quadruple shot
After faking sick for two days (I lose sick days at the end of the year and never really get sick; I feel that sick days are a violation of the rights of the preternaturally healthy), I now have four little guys to post, which should be up throughout the day. Cloak and dagger style, of course; this filth at work thing is bad for my blood pressure.
Also, the end of the first and start of the second seasons of the West Wing? Kinda freakishly good. Not that I'd forgotten, you understand, but I watched like ten episodes over the past two days. In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen, my god.
Can I get a rousing chorus of 'the off-season sucks,' y'all?
outside in
for alowishus812
This Texas shit has got to stop, Crosby thinks.
Oil derrick tonight, in the horizontal gash of the headlights, twenty miles into the desert outside the middle of fucking nowhere. Rich Harden is on a cut of metal thicker than Crosby’s chest, jeaned legs hanging five inches off the ground.
Kinda drunk, Crosby focuses on distracting Harden from climbing.
They sleep in the truckbed that night, in the ninety degree temperatures, in T-shirts and bare feet, their sneakers in the cab among half a case of empties.
In Midland, there is less than nothing to do. Odessa’s got a strip club, but Crosby can think of few things worse than taking Rich Harden to a strip club. Harden flicks poker chips at him across the couch as they’re watching TV, another weekday evening with ice for their arms and knees, the tight place in Harden’s side that aches deep sometimes. Harden drives to Dallas to get Canadian beer. Harden is the reason that twenty year old boys aren’t typically given this kind of freedom, money never an issue and most of the games are played at night.
Bobby is twenty-two, and somehow better equipped. He knows more about the minors than Harden does, recognizes it more clearly. How to Make the Big Leagues, the overarching theme of Bobby Crosby’s life, shagging flies for the high school team when he was seven, throwing to white patches of spray-paint on the trees from sixty feet out, eight-hour stints at the batting cages on the pier, in the sweep of the lights from the go-cart track.
Harden is unused to living so completely for one thing. He still has trouble counting American change when he’s drunk, and there are bizarre rules that he learned in Canada, you don’t run on a dropped third strike, you don’t throw a slider behind in the count. Harden takes losses very badly, fights stuff in the dugout and once he threw his glove into the bench so hard the wood snapped cleanly.
Crosby washes his car in the driveway on Sundays when they’re home, telling Harden stories about the cars his father owned, the amnesiac Long Beach sunlight drying his shorts, his fingertips wrinkled. Harden sits on the grass and occasionally throws a sponge at Crosby’s car, gleaming like wax.
Harden follows Crosby into the house, his knuckles bruised, and they make macaroni and cheese for dinner, on the couch with Harden’s legs folded in. Crosby idly counts the growing population of bottles on the coffee table, eyeing the curve of Harden’s fingers over glass. Harden has good hands.
Crosby goes to the kitchen when the late news comes on, and he’s doing dishes with his eyes closed, thinking of Richie today in the weight room, contorting his chest with his forearms tense and in motion.
The water is blue and cold over his hands. Harden comes in whistling, reflected in the scuffed silver of the toaster. He leans against the counter, crosses his arms. He mutters something like, “Goddamn medieval curse, is what it is,” and Bobby sorta smiles.
Harden’s always got the best theories for what’s happening to them.
The rolled cuffs of Crosby’s shirt are damp, and he pushes them farther up, leaving salt-like streaks of soap behind. The dust in Midland doesn’t fear walls or windows, settles in thickly on every surface, mostly the back of Crosby’s throat.
They go over schemes and people they might have offended, and Harden laughs with his head back on the cabinets. His neck is flushed, Irish-Canadian glow, because Harden is just about as white as they come. Pretty northern boy.
Then Crosby says something dumb about how entertaining Rich Harden’s considerable paranoia is so much better than going out and getting laid, seriously, dude, and Harden gets that look on his face like when he’s about to slam his head into something. His eyes flicker and he licks his lips and grabs Crosby’s belt, yanks him closer.
“You don’t have to go out to get laid, man,” Harden says, grinning.
Crosby kisses him with his wet arms slipping on Harden’s shoulders. He’s supposed to know how to do this, this half-drunk bus league error in judgment. He’s done it before, but Harden hooks his thumbs in Crosby’s belt loops and pushes against him, and Crosby has a bad feeling that this is the kind of mistake he’ll repeat for the rest of his life.
Because Harden is kinda out of his head. Subtly and without malice, but Harden is too good a pitcher not to be a little fucked up. One of those things that Crosby has learned in the minors.
