two for the price of one (which would be zero dollars)
also, really. huston street's kinda like a cancer, isn't he.
No Better Than The Weather
By Candle Beck
They go back to Oakland at the very end of March, to play a three-game exhibition set against San Francisco before going to Seattle. In the clubhouse, Street sidles up to Harden with an anxious smile and a pair of fruit roll-ups. Harden’s peeling the shapes out of his, little cartoon figures and dinosaurs, and Street asks him:
“Can I come sleep over at your house?”
Harden licks red goo off the back of his teeth. “Will we be making popcorn and watching ‘Die Hard’?”
“Um. Sure?” Street shifts his weight and Harden can still see a vague shimmer of green in his hair from the chlorine in the hotel swimming pool, back in Phoenix.
Harden pops his collar, studies himself in the little mirror in his locker, and folds it back down. Street’s acting strange, but Street is a weird kid on his best day, which this probably isn’t, sixty-nine hours till first pitch in Seattle.
“Bring a sleeping bag. I got a tent we can set up in the living room.”
“Okay, that’s a yes, right?”
Harden grins at him. Street’s funny as shit, especially when he’s nervous. Harden’s seen him every day for the past six weeks, and the next six months, too, and a lot might happen in that time. Harden’s got faith in the season to see them through, make sure they come out okay on the other side.
Street follows Harden home. This is the first time in his life that he is living alone, and at the moment it’s still unnerving, everything still packed in boxes and suitcases, cabinets and refrigerator empty because they just got in last night. Harden snagged some beers from the spread, though, and he shows Street around, the two of them barefoot and drinking slowly.
“You can put your stuff in here,” Harden says, pushing open the door of the guest room. Street’s teeth spark off the silver of his beer can.
“Wasn’t I promised a tent?”
“It was kinda only a metaphorical tent.”
With Street smiling at him, Harden briefly loses his sense of place and time. This is their third year; Huston is becoming part of his history, every day they spend in each other’s company one more flashback to relive decades from now.
They repair to the living room, watching the Nascar Report on one of the cable channels. Street knows way too much about this stuff, explaining for the fifteenth time how the point system works and telling Harden that the air at races tasted like gasoline and tar.
When they were still living together, Harden used to take naps on Sundays in front of the television, for hours as Street and Blanton and Swisher watched the cars fly endlessly around the track.
Street falls quiet after a while, slumping back into the couch and crossing his arms over his chest. In the wick of television light, his face grows pinched and discontent, his mind evidently far away.
“So,” Harden says. “Maybe you wanna tell me what’s going on now.”
Street gives him a quick look, though he shouldn’t, really, because Harden is an inherently curious person, always after them with questions about motivation and schemes. Anyway, he knows that Street’s extremely well-mannered and it’s only polite to provide an explanation when you ask to crash at your friend’s house. Street hardly ever lies, too, which makes him unique and deceptively simple to take advantage of.
“Me and Lacey decided to not so much live together anymore.”
“Really?” Harden leans back, resting his beer on his hip. “Huh.”
“I mean, I guess we decided to try not living together for a little bit, and then see if that’s a better idea than what’s happening now.”
“You’re engaged,” Harden points out, watching Street rub his hands together and exhale, snap a glare back at him that he never would have tried even six months ago.
“Yeah, and we haven’t lived in the same city in like two years, dude. It’s. Weird.”
“Um. It’s probably not good if you like her more when it’s a long-distance relationship.”
Smirking, Street gets up and goes over to his bag by the door. He crouches to dig through the pockets and says to Harden, “It’s not like that. It’s just we’re doing this backwards. You’re supposed to see each other every day, then move in together, then get engaged.”
Harden restrains himself from noting that he and Street have already managed two out of three pretty easily, because Street doesn’t like to be reminded that there’s a line of tension between them that has never been fully justified by friendship or professional rivalry.
“So it’s, like, devolution.”
“What? No. Don’t make up words.” Street straightens with two miniature bottles of liquor shining narrowly between his fingers. Harden gives a silent cheer to the Boy Scouts, holding up his hand for Street to toss him a bottle.
They settle in again, lulled by the thrum of the races and the crickets calling out in the backyard. Harden turns the situation over in his mind, the two of them drinking here in the shallows of the East Bay again, with another season looming like fog on the edge of the hill, about to steamroll right over the two of them. Harden has grown to distrust the game over the past few years, but he had an untouchable spring and, god help him, it’s made him brave once more.
“When you said you wanted to crash here, Huston, did you mean just tonight or for the whole season?”
Street looks at him and his face twists interestingly into a guilty, manipulative smile. He shrugs. Harden watches a flush rising on his neck, hazy and maybe seventy percent drunk, which is about right.
“I don’t know what’s gonna happen, is the thing,” Street says apologetically. “It could be a couple of weeks, or maybe, like, it’s possible it might go a little longer. So you can tell me if it’s not cool. Obviously, I can scare up another guest room if I need to. Or, a series of them, as the case may be.”
Street stops suddenly and knots his fingers together. The tips of his ears are bright red, and Harden remembers happily that Street tends to babble amusingly when drunk, kills time better than anyone Harden knows.
“Rent’s due on the fifth, man,” Harden says, and Street ducks his head, grinning and nodding.
“See, I came to the right place.”
“You did, yes. And I get to be host to your little quarter-life crisis, it’s really win-win.”
Street rolls his eyes and leans back against the arm of the couch, one leg stretched out on the coffee table. He loosens at this time of night, after a game, smooths out his edges and lets his shoulders give, and sometimes Harden gets dizzy staring at the lazy slant of his body.
“I wouldn’t say it’s a crisis, so much. I’m just trying to get married, you know, I’d like to get it right.”
Harden doesn’t say anything, badly distracted by the skew of light and color over Street’s face and for a moment certain that they’ll go the distance this year.
So Street moves back in with Harden, all alone up there in the hills even though Danny Haren is three steep blocks over, Swisher and Blanton a straight shot down Las Cruces. He only has time to bring over a few carloads of his stuff, boxes of VHS tapes and his Rookie of the Year plaque gathering on the kitchen counters, a duffle bag unpacked enough to find sheets for the bed on the floor of his guest room, and then they fly north for Opening Day and baseball completely absorbs them for a week.
They go to Seattle and don’t do so well, go to Anaheim and do better. The games against the Angels are breathless one-run affairs, far too scratched-out for this early in the year, and Harden gets exhausted thinking about six more months of this shit, but that passes quickly. He pitches extremely well in his first start, and he and Bobby Crosby get blind drunk that night, until they feel invulnerable, making toasts to their injuries and vocally daring them to return. It’s terrible luck, of course, but Harden has played it safe in the past and where has that gotten him but back on the disabled list?
