don't look like a poser in a high-speed chase
So, my computer was dying, dying really quickly and in a fully obnoxious way. It stopped registering the power cord, or the connection got too loose or some shit, but it wouldn't charge half the time and I'd have to jiggle the cord and prop it up on card decks and all manner just to keep the thing on. And finally it stopped working and no matter what I did it wouldn't charge and eventually it wouldn't even turn on anymore. Dead!
Not only dead, but trapping a few fragments and beginnings, maybe five pages of a Munson/Chavez story that has nothing to do with the epic (imagine!), and everything to do with 16, maybe less, a song off that iron & wine and calexico album that was on loop as those five pages got written, and also there was a page or two of the first version of the story that follows. There is a lot of other stuff that I am forgetting, all the half ideas and false starts.
But! I am totally zen about the whole thing, because literally the day my computer finally died, I got the go-ahead from the 'rents to get a new computer as an early birthday/christmas thing, and the day after it died, I went to the Apple Store and picked up this here mad sly MacBook.
Very exciting stuff. I am obsessed with the thing. My old computer was so broke-ass, hadn't been able to watch anything downloaded or streamed for a year, stopped being able to burn cds like six months ago, it was becoming so useless. And now, now. Macs really are something. I see what all the fuss is about.
Downloaded the second season of Supernatural and am just tearing through that motherfucker, and in the time between I picked up on the other currently-stuck-on-a-harddrive-encased-in-worthlessness story, not the Munson/Chavez one (which I should be able to recreate), but instead:
Cellar Door
By Candle Beck
Zito loses another game, and then he gets the hell out of there.
He blows off his teammates and the reporters, not typical behavior but he's had a rough couple months. Nobody can begrudge him. Dashes through his post-game routine and dresses with his skin still damp, his shirt sticking to his back in long streaks. He can feel his wet hair brushing on the bunched hood of his sweatshirt as he throws together a sandwich at the spread.
Lincecum materializes beside him while he's waiting for the elevator, in the spooky ninja manner that he has. Zito is bolting his sandwich and almost chokes. Lincecum whacks him on the back a few times, rattling Zito's whole body.
"Y'all right?"
Zito shrugs his hand away. "Fine."
"Coming out with us tonight?"
"Nope."
"Aw come on." His fucking hand is back, poking at Zito's arm as Lincecum tries a winning grin, almost gap-toothed. Zito shuts his eyes, god give me strength.
"No means no, Tim."
Lincecum cannot take a hint worth shit and he pokes Zito a few more times desultorily, without real intent. Zito counts his breaths and manages not to bodily injure the future of the goddamn team, and the elevator arrives with a low bonging sound.
"Where you going, anyway?" Lincecum asks, rocking back on his heels and licking his lips and blinking all big-eyed and there is no way Zito was this annoying when he was twenty-four years old.
Zito gets on the elevator and turns, levels a long look at the kid while he considers just not answering, maybe grinning merrily and shooting Lincecum the bird as the doors close. Something about Lincecum brings out the asshole in Zito, or maybe it's just San Francisco.
"Cleveland," Zito says, and Tim's face falls a little bit like he thinks Zito's fucking with him, and usually Zito would be, but tonight it's true.
Zito puts on his sunglasses even though it's nighttime, pulls up his hoodie hood. Most of the crowd has dispersed, but certainly the last thing Zito wants right now is to be spotted by any fans. He might not get away alive. It's cold outside, a biting wind and a chalk smear of the moon behind gray clouds. The marina lights shine golden on the bay, the naked sailboats with their white masts clustered like a small albino forest.
Zito has left his car in the garage, somewhere under the asphalt under his sneakers, and he hails a cab out on King Street. He throws his bag onto the seat and then follows it in, saying shortly, "Airport."
And then they're off.
Familiar highway sights, the rows of little boxes lit up on the hillside and the mass of billboards like pages lost out of some immense picturebook, and Zito takes his sunglasses off, keeps his hood up. The world is reduced to what can fit in a soft cotton frame, trapped in a cab's window.
He thinks for a minute about Tim Lincecum, who makes Zito's hands itch. He puts Zito on edge like living with a werewolf, something supernatural and beyond explanation. Insane fastballs come wrenching out of Lincecum's skinny body. His change-up hits a wall, just fucking dies. Zito never trusts anybody who pitches that well, always on guard for people who've sold their souls, but Lincecum's also such a stupid clueless kid with such a stupid obvious crush on Zito and Zito doesn't even know where to begin with that. It's all very unnerving and off-putting.
But it's also no longer Zito's problem, as the cheap motels and park-and-flys start to dominate the landscape. Zito scoots over to the other side of the car so he can see the long hangars and the ranks of planes like toys on the carpet. When he was a kid, his dad would take him to watch the planes taking off on Saturday afternoons, back when you could still go back without a ticket. Zito loved that; his dad has told him how he howled when it was time to leave.
It's a pretty cool-looking airport, the new facade swooped in almond shapes and glowing geometrically like an alien city. Zito relaxes back into the seat, unconsciously soothed by the proximity of escape.
He gets to say, "Put me on the next flight to Cleveland," a lifelong dream, but the ticket lady doesn't look particularly impressed, and Zito wonders if there is an impulsive subculture ever asking for the next flight, jetting off at the proverbial moment's notice, and he wonders how he could swing that gig.
He's only got his game bag, which has the clothes he came to the ballpark in and a clean change of underwear and his Giants sweatshirt and another pair of shoes, his glove and back-up glove and batting gloves and everyday cap, a few spare baseballs clonking around the bottom with rolls of tape and half-finished bags of sunflower seeds and his portable transistor radio. It's just small enough that he doesn't have to check it, and he buys a couple random magazines and some gummi bears, stands sock-footed in line for security, kinda dazed from staring at all the people locked into their small traveling worlds.
There's an hour to kill before boarding. Zito decapitates the gummi bears one at a time, to the fascination of a small black boy in a red-striped shirt with the biggest eyes of anyone Zito's ever seen. He wants to offer the kid some bears to do away with himself, but the kid's mom is on the phone and beautiful and incredibly intimidating and Zito doesn't want to get into a whole thing about whether processed sugar is okay.
He flicks at his magazines but they're already boring. He checks his watch four times in two minutes and thinks about how it's one in the morning in Cleveland and they'll be splitting up, leaving the hotel bar in ones and twos, yawning and rubbing the backs of their necks in the elevator.
Zito takes out his phone and calls Eric Chavez.
It rings and rings, and Zito has resigned himself to hanging up on Chavez's voicemail when suddenly he's there, talking too loud amid a tidal wave noise, "-know, Jack, but you'll be the first fuckin' one I tell. Hello? Z?"
"Hiya."
"Lemme just-" There's some rustling and the muffled chorus behind Chavez's voice fades a little bit. "Loud-ass motherfuckers. Your team's not so fucking loud I bet."
Zito doesn't even flinch, which is how far he's come. "They have their moments."
"What's up? I, uh, I don't think I looked at the scores tonight. You pitched, right, somebody was saying something."
"Lost again. Same old. How's. Where are you guys?"
"Ah, where in the world--hey rookie pop quiz, what city are we in?" There's a muffled response and Chavez reports, "Cleveland."
"Hmm." Zito steeples one hand over his eyes, concentrating on keeping his voice even and unsuspicious. "That's the, the Ritz-Carlton downtown, right? Indoor pool, if I'm remembering correct."
