know.” Dempster slings an arm familiarly around his shoulders, which gives Harden a little pang-- it strikes him as something that an Oakland Athletic would do. “Richie, I’ve seen things that you, with your metro-Victorian mind, can’t even imagine. Incredibly Canadian things. Smoked salmon piled so high it would take your breath away. I’ve seen beavers the size of moose and moose the size of… bigger moose. Once, I stabbed a Flames fan just to watch him die.”
Dempster’s arm is heavy across his shoulders. It feels nice, grounding. “I’ve seen moose. And actually, I’m… a Flames fan…”
“What? No.” Dempster draws back, face screwed up in theatrical horror. “It cannot be!”
“I lived in Calgary for a while, sorry, man.” He smirks at Dempster, who is cringing away and making warding gestures in his direction. “Does this make things weird?”
“I was so damn excited to get another Real Live Northerner around here, and when they said you were from BC, it was like all my prayers had been answered! But this! This is like a stab to the heart. I don’t know if I can go on. I don’t… a Flames fan. No, no, it’s too painful.” Dempster flings a hand up in front of his face. “Don’t look at me! I can’t stand the gaze of your cruel demon eyes.”
“I didn’t want to make it weird,” Harden says, as sorrowfully as he can manage. His mouth naturally falls into a smirk when he isn’t paying attention, he can’t help it. “But I just can’t stop… the flame burning in my heart.”
Dempster straightens up, his eyebrows settling down in a way that makes him look almost comically stern. “Richie, I’m sorry. But you’ve left me no choice. I’m going to need to stab you now.” He lunges the remaining few inches towards Harden, who tries to duck away, even though it is basically impossible for him to escape. Dempster gets him in a headlock and starts jabbing a finger into the soft spaces between Harden’s ribs, like the most annoying older brother on the planet.
Carlos Zambrano is frozen in front of his locker, watching them with incomprehension and horror fighting for territory on his face. Harden can see as he turns, all belligerent perplexity, to Ted Lilly, who has the locker next to his. “What the fuck?”
“Canada,” Lilly says, without missing a beat.
He is still being mercilessly and relentlessly poked, but Harden grins anyways. Dempster has given these guys a way to deal with him: instead of being an unknown, destined to fit into the team in some nerve-wrackingly unspecified way, Harden is now a tidy category in their minds. He’s Another Crazy Canadian. Of course he is not at all crazy in the way that Dempster so manifestly is, but that doesn’t really matter. The other guys know, or think they know, what to make of him now. The difficult part is over. Getting rid of the remainder of that awkwardness will just be a matter of details.
----
His first game as a Cub is in Wrigley, against the Giants. They leave him in long enough to get three at-bats. He strikes out in all three, but he doesn’t hurt himself, which is probably the most he can hope for. He gives up eight baserunners but no runs and although he gets a no-decision, the Cubs manage to eke out a one-run win in the eleventh. As first game impressions go, it’s not too bad.
Dempster pulls him aside in the clubhouse afterwards. “So, yeah, welcome to Chicago,” he says. “You know, officially and all that. As your new self-appointed best friend I’m required to say that if there’s en-eeeeee-thang you need to know, come to me first.”
He knows that Dempster is just joking around, but it still feels stupidly good to have someone here call him a friend. Harden nods. “That sounds great. Right now all I really need to know is, where do you go to get a Flames jers--“
Dempster tackles him to the ground. He presses a hand down over Harden’s mouth, sitting up to pin Harden’s biceps with his knees. Harden blinks at him, which is the most he can do without resorting to kicking. Man, and he’d thought the Athletics were a physical team. He hasn’t even been here a full week and already here he is, on his back with 200 pounds of pitcher sitting on his chest. The whole team is watching.
“Can I interest you in the Blackhawks?” Dempster asks. Conversationally; like he isn’t sitting on a fellow pitcher, not even a little bit. “Because I fear that we’re going to need some sort of compromise if you want to remain among the living and non-evil.”
Harden tries to answer, but Dempster’s hand is still covering the lower half of his face, so he just ends up mouthing Dempster’s palm. It is clean from the showers, and obviously Dempster rinses thoroughly; it doesn’t really taste like anything, not even salt or soap. Dempster doesn’t move his hand right away, grinning like mad because apparently it is funny to let Harden struggle. So, whatever: Harden licks him. Dempster’s eyebrows go up.