At the hotel in Anaheim, he comes upstairs pretty late, shambling on adrenaline and the red bull and vodka that had seemed like such a good idea at the time, and after a minute, a shoe or a mitt or something crashes into the connecting door.
Harden toes off his shoes and strips out of his button-up, socked in his thin undershirt and opening the door, leaning on the jamb. Street’s sitting cross-legged on the bed, looking like he’s still in high school with a slender strip of pale through the tan of his arm, the place where he wears his green rubber bracelet. He beckons Harden in and asks all about his night, pouring glasses of water and running down to the lobby to buy aspirin when the caffeine wears off and Harden’s head starts to ache.
Harden falls asleep on Street’s bed, after they spend several hours talking over HBO. It’ll be like this for the first few weeks, tired all the time and relying on each other for protection. Harden gets confused by the speed of life on the road, which he really expected to have grown out of by now.
He wakes up a little before dawn to find that Street is asleep next to him, though he is on top of the covers and still in his clothes, and Street is half-buried under pillows and blankets and his bare shoulder is peeking out.
Harden gently pushes the pillow off Street’s head, and looks at him for a second, the curve of his neck and narrow perfect skin at the corner of his eye. He takes off his belt and lies back down, staring at the ceiling until it’s light enough that he can make out the cracks in the plaster.
When they get back to Oakland, it’s overcast and cool and they spend a day at Ikea buying Street furniture. Street’s phone rings when they’re in line, and he goes outside to take it. His shirt is stuck to his body by the wind and Harden watches him through the front windows, one hand over his ear.
Street’s speaking sharply when Harden comes out of the store, a short ragged sheaf of his hair poking out, saying, “Look, you’re not allowed to complain about that. You wanted me to leave, remember?”
Harden rests his elbows on the handhold of the cart and studies the set of Street’s back, stiff rise of his shoulders. Street’s facing away from him, scowling at the highway.
“Yeah, babe, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Street says into his phone, and Harden starts because it’s almost a sneer, and that’s bizarre to hear in Street’s tore-up voice. “I can either live with you or you can shut up about wherever else I choose to.”
Harden considers that, then clears his throat. Street jumps and turns to see him, making a face and waving Harden off. Harden sighs and pushes the cart over to the car, checking over his shoulder to see Street weaving between the aisles, a flash of dark gold against the chrome and silver, the gray sky.
It’s clear, after that, that Street’s reasonable explanation for living with Harden is, at best, a totally misguided line of bullshit. Street didn’t move out on his girlfriend after an amicable and mature discussion; he got himself thrown out, which is really something of a trick, considering that he bought the house.
Harden bides his time. Street is still in a thanks-for-letting-me-stay kinda mood; he cooks and drives down to the 7-Eleven when they run out of milk and sugar. He goes out when Harden asks him to, unlike a couple weeks ago in Phoenix when it was like warfare, getting around his plans with Lacey. They stay up late and Harden will take advantage of this until it begins to wane, and then he’ll find out what the fuck happened to Huston Street.
Every time Street talks on the phone with her, they seem to end up fighting. Harden’s uncomfortable with the patio door open a couple inches, enough for him to hear Street out back, ripping off mean comebacks and bringing up their collegiate history. Street’s actually pretty good at fighting dirty, which knots something in Harden’s stomach.
But it is very much like undergrad, when every semester one of Harden’s friends would go through a transformative broken heart, first real girlfriend, first grown-up disaster, and Harden hadn’t expected to bear witness to another one of these, this late in the game.
He’s learning secrets about Street that neither the team nor their last two seasons as roommates could have taught him. Street fucked around on Lacey back in Texas, and not just one time, either, but actually had another girlfriend for a couple of months. Lacey had done something in retaliation that makes Street’s voice go low and cold whenever she mentions it, but Harden can’t figure out what exactly it was. Lacey left a lot behind when she followed Huston out to California, and Street keeps saying, “But you said you wanted to! I said you didn’t have to!” which Harden also did not know.
And there’s something else. Harden’s sitting on the roof eating an ice cream drumstick, and Street comes out the front door, talking to nobody. Harden peers down and sees him barefoot and pacing, his phone stuck to his ear.
“You made it into this huge deal that it totally isn’t, Lace,” Street’s saying. “It’s not that weird, and it definitely isn’t cause to fucking leave me.”
Harden licks at his fingers, stunned. Street scoffs at something she says, and Harden can see him latch a hand onto the sunburned back of his neck.
“I do not need to figure out what I want,” Street tells her. “I’ve told you. I’m just staying here, that’s all.”
Harden startles and bites down hard on the tip of his tongue. He looks over again to see Street knuckling his forehead, his eyes wrenched shut. Like all the afternoons of their life these days, something monumental is happening.
“You act like it’s a foregone conclusion! Like, oh, this plus that has to equal this other thing. When, in reality, he’s my best friend and where the fuck else am I supposed to go when something like this happens?”
There’s a pause. Harden lies down on his back on the roof, flattening one hand over his chest and blinking up at the wide blue sky. He sucks on the sore spot on his tongue, picturing Street down there in the worn-thin Babe Ruth League jersey tee with red sleeves and lettering that he wears on their off-days sometimes, Street all warm and bright with anger.
“I don’t want to be here,” Street says plainly, taking Harden’s breath away. “I want to be at home, with you, and this is just, it’s so messed up, babe, you should really let me come back.”
But Lacey won’t let him. Street puts the local Domino’s on his speed dial, pins a few photographs to the walls, and finds a shortcut to the highway. Harden breathes out, now that Street is two doors down once again, now the season has truly begun. Street still acts like he’s in exile, martyred and piteous, but Harden’s working on not being so entirely suckered by Street’s sad puppy face.
Anyway, it’s not just cosmetic, whatever the damage is between Huston and Lacey. Street stays awake some nights, walking the hallways, making hot chocolate in the kitchen, and there is something so sorrowful and lonely about Street in the middle of the night that Harden tries not to disturb him, like Street’s sleepwalking and if he gets woken up, he could die.
Street continues to bicker with Lacey before dinner and after midnight, and Harden eavesdrops intentionally this time, slipping into the pantry when Street comes into the kitchen, sliced up by strips of light with his ear pressed against the door. Best he can piece together, Street did something that Lacey considers unforgivable, though Street is convinced that it’s not a big deal. Lacey threw him out and Street’s been trying to talk her into taking him back, which Harden finds odd if only because they’re always baiting each other and setting cruel traps. Also, Lacey has a problem with Street moving in with Harden, which may or may not tie back to the aforementioned unforgivable trespass.
