Fic: Praying Mantis (Zombie Female Insects)
Title: Praying Mantis (Zombie Female Insects)
Author: soupypictures
Pairing: Barry Zito/Tim Lincecum
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: The names of real people, institutions and organizations are meant to give the fiction a sense of reality and is in no way indicative of anything even resembling real life.
Summary: Zito has bad taste in television. Tim loves him anyway.
Notes: Most of this was written while I was still on my summer break. I got this ridiculous bout of inspiration while watching Speed of Life on Discovery. Then it died, school started, and I defibbed it while horizon_greene was at a Tim Lincecum start. So that whole huge style gap between beginning and end thing? There ya go. (Also, don’t ask why Tim is Tim and Barry is Zito. They just are.) If you like this, thank horizon_greene for pushing me to finish it. If it grosses you out, blame Discovery.
Tim feels vaguely disgusted and remembers why he doesn’t like to watch Discovery indiscriminately. Sandoval had left the clubhouse TV on the channel and Tim had become engrossed watching leaping great white sharks chase after fake seals. The couch sinks down beside him and he’s too horrifically entranced by the high definition battle on the screen of the huge TV to even acknowledge the guy’s presence. And anyway, this is a repeat of almost every day of his life for six months out of the year. He knows who the man is without looking.
“If I were a praying mantis I would be gay,” he blurts, watching as the male insect lets go of the leaf of grass, preferring to fall fifty feet into the unknown (and almost certain death) than mate with the female, get decapitated, and have his brains eaten for breakfast. Zombie female praying mantis.
Tim thinks about his own breakfast, scarfed down on the way to the ballpark in Zito’s Range Rover. His stomach growls and he makes a vague plan to rustle up something better than Pop Tarts. He wonders whose locker he can raid for a Power Bar. Stupid Zito and his sweet tooth.
“I don’t think you would have a choice in the matter,” his companion remarks as the show goes to commercial. “What are we watching? This is gross.”
“Like Time Warp but with animals in the wild. I dunno, I thought it’d be cooler. I kind of want to know what happens to that little dude, though.”
They sit in a halfway comfortable silence as the commercials roll on, muted because Tim’s father taught him well. Tim wishes he’d gotten further along in his dressing routine before being captured by the television. Sitting around in compression shorts, socks, and sandals is generally not a good idea with Zito around for a plethora of reasons. Most of them include wandering hands.
In the instant before the program recommences Tim hits the mute button and Zito makes a quiet noise of appreciation. They watch, entranced, as the insect lands on the forest floor and decides he’s hungry.
“Uh, new revelation: I would not be a praying mantis at all. They eat roaches?!” Tim whispers, repulsed. He is leaning forward, unconsciously protecting his bare torso from unseen insect predators. He forgets his plan to find a Power Bar.
“So you were okay with being a gay praying mantis until you figured out you’d be expected to eat roaches? That says a lot about you.”
Tim flushes and reaches out to shove Zito’s shoulder, eyes still locked on the insect devouring the most repulsive creature on the planet. In slow motion. “You’re sick.”
“I’m sick? You’re the one watching insects eat each other. Here, let’s change the channel.”
But Tim doesn’t want to surrender his control of the television. Though he is currently watching a nightmare, he knows Zito will just turn it to TLC or something to watch women get told their style sucks, or watch them try on wedding dress after wedding dress, or oh god please no, Bravo, in hopes of seeing that kid who’s in Stockton now, the one Tim knows Zito’s been following exclusively through that TV show. (Zito says it’s because he likes watching plastically-repaired housewives clawing at each other’s hair, but Tim knows better. The kid isn’t on the New Jersey show. The kid is also pretty hot.) And anyway, just an hour ago he’d been stuck watching Birth Day or some other inhumane babies-being-born show that would have been Rated R if Tim had anything to say about it.
A wrestling match ensues, but neither of them are very serious about it. It’s a well-established rule not to give a fight your all if you don’t really mean it, especially not in the clubhouse where the trainer can see firsthand just how you fucked up your hand. There’s no making up a good excuse when he saw you swing at your teammate.