Harden licks him again, dragging his tongue down the center of Dempster’s palm much more deliberately, looking up at Dempster’s face the whole time. He thinks he has the situation pegged, but he has to be careful here; if he’s wrong, it won’t go well for him. Dempster stares right back at him though, and slowly draws one corner of his lower lip through his teeth. He’s not angry.
Maybe it would be smart for Harden to pretend that being pinned to the floor like this is not turning him on at all, but he kind of needs Dempster to realize it, because in another minute or so it is going to be very obvious to everyone on the team, and that needs to not happen. Dempster stares at him for a very long moment, long enough for Harden to start to get a little panicky, before he rocks back on his heels and sits down hard on Harden’s groin. Harden grunts at the impact and swats at Dempster like he’s annoyed. But his burgeoning erection is now crushed under Dempster, and while that is actually kind of hot, it’s also fairly painful, which is making the problem disappear. His arms, freed from the pressure of Dempster’s knees, are tingling.
“Gross!” Dempster says, taking his hand away from Harden’s face and waving it around with an expression of disgust. Harden smirks extra-widely at him and rubs at his own biceps to try to smooth the tingling away.
----
His second game as a Cub is in Arizona. The potential heat scares him a little, until he remembers that Chase Field is a retractable dome and they will close it if it seems like it will be too hot come gametime; also, it cannot possibly be worse than Texas, and he has pitched there plenty of times. He only gives up one run and he strikes out ten Diamondbacks, but he is going up against Randy Johnson, which is just unfair. The Cubs lose two-to-nothing. It feels like Oakland.
----
His third game is back in Chicago, against the Marlins. Dempster pitches the day before and gets screwed out of a win by the bullpen. Harden only goes five innings, but he strikes out ten guys again and leaves with a lead, which the bullpen promptly gives up. Chad Gaudin kind of loses his mind in the top of the twelfth, gives up a couple of doubles, and they lose.
Harden does not slam his glove around and act all pissed off after. He’s had three good outings with this team and does not yet have a win to show for it, but his years in Oakland have prepared him for that if nothing else. It will come when-- if-- it comes. All he can do is get himself ready to go back out there in five days.
The Cubs seem surprised, though-- they walk around him carefully after the game, shooting him little apologetic looks with every appearance of Giving Him Space if He Wants It. Harden is amused and kind of suspicious that it's some sort of new kid hazing, waiting for the other cleat to drop, right up until he sees Zambrano snap at Ryan Theriot, who was 0-for-5 on the day. It is very close to a literal snap, and Theriot leaps back as if he’s been bitten. Then Harden just feels sad. If the hitters are struggling, getting angry with them is not going to help.
“It’s not usually like this,” Dempster says. He is at the locker next to Harden, leaning in to speak quietly. “The guys are usually better’n this. Sorry you’re getting such a cruddy first look.”
Harden shakes his head. “It’s fine. I mean, I know. Rough patches happen, that’s just baseball.”
“That’s very polite of you,” Dempster says.
Harden shrugs, then catches a glimpse of Dempster’s face. He turns to glare at him. Dempster is grinning, huge and toothy. The corners of his blue-gray-green eyes are crinkling up.
“I’m being reasonable. This is not about me being polite. This is not about how Canadian I am.”
“Of course it isn’t, Richie, of course it isn’t.” Dempster pats him on the shoulder. He begins to whistle a little tuneless nothing that quickly mutates into O Canada. Soon enough he is singing it, softly at first, then louder and louder, so that by the time he gets to the last we stand on guard for thee, he is shouting it lustily, hand over his heart.
There are smiles breaking out all over the clubhouse. They are guilty, reluctant, but irrepressible. Harden shakes his head again and couches his own reluctant smile in a smirk.
----
His fourth start is in Milwaukee. He is not getting any better at the plate-- he bunts into a double play, the exact sort of thing that National League pitchers should never do-- but the other Cubs back him this time, scoring five runs against the Brewers before he leaves the game.
The last batter he faces that day is Jason Kendall. Harden is tired, his pitch count up into triple digits for the first time since he joined this team, but he forces himself to work at a slow, deliberate pace, letting his arm rest as much as it possibly can between pitches. He has only given up one run so far and he does not intend to give up any more, not in this game. There is a man on second and he is pitching from the stretch, which is actually a bit of a relief; without his high leg kick, there are fewer muscles screaming at him as he launches forward across the mound.