Harden tries to fill in the blanks as the days pass and Street falls asleep more and more often on the couch in the living room, his phone moving gently on his breathing stomach. He’s never particularly liked Lacey, but he thinks he kept that pretty well concealed, on the rare occasions that they’d met. Street is and always has been devoted to her, so there’s never been much point in saying that she seems to him like the kind of woman you marry too young, live to regret.
In the meantime, he and Street fall into their old patterns, the ease of living together surprising Harden every spring. They go through the White Sox and Yankees and Angels on that first homestand, and they end up every night fucking wrenched by exhaustion.
The Yankees series, in particular, is far too dramatic for April. Thirteen innings and walk-offs and Travis Buck coming out of fucking nowhere, huge ovations in his twelfth major league at-bat, a stun of extra-base hits making his name for him.
Harden finds it nostalgic. He remembers when it was Street and before that it was Swisher and before that it was Crosby and before that it was Harden himself. It’s something that binds half the team together; they all once went by ‘kid.’
Back at the house, they lie around on the couch and the carpet for hours without talking, the television on and the lights off. They eat breakfast together and generally take one car into the ballpark. The night before they go out on the road again, Harden realizes that they’re sharing a tube of toothpaste.
Early season baseball is as much about establishing proper circadian rhythms as anything else, and Harden’s still awake in Texas at two in the morning, sitting with his back against the connecting door. Street’s on his phone again in the next room, because it’s only midnight in California, but Harden can’t make out what he’s saying, just the familiar rise and run of Street’s voice like a vibration.
Harden dozes off, and the door is quiet when he wakes up an hour later, groggy and sticky-mouthed. He stumbles to his feet and goes out into the hall to the vending machine for a bottle of water, where he rests his forehead on wall for a second, trying to remember what city they’re in and what year it is and what position he plays.
Street’s sticking his head out into the hall when Harden comes back, his face scrubbed clean and swollen-eyed. He spots Harden and freezes, then smiles.
“You’re still up?”
Harden shakes his head, yawning and pressing the cold bottle against his hip. “I’m really not.”
“You wanna, um. Come hang out for a minute?” Street looks mildly panicked, hanging onto the doorframe with both hands.
Shrugging, Harden shuffles into Street’s room, already half-planning to wake up here tomorrow, on top of the covers with Street underneath. He sits on the bed and opens his water, his palms slick and cool, and sees on the table, in the shadow of the television set, the hard glass shine of one of the bottles of Kentucky bourbon that Joe’d brought back. It’s only a quarter full, and Street is, upon closer examination, swaying a little bit.
“It’s amazing how much trouble you manage to get into just by sitting around in your room,” Harden tells him.
“What? Trouble? I don’t think so, man.” Street falls more than sits down, bouncing onto his back as Harden smirks.
“You’re hammered.”
Street arrows a finger at him across the few feet that separate them. “Well, that. That’s true. Wow.” He rubs his face with his hands. “When did that happen?”
“You called home?” Harden asks stupidly. Street’s face crumples slightly, and he nods.
“Yeah, think I did. I gotta. Gotta quit doing that.”
Harden snorts and nods in agreement. He kicks off his shoes and folds his legs on the bed, staring at Street’s fine bent profile.
“You know I couldn’t agree more, dude.”
Street smiles kinda sadly down at the carpet and turns his fist into the side of his head, a pained, forlorn gesture that Harden has seen him do hundreds of times. He’s going through hell, oddly enough, and Harden keeps forgetting that.
“It’s just, I keep saying the same stuff and it won’t, it never works. I can’t think of any other ways to explain it, she’s just, like, deaf.”
Harden closes his hand around his own ankle and spots the crack in Street’s defenses, holding his breath.
“Explain what, man? What happened?”
Street doesn’t answer for a while, and Harden’s sure that he won’t, though this is vintage Street, sweet drunk rambly Huston Street who has confessed all manner of things under the influence. This is different, built up in Harden’s mind to be as bad a thing as Street has ever done.
Street falls back on the bed, stares up at the ceiling and Harden eyes the edge of his stomach where his shirt is pulled up, the foreshortened stretch of his body and long legs.
“She found something.”
Harden waits expectantly, but Street doesn’t continue. “Yeah?”
Street sighs, closes his eyes. “On my computer.”
“Oh.” Harden thinks for a minute. “Oh! Shit, dude.” He starts to grin, glad that Street is lying down and can’t see his face. “She found your porn?”
Street winces, nods, a blur of red traveling up his neck to his face. Harden laughs silently, manically, for a moment, shaking his head. “Password protect, Huston, come on.”
“It’s a new computer. I’m still figuring everything out on it.”
Harden laughs out loud that time, and Street squints one eye open, thinly scowling at him. Forcibly calming, Harden claps Street on the knee, shakes his leg a little bit.
“She kicked you out because of that? Because, dude, that is a ridiculous overreaction. Good thing you found out now, huh?”
But Street’s shaking his head, his eyes scrunched shut again. One hand fists at his side and pushes at the bone of his hip; it looks more like a compulsion than anything else.
“It wasn’t just the stuff itself. It was mostly the, um. Content.”
Harden lifts an eyebrow. “Livestock?”
Street twitches and sucks in a fast breath. “Dude! No! Gross.”
Grinning, Harden pats his knee apologetically, his mind working desperately past the recycled hotel room and the haze of bourbon that’s clinging to Street’s skin. Street folds his thumb inside his fist and turns his face away from Harden.
“There were ones with guys. Um. Just guys.”
Harden goes completely still, his fingers still alit on Street’s leg. A flood of images overwhelms him, strong enough that it would have buckled his knees had he been standing. Street in blue computer light, on the twin bed that he’d slept on for the first two months of his rookie year, his hand down under the sheets and his tongue caught between his teeth. Street, watching guys.
Street’s looking at him, peeking from under his eyelashes. He’s blushing so bad it looks like it hurts, and Harden almost wants to laugh again.
“You’re a fucking secret agent, dude,” Harden says, his heart hammering. This could change everything. “You didn’t think to mention that you liked dick?”
Street jerks his head to the side, hunching. “I don’t. I’m not. Fuck, Richie, that’s what she keeps saying.”
Harden chokes back a cackle, of course, of course. “She said that to you? She called you a-” He cuts himself off, presses the underside of his wrist against his mouth, sick with a bizarrely frantic glee.