They already live together and work together and that alone makes it a bad idea even if Crosby can explain away all the rest of it. Harden goes back to his room afterwards, because, honestly, Texas in July is no time to sleep in the same bed as someone. The air is heavy and sentient, curling in under clothes and making Crosby yawn. The temperature matches up to his own, hard to tell where he starts and the weather ends.
Harden practices quarters at the kitchen table in the morning, coins cartwheeling and bouncing around Crosby’s ankles. Two days later, Harden’s got him pressed down on the floor, cool tile and Harden braced over him, grinning. Crosby can feel the coins under his shoulder blades, small circles on the backs of his arms.
In Corpus Christi, they escape their roommates and meet up in the basement of the motel, alongside the row of washers and dryers, red glow of the Coke machine in the corner lighting up the room when Harden cuts the lights, his eyes bright. Crosby can feel static electricity building in his mouth, Harden clean of all flaws as he takes off his shirt.
Sunday, back home in the stoned haze of Midland, they’re hanging around, vaguely recovering from the night, the blinds closed, sun in bars across Harden’s legs. Collecting strength so that they can wash Crosby’s car later, and Bobby is attempting to define the odd thing that’s going on in his chest, day-dreaming of Harden soap-slick and twisting on the grass.
Harden is crawling over him, his mouth on the underside of Crosby’s jaw and Harden’s bored, careless hands flat-palmed over Crosby’s hair.
Harden’s skin tastes like liquor, sweating slow with the fan on the floor pivoting, pushing air across them. Too hot for anything, Crosby thinks, lowering Harden down onto the couch. The fan’s metal grid reflects silver-white on Harden’s cheek, and Harden smirks up at him, always so fucking cool. He knows just what he looks like.
Crosby doesn’t want to be this kind of gay, he’s better when it’s just a random collision at the end of the night, not this intentional, everyday thing, hungover on a Sunday with Harden sober and willing. He doesn’t want Harden’s clever mouth to follow him around anymore, superimposed on billboards and the black screen of the television.
He tells Harden, “I’m not really like this, you know.”
Harden shrugs, asks if Crosby gonna keep screwing around with him. Crosby says yes, and Harden smiles, “Then what the hell do I care?”
No reason why he should. The dust gathers thick enough on Harden’s back that Crosby can write his name in it, along the ruler-line of Harden’s spine. Crosby has been infected, an unbelievably insignificant part of him microscoped and blown up and cast over like a shadow. Probably he should be used to that by now. Every time he strikes out, it’s another day he’ll spend in the minor leagues.
Harden is really like this, Crosby realizes. Harden’s stories from high school sometimes end with blowjobs like punchlines, unconscionable acts in mostly-empty movie theatres, house parties and some swaying drunk kid with Harden’s hands pressed like struts on his chest. Harden watches the Oakland A’s for more than just preparation, blank-eyed with his mouth open a little bit, his fingers woven together between his knees.
Richie tells Crosby to pull the car over when they’re in the outskirts, wagon-wheel moon as gold as a ring in the sky. Crosby obeys, rests his hands on the steering wheel, looking without much hope for desert creatures out there in the black land.
“Bobby,” Rich says low. Out of the corner of his eye, Crosby can see a blur of blue and white. Harden is built from small parts, hard to fracture in any fatal way.
Crosby gets out of the car, stumbling in his haste. His shoulders bow under the heat, sweat prickling on his neck. You could melt fucking iron out here. He leans back on the side panel, attempting to find some oxygen, hearing Harden get out and the crunch of his footsteps.
Harden leans next to him companionably. It’s unnerving, the way Harden so obviously couldn’t care less about the risks of what they’re doing. Harden is insulted by the very idea of caution. Crosby can picture him a couple years from now, SportsCenter live coast-to-coast and Harden smirking, “Sleeping with the shortstop was the only good thing that happened to me in the minors.”
There is a plan that Crosby is following. A path cut clear through the tall grass, beat by his father, and forgive him if he’s strayed, down here in the double-a summer. Harden is stunning, out in the moonlight.
Texas running far before them, the wicked heart of August, Harden asks thoughtfully, “Do you remember what day it was, that time in the kitchen? The first time?”
Crosby swallows and shakes his head. Harden sighs, a rustle like tumbleweed.
“I can’t remember either.” He nudges his arm into Crosby’s. “Doesn’t it seem like we should remember?”
Crosby looks over at him, the strange soft dark on Harden’s face, a gray cloud spreading on the window glass, around the outline of Harden’s body. It’s been three or four months and now Crosby can’t quite place it.
He thinks that if the world is right, Harden will be around forever. Ten, fifteen years down the line, they’ll be in Phoenix for spring training and in the dry air, Crosby will think of this moment, think about how he was thinking about the future.