Kendall sets his big square jaw and hoists his bat up over his shoulder. He always uses one of the pale bats, which Harden prefers; they are easier for him to see than the dark ones. He squints in for the sign from Geovany Soto, nods when he gets one that he likes, and forces himself into his pitching motion again.
When his arm comes up over his shoulder every separate part of it sings a little aria to pain, but he gets the ball on its way. Kendall swings so hard that he spins around on his heels at the plate, spraying up a little scrim of dirt. Strikeout number nine on the day.
He accepts high fives and handshakes from the guys in the dugout before trotting down the steps to the clubhouse, pulling the bottom hem of his jersey out of his pants, the first thing that every ballplayer does as soon as he is allowed. The game is over for him; he will watch the rest of it on one of the clubhouse monitors, sprawled on one of the squashy gray Milwaukee clubhouse couches, decompressing from his start and trying to act like he doesn’t miss the Oakland couches with their familiar midgame crowd of DL-crazed shortstops and pitchers with no sense of personal space.
The Cubs have some pretty intense ideas about The Concept of Team; management has 'strongly encouraged' everyone to stay up in the dugout or bullpen unless they have some incredibly pressing reason to not be there. In Oakland they were lucky if the guys who were playing that day stayed up in the dugout for the entire game.
He doesn’t get more than the top two buttons of his jersey undone before something thuds into the wall next to him. He looks up. Dempster is leaning one shoulder on the strip of wood that separates their lockers, grinning that toothy off-kilter grin. He makes a loose fist and thrusts it up to Harden’s chin, a little sports reporter interview routine. “So Richie, how does it feel to go seven innings for the first time as a Cub?”
“It feels good, Ryan, really good,” Harden says in his very best Pompous Ass voice, playing along. He pops the next button down without even thinking about it and is struck by the way Dempster’s eyes stutter. The hand holding the invisible microphone wavers slightly.
As an experiment, he plays his hands deliberately down the jersey placket and wriggles the next button out of its stitching-reinforced slot. The jersey is three-quarters of the way open now, hanging off of his shoulders, exposing most of the skintight royal blue compression tee he wears under it. Dempster drops his hand and stares at Harden, not joking anymore.
Harden swallows hard. He should stop and think about this. Definitely. There are all kinds of boundaries here, a near-infinite range of potential disastrous outcomes. There are a thousand unwritten rules of baseball teammate interaction to consider. He hasn’t even been here that long. He doesn’t even know Dempster that well! He has no idea what he’s getting into, really.
He thinks about it for maybe two seconds. He didn’t get to be a professional pitcher by using his brain, for God’s sake.
He undoes the remaining buttons on his jersey quickly, because the jersey is baggy and he wants to get rid of it fast. He shakes it off of his arms and lets it slide backwards to crumple on the floor of his locker. Dempster straightens up and leans more firmly on the locker partition. He has not taken his eyes off of Harden once. Harden isn’t even sure that he’s blinking. Dempster also hasn’t said anything, but that’s fine: they are not going to talk about this. What is there to say?
The shirt, he decides, can stay for now. He drops his hands to his belt, which is, surprise! bright blue. He had a dark green one in Oakland, which he liked better; in some lights it looked almost black, like a normal belt, and sometimes when he was packing lazy he would wear it out to bars on road trips. This Cubbie blue is much less versatile.
He unbuckles the belt and draws it slowly out of the wide gray belt loops of his uniform pants. He watches it for a second, kind of enjoying the slide of the dyed leather himself, but when he looks up at Dempster it’s even better. Dempster is chewing on his upper lip and, consequently, some of the reddish bristles growing there. One hand is still braced on the wall, but the other is hooked aggressively into his own belt, fingers dangling down to where his pants are becoming very obviously tented.
Harden works the flies of his pants open slowly, thumbing the button, teasing the zipper downwards in little fits and starts. When it’s halfway down he remembers that he’ll need to take his shoes off, so he does that hastily, toeing off each bright blue cleat and kicking them into the corner of his locker with his heels. He pinches that zipper pull between two fingers again and clicks it up and down a few times, like he is thinking about maybe re-zipping. His habitual smirk wants to come out full-force, and he sees no real reason to restrain it.
Dempster makes a little groaning sound, then clamps his mouth shut so hard that a muscle on the side of his jaw bulges momentarily. Harden has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from making any noise himself.