"Closed for renovations, actually. And this idiotic blue color scheme in all the rooms on our floor. Makes me seasick." Chavez is slurring a little.
"You sound kinda drunk, Chav."
"Well, that's understandable."
Zito laughs through his nose. He can see the faux-serious face Chavez wears when he's drunk, the way he bobs his head slightly and hiccups every few minutes, his shoulders jumping.
"I wasn't sure you were still traveling with the team," Zito says, and then bites his tongue. There's a brief silence, Chavez breathing out against the receiver.
"Yeah well."
Chavez doesn't say anything else, but Zito shouldn't have said anything to begin with, so he lets it go. Chavez has been hurt in one way or another for the majority of the past two years. He's got a small son and a pregnant wife at home and another surgery scheduled for the fall, but he's still going where the A's go, watching his team lose all over the country.
"All right, well," Zito says, and trails off sorta expectantly. Chavez doesn't help him out, and Zito ends up saying, "I'll let you get back to it, I guess."
"You probably got some film to watch, huh," Chavez says, and it's pretty cruel but no worse than anything Zito's done to him.
"Guess I do."
"Well. Thanks for the call."
"Oh you know." Zito presses a fist against his eye. "Just checkin' in."
He ends the call and stares blankly into the middle distance for awhile. It always makes him feel weird. He feels like his voice doesn't sound right when he's talking to a former teammate, like the words don't really fit his mouth the same way and he can't be sure they mean what he thinks they do. The conversations are always brief and disjointed and he's always bailing out early, hating the deadened silences. Zito has never been any good at keeping up with old friends, which is why he doesn't have very many.
He tries to sleep on the flight but doesn't have any luck. Resting his head on the window, his legs stretched out as far as they will go and already starting to cramp, Zito replays past sexual experiences on the black backs of his eyelids, certain grips and a specific mouth dragging across his shoulder.
Everything will be better when he gets to Cleveland. He'll be less exhausted and less emotionally unstable. These mood swings, these sudden surges towards violence and all the dumb stuff he blurts out--all this will be made right again in Ohio.
The flight attendant brings him drinks and seems to recognize him, a sideways smile and the tip of an eyebrow, but she doesn't say anything and Zito's glad. He's honestly started to dread being approached, called by name by someone he's never met. He's not famous for the right reasons anymore and he feels like a bad joke and he doesn't even want people looking at him because they think he's cute. He doesn't want anybody to look at him at all, really, which is a new and disturbing thing, not what he was taught.
Cleveland rises from the plains, smears of suburban light for miles around, backed up against the lake like a star in front of a black hole. Zito's forehead is on the window and he has a vague impression of fog, his breath clouding briefly on the plasticky glass.
Somewhere down there. Somewhere in the gold chrome crush of downtown, the slick streets with the stoplights changing in unison, somewhere down there is an alley and a backdoor to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.
Zito jitters in the back of the cab, watching his hands dance on his knees. His mouth is dry and he'd be worried about the speed of his heartbeat if he didn't like it so much. Some of his general misery sloughs off as the buildings get taller and taller around him.
He's really close now.
There's a Latino guy smoking a cigarette in the alley behind the Ritz-Carlton, wearing a blinding white shirt and black pants, someone from the kitchen, and he looks faintly familiar. Zito figures what the hell and goes up to him, his bag slung over his shoulder.
"Um, hi." The guy cases him with a look but doesn't say anything, his eyes squinty through the smoke. Zito rubs his hand fast on his leg, tries out a grin. "You remember me?"
The guy shakes his head, and Zito says, "I'm on the team. The A's? I came in with them yesterday?"
The guy's eyes narrow and he looks at Zito more closely, and Zito is relieved to see the suspicion in his face fade a little bit. All ballplayers look the same, in or out of uniform. The guy nods, offers Zito his cigarette, which Zito turns down.
"So, we have this curfew? Supposed to be back at midnight but I, I lost my key and I forget what floor we're on and I can't get into trouble again so, um." Zito rummages for his wallet, fingers a twenty but takes out a fifty instead. "You think you can help me out?"
Plucking the bill from Zito's fingers, the guy looks it over to make sure it's legit, then smirks at Zito. "No problem, boy."
He flicks the butt away, pinwheel orange spark flying into the darkness, and punches in the code for the backdoor, holding it open and telling Zito, "They're on the fourteenth. Take that elevator, the back one."
"Gracias," Zito says, already moving past the empty pastry carts and crates of oranges, eyes fixed on the scuffed dull silver of the freight elevator doors.
An almost-perfect plan, he realizes as he steps out onto the blue carpet of the fourteenth floor. It's very very late and the hallway is deserted except for empty room service plates, napkins crumpled into small mountains. Almost-perfect because Zito doesn't know which room is the right one, and he certainly can't bribe someone to tell him.
He can't be seen by anybody else on the team. He would spontaneously die of humiliation.
Zito paces down the endless blue runway, letting his fingers brush lightly on each door he passes, feeling like he should be able to sense it. The right door should call out to him because the man behind it is Zito's one true love.
But life's not a fairy tale, or at least, not much of one, and the doors are impassive, identical, unmoved by Zito's crumbling defenses. Way down at the far end, there's an A's cap smashed on the carpet, and Zito picks it up, sees the number 24 inked on the underside of the brim and leaves it on the floor.
His third pass down the hall finds him increasingly distressed and berating himself more and more for haring the fuck off without any kind of plan and having his luck run out when he is literally within feet of his goal. He's kicking miserably at the carpet when his eyes fall on the room service plates again and his mind lights up.
He goes back, checking each plate this time, and towards the end of the hall he finds it, hamburger remains with the tomato slices stacked uneaten and post-modern swirls of dried ketchup decorating the pale ceramic. The tomato slices are a pretty good clue but the ketchup art is the kicker.
Zito leans against the door, breathing out for a long moment. He lets a measure of anxiety slip off him, rolling his shoulders back. He knocks softly three times, waits ten seconds, then does it again, and he keeps that up for almost two minutes.
He's lulled himself into a kind of a trance when the door is suddenly snatched out from under him, a snarl busting the quiet, "Who the fuck-" and Zito falls into Bobby and almost knocks him down.
"What-" Crosby grabs Zito's arms and sets him upright. "Barry?"
Zito hugs Crosby tight, presses his face into his neck. It's awesome, fucking unbelievable. "Bobby."
Crosby's hands alight on Zito's hips. "The fuck are you doing here?"
"Oh, you know." Zito lets out a breath that actually hurts, he's been holding it so long. "Was in the neighborhood."
Crosby gets the door closed, gets Zito pushed up against it. Zito goes wherever Crosby wants him to, his back hits the wood and it's like something presses into place with a palpable click, like his ribcage was out of joint but now he's okay. Crosby's hands are flat and wide on Zito's chest, his eyebrows up and there's a scratch on the line of his jaw, a hole in the collar of his T-shirt.
"You're nuts," Crosby tells him, but it's mostly by rote, Zito can tell. It should go without saying by now, Zito being crazy.
Zito is grinning, that huge idiot grin of his. He runs his hand over Crosby's short hair, touches the back of his neck and lets his fingers get in under Crosby's shirt.
"You happy to see me, Bobby?"
The edge of Crosby's mouth crooks up. "Over the fuckin' moon, babe."