Harden slides his hand on the back of Crosby’s neck, frictionless and sneaking under his shirt. Crosby tips his head back, trying to catch his breath, the sky dumb with stars.
Also, the end of the first and start of the second seasons of the West Wing? Kinda freakishly good. Not that I'd forgotten, you understand, but I watched like ten episodes over the past two days. In The Shadow Of Two Gunmen, my god.
Can I get a rousing chorus of 'the off-season sucks,' y'all?
outside in
for alowishus812
This Texas shit has got to stop, Crosby thinks.
Oil derrick tonight, in the horizontal gash of the headlights, twenty miles into the desert outside the middle of fucking nowhere. Rich Harden is on a cut of metal thicker than Crosby’s chest, jeaned legs hanging five inches off the ground.
Kinda drunk, Crosby focuses on distracting Harden from climbing.
They sleep in the truckbed that night, in the ninety degree temperatures, in T-shirts and bare feet, their sneakers in the cab among half a case of empties.
In Midland, there is less than nothing to do. Odessa’s got a strip club, but Crosby can think of few things worse than taking Rich Harden to a strip club. Harden flicks poker chips at him across the couch as they’re watching TV, another weekday evening with ice for their arms and knees, the tight place in Harden’s side that aches deep sometimes. Harden drives to Dallas to get Canadian beer. Harden is the reason that twenty year old boys aren’t typically given this kind of freedom, money never an issue and most of the games are played at night.
Bobby is twenty-two, and somehow better equipped. He knows more about the minors than Harden does, recognizes it more clearly. How to Make the Big Leagues, the overarching theme of Bobby Crosby’s life, shagging flies for the high school team when he was seven, throwing to white patches of spray-paint on the trees from sixty feet out, eight-hour stints at the batting cages on the pier, in the sweep of the lights from the go-cart track.
Harden is unused to living so completely for one thing. He still has trouble counting American change when he’s drunk, and there are bizarre rules that he learned in Canada, you don’t run on a dropped third strike, you don’t throw a slider behind in the count. Harden takes losses very badly, fights stuff in the dugout and once he threw his glove into the bench so hard the wood snapped cleanly.
Crosby washes his car in the driveway on Sundays when they’re home, telling Harden stories about the cars his father owned, the amnesiac Long Beach sunlight drying his shorts, his fingertips wrinkled. Harden sits on the grass and occasionally throws a sponge at Crosby’s car, gleaming like wax.
Harden follows Crosby into the house, his knuckles bruised, and they make macaroni and cheese for dinner, on the couch with Harden’s legs folded in. Crosby idly counts the growing population of bottles on the coffee table, eyeing the curve of Harden’s fingers over glass. Harden has good hands.
Crosby goes to the kitchen when the late news comes on, and he’s doing dishes with his eyes closed, thinking of Richie today in the weight room, contorting his chest with his forearms tense and in motion.
The water is blue and cold over his hands. Harden comes in whistling, reflected in the scuffed silver of the toaster. He leans against the counter, crosses his arms. He mutters something like, “Goddamn medieval curse, is what it is,” and Bobby sorta smiles.
Harden’s always got the best theories for what’s happening to them.
The rolled cuffs of Crosby’s shirt are damp, and he pushes them farther up, leaving salt-like streaks of soap behind. The dust in Midland doesn’t fear walls or windows, settles in thickly on every surface, mostly the back of Crosby’s throat.
They go over schemes and people they might have offended, and Harden laughs with his head back on the cabinets. His neck is flushed, Irish-Canadian glow, because Harden is just about as white as they come. Pretty northern boy.
Then Crosby says something dumb about how entertaining Rich Harden’s considerable paranoia is so much better than going out and getting laid, seriously, dude, and Harden gets that look on his face like when he’s about to slam his head into something. His eyes flicker and he licks his lips and grabs Crosby’s belt, yanks him closer.
“You don’t have to go out to get laid, man,” Harden says, grinning.
Crosby kisses him with his wet arms slipping on Harden’s shoulders. He’s supposed to know how to do this, this half-drunk bus league error in judgment. He’s done it before, but Harden hooks his thumbs in Crosby’s belt loops and pushes against him, and Crosby has a bad feeling that this is the kind of mistake he’ll repeat for the rest of his life.
Because Harden is kinda out of his head. Subtly and without malice, but Harden is too good a pitcher not to be a little fucked up. One of those things that Crosby has learned in the minors.
They already live together and work together and that alone makes it a bad idea even if Crosby can explain away all the rest of it. Harden goes back to his room afterwards, because, honestly, Texas in July is no time to sleep in the same bed as someone. The air is heavy and sentient, curling in under clothes and making Crosby yawn. The temperature matches up to his own, hard to tell where he starts and the weather ends.