It is highly gratifying, though, Dempster’s reaction. Harden pulls the zipper the rest of the way down to show his appreciation. He shimmies his hips a little and lets his pants slide slowly down on their own. Dempster watches them the whole way down; his eyes do not work their way back upwards until the pants are puddled around Harden’s ankles. He steps out of them and kicks them back into his locker just like he did with his cleats. Normally he is much more careful about hanging up his gear, but right now he can make an exception.
He is down to the blue Under Armour shirt, his white sliding shorts, and the knee-high blue socks that he had on under his pant-legs. It’s kind of funny; he is used to wearing compression shorts, not the hip-and-thigh-padded sliding shorts, but since this is the National League and he is expected to at least try to get on base sometimes, he has to be prepared to run the bases, without regard for the inevitable disastrousness that would result. His jockstrap and cup are both still on under the shorts; he is rapidly becoming as hard as Dempster so evidently is, but the cup is holding him uncomfortably in check, while Dempster, who was of course not on the field today, is free to make a scene. If someone were to walk in right now, Harden would look perfectly normal, just undressing after a game. It’s Dempster who would be in trouble.
Harden reaches down and wraps a hand around his cup. He shifts it like he would during a game. Nothing untoward there, just resettling everything inside, although it is a token gesture at the moment: the state of his dick now is such that it simply cannot be comfortable so long as he keeps the cup on. Dempster’s hips twitch almost helplessly. Harden’s cup gets significantly more intolerable.
The thought of his jersey lying on the floor is at the back of his mind, driving him kind of crazy, which is maybe sort of sad, but it does give him an excuse to turn around and bend over. He can hear Dempster’s sharp intake of breath. Harden is not above showing off his ass, because he knows that it is one of his best features. He knows it’s a good ass because Zito used to tell him so, over and over again.
----
Zito had something to say about his ass pretty much every time Harden had it out of his pants, which was at least twice a day, every day during the season. Zito was fond of saying things like, “Look at that! Amazing!” and “Those have to be butt implants,” and “My God, I bet you could bounce sunflower seeds off of that ass.” Sometimes he did bounce sunflower seeds off it while Mulder covered his eyes and Hudson drawled something pithy and cutting about Zito needing to stop scaring the rookies.
Harden spent a lot of time rolling his eyes and saying, “Barr-eeeee, knock it off,” but he also never tried to get away when Zito was aiming sunflower seeds at his butt. Sometimes he flexed to make the seeds bounce farther.
There was a lot of talk there, but not a whole lot of action, and although Harden was pretty damn close to fearless on the field, he could be a little bit chicken when it came to some things. He started hooking up with Crosby after a while, for lack of anything better to do, and because Crosby seemed to be the only one who was actually interested in it. He had no idea if Zito ever noticed. But he thought that Hudson and Mulder probably figured it out before they were traded, so it stood to reason Zito would have known too. Which was fine, whatever. Like he cared.
The first time it happened Crosby put both of his hands square on the cheeks of Harden’s ass and squeezed blissfully. “Man,” he said, “this really is amazing. All this time he’s been teasin’, but Zito really was right.”
Harden closed his eyes and said, “Bobby. Can we really, just. Not talk about Zito?” Crosby took a good look at his face and shut up fast. In all the time they were to spend together away from the ballpark, he never brought Zito up again. Harden was a little bit disappointed and a little bit grateful. Eventually his mind filled up with Crosby and he forgot all about it.
----
The fabric of his jersey is heavy enough to pull the wrinkles out via gravity once it’s on the hanger. He smooths his hands down it again anyways, just in case. There is a small noise as Dempster moves in behind him. Harden takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. Dempster’s hands are surprisingly gentle as they curve around his sides.
He expects Dempster to say something now, but he doesn’t. He just leans close, so close that Harden can feel the heat of Dempster’s breath on the back of his neck. He is not pressing his hips into Harden, but he is close enough that Harden can feel the erection straining at Dempster’s pants. It seems enormous, but he is pretty sure that’s just his brain playing tricks on him.
“What d’you want?” he asks, but he asks it very quietly.
Instead of answering, Dempster slides one hand around to Harden’s stomach. He works his fingers under the tight spandex of Harden’s shirt so that he is touching skin. Harden shudders hard.
“You should shower. Before the game ends and it gets crowded. And, you know,” Dempster breathes, right in Harden’s ear, “full of sweaty gross ballplayers.” His hand keeps moving up, over Harden’s ribs, right up the center of his chest. Harden can feel goosebumps rising all over his skin. He raises his arms obediently so that Dempster can peel the t-shirt off of him. His right arm won’t go all the way up, but Dempster of course understands and anticipates that.