Zito kisses him, a quick tug and that wild thrill when Bobby comes to him, always sorta expecting resistance and Bobby just gives. Just there for a second, heated and sleepy with mostly-closed mouths, a slow tumble in Zito's stomach when Crosby's hands on his chest curl and grip.
Just for a second, and Crosby pushes him back. He's half-smiling, and anybody else would call it a smirk but Zito knows better.
"You pitched earlier, you just came straight from the ballpark?" Crosby asks. Zito nods. "And you guys are playing tomorrow, right? You gotta go back?"
"I got a few hours."
"Few hours," Crosby echoes. His eyebrows tick eloquently.
Zito moves his shoulders in half a shrug. "It's the best I could do."
Crosby nods and lets his hands slip down Zito's chest, slow and pressing hard. Zito starts having trouble breathing, his eyes locked on Crosby's face, trying to impress on his mind Crosby's drowsy turned-on expression. Crosby licks his lips.
"We're gonna have to talk about this, you know."
Crosby is walking backwards as he says it, drawing Zito along with him. They trip and shuffle, hands stuck to each other. There's a crack in the curtains maybe six inches wide letting in the light pollution, and the bed is a ruined lunar landscape, all rubble and valleys. Zito almost can't bear how happy he is at this moment.
"Talk 'bout what?" he asks distractedly, pulling Crosby's shirt up.
Crosby lifts his arms and tells him as Zito skims the shirt off, "The short-circuit that has happened in your brain."
"Not even making sense," Zito mumbles, thin-eyed and hot staring at Crosby. He tears off his own shirt and pushes Crosby down on the bed. Crosby looks up at him, smiling smug and knowing and dark.
"C'mere," he says, crooks his fingers in Zito's belt. "You look really tired."
Zito shakes his head automatically. "No way, dude, I am wired, I am up."
"Getting there, anyway," Crosby says with a wicked smile, then tells him, "You're a complete fucking moron, but we can have sex now and deal with it later."
Zito shoves Crosby flat on the bed, straddles him and leans down close, bites a hard kiss off his mouth and says happily, "I knew this was a good idea."
It takes him by surprise, always does, how fast it goes between them, like they've stepped off a cliff hand in hand. They fall at an exponential rate because that's how gravity works. It's been a long time since they last had a chance, not since interleague, and Zito makes sure all the old tricks work, makes sure Bobby still snickers and gasps and curses. Zito rolls them across the bed a couple of times just because he can, because he loves the tumble and crash of Crosby's body against his own.
For once Zito doesn't fight the urgency, doesn't bother trying to make it last or make it stick. It's late, closer to dawn than midnight, and he lied when he said he wasn't tired, and he doesn't have the wherewithal to pretend that this is anything other than the only thing he wants. Bobby is underneath him writhing and growling, and this is worth the decimation of his fastball, every one of Crosby's petty nagging injuries, and all the misfortune that has so recently befallen their two teams. This is worth the lives the two of them lead here at the cellar door, and Zito has to believe that.
So he moves down Crosby's body and holds his hips still. Crosby leans back on his elbows, watching. He always watches and it always flushes Zito with a purified bolt of heat. It's one of those moments when Crosby's eyes look more silver than blue.
Zito says, "Tell me something," as he lowers his head, and Crosby's internal monologue immediately starts spilling out, broken up with moans and hisses and blasphemy.
"Oh you're fuckin' ridiculous, missed your goddamn mouth, jesus, yeah, yeah you dumbass motherfucker, can't believe you did this, ah fuck, fuckin' christ, you're so good at that you stupid crazy fuck, please, please."
Zito can't listen to it for long, rubbing himself against the bed and working his mouth fast. Both of Crosby's hands are in Zito's hair when he comes, his back arching and his voice suddenly cut off in a keen almost too high to hear. He's trembling, warm as steam and coming down, and Zito slides up his body, licking at Crosby's throat and grinding against his hip before he gets himself together enough to lend a hand, and it's over pretty quick after that.
For a few minutes, there is nothing wrong with Zito.
They lie in a tangle, hard to tell apart. Crosby is stripped bare and Zito's jeans are open and he feels fantastic. Three or four years ago, he wouldn't have been able to keep his mouth shut right now, and he'd be saying something irrevocable, something about how Crosby's the best he's ever had and how Zito wants to go slay dragons for him and other impossible stuff like that.
Zito used to be a romantic, but he knows better now.
Eventually, Crosby huffs in a way that means he wants Zito to stop lying on his arm, and Zito obligingly lifts to let him pull it free, settles his cheek on the cool of the sheet instead. Crosby shifts around, his legs rustling against Zito's and Zito expects him unknot and kick free, but instead Crosby locks his feet around Zito's ankle and pushes an arm across Zito's back. Zito sighs and closes his eyes.
"Got a day game," Crosby says, barely a murmur. "Bus leaves at nine."
"I won't sleep that long," Zito says, but his mouth doesn't really work, slurred and thick. He trusts that Crosby catches his meaning.
"Still gonna talk." Crosby brushes his mouth across Zito's shoulder absently. "Crazy bitch."
Zito smiles, and he falls asleep.
He is crazy and he has to be okay with that because there's no fixing it. If he's not okay with it he won't be able to play baseball anymore and even if baseball is largely why he went crazy, that doesn't mean he needs it any less.
He dreams of the lifeguard hut on the beach back home, where he and his friends would go to drink and smoke late at night. A high school location, but Crosby's the one sitting cross-legged on the splintered salt-softened boards next to him, drenched in slivers of light like tinsel on a Christmas tree. Crosby is making a smoking device out of an empty soda can, using Zito's small red penknife to perforate the aluminum, and he's telling Zito something important.
Zito is barely paying attention, because there's a white bird in here with them for some reason, flying silently back and forth. He tracks it, his eyes moving, and he interrupts Bobby to ask, "Did you bring that bird?"
Crosby scowls at him, and Zito notices that the penknife is now a Bowie knife, whittled and vicious-looking. Zito turns hurriedly back to the bird, swallowing back his fear. Crosby would never hurt him, no matter how well-armed he becomes.
"That's not a bird, it's a dragon," Crosby tells him, and Zito nods. He can see that now, a tiny white dragon, scales like pearls, twisting in the gloom. The ocean smell is at once incredibly strong, and Zito thinks he might be all of fifteen years old right now.
"Look at that," he says without taking his eyes off the dragon. "If it eats flesh we're both screwed."
"Barry."
Zito doesn't look down. "What?"
"Look at me, man."
Zito's brow furrows but he still doesn't look down. He doesn't know what Crosby was trying to tell him earlier but he's pretty sure he doesn't want to hear it. Crosby's voice is cracking like Zito has only heard a couple of times, most recently the night the Tigers beat them for the pennant, and no good can come of that.
"You know," Zito starts to say, kinda panicked, just trying to keep ahead of Crosby. He says something not at all characteristic, scrabbling around. "I bet I could kill it with one knife-throw."
The white dragon's eyes glow red and its shiny serrated mouth hisses at him, and Zito hisses back, and Crosby puts his hand on the side of Zito's face and says:
"Don't."
It's as good a place as any to wake up. Zito does with a twitch, and he's aware immediately that he's in a hotel but he has no idea where, and he lies with his eyes closed trying to remember which road trip he's on for the longest time before Crosby coughs and Zito's eyes snap open and he remembers: Cleveland. Bobby.