“She thinks it means something it doesn’t,” Street says, his voice shaking. “She thinks it’s, like, that’s what I want, but really I just. Sometimes I like to watch it. It’s nothing. It’s normal.”
“You don’t need to defend gay porn to me, Huston.”
“Thank you,” Street sighs. Harden tips his head to the side.
“Of course, I fuck around with guys.”
Street groans and covers his face with his hands. “Why do I always forget that about you?”
“Search the fuck out of me, man.”
Harden sounds a little sharper than he intended, because it’s not like he’s ever kept it a secret. Street should be old enough to recognize when someone’s flirting with him, especially when it happens for two years straight. Harden checked every last avenue into Huston Street, the first few months they knew each other, intently trying to see if there were any circumstances under which Street would let him bite the back of his neck and press his fingers into the dents of Street’s hips. But Street only ever smiled and played dumb, and maybe he wasn’t so much playing, either.
“It’s not like that for me,” Street says firmly, a shoddy tear opening somewhere in Harden’s chest. “It’s like, you know those girls that like watching lesbian porn?”
Harden snorts. “Those girls are a fucking myth.”
“No, because there was this guy on the team back home, and his girlfriend was like that. But she was still totally straight. They had sex, like, constantly.” Street’s forehead knots. “It doesn’t mean I like guys all of a sudden.”
Harden’s pretty sure that that’s patently untrue, but Street’s clearly on unstable ground here, and Harden has no desire to further jeopardize him. “Lacey disagrees?”
Pushing his teeth into his lower lip, Street swipes a hand at his eyes. “She says there are things that I have to figure out without her. And she’s not gonna do anything binding unless she’s a hundred percent sure.”
“That’s probably smart. Marrying a repressed homosexual rarely ends well.”
“I’m not-”
“I’m joking.”
Street clenches his jaw and glares up at Harden, lace-thin line of garnet sparkling. Harden loses his breath and stands, crosses to the bourbon, which shines and beckons and honestly, if ever there were a time to have a drink.
He clicks his teeth on the glass, a trail of heat rolling down the center of him, and looks back at Street sprawled on the bed, thinks that it wasn’t much of a joke, after all.
“So what’re you gonna do?”
Street looks down, disconsolate. “I’m trying everything, man, I really am.”
“How’re you even. I mean. How do you argue something like that?” Harden takes a long drink, watching Street warp in the curve of the bottle.
“I’ve never done anything remotely gay. This is so out of nowhere.”
Harden snorts and tries to cover it, but Street straightens and gives him a narrow look. “You wanna share the joke, Rich?”
Moving his shoulders, Harden grins against the mouth of the bottle, a low burr stretching under his skin. He wants to tell Street about the first three or four weeks of their acquaintance, when Street’s measured voice and lidded watchful eyes had taken Harden’s mind to bad places, and the way Street sometimes loses his train of thought when Harden’s not wearing a shirt. Harden wouldn’t spend this kind of time on someone he didn’t think he had a chance with, and that’s what there’s always been between the two of them, a bottle of bourbon, middle of the night, on the road, a backwards realignment and the staggering long shot that he might wake up one morning with Street’s mouth on his throat.
“You know it’s not an absolute,” Harden says instead. “It doesn’t have to be, like, either-or.”
Street’s face opens, slightly panicked, and he looks away. He licks his lips and Harden figures he’s probably still pretty drunk.
“You don’t get it, man. What, I’m supposed to throw away everything I’ve wanted for my whole life just on accounta this?”
“You kinda already did,” Harden points out, but Street winces and he feels like a heel. “Sorry.”
“It’s just not that big a deal,” Street says to the floor. “It’s not enough to mess everything up like this.”
“I don’t know, Huston. You got this whole double life thing. I’m actually kinda impressed.” Harden’s mostly joking, but like everything else he tries tonight, it does more harm than good, bending Street’s mouth down.
“No one ever believes me when I say I’m not gay,” he whispers.
Harden groans inwardly and crosses to sit back down next to him, passing him the bottle. “I believe you, man. I don’t mean to say that you’re lying or something. But I think maybe you’ve got depths that have yet to be explored.”
Street blinks at him foggily. “What?”
Harden shakes his head, smirking. His grip on sobriety is nicely loosened; he feels bright and mildly invincible.
“Maybe your double life is really like a quadruple life, because even you don’t know about it.” Street just looks confused, so Harden continues, “I can’t really speak from any kind of experience, but I don’t think gay porn is every straight boy’s secret.”
Curling his shoulders, Street pushes his fingers together and doesn’t say anything for a long time. “You do think I’m repressed.”
“No, just, you’re not sure yet. I get it.”
“Look, I’m not, like, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. If I were gay, I’d be gay. I’m not like, that thing, where you hate yourself?”
“Um. Internalized homophobia?”
“Yeah. That. If I were gay, I’d do something about it.”
Harden holds his breath. “Yeah?”
Street eyes him carefully, and licks his lips again and Harden thinks he must be doing that unconsciously, he can’t know what it does to Harden. Street’s got an arsenal of tricks like that, moments when Harden is shoved back and pummeled, dry-mouthed.
“I figured this stuff out years ago,” Street says, mostly to himself, and Harden wonders if he weighed the fucking pros and cons back when he was thirteen and trying to decide whether he wanted to kiss girls or boys. It’s not entirely innocent, the idea that Street thinks it’s a choice.
“You never did anything?” Harden asks, because he knows an awful lot of straight guys who’d been at least jerked off by another guy, and maybe that’s a bad situation to fit Huston into when Harden’s drunk and Street’s right next to him on the bed smelling like toblerone and bourbon.
Street draws his shoulders up, looks down. “Nobody’s completely clean, Richie.”
Harden puts his fingers on Street’s jaw and lifts his face and kisses him.
It takes everyone by surprise.
Street’s eyes are open and huge and white. He’s remarkably warm, his shoulder against the inside of Harden’s arm and Harden’s hand sliding up his face. Harden licks across Street’s lower lip, figures, fuck it, and darts his teeth for a second, feeling Street gasp and jerk backwards.
“No fucking way,” he breathes out, and Harden has absolutely no idea what he means. He pushes the tips of his fingers into Street’s hair and Street looks distracted for a second. “Richie, what’re you-”
“Just, just know that you have options,” Harden says, having trouble thinking about the moment several seconds from now when Street will pull away from him. He thinks it might feel like getting his arms broken. “Not necessarily that you’ll take them, but just. There. For you to have. Whenever you want.”