Harden practices quarters at the kitchen table in the morning, coins cartwheeling and bouncing around Crosby’s ankles. Two days later, Harden’s got him pressed down on the floor, cool tile and Harden braced over him, grinning. Crosby can feel the coins under his shoulder blades, small circles on the backs of his arms.
In Corpus Christi, they escape their roommates and meet up in the basement of the motel, alongside the row of washers and dryers, red glow of the Coke machine in the corner lighting up the room when Harden cuts the lights, his eyes bright. Crosby can feel static electricity building in his mouth, Harden clean of all flaws as he takes off his shirt.
Sunday, back home in the stoned haze of Midland, they’re hanging around, vaguely recovering from the night, the blinds closed, sun in bars across Harden’s legs. Collecting strength so that they can wash Crosby’s car later, and Bobby is attempting to define the odd thing that’s going on in his chest, day-dreaming of Harden soap-slick and twisting on the grass.
Harden is crawling over him, his mouth on the underside of Crosby’s jaw and Harden’s bored, careless hands flat-palmed over Crosby’s hair.
Harden’s skin tastes like liquor, sweating slow with the fan on the floor pivoting, pushing air across them. Too hot for anything, Crosby thinks, lowering Harden down onto the couch. The fan’s metal grid reflects silver-white on Harden’s cheek, and Harden smirks up at him, always so fucking cool. He knows just what he looks like.
Crosby doesn’t want to be this kind of gay, he’s better when it’s just a random collision at the end of the night, not this intentional, everyday thing, hungover on a Sunday with Harden sober and willing. He doesn’t want Harden’s clever mouth to follow him around anymore, superimposed on billboards and the black screen of the television.
He tells Harden, “I’m not really like this, you know.”
Harden shrugs, asks if Crosby gonna keep screwing around with him. Crosby says yes, and Harden smiles, “Then what the hell do I care?”
No reason why he should. The dust gathers thick enough on Harden’s back that Crosby can write his name in it, along the ruler-line of Harden’s spine. Crosby has been infected, an unbelievably insignificant part of him microscoped and blown up and cast over like a shadow. Probably he should be used to that by now. Every time he strikes out, it’s another day he’ll spend in the minor leagues.
Harden is really like this, Crosby realizes. Harden’s stories from high school sometimes end with blowjobs like punchlines, unconscionable acts in mostly-empty movie theatres, house parties and some swaying drunk kid with Harden’s hands pressed like struts on his chest. Harden watches the Oakland A’s for more than just preparation, blank-eyed with his mouth open a little bit, his fingers woven together between his knees.
Richie tells Crosby to pull the car over when they’re in the outskirts, wagon-wheel moon as gold as a ring in the sky. Crosby obeys, rests his hands on the steering wheel, looking without much hope for desert creatures out there in the black land.
“Bobby,” Rich says low. Out of the corner of his eye, Crosby can see a blur of blue and white. Harden is built from small parts, hard to fracture in any fatal way.
Crosby gets out of the car, stumbling in his haste. His shoulders bow under the heat, sweat prickling on his neck. You could melt fucking iron out here. He leans back on the side panel, attempting to find some oxygen, hearing Harden get out and the crunch of his footsteps.
Harden leans next to him companionably. It’s unnerving, the way Harden so obviously couldn’t care less about the risks of what they’re doing. Harden is insulted by the very idea of caution. Crosby can picture him a couple years from now, SportsCenter live coast-to-coast and Harden smirking, “Sleeping with the shortstop was the only good thing that happened to me in the minors.”
There is a plan that Crosby is following. A path cut clear through the tall grass, beat by his father, and forgive him if he’s strayed, down here in the double-a summer. Harden is stunning, out in the moonlight.
Texas running far before them, the wicked heart of August, Harden asks thoughtfully, “Do you remember what day it was, that time in the kitchen? The first time?”
Crosby swallows and shakes his head. Harden sighs, a rustle like tumbleweed.
“I can’t remember either.” He nudges his arm into Crosby’s. “Doesn’t it seem like we should remember?”
Crosby looks over at him, the strange soft dark on Harden’s face, a gray cloud spreading on the window glass, around the outline of Harden’s body. It’s been three or four months and now Crosby can’t quite place it.
He thinks that if the world is right, Harden will be around forever. Ten, fifteen years down the line, they’ll be in Phoenix for spring training and in the dry air, Crosby will think of this moment, think about how he was thinking about the future.
Harden slides his hand on the back of Crosby’s neck, frictionless and sneaking under his shirt. Crosby tips his head back, trying to catch his breath, the sky dumb with stars.