They're not touching, a pillow's width between them and Crosby sprawled out on his back with his mouth cocked open. It's still almost completely dark, but Zito can tell, somehow sense, that the sun has begun rising at the eastern edge of town. Just enough that he can make out the marks he left on Crosby's throat and in the hollow of his hip. He wonders if the guys will notice, but probably not. They never have.
Zito watches Crosby sleeping for a minute, and eventually it makes him want to cry. He rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling, thinking of the dragon like a woven cord of snow, and he gets himself under control.
Crosby coughs again and when Zito looks over Crosby is blinking back at him, soft-mouthed and momentarily confused.
"Um," he says, struggling to decipher Zito's presence but already rolling onto his side and reaching out, his hand rough and warm on Zito's chest. He butts his head on Zito's shoulder. "Wh'fuck?"
Zito moves to face him, drapes his arm over Crosby's body. He smiles. "It wasn't just a dream, Bobby."
Crosby hums, pushing into Zito and his mouth streaks hot and open across Zito's collarbone before Crosby settles in. They're like that for a long moment.
"Time's it?" Crosby asks him, and Zito doesn't even glance at the clock, saying, "Early still. We're okay."
"You gotta. Got a plane to catch?"
"Night game, it's okay. There's time."
Crosby mutters about Zito being a lunatic, but Zito can't make out most of it, only the vibration of Crosby's voice against his skin, the press of his mouth. Zito closes his eyes to feel it better, and then Crosby sighs and falls quiet and there is a lull.
Zito is drifting, trying with everything he's got to stay in the moment, when Crosby asks, "What's this little excursion running you?"
Zito jerks, and they knock skulls and Crosby pulls back. Zito's awake now, but he plays dumb, "What?"
"Couple thousand dollars at least, right?"
Closer to three, actually, and Zito answers, "You realize I could have chartered a jet without my accountant even noticing." He pauses. "Shit. Why didn't I charter a jet?"
Crosby snickers. He pushes Zito's hair back. "'Cause you're dumb, man. And because you've always wanted to say, put me on the next flight to somewhere."
Zito wants to laugh but it sticks weirdly in his throat. He's always caught off-guard by how much Crosby knows about him, how deep this whole thing goes. They've been fucking around on and off for five years now. He crosses time zones for this guy. It's still so bizarre.
"You really know how to make a guy feel needed," Crosby says, and Zito doesn't trust his tone of voice and is almost immediately validated as Crosby continues, "Or like he's sleeping with a total basketcase."
"Hey," Zito protests feebly. "I am not."
"Dude, not that I don't appreciate it. You definitely have a standing invitation to randomly appear and suck me off whenever you feel the urge, but, well." His hand moves through Zito's hair again. "It seems kinda impulsive. Um. Compulsive. Bad for you, or whatever."
Zito makes a smile, meeting Crosby's half-mast eyes. "All right, I won't do it again."
Crosby gets pissed, glaring at him. "Did I say that?"
"Pretty much," Zito snaps, not sure if he's angry or scared.
"No, I fucking did not, thank you but I know what I said. It's a great idea and I'm all behind it, I just prefer you when you're a little less fucked-up."
Zito rolls onto his back, making a scoffing noise. His eyes are burning and his heart is triphammering and he's not sure why. It's all true and Crosby's even saying it nice. Nice enough, anyway, nicer than Zito really deserves, so maybe he's terrified about what it's leading up to.
"Well," he says, and he sounds okay. A little strangled. "I'm not sure what you expected. Surely you've. You know what kind of year it's been for me."
"Oh knock it off," Crosby says tiredly, and Zito flinches. "Seriously. Like you're the only person in the room who hasn't lived up to expectations."
Zito blinks at the ceiling, something in his gut automatically rejecting that. He's oddly defensive about his misery. It's his, unique and irreplaceable and more constant than his closest friends.
He sighs. "I don't know, Bobby. I just wanted to get out of there. You know that feeling? Like, five runs across and we haven't even gotten an out yet and nothing is ever going right. And you just want it to be over. You'd give anything. And I, I, yeah, I might be having some sort of protracted mental breakdown but at least I can still do this. Get the fuck out when I need to."
There's a rustle, Crosby shaking his head in Zito's peripheral vision. "Which, just, the timing of it is what baffles me, man. Because you do get off-days, you know. We're gonna end up with what, two whole hours actually conscious? And again, thank you for the blowjob. But you've gotten like fifteen minutes of sleep and you have to fly back and then there's the game and. You. You need to take better care of yourself if nobody on your fucking team's gonna."
Zito doesn't answer for a minute. He has honestly been rendered speechless. He wonders if it's really that simple, if he's not really crazy, just poorly looked-after.
"Tim Lincecum wants to sleep with me," he offers eventually, at a complete loss.
Crosby snorts. "Oh my god, please do not hook up with that prepubescent sideshow freak because I seriously might die laughing."
"Hey." Zito hits him instinctively, hard enough to make an old point: don't talk shit about my teammates. It only feels strange afterwards, when he looks over at Crosby grinning at him and gets disoriented, forgetting which team he's on for just a second. "Um. I'm not gonna, anyway."
"Good, 'cause I don't wanna make out with any child molesters."
Zito hits him again, drills him in the shoulder and really gets gravity on his side and makes Crosby yelp amid his snickering, curling up a little.
"Nobody thinks you're funny," Zito tells him. "Everybody's always talking about how lame your jokes are behind your back."
Crosby, the jackass, only rolls into Zito and carries on snickering against Zito's side, arm slung across his stomach. Zito gets twitchy at the warmth of Crosby's breath and the rough of his face. He lays his hand down carefully in the middle of Crosby's back, lining his middle finger up on Crosby's spine.
They're quiet for a minute, and Zito thinks maybe they'll fall back asleep. It's brightening outside, soft and overcast and colorless, like strengthening moonlight, and Zito idly conjures up a thunderstorm, a fierce summer rain that will ground his plane and postpone the ballgame and they won't have to leave the room.
"It was stupid," Crosby says, his voice sounding dim and kinda strained. Zito can't see much of his face, but he can feel how Crosby's breath is hitching. "I mean. All that stuff stands." He pushes his forehead slow across Zito's side. "But I was having a pretty fucking awful road trip before you showed up."
Zito squeezes his eyes shut and nods blindly. He slides his hand up to the back of Crosby's head and Crosby exhales, hot as hell and making Zito shiver. "I was having a fucking awful homestand."
"Seems to happen a lot, doesn't it," Crosby says tonelessly.
"Yeah." Zito bites the inside of his lip too hard, ice-pick of pain and a copper taste, letting his fingertips fit into the hollow at the base of Crosby's skull, feeling the minute shudder of a pulse there. He thinks about how much happier he is when he has tangible proof of Bobby Crosby in his hand, how much more sense the world makes.
"Ah fuck," Crosby breathes out. "Now all I want is for you to fly back out tonight."
Zito swallows blood and holds Crosby in such a way that Zito's wrist is tight on the side of Crosby's neck and their heartbeats are pouring one into the other. Zito can't tell his pulse from Crosby's and this is why he never should have come out here.
All he says is, "Okay."