Street shakes his head, sucks on the corner of his lip. He looks completely lost, and Harden moves his hand to cup the side of his neck. “You’re not losing anything, Huston. This is all just a bonus.”
Snapping a glance up at him, Street’s fist winds in the back of Harden’s shirt, and Harden didn’t realize that Street’s arm has been around his waist since Harden kissed him. He makes careful note of that, watching the color rise in Street’s cheeks.
“Everything’s so weird right now,” Street kinda whines, which is endearing to Harden for reasons that he can’t quantify.
“Yeah. Old news, kid,” Harden tells him, and fits his mouth over Street’s again, because he’s learned to take advantage when things are momentarily available.
Street inhales and Harden kisses him hard when his mouth opens to say something, and something crazy happens when Street pushes back against him and gets right the fuck into it. Though he tastes kinda desperate, Harden can’t remember anything better, Street licking at his lips. Harden holds Street’s head in both hands, angling up on his knee to get a nice downward tilt and feel Street’s neck reach and bare for him.
Breaking away, Street buries his face in Harden’s neck and hugs him tight and quick around the waist with both arms. Harden chews at his shoulder and nips his ear, pushes his hands down under Street’s shirt collar, wide between his shoulder blades, checking the knit of his fingers into Street’s spine.
“I, I can’t understand why this is happening to me,” Street says, not quite muffled enough to hide the break in his voice.
“It happened to the rest of us like ten years ago, man,” Harden answers absently, Street everywhere and all around him. “You’re just on the short bus, so don’t worry about it so much.”
He tries to kiss Street again but Street ducks and abruptly slides away, standing and pacing to the center of the room. Flushed with his face looking strangely battered, his eyes, his mouth, Street tries to smooth down the edge of his hair, but it sticks back up straightaway.
Street looks helpless and ambushed, saying a little too loudly, “You gotta quit doing this. You’re so bad for me.”
Even badly injured the way he is, Harden still manages to laugh at that. “Sure, like when I took your homeless ass in after you pissed off your beard. I’m such a jerk.”
Street’s blank with shock for a moment, before he snarls and disappears into the bathroom, the door clapping like lightning and Harden jumping. He’s shaky and numb, staring at the place where Street was a minute ago, feeling the burn in the palms of his hands.
It takes him almost an hour to remember that this isn’t his room, and by then he’s drunk enough that moving would be disastrous, so he kicks his way under the blankets and curls up. He can’t sleep, and it’s not until dawn that he hears the bathroom door open and Street come out. Harden holds perfectly still, a breath caught in his chest. Street gets in on the other side of the bed and Harden is honestly not sure whether Street even knows he’s still here, and he spends the next three hours lying there, wondering.
His courage gives out eventually, and he sneaks back to his room seventeen minutes before their wake-up call. He walks the short path between door and window, thinking about this mess he’s gotten himself into.
Street plays it cooler than Harden would have expected from him, wearing sunglasses through breakfast and blaming a hangover. The guys are raucous, eating muffins and cornflakes and talking about where to go tonight. Street folds himself in with Swisher and Buck, half a shoulder turned against Harden, protected from interrogation. Harden glares at the slash of Street’s cheek that he can see and stabs his toast beyond recognition.
“Dude. Bobby Orr, two Rs, right?”
Harden looks over at his own Bobby, who’s stealing his orange juice and wearing a sleep crease on his cheek. “Um, yeah.”
“He says I’m right, Danny,” Crosby says over his shoulder, and then turns back to look at Harden critically. “You look like shit.”
Harden coughs on a laugh, rubbing his wrist against his leg under the table. “That fucking bourbon Joey brought back? It’s poison.”
Crosby grins and nods. “You were hanging with Huston last night?”
Harden starts and his fork falls onto the floor. He bites the inside of his cheek, ordering calm. “Who told you that?”
“He’s hungover on that shit, too. Damn. I really would have expected better from Joe.”
Fixing his eyes on the table, Harden shrugs. “I was already fucked up from the trip out, anyway.”
“Right? Tell me about it.” Crosby pushes Harden’s glass back towards him, sticky-mouthed. “It’s four in the morning and I’m like, more shots please. In addition to avoiding Joe’s liquor-don’t fucking dare the rookie.”
Harden snorts, rubbing at his forehead with the heel of his hand. Crosby half-smiles, eyes bloodshot and brackish, drag of messy curls and he hasn’t shaved in two weeks, spending almost all his time with Travis Buck.
Harden lets Crosby distract him for awhile longer, and then there’s a bus and a ballpark and three more hours to kill. Harden’s not starting, and being constantly adjacent to Huston Street is doing strange things to him, so he prowls around the batting cages under the stadium, turning a pitching machine up to ninety-eight and throwing in time with it, trying to beat the machine’s ball to the backstop. He has to stop after only a little bit, though, his shoulder tightening almost imperceptibly.
Street’s not thinking clearly, Harden decides, kicking baseballs down the length of the cage. They’re both having some kind of mental crisis, but Street’s got a lot further to fall, and no real reason to risk anything on Harden. Street could probably go on happily believing that jerking off to guys having sex is something that everybody does and nobody talks about, and never have to worry about this kind of disaster again.
And Harden gets a little pissed off, thinking that Street’s got no right to act like it would be so awful, not when he pressed up against Harden and kissed him all stunned and hot and into it. It’s not as if Harden wouldn’t do fucking anything to make sure Street had a good time.
He doesn’t have any luck figuring out a plan of action on his own, so Harden calls Zito, the only guy in his dispersed circle that he can realistically bring this up with. Zito turned out to be actually straight, shock of Rich Harden’s young life, but he doesn’t mind when Harden poses gender-neutral hypotheticals to him.
“So, let’s say there’s this person you know who maybe you want to try something with, but, like, it’s not clear if they’re really interested or just kinda fucked up.”
Zito chews thoughtfully into the phone. He’s home in San Francisco, playing the Cardinals, fighting back a terrible start to the season, desperate to be out of April. Preparing for the National League has slowed Zito’s response time, set him on edge.
“Can I take a guess and say that this probably fucked up somebody will be in your immediate proximity for the next six months?”
Harden coughs out a laugh, sits with his back against the fence. “That might be accurate.”
“Okay. I mean, give me something to work with. What happened?”
Drumming his fingers on his knee, Harden tries to find a way to sum it up, three sentences or less because goddamn if he’s gonna go deep with Zito again. Last time, they were up till five in the morning, drinking liquor with caffeine and intricately debating how to pitch in the cold.