Tim knows to give up, too, because one out of every ten times Zito gets intensely competitive and someone might actually end up hurt.
Zito holds up the remote in victory, shoving his hand in Tim’s hair and moving it around, fucking it up like he always likes to do when it’s actually clean, brushed, and nice-looking. Tim bats at his hand and makes a half-assed grab for his surrendered remote.
“Please don’t--” Tim breaks off in defeat as Zito defiantly hits the combination of buttons to send them from badass snakes eating live frogs to crying women in white dresses. Typical Zito fare.
“Fuck off, tarantulas were coming on after the next commercial and you know that skeeves you out. Don’t front.”
“What, and this is any less freaky?”
“Whatever. You didn’t even like the nature show. You hate Discovery.”
Tim fights back a smile at Zito knowing these things. He should stop being surprised; Zito is like a pregnant woman with his elephant memory. (Tim knows this because he was watching I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant with Wilson one ill-fated afternoon. Apparently awesome memory is a symptom you might be pregnant? He and Wilson had sat in uncomfortable silence as they pondered the implications of that information.)
“That’s not strictly true.”
“That’s right!” Zito snaps his fingers and points at the TV. “You like that crab show. With the ice and the waves and the, uh, crabs.”
“Whatever, it’s all about people, not crabs.”
“And you secretly hope you bump into one of those guys -- I haven’t figured out which one yet, but I will -- whenever you go home to Seattle.”
“I’m not from Seattle--”
“Hah! You did not deny that you harbor a crush!” Zito giggles and this is how Tim knows he intended the pun.
Tim feels himself blush despite his best efforts to hold it at bay. “I hate you, you know?”
Zito laughs, leaning close with the pretense of grabbing a bottle of water off the table on Tim’s side of the couch. “I wouldn’t mind if you brought home that younger Harris kid, you know. It’d be like two of you,” he says softly, right into Tim’s ear, and Tim’s face feels hot.
Zito leans back and takes a long pull of the water. “Bingo.”
“Shut up.”
“I have connections, you know.”
“What, with the fishing industry in the Pacific Northwest? I’m sure my connections are better than yours. Fucking hippie.”
“Hey, pothead, who’re you calling hippie? Last time I checked you were in court for possession and you have the long hair.”
Tim crosses his arms over his chest and pouts, eliciting a bark of laughter from Zito. Tim mumbles something under his breath, eyes locked on the TV show and a woman crying about being too fat for the dress she likes.
“What was that? I can’t hear you when you mumble like a teenager.”
“I said, I don’t want a threesome anyway.” He shakes his head, still facing forward and shaping his mouth around words with barely any breath behind them.
Zito obnoxiously cups a hand around his ear, Tim can see this from the corner of his eye and also, it’s Zito. What else would he be doing? “Can’t hear you,” he singsongs.
Tim faces Zito head-on for the first time since they got to the ballpark in Zito’s Range Rover. He rests his cheek on his knees, hair falling over his arms. “There’s no one,” he repeats. “Just you.” Tim sees a flicker of something, he’s not sure what, in Zito’s eyes and the lefty reaches over to tuck a lock of hair back away from Tim’s face.
“Wanna go to the video room?” Zito asks hopefully.
Tim scoffs, but can’t hold back a tiny smile. “You know what I’m gonna say.”
Zito smiles brightly. “Yeah, but it was worth a shot.” He turns his attention back to the TLC show, draping his arm across the back of the couch.
“Ever the optimist.” Tim snags the remote and flips the channel back to Discovery. Zito puts up half of a fight, but the crab show is on and Zito will never turn down a chance to tease Tim about his ... proclivities. Tim lets Zito fuck up his hair again (and maybe even leans into it a little). He endures Zito’s taunting and thinly-veiled, leering innuendos. He decides, watching Sandoval waltz into the clubhouse and pointedly look anywhere but the couch, that he’s really, really glad he’s not a praying mantis, gay or otherwise.
He’s pretty sure Zito would be a female one, if given the choice, just so he could feast on his freshly-killed mate’s brains.
Twisted fucker.