THE END
also, a possible forewarning of sorts: it is looking likely that my next move will be to hare off and go register voters in a swing state (possibly ohio, which would make this story eerily prescient) to get obama elected. or something of the kind! hundred hour work weeks i've been promised, but that's kid's stuff. life seems deeply invested in keeping me off-guard.
Not only dead, but trapping a few fragments and beginnings, maybe five pages of a Munson/Chavez story that has nothing to do with the epic (imagine!), and everything to do with 16, maybe less, a song off that iron & wine and calexico album that was on loop as those five pages got written, and also there was a page or two of the first version of the story that follows. There is a lot of other stuff that I am forgetting, all the half ideas and false starts.
But! I am totally zen about the whole thing, because literally the day my computer finally died, I got the go-ahead from the 'rents to get a new computer as an early birthday/christmas thing, and the day after it died, I went to the Apple Store and picked up this here mad sly MacBook.
Very exciting stuff. I am obsessed with the thing. My old computer was so broke-ass, hadn't been able to watch anything downloaded or streamed for a year, stopped being able to burn cds like six months ago, it was becoming so useless. And now, now. Macs really are something. I see what all the fuss is about.
Downloaded the second season of Supernatural and am just tearing through that motherfucker, and in the time between I picked up on the other currently-stuck-on-a-harddrive-encased-in-worthlessness story, not the Munson/Chavez one (which I should be able to recreate), but instead:
Cellar Door
By Candle Beck
Zito loses another game, and then he gets the hell out of there.
He blows off his teammates and the reporters, not typical behavior but he's had a rough couple months. Nobody can begrudge him. Dashes through his post-game routine and dresses with his skin still damp, his shirt sticking to his back in long streaks. He can feel his wet hair brushing on the bunched hood of his sweatshirt as he throws together a sandwich at the spread.
Lincecum materializes beside him while he's waiting for the elevator, in the spooky ninja manner that he has. Zito is bolting his sandwich and almost chokes. Lincecum whacks him on the back a few times, rattling Zito's whole body.
"Y'all right?"
Zito shrugs his hand away. "Fine."
"Coming out with us tonight?"
"Nope."
"Aw come on." His fucking hand is back, poking at Zito's arm as Lincecum tries a winning grin, almost gap-toothed. Zito shuts his eyes, god give me strength.
"No means no, Tim."
Lincecum cannot take a hint worth shit and he pokes Zito a few more times desultorily, without real intent. Zito counts his breaths and manages not to bodily injure the future of the goddamn team, and the elevator arrives with a low bonging sound.
"Where you going, anyway?" Lincecum asks, rocking back on his heels and licking his lips and blinking all big-eyed and there is no way Zito was this annoying when he was twenty-four years old.
Zito gets on the elevator and turns, levels a long look at the kid while he considers just not answering, maybe grinning merrily and shooting Lincecum the bird as the doors close. Something about Lincecum brings out the asshole in Zito, or maybe it's just San Francisco.
"Cleveland," Zito says, and Tim's face falls a little bit like he thinks Zito's fucking with him, and usually Zito would be, but tonight it's true.
Zito puts on his sunglasses even though it's nighttime, pulls up his hoodie hood. Most of the crowd has dispersed, but certainly the last thing Zito wants right now is to be spotted by any fans. He might not get away alive. It's cold outside, a biting wind and a chalk smear of the moon behind gray clouds. The marina lights shine golden on the bay, the naked sailboats with their white masts clustered like a small albino forest.
Zito has left his car in the garage, somewhere under the asphalt under his sneakers, and he hails a cab out on King Street. He throws his bag onto the seat and then follows it in, saying shortly, "Airport."
And then they're off.
Familiar highway sights, the rows of little boxes lit up on the hillside and the mass of billboards like pages lost out of some immense picturebook, and Zito takes his sunglasses off, keeps his hood up. The world is reduced to what can fit in a soft cotton frame, trapped in a cab's window.
He thinks for a minute about Tim Lincecum, who makes Zito's hands itch. He puts Zito on edge like living with a werewolf, something supernatural and beyond explanation. Insane fastballs come wrenching out of Lincecum's skinny body. His change-up hits a wall, just fucking dies. Zito never trusts anybody who pitches that well, always on guard for people who've sold their souls, but Lincecum's also such a stupid clueless kid with such a stupid obvious crush on Zito and Zito doesn't even know where to begin with that. It's all very unnerving and off-putting.
But it's also no longer Zito's problem, as the cheap motels and park-and-flys start to dominate the landscape. Zito scoots over to the other side of the car so he can see the long hangars and the ranks of planes like toys on the carpet. When he was a kid, his dad would take him to watch the planes taking off on Saturday afternoons, back when you could still go back without a ticket. Zito loved that; his dad has told him how he howled when it was time to leave.
It's a pretty cool-looking airport, the new facade swooped in almond shapes and glowing geometrically like an alien city. Zito relaxes back into the seat, unconsciously soothed by the proximity of escape.
He gets to say, "Put me on the next flight to Cleveland," a lifelong dream, but the ticket lady doesn't look particularly impressed, and Zito wonders if there is an impulsive subculture ever asking for the next flight, jetting off at the proverbial moment's notice, and he wonders how he could swing that gig.
He's only got his game bag, which has the clothes he came to the ballpark in and a clean change of underwear and his Giants sweatshirt and another pair of shoes, his glove and back-up glove and batting gloves and everyday cap, a few spare baseballs clonking around the bottom with rolls of tape and half-finished bags of sunflower seeds and his portable transistor radio. It's just small enough that he doesn't have to check it, and he buys a couple random magazines and some gummi bears, stands sock-footed in line for security, kinda dazed from staring at all the people locked into their small traveling worlds.
There's an hour to kill before boarding. Zito decapitates the gummi bears one at a time, to the fascination of a small black boy in a red-striped shirt with the biggest eyes of anyone Zito's ever seen. He wants to offer the kid some bears to do away with himself, but the kid's mom is on the phone and beautiful and incredibly intimidating and Zito doesn't want to get into a whole thing about whether processed sugar is okay.
He flicks at his magazines but they're already boring. He checks his watch four times in two minutes and thinks about how it's one in the morning in Cleveland and they'll be splitting up, leaving the hotel bar in ones and twos, yawning and rubbing the backs of their necks in the elevator.
Zito takes out his phone and calls Eric Chavez.
It rings and rings, and Zito has resigned himself to hanging up on Chavez's voicemail when suddenly he's there, talking too loud amid a tidal wave noise, "-know, Jack, but you'll be the first fuckin' one I tell. Hello? Z?"
"Hiya."
"Lemme just-" There's some rustling and the muffled chorus behind Chavez's voice fades a little bit. "Loud-ass motherfuckers. Your team's not so fucking loud I bet."
Zito doesn't even flinch, which is how far he's come. "They have their moments."
"What's up? I, uh, I don't think I looked at the scores tonight. You pitched, right, somebody was saying something."
"Lost again. Same old. How's. Where are you guys?"
"Ah, where in the world--hey rookie pop quiz, what city are we in?" There's a muffled response and Chavez reports, "Cleveland."
"Hmm." Zito steeples one hand over his eyes, concentrating on keeping his voice even and unsuspicious. "That's the, the Ritz-Carlton downtown, right? Indoor pool, if I'm remembering correct."
"Closed for renovations, actually. And this idiotic blue color scheme in all the rooms on our floor. Makes me seasick." Chavez is slurring a little.