“There’s been some. Mixed signals. Or, well, extenuating circumstances. I can’t really take anything at face value. He’s very very confused, but there’s a strong chance that he wants to make out with me, too.”
“Hmm. What’s he confused about?”
“Oh. Me. The guy thing.”
Zito laughs. “You’re breaking him in?”
“Fucking trying to. He’s kinda, like, denial boy. Like, he’ll do this stuff and then be all, I didn’t mean it, it doesn’t mean anything.” Harden pushes a baseball back and forth on the dirt, wearing a groove down to the wood a couple inches underneath.
“Well, it’s very unsettling, you know. Being accosted by someone like you.”
“I did not accost him, Barry.”
“Scarred him for life, probably.”
Harden glares, and keeps stonily silent, waiting for Zito to take him seriously. Zito’s permitted a few cracks because Harden used to get drunk and try to feel him up, but he’s over his limit.
“Bitch,” Zito says, not unkindly. “Honestly, though, you want to deal with this shit right now? Because, like, it sounds like it’s gonna get worse before it gets better.”
“Yeah. He’s just so tortured about the whole thing.” Harden sighs. “It’s such a Catholic coming out. Who lives like that?”
Zito takes a long pause, then says dryly, “That kinda narrowed down the potential number of people that you could be talking about, dude.”
Harden shakes his head, rubs at his eyes. It’s amazing to be in this early summer heat again; the East and Midwest are still frozen over. “Whatever. Tell me what I should do.”
“Well. There’s the responsible thing to do, and then there’s getting something out of the situation. I say get him drunk.”
“What?” Harden says, aghast.
“I hate to think that you’ve forgotten so quickly, Richie, but I was on staff with this kid for two years, just the same as you. He is never not ever gonna admit it while sober. Which isn’t to say that it’s not true, because, hello, he’s been sick over you since, like, day two.”
“Whoa. Back the fuck up.” Harden sits up straight, popping his knee out. “That’s some new goddamn information.”
Zito laughs, and it’s kinda difficult that he’s not right upstairs right now, that Harden won’t see him tonight, probably not till interleague. The A’s are an extremely weird team without Zito, a totally incongruent thought when considering the weirdness of the man himself, but he’d been around so long, and now the foundation of the team is reduced to one narrow support in the person of Eric Chavez, all the rest of them still so new.
“That thing, where he does your laundry? Yeah.”
“Hey. He likes doing laundry. It calms him.”
“Dude.”
Harden exhales heavily. “Okay.”
“He’s definitely fucked up about it, though.”
“I know, right?”
“So. In vino veritas, and all that.”
Rolling his eyes, Harden grins hard against the heel of his hand. “Get him drunk.”
“And the truth shall set you free.”
“You know, I actually already did get him drunk.”
“Yeah? What happened?”
Harden flushes, remembering the slide of Street’s skin under his hands, and grudgingly cedes Zito the point. “Once he’s drunk, though, then what?”
“What, you want me to hold your dick for you, too?” Zito snarks, and then bursts out giggling.
Harden senses that Zito’s a little bit drunk himself, and he changes the subject to that for awhile, bitching about how his tolerance is coming back up and he needs, like, six beers to get buzzed. They try to talk about baseball, but it doesn’t really take, and then Harden’s got to go, Chavez shouting at him from the tunnel to get his punk ass into the card game already.
They get back home with Street still pretending nothing happened, not quite ignoring Harden but not exactly talking to him, either. Harden’s frustrated and pissed off and tired, making Buck carry his bags. He throws a balled-up paper cup at the back of Street’s head on the bus, and lets Danny Haren get blamed for it.
He’s not counting on Street to come home tonight, this latest betrayal doubtless enough to send him back to Lacey once and for all. Harden thinks, good, enjoy the closet for the rest of your life, motherfucker, but then he feels guilty, unnerved by the house all on his own.
Four days like that, Street laughing across the clubhouse and walking out to the bullpen next to Harden without saying anything, Harden lying awake with the television muted, listening to how quiet it gets out in the hills. Four days like that, and Harden hears from Crosby that Street is actually sleeping at Zito’s apartment in San Francisco while the Giants are out of town. It feels like a slap in the face somehow, though Harden’s not sure if he’s mad at Zito for taking Street in or Street for abandoning the team at the first sign of trouble.
Four days, and then Street runs out of clean boxers and shows up at their house in the afternoon with an empty duffel bag and a persistent blush on his face. Harden comes into the hall when he hears keys in the door, his heartrate up almost imperceptibly.
“Hey, Richie.”
Harden breathes out, realizes kinda way too late that this isn’t some secondhand crisis, he’s not just a witness anymore-he’s fucking in love with the kid.
“Hey, Huston.”
Street nods awkwardly and holds up his bag. “I came to get my stuff.”
“Yeah.” Harden makes fists, swallowing hard, saying fast, “Really you shouldn’t, though.”
Looking caught, Street drops his hand and blinks at him. Such a pretty little headcase, honestly. Harden makes a sound like a laugh and rubs at his mouth with the side of his hand.
“Why’re you leaving?”
“Oh, well.” Street sorta smiles, not looking at him. “It’s just. It’s weird, huh?”
“Your whole life, man, so what’s a little more?”
Street glances up and he’s more than a bit screwed up, with the raw line of his mouth and the jagged slant of his eyes. Hasn’t been sleeping, probably, torn up like any good straight boy would be.
“I can’t stay here anymore,” Street says low.
“Because I make you do terrible things,” Harden answers snidely, hating every time Street blames this on him.
“Because you will.” Street flinches, hadn’t meant to say that and Harden’s staring at him. Street lets out a long breath and slouches back on the door. “If I stay here, something’s gonna happen with us. You know that.”
Harden nods, his mouth dry. “Yeah. I. Yes.”
“And it can’t, okay? Because it. It can’t.”
Street’s talking to the floor. Harden’s stuck back on Street thinking something was bound to happen between them, wondering if the stuff Street imagines is the same stuff he comes up with himself. But Street looks like his heart’s breaking and Harden’s not built to withstand that.
“Okay,” he says softly. “Nothing’s gonna happen.”
It’s tougher than he thought, especially when he sees Street’s face fall, eyelashes flickering. Harden can’t figure out the right thing, everything he does just makes it worse.
Nodding, pained, Street hunches his shoulders and picks up his duffel bag, walking with his head down towards Harden, and Harden falters, grabs his arm, freezing them both.
“I’m sorry,” he says immediately. “I thought. Isn’t that what you wanted me to say?”