Dempster tilts his head and rests his lips on the side of Harden’s neck, just shy of a kiss. His fingers trail over Harden’s forearms, his biceps, skirting the edge of his armpit and up the rounded curve of his deltoids as Harden lowers his arms again. Dempster lets his hand drift down Harden’s bare side, scaring up a trail of goosebumps in its path, until it rejoins its mate back at the waistband of Harden’s sliding shorts.
If someone were to walk in at this point, they would both be in really, really big trouble.
Harden glances at the nearest tv monitor. Frequent pitching changes as both teams get into their bullpens have slowed the game down significantly; there are no outs yet in the bottom of the eighth. The raised letters spelling out CHICAGO across the front of Dempster’s jersey are scratchy against the skin of his back.
“Should get these off,” Dempster says. He gently digs his thumbs under the waistband of Harden’s shorts. “If you’re gonna shower.”
Harden tips his head back until Dempster’s nose is pressed to the back of his skull. He rests his hands on top of Dempster’s. “Yeah.” God. He cannot believe how much he has missed simply being touched, just having someone else's hands on his body like this.
----
He had his own apartment. It should have been weird for him to sleep over at the house Crosby shared with Street and Duchscherer and Swisher: they had a spare bedroom, but Harden conspicuously never used it. Luckily, Duke didn’t give a shit, and Street was too embarrassed to ever say anything, and Swisher seemed to think it was just the normal state of things. Of course Swisher had first come up in 2004, so it was all he had ever really known.
In retrospect of course it was never really about luck. It was just another example of how weird Oakland was.
Crosby was easy and familiar. Harden knew exactly how to work his fingers in Crosby’s ass to make him come without touching his dick. He knew about the spot behind Crosby’s knees that would make him go from soft to hard in a second when it was bitten. When Crosby rolled over in the morning and started rubbing himself all over Harden, Harden knew how to slide under the warm covers and hold Crosby’s hips down with a sleep-heavy arm.
Crosby woke up bright and obnoxiously early every day; Harden liked staying up late, until all the major tv channels switched over to infomercials. They rarely wanted sex at the same times, but it was fine, because they could get each other off quickly and efficiently and it was like having a groupie on-call 24-7. It was better than that, actually, because they went on all the same road trips and knew all the same stupid in-jokes.
It was very easy to take it for granted.
----
Dempster slowly kneels, peeling Harden’s shorts down along with him. It must be tough on his knees; Harden probably could not do it, and is duly impressed. Dempster drops little kisses down Harden’s back as he goes: a light touch to Harden’s spine between his shoulderblades, another in the middle of his back, a kiss to the very top of Harden’s ass, right where the waistband of his jockstrap sits.
“Christ,” Dempster mutters. Harden looks back over his shoulder. His skin is pale-- none of them have time to lie out tanning in the middle of the season, although somehow Zito always seemed to find a way-- but the leg straps of his jock are white enough to show starkly against the curves of his ass anyways. Dempster’s face is nearly level with Harden’s ass, and he is staring at it with a dazed, fixed expression that makes the rigid cup completely, totally fucking unacceptable for one second longer.
He pulls the thick elastic waistband at the top of his jock away from his stomach, holding it out with one hand as he reaches in with the other to grab the cup. There should be a laundry bin around where he can drop it off for the poor clubhouse attendants to clean, but he doesn’t see one nearby, so he just chucks it into the corner of his locker. Whatever. It’s not like this is his home clubhouse.
“Better?” Dempster asks. He nips very lightly at Harden’s ass when Harden looks at him, then sits back on his heels and runs his tongue over his lower lip. There is a very small wet spot on the front of his pants.
Harden snaps his head forward to stare into his locker and tries to get his breathing under control. God. God. The eighth inning will be over soon.
“I think I better go in for that shower now. I-- shit,” he gasps. Dempster has leaned forward again. He reaches around Harden’s waist and starts groping him through the thin fabric of the jock. He presses his face to the upper curve of Harden’s ass, goatee scratching the skin there, and feels around blindly for a minute before he gets his bearings, slides his hand under the front pocket of the jock and starts to firmly stroke Harden’s cock.
Harden shakes hard and sways forward, his knees gone weak. He slams his hands into the walls on either side of his locker to hold his weight. Pain shoots through his right arm, but Dempster’s hand on his dick feels so amazing that even the pain is somehow translated into just another kind of intense pleasure. He knows that he will pay for it later, but it is not easy to think about that right now.