"You sound kinda drunk, Chav."
"Well, that's understandable."
Zito laughs through his nose. He can see the faux-serious face Chavez wears when he's drunk, the way he bobs his head slightly and hiccups every few minutes, his shoulders jumping.
"I wasn't sure you were still traveling with the team," Zito says, and then bites his tongue. There's a brief silence, Chavez breathing out against the receiver.
"Yeah well."
Chavez doesn't say anything else, but Zito shouldn't have said anything to begin with, so he lets it go. Chavez has been hurt in one way or another for the majority of the past two years. He's got a small son and a pregnant wife at home and another surgery scheduled for the fall, but he's still going where the A's go, watching his team lose all over the country.
"All right, well," Zito says, and trails off sorta expectantly. Chavez doesn't help him out, and Zito ends up saying, "I'll let you get back to it, I guess."
"You probably got some film to watch, huh," Chavez says, and it's pretty cruel but no worse than anything Zito's done to him.
"Guess I do."
"Well. Thanks for the call."
"Oh you know." Zito presses a fist against his eye. "Just checkin' in."
He ends the call and stares blankly into the middle distance for awhile. It always makes him feel weird. He feels like his voice doesn't sound right when he's talking to a former teammate, like the words don't really fit his mouth the same way and he can't be sure they mean what he thinks they do. The conversations are always brief and disjointed and he's always bailing out early, hating the deadened silences. Zito has never been any good at keeping up with old friends, which is why he doesn't have very many.
He tries to sleep on the flight but doesn't have any luck. Resting his head on the window, his legs stretched out as far as they will go and already starting to cramp, Zito replays past sexual experiences on the black backs of his eyelids, certain grips and a specific mouth dragging across his shoulder.
Everything will be better when he gets to Cleveland. He'll be less exhausted and less emotionally unstable. These mood swings, these sudden surges towards violence and all the dumb stuff he blurts out--all this will be made right again in Ohio.
The flight attendant brings him drinks and seems to recognize him, a sideways smile and the tip of an eyebrow, but she doesn't say anything and Zito's glad. He's honestly started to dread being approached, called by name by someone he's never met. He's not famous for the right reasons anymore and he feels like a bad joke and he doesn't even want people looking at him because they think he's cute. He doesn't want anybody to look at him at all, really, which is a new and disturbing thing, not what he was taught.
Cleveland rises from the plains, smears of suburban light for miles around, backed up against the lake like a star in front of a black hole. Zito's forehead is on the window and he has a vague impression of fog, his breath clouding briefly on the plasticky glass.
Somewhere down there. Somewhere in the gold chrome crush of downtown, the slick streets with the stoplights changing in unison, somewhere down there is an alley and a backdoor to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.
Zito jitters in the back of the cab, watching his hands dance on his knees. His mouth is dry and he'd be worried about the speed of his heartbeat if he didn't like it so much. Some of his general misery sloughs off as the buildings get taller and taller around him.
He's really close now.
There's a Latino guy smoking a cigarette in the alley behind the Ritz-Carlton, wearing a blinding white shirt and black pants, someone from the kitchen, and he looks faintly familiar. Zito figures what the hell and goes up to him, his bag slung over his shoulder.
"Um, hi." The guy cases him with a look but doesn't say anything, his eyes squinty through the smoke. Zito rubs his hand fast on his leg, tries out a grin. "You remember me?"
The guy shakes his head, and Zito says, "I'm on the team. The A's? I came in with them yesterday?"
The guy's eyes narrow and he looks at Zito more closely, and Zito is relieved to see the suspicion in his face fade a little bit. All ballplayers look the same, in or out of uniform. The guy nods, offers Zito his cigarette, which Zito turns down.
"So, we have this curfew? Supposed to be back at midnight but I, I lost my key and I forget what floor we're on and I can't get into trouble again so, um." Zito rummages for his wallet, fingers a twenty but takes out a fifty instead. "You think you can help me out?"
Plucking the bill from Zito's fingers, the guy looks it over to make sure it's legit, then smirks at Zito. "No problem, boy."
He flicks the butt away, pinwheel orange spark flying into the darkness, and punches in the code for the backdoor, holding it open and telling Zito, "They're on the fourteenth. Take that elevator, the back one."
"Gracias," Zito says, already moving past the empty pastry carts and crates of oranges, eyes fixed on the scuffed dull silver of the freight elevator doors.
An almost-perfect plan, he realizes as he steps out onto the blue carpet of the fourteenth floor. It's very very late and the hallway is deserted except for empty room service plates, napkins crumpled into small mountains. Almost-perfect because Zito doesn't know which room is the right one, and he certainly can't bribe someone to tell him.
He can't be seen by anybody else on the team. He would spontaneously die of humiliation.
Zito paces down the endless blue runway, letting his fingers brush lightly on each door he passes, feeling like he should be able to sense it. The right door should call out to him because the man behind it is Zito's one true love.
But life's not a fairy tale, or at least, not much of one, and the doors are impassive, identical, unmoved by Zito's crumbling defenses. Way down at the far end, there's an A's cap smashed on the carpet, and Zito picks it up, sees the number 24 inked on the underside of the brim and leaves it on the floor.
His third pass down the hall finds him increasingly distressed and berating himself more and more for haring the fuck off without any kind of plan and having his luck run out when he is literally within feet of his goal. He's kicking miserably at the carpet when his eyes fall on the room service plates again and his mind lights up.
He goes back, checking each plate this time, and towards the end of the hall he finds it, hamburger remains with the tomato slices stacked uneaten and post-modern swirls of dried ketchup decorating the pale ceramic. The tomato slices are a pretty good clue but the ketchup art is the kicker.
Zito leans against the door, breathing out for a long moment. He lets a measure of anxiety slip off him, rolling his shoulders back. He knocks softly three times, waits ten seconds, then does it again, and he keeps that up for almost two minutes.
He's lulled himself into a kind of a trance when the door is suddenly snatched out from under him, a snarl busting the quiet, "Who the fuck-" and Zito falls into Bobby and almost knocks him down.
"What-" Crosby grabs Zito's arms and sets him upright. "Barry?"
Zito hugs Crosby tight, presses his face into his neck. It's awesome, fucking unbelievable. "Bobby."
Crosby's hands alight on Zito's hips. "The fuck are you doing here?"
"Oh, you know." Zito lets out a breath that actually hurts, he's been holding it so long. "Was in the neighborhood."
Crosby gets the door closed, gets Zito pushed up against it. Zito goes wherever Crosby wants him to, his back hits the wood and it's like something presses into place with a palpable click, like his ribcage was out of joint but now he's okay. Crosby's hands are flat and wide on Zito's chest, his eyebrows up and there's a scratch on the line of his jaw, a hole in the collar of his T-shirt.
"You're nuts," Crosby tells him, but it's mostly by rote, Zito can tell. It should go without saying by now, Zito being crazy.
Zito is grinning, that huge idiot grin of his. He runs his hand over Crosby's short hair, touches the back of his neck and lets his fingers get in under Crosby's shirt.
"You happy to see me, Bobby?"
The edge of Crosby's mouth crooks up. "Over the fuckin' moon, babe."
Zito kisses him, a quick tug and that wild thrill when Bobby comes to him, always sorta expecting resistance and Bobby just gives. Just there for a second, heated and sleepy with mostly-closed mouths, a slow tumble in Zito's stomach when Crosby's hands on his chest curl and grip.