Street drags his head to the side, closing his eyes. “I guess, man, I don’t know.”
“Huston.” Harden starts to lift his hand to Street’s face, but it’s shaking and he hides it along the line of Street’s side instead, feeling Street inhale sharply. “Kid.”
He’s very close. Harden can’t stop staring at him, all clean untouchable skin and the frightened move of his eyes, his mouth. Street glances at him, something secretive and dark, and licks his lips, his eyes widening when he sees how Harden reacts to that, Harden’s hand tightening and a small noise cracking in his throat. He looks at Harden in disbelief, but doesn’t move away.
“You’re gonna have to stop me right this second, or I swear-” Harden cuts himself off, because Street’s already shaking his head and swaying forward and Harden meets him in the middle.
Exponentially better this time, Street coming from somewhere other than drunk and confused, wrenching his hand in Harden’s shirt and pinning him to the wall, kissing him deep and angry and hot, jesus. Harden gets hold of Street’s hips and digs his fingers in and slams Street back into the other wall, grinning against Street’s mouth, licking the tip of his nose.
“See, not so bad,” Harden says breathlessly, before Street slides his hand around the back of his head and kisses him again, messy black-eyed boy in the hallway shadows with his mouth soft and weirdly blurred as Harden smooths his fingers down Street’s face. Street’s other hand is busy unbuttoning his jeans, and Harden likes the way he thinks, hiking Street higher up the wall and letting Street close his legs around his waist.
Working together, they get Street’s shirt almost off, hanging from his forearm, and both their jeans open, and Street has one arm flung out, gripping helplessly at the wall, the other wrapped around Harden’s shoulders. Harden can’t see for wanting him so badly, even now that he’s got him, Street gasping and arching his back, his throat exposed, his hair plaster-dusted and damp. He can’t believe Street’s got it in him to look this good, writhing and stuttering, “Oh fucking Christ Richie please.”
Harden’s making sounds he’s never heard before. Street rips Harden’s shirt at the shoulder and his nails bite into skin. Harden never wants to take his hands off Street, never wants to look up and not see Street panting with his eyes half-closed. Street is still almost fully dressed, his feet off the carpet and his back braced hard on the wall, and Harden’s got one hand pushed into Street’s shorts and the other bearing half of Street’s weight.
It ends quick, which is to be expected, after the week the two of them have had. Harden’s legs give out from holding Street up, and they both drop heavily to the carpet, breathing hard. Street’s legs flop over Harden’s, but he figures that’s really the least of their problems.
For awhile, they just lie there on the floor, something companionable between them that feels wrong even though Street came all over Harden’s hand and Harden, sadly, came in his shorts. Harden reminds himself that all they actually are is a pair of friends who’ve now fucked around once. This is so commonplace there’s more than one name for it, but it seems like it should be different with Street because they’ve always been more than friends, in one way or another.
Harden sighs, reaching down and curling his fingers around Street’s ankle, making him twitch. Harden’s just wrecked over Street. He wants to take him home, keep him there. He wants to fuck with Street’s mind just enough that Street might give him a chance.
“So. Little less repressed, now?” he asks eventually, because dumb jokes at inappropriate moments are never out of style.
Street tugs his ankle lightly, but doesn’t break Harden’s grip. “I don’t know.”
“Hey, come on. That was incredibly convincing, I thought.”
“Shut up, Richie.”
Harden does, looking up at the ceiling and playing his fingers along the bone of Street’s ankle. He’s in a place of joy and comfort at the moment, sticky and used on the floor with Street’s legs all mixed up in his own, but he can already see that this won’t end well.
“I really didn’t want to be like this,” Street says, and Harden can’t tell what hurts more, what Street said or how he said it. Street sounds like he wants to be buried alive, like he’s running out of oxygen.
“It’s just one of those things, Huston,” Harden tries, holding onto Street’s ankle for dear life. “It’s like the weather.”
There’s a pause. “The weather?” Street says doubtfully.
“Whatever.” Harden pulls on Street’s leg a little, thinking blackly that they’re lying here talking about this and Street’s still teasing him. “It’s stuff you can’t fix.”
Street’s throat clicks as he swallows. “I can’t get married now?” and Harden doesn’t think Street meant to make that into a question.
“You can, fuck, man. You can do whatever you want. You can sleep with me. You can sleep with Lacey, marry Lacey if that’s better. This is the end of your big gay revelation. Now you get on with your life.”
Harden definitely didn’t mean to say that. He sits up, taking the time to fix his jeans, and crawls to sit next to Street’s head. Street looks whipped and scared, flinching, watching Harden with distrust. His mouth is slightly swollen, thank god, and it gives Harden something to focus on.
“Just. This is who you are. It’s not like bad luck or something. You’re fundamentally unchanged, and the people who count aren’t gonna care.”
“Really,” Street says, almost too loudly, his eyes flaring white. “Lacey’s not gonna care?”
“Once you stop fucking lying to her about it, dude, I’m sure she’ll get a rainbow button for her bag.”
Street snarls, strange from right above him the way Harden is. “You’re real fucking funny when it comes to me and her. Which is just what I fucking need right now.”
“Look.” Harden pokes his finger into Street’s shoulder. “I get that you’re in a bad place, but quit acting like fucking around with me has put a black mark on your soul or some shit. It’s irritating.”
Street turns his face away, glaring. Harden glances back and sees that Street’s got his fists low on his stomach. A fine line breaks the plane of his forehead, his teeth pushing out his lower lip. It’s a petulant and juvenile expression, and for reasons Harden doesn’t bother exploring, one of his favorites on Street. He keeps being caught off-guard by reminders that he is, in fact, fucking in love with the kid.
“Shoulda just gotten you drunk,” Harden mutters, and Street’s eyes flash to him and then away again. “Okay, you see how I’m all secure in my bisexuality? Doesn’t this look like fun?”
Street glares directly at him this time. Harden sighs and pushes a hand through his hair, giving up for the moment and letting his shoulders fall. His knee is against Street’s side, a warm impression left. He’s not handling this right. They really need to get the fuck out of the hallway.
“End of the day, man, either you want to stay or you don’t,” Harden says at last. “That’s all it should really come down to.”
He weaves his fingers together and rests the back of his hand on the slick run of Street’s side. He doesn’t want to look at Street anymore, treachery in Street’s face and the way his mouth is going to thin right before Street tells him no. Harden wonders how bad this is gonna hurt, and for how long.
“Maybe,” Street starts, and then stops. One of his fisted hands slides up careful from his waist and bumps into Harden’s folded fingers. “Maybe I’ll stay tonight.”