Dempster has a strong, sure grip, which is only logical, since he is a pitcher. It’s wrong, but Harden cannot stop himself from making comparisons to Crosby. Crosby had smaller hands, narrower fingers, and Crosby knew Harden’s dick almost as well as Harden does. Crosby’s handjobs had been highly efficient and almost instantly effective. Dempster is just now figuring out what works for Harden and what doesn’t, learning on the fly; his fingers are almost clumsy for all that his grip is firm.
“Come on,” Dempster says, his lips moving against Harden’s back, “come on, come on, before the game ends…” He trails off and speeds up the motion of his hand. His other hand cups Harden’s balls from outside of the jock. Harden gives up any pretense of self control and starts seriously fucking Dempster’s fist, which feels amazing.
Every time he pushes forward, a hot stab of pain radiates down from his shoulder. It’s fine. He’ll have the trainer pack it in ice after the game, he’ll rest it as thoroughly as he can before his next start. He’ll have the trainer massage it, he’ll try that stupid magnet therapy, whatever it takes, he doesn’t care, it doesn’t matter, because the only thing that matters right now is the way Dempster’s thumb slips on and off of the head of Harden’s cock as he thrusts, the way Dempster’s fingertips massage his balls through the damp cotton, the way Dempster, oh God, scrapes his teeth along the line of one leg strap, down one flexing cheek of Harden’s ass, the way he drops his head down even lower and rubs the rough bristles of his goatee on the back of Harden’s thigh as he squeezes the hand around Harden’s dick rhythmically, gently rolls Harden’s balls in his palm--
Harden comes so hard that he thinks he maybe loses consciousness for a few seconds: just total white-out in his head. When he returns to general awareness, Dempster has caught him by the waist and is basically holding up upright. In another minute he more-or-less gets his feet under him again and manages to turn his head to look back at Dempster with bleary gratitude.
Dempster stands, although it is obviously difficult. His erection has not flagged one bit. Despite this, or maybe because of it, he looks incredibly pleased with himself. “I’m just gonna go. Jerk off in one of the stalls, or something.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Harden says, as soon as he can draw enough breath again to speak. “You don’t have to-- I want to…”
Dempster grins wryly at him. “That's very polite of you, but the game's over. Congrats on your first big Cubbie W.” He leans in and kisses the corner of Harden’s mouth, right where the smirk tilts up. The goatee makes Harden’s lips twitch. As Dempster turns and awkwardly waddles towards the toilets, Harden can hear the first of the other players clattering down the clubhouse steps.
He wraps a towel around his waist, gathers the clothing out of his locker, and goes looking for the laundry hamper. He finally finds it, all the way on the other side of the clubhouse, behind a supporting beam. He dumps everything in except for the jock, which he holds up by one of the leg straps and examines ruefully. It is a mess. Leaving it for the clubbies to deal with would be… well, it would just be unpardonably rude, and he cannot bring himself to do it. He finds an empty sunflower seed bag in Zambrano’s locker, wads the jockstrap into it, and throws it into the trash.
By the time he gets to the showers, half the team is already there, flicking water at each other, clogging up the drains with grass and dirt. He unwraps his towel and walks in with his head held high, trying as hard as he can to not look like a guy who just got a handjob from another pitcher, whatever that looks like. He mostly tries to not think about what just happened. There is one closed stall door in the line of toilets. He knows that Dempster is in there. He tries to not think about that either.
It immediately goes wrong: Derrek Lee and Aramis Ramirez nearly laugh him out of the showers, because he has forgotten to take his socks off. Harden can feel his face turning brilliantly, scaldingly red. “Maybe I wanted to try showering with the socks,” he says, trying to make the best of it. “As… as an experiment, you know.”
“God!” Lee shouts. “Fuckin’ Canadians!”
“What the hell does that even mean?” Harden asks plaintively. What would wearing socks in the shower have to do with being Canadian? Someone needs to explain this to him. Seriously.
The rest of the team is laughing, and he knows, he just knows that he is going to wake up to wet baseball socks draped over his face the next time he falls asleep on the team plane, and what the hell. He shakes his head under the spray of his showerhead, smirks and snickers a little. It is kind of funny. OK, OK, what the hell. He can be the weird Canadian.
It doesn’t feel anything like Oakland. But that’s all right. It's high time he learned a new way to play anyways.