Just for a second, and Crosby pushes him back. He's half-smiling, and anybody else would call it a smirk but Zito knows better.
"You pitched earlier, you just came straight from the ballpark?" Crosby asks. Zito nods. "And you guys are playing tomorrow, right? You gotta go back?"
"I got a few hours."
"Few hours," Crosby echoes. His eyebrows tick eloquently.
Zito moves his shoulders in half a shrug. "It's the best I could do."
Crosby nods and lets his hands slip down Zito's chest, slow and pressing hard. Zito starts having trouble breathing, his eyes locked on Crosby's face, trying to impress on his mind Crosby's drowsy turned-on expression. Crosby licks his lips.
"We're gonna have to talk about this, you know."
Crosby is walking backwards as he says it, drawing Zito along with him. They trip and shuffle, hands stuck to each other. There's a crack in the curtains maybe six inches wide letting in the light pollution, and the bed is a ruined lunar landscape, all rubble and valleys. Zito almost can't bear how happy he is at this moment.
"Talk 'bout what?" he asks distractedly, pulling Crosby's shirt up.
Crosby lifts his arms and tells him as Zito skims the shirt off, "The short-circuit that has happened in your brain."
"Not even making sense," Zito mumbles, thin-eyed and hot staring at Crosby. He tears off his own shirt and pushes Crosby down on the bed. Crosby looks up at him, smiling smug and knowing and dark.
"C'mere," he says, crooks his fingers in Zito's belt. "You look really tired."
Zito shakes his head automatically. "No way, dude, I am wired, I am up."
"Getting there, anyway," Crosby says with a wicked smile, then tells him, "You're a complete fucking moron, but we can have sex now and deal with it later."
Zito shoves Crosby flat on the bed, straddles him and leans down close, bites a hard kiss off his mouth and says happily, "I knew this was a good idea."
It takes him by surprise, always does, how fast it goes between them, like they've stepped off a cliff hand in hand. They fall at an exponential rate because that's how gravity works. It's been a long time since they last had a chance, not since interleague, and Zito makes sure all the old tricks work, makes sure Bobby still snickers and gasps and curses. Zito rolls them across the bed a couple of times just because he can, because he loves the tumble and crash of Crosby's body against his own.
For once Zito doesn't fight the urgency, doesn't bother trying to make it last or make it stick. It's late, closer to dawn than midnight, and he lied when he said he wasn't tired, and he doesn't have the wherewithal to pretend that this is anything other than the only thing he wants. Bobby is underneath him writhing and growling, and this is worth the decimation of his fastball, every one of Crosby's petty nagging injuries, and all the misfortune that has so recently befallen their two teams. This is worth the lives the two of them lead here at the cellar door, and Zito has to believe that.
So he moves down Crosby's body and holds his hips still. Crosby leans back on his elbows, watching. He always watches and it always flushes Zito with a purified bolt of heat. It's one of those moments when Crosby's eyes look more silver than blue.
Zito says, "Tell me something," as he lowers his head, and Crosby's internal monologue immediately starts spilling out, broken up with moans and hisses and blasphemy.
"Oh you're fuckin' ridiculous, missed your goddamn mouth, jesus, yeah, yeah you dumbass motherfucker, can't believe you did this, ah fuck, fuckin' christ, you're so good at that you stupid crazy fuck, please, please."
Zito can't listen to it for long, rubbing himself against the bed and working his mouth fast. Both of Crosby's hands are in Zito's hair when he comes, his back arching and his voice suddenly cut off in a keen almost too high to hear. He's trembling, warm as steam and coming down, and Zito slides up his body, licking at Crosby's throat and grinding against his hip before he gets himself together enough to lend a hand, and it's over pretty quick after that.
For a few minutes, there is nothing wrong with Zito.
They lie in a tangle, hard to tell apart. Crosby is stripped bare and Zito's jeans are open and he feels fantastic. Three or four years ago, he wouldn't have been able to keep his mouth shut right now, and he'd be saying something irrevocable, something about how Crosby's the best he's ever had and how Zito wants to go slay dragons for him and other impossible stuff like that.
Zito used to be a romantic, but he knows better now.
Eventually, Crosby huffs in a way that means he wants Zito to stop lying on his arm, and Zito obligingly lifts to let him pull it free, settles his cheek on the cool of the sheet instead. Crosby shifts around, his legs rustling against Zito's and Zito expects him unknot and kick free, but instead Crosby locks his feet around Zito's ankle and pushes an arm across Zito's back. Zito sighs and closes his eyes.
"Got a day game," Crosby says, barely a murmur. "Bus leaves at nine."
"I won't sleep that long," Zito says, but his mouth doesn't really work, slurred and thick. He trusts that Crosby catches his meaning.
"Still gonna talk." Crosby brushes his mouth across Zito's shoulder absently. "Crazy bitch."
Zito smiles, and he falls asleep.
He is crazy and he has to be okay with that because there's no fixing it. If he's not okay with it he won't be able to play baseball anymore and even if baseball is largely why he went crazy, that doesn't mean he needs it any less.
He dreams of the lifeguard hut on the beach back home, where he and his friends would go to drink and smoke late at night. A high school location, but Crosby's the one sitting cross-legged on the splintered salt-softened boards next to him, drenched in slivers of light like tinsel on a Christmas tree. Crosby is making a smoking device out of an empty soda can, using Zito's small red penknife to perforate the aluminum, and he's telling Zito something important.
Zito is barely paying attention, because there's a white bird in here with them for some reason, flying silently back and forth. He tracks it, his eyes moving, and he interrupts Bobby to ask, "Did you bring that bird?"
Crosby scowls at him, and Zito notices that the penknife is now a Bowie knife, whittled and vicious-looking. Zito turns hurriedly back to the bird, swallowing back his fear. Crosby would never hurt him, no matter how well-armed he becomes.
"That's not a bird, it's a dragon," Crosby tells him, and Zito nods. He can see that now, a tiny white dragon, scales like pearls, twisting in the gloom. The ocean smell is at once incredibly strong, and Zito thinks he might be all of fifteen years old right now.
"Look at that," he says without taking his eyes off the dragon. "If it eats flesh we're both screwed."
"Barry."
Zito doesn't look down. "What?"
"Look at me, man."
Zito's brow furrows but he still doesn't look down. He doesn't know what Crosby was trying to tell him earlier but he's pretty sure he doesn't want to hear it. Crosby's voice is cracking like Zito has only heard a couple of times, most recently the night the Tigers beat them for the pennant, and no good can come of that.
"You know," Zito starts to say, kinda panicked, just trying to keep ahead of Crosby. He says something not at all characteristic, scrabbling around. "I bet I could kill it with one knife-throw."
The white dragon's eyes glow red and its shiny serrated mouth hisses at him, and Zito hisses back, and Crosby puts his hand on the side of Zito's face and says:
"Don't."
It's as good a place as any to wake up. Zito does with a twitch, and he's aware immediately that he's in a hotel but he has no idea where, and he lies with his eyes closed trying to remember which road trip he's on for the longest time before Crosby coughs and Zito's eyes snap open and he remembers: Cleveland. Bobby.
They're not touching, a pillow's width between them and Crosby sprawled out on his back with his mouth cocked open. It's still almost completely dark, but Zito can tell, somehow sense, that the sun has begun rising at the eastern edge of town. Just enough that he can make out the marks he left on Crosby's throat and in the hollow of his hip. He wonders if the guys will notice, but probably not. They never have.
Zito watches Crosby sleeping for a minute, and eventually it makes him want to cry. He rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling, thinking of the dragon like a woven cord of snow, and he gets himself under control.
Crosby coughs again and when Zito looks over Crosby is blinking back at him, soft-mouthed and momentarily confused.
"Um," he says, struggling to decipher Zito's presence but already rolling onto his side and reaching out, his hand rough and warm on Zito's chest. He butts his head on Zito's shoulder. "Wh'fuck?"
Zito moves to face him, drapes his arm over Crosby's body. He smiles. "It wasn't just a dream, Bobby."
Crosby hums, pushing into Zito and his mouth streaks hot and open across Zito's collarbone before Crosby settles in. They're like that for a long moment.
"Time's it?" Crosby asks him, and Zito doesn't even glance at the clock, saying, "Early still. We're okay."
"You gotta. Got a plane to catch?"
"Night game, it's okay. There's time."
Crosby mutters about Zito being a lunatic, but Zito can't make out most of it, only the vibration of Crosby's voice against his skin, the press of his mouth. Zito closes his eyes to feel it better, and then Crosby sighs and falls quiet and there is a lull.
Zito is drifting, trying with everything he's got to stay in the moment, when Crosby asks, "What's this little excursion running you?"
Zito jerks, and they knock skulls and Crosby pulls back. Zito's awake now, but he plays dumb, "What?"
"Couple thousand dollars at least, right?"
Closer to three, actually, and Zito answers, "You realize I could have chartered a jet without my accountant even noticing." He pauses. "Shit. Why didn't I charter a jet?"
Crosby snickers. He pushes Zito's hair back. "'Cause you're dumb, man. And because you've always wanted to say, put me on the next flight to somewhere."
Zito wants to laugh but it sticks weirdly in his throat. He's always caught off-guard by how much Crosby knows about him, how deep this whole thing goes. They've been fucking around on and off for five years now. He crosses time zones for this guy. It's still so bizarre.
"You really know how to make a guy feel needed," Crosby says, and Zito doesn't trust his tone of voice and is almost immediately validated as Crosby continues, "Or like he's sleeping with a total basketcase."
"Hey," Zito protests feebly. "I am not."
"Dude, not that I don't appreciate it. You definitely have a standing invitation to randomly appear and suck me off whenever you feel the urge, but, well." His hand moves through Zito's hair again. "It seems kinda impulsive. Um. Compulsive. Bad for you, or whatever."
Zito makes a smile, meeting Crosby's half-mast eyes. "All right, I won't do it again."
Crosby gets pissed, glaring at him. "Did I say that?"
"Pretty much," Zito snaps, not sure if he's angry or scared.
"No, I fucking did not, thank you but I know what I said. It's a great idea and I'm all behind it, I just prefer you when you're a little less fucked-up."
Zito rolls onto his back, making a scoffing noise. His eyes are burning and his heart is triphammering and he's not sure why. It's all true and Crosby's even saying it nice. Nice enough, anyway, nicer than Zito really deserves, so maybe he's terrified about what it's leading up to.
"Well," he says, and he sounds okay. A little strangled. "I'm not sure what you expected. Surely you've. You know what kind of year it's been for me."
"Oh knock it off," Crosby says tiredly, and Zito flinches. "Seriously. Like you're the only person in the room who hasn't lived up to expectations."
Zito blinks at the ceiling, something in his gut automatically rejecting that. He's oddly defensive about his misery. It's his, unique and irreplaceable and more constant than his closest friends.
He sighs. "I don't know, Bobby. I just wanted to get out of there. You know that feeling? Like, five runs across and we haven't even gotten an out yet and nothing is ever going right. And you just want it to be over. You'd give anything. And I, I, yeah, I might be having some sort of protracted mental breakdown but at least I can still do this. Get the fuck out when I need to."
There's a rustle, Crosby shaking his head in Zito's peripheral vision. "Which, just, the timing of it is what baffles me, man. Because you do get off-days, you know. We're gonna end up with what, two whole hours actually conscious? And again, thank you for the blowjob. But you've gotten like fifteen minutes of sleep and you have to fly back and then there's the game and. You. You need to take better care of yourself if nobody on your fucking team's gonna."
Zito doesn't answer for a minute. He has honestly been rendered speechless. He wonders if it's really that simple, if he's not really crazy, just poorly looked-after.
"Tim Lincecum wants to sleep with me," he offers eventually, at a complete loss.
Crosby snorts. "Oh my god, please do not hook up with that prepubescent sideshow freak because I seriously might die laughing."
"Hey." Zito hits him instinctively, hard enough to make an old point: don't talk shit about my teammates. It only feels strange afterwards, when he looks over at Crosby grinning at him and gets disoriented, forgetting which team he's on for just a second. "Um. I'm not gonna, anyway."
"Good, 'cause I don't wanna make out with any child molesters."
Zito hits him again, drills him in the shoulder and really gets gravity on his side and makes Crosby yelp amid his snickering, curling up a little.
"Nobody thinks you're funny," Zito tells him. "Everybody's always talking about how lame your jokes are behind your back."
Crosby, the jackass, only rolls into Zito and carries on snickering against Zito's side, arm slung across his stomach. Zito gets twitchy at the warmth of Crosby's breath and the rough of his face. He lays his hand down carefully in the middle of Crosby's back, lining his middle finger up on Crosby's spine.
They're quiet for a minute, and Zito thinks maybe they'll fall back asleep. It's brightening outside, soft and overcast and colorless, like strengthening moonlight, and Zito idly conjures up a thunderstorm, a fierce summer rain that will ground his plane and postpone the ballgame and they won't have to leave the room.
"It was stupid," Crosby says, his voice sounding dim and kinda strained. Zito can't see much of his face, but he can feel how Crosby's breath is hitching. "I mean. All that stuff stands." He pushes his forehead slow across Zito's side. "But I was having a pretty fucking awful road trip before you showed up."
Zito squeezes his eyes shut and nods blindly. He slides his hand up to the back of Crosby's head and Crosby exhales, hot as hell and making Zito shiver. "I was having a fucking awful homestand."
"Seems to happen a lot, doesn't it," Crosby says tonelessly.
"Yeah." Zito bites the inside of his lip too hard, ice-pick of pain and a copper taste, letting his fingertips fit into the hollow at the base of Crosby's skull, feeling the minute shudder of a pulse there. He thinks about how much happier he is when he has tangible proof of Bobby Crosby in his hand, how much more sense the world makes.
"Ah fuck," Crosby breathes out. "Now all I want is for you to fly back out tonight."
Zito swallows blood and holds Crosby in such a way that Zito's wrist is tight on the side of Crosby's neck and their heartbeats are pouring one into the other. Zito can't tell his pulse from Crosby's and this is why he never should have come out here.
All he says is, "Okay."
THE END
also, a possible forewarning of sorts: it is looking likely that my next move will be to hare off and go register voters in a swing state (possibly ohio, which would make this story eerily prescient) to get obama elected. or something of the kind! hundred hour work weeks i've been promised, but that's kid's stuff. life seems deeply invested in keeping me off-guard.