Harden looks up sharp enough that his neck pops. “You’ll.”
Street still looks scared, but something else too, recklessness, curiosity, dangerous signs. He’s almost smirking at Harden, biting his lip. “Maybe just for tonight, because, fuck, Richie, I want to, I really do.”
Harden stops him with a kiss and there are Street’s arms around his neck again, there they go in reverse. He resolves, at some point tonight, to do this proper and in a bed, but that’s not this time, this time it’s carpet burn and Street hooking his hand in the hole in Harden’s shirt and ripping it clear to the hem.
This time Harden keeps an arm slung across Street’s stomach after, and Street combs his hand distantly through Harden’s hair. In the slant of light from the living room door, Harden thinks that Street looks happier than Harden’s ever seen him, and it just tears the heart out of him.
He sleeps through dawn, though only barely, and wakes up alone. Street has taken one of Harden’s shirts and left a half a glass of orange juice on the kitchen counter. Harden sits down at the table, yawning. He pokes at the newspaper and stares at the walls for a while. Then he sorta crumples, curling until his arm is around his stomach and his cheek is on the table.
“Fuck,” he says with his voice hoarse. He squeezes his eyes shut and presses his fist into his forehead. He thinks, stuff you can’t fix, and Huston Street is one of those things, and Rich Harden too, and it hits him then, crippling and incomplete: it’s gonna feel like this forever.
THE END
Endnotes: And that takes us right up to Harden getting hurt again! So, clearly, fun times ahead.
Title from ‘The Oldest Story in the World,’ a Plimsouls song that, like, four people in the world know about. But it’s very good, and you should look that shit up.
you’ll never change me
you’re no better than the weather
you’re cool but there’s rain in your heart
you’re blown like a feather
and that’s the oldest story in the world
No Better Than The Weather
By Candle Beck
They go back to Oakland at the very end of March, to play a three-game exhibition set against San Francisco before going to Seattle. In the clubhouse, Street sidles up to Harden with an anxious smile and a pair of fruit roll-ups. Harden’s peeling the shapes out of his, little cartoon figures and dinosaurs, and Street asks him:
“Can I come sleep over at your house?”
Harden licks red goo off the back of his teeth. “Will we be making popcorn and watching ‘Die Hard’?”
“Um. Sure?” Street shifts his weight and Harden can still see a vague shimmer of green in his hair from the chlorine in the hotel swimming pool, back in Phoenix.
Harden pops his collar, studies himself in the little mirror in his locker, and folds it back down. Street’s acting strange, but Street is a weird kid on his best day, which this probably isn’t, sixty-nine hours till first pitch in Seattle.
“Bring a sleeping bag. I got a tent we can set up in the living room.”
“Okay, that’s a yes, right?”
Harden grins at him. Street’s funny as shit, especially when he’s nervous. Harden’s seen him every day for the past six weeks, and the next six months, too, and a lot might happen in that time. Harden’s got faith in the season to see them through, make sure they come out okay on the other side.
Street follows Harden home. This is the first time in his life that he is living alone, and at the moment it’s still unnerving, everything still packed in boxes and suitcases, cabinets and refrigerator empty because they just got in last night. Harden snagged some beers from the spread, though, and he shows Street around, the two of them barefoot and drinking slowly.
“You can put your stuff in here,” Harden says, pushing open the door of the guest room. Street’s teeth spark off the silver of his beer can.
“Wasn’t I promised a tent?”
“It was kinda only a metaphorical tent.”
With Street smiling at him, Harden briefly loses his sense of place and time. This is their third year; Huston is becoming part of his history, every day they spend in each other’s company one more flashback to relive decades from now.
They repair to the living room, watching the Nascar Report on one of the cable channels. Street knows way too much about this stuff, explaining for the fifteenth time how the point system works and telling Harden that the air at races tasted like gasoline and tar.
When they were still living together, Harden used to take naps on Sundays in front of the television, for hours as Street and Blanton and Swisher watched the cars fly endlessly around the track.
Street falls quiet after a while, slumping back into the couch and crossing his arms over his chest. In the wick of television light, his face grows pinched and discontent, his mind evidently far away.
“So,” Harden says. “Maybe you wanna tell me what’s going on now.”
Street gives him a quick look, though he shouldn’t, really, because Harden is an inherently curious person, always after them with questions about motivation and schemes. Anyway, he knows that Street’s extremely well-mannered and it’s only polite to provide an explanation when you ask to crash at your friend’s house. Street hardly ever lies, too, which makes him unique and deceptively simple to take advantage of.
“Me and Lacey decided to not so much live together anymore.”
“Really?” Harden leans back, resting his beer on his hip. “Huh.”
“I mean, I guess we decided to try not living together for a little bit, and then see if that’s a better idea than what’s happening now.”
“You’re engaged,” Harden points out, watching Street rub his hands together and exhale, snap a glare back at him that he never would have tried even six months ago.
“Yeah, and we haven’t lived in the same city in like two years, dude. It’s. Weird.”
“Um. It’s probably not good if you like her more when it’s a long-distance relationship.”
Smirking, Street gets up and goes over to his bag by the door. He crouches to dig through the pockets and says to Harden, “It’s not like that. It’s just we’re doing this backwards. You’re supposed to see each other every day, then move in together, then get engaged.”
Harden restrains himself from noting that he and Street have already managed two out of three pretty easily, because Street doesn’t like to be reminded that there’s a line of tension between them that has never been fully justified by friendship or professional rivalry.
“So it’s, like, devolution.”
“What? No. Don’t make up words.” Street straightens with two miniature bottles of liquor shining narrowly between his fingers. Harden gives a silent cheer to the Boy Scouts, holding up his hand for Street to toss him a bottle.
They settle in again, lulled by the thrum of the races and the crickets calling out in the backyard. Harden turns the situation over in his mind, the two of them drinking here in the shallows of the East Bay again, with another season looming like fog on the edge of the hill, about to steamroll right over the two of them. Harden has grown to distrust the game over the past few years, but he had an untouchable spring and, god help him, it’s made him brave once more.
“When you said you wanted to crash here, Huston, did you mean just tonight or for the whole season?”
Street looks at him and his face twists interestingly into a guilty, manipulative smile. He shrugs. Harden watches a flush rising on his neck, hazy and maybe seventy percent drunk, which is about right.
“I don’t know what’s gonna happen, is the thing,” Street says apologetically. “It could be a couple of weeks, or maybe, like, it’s possible it might go a little longer. So you can tell me if it’s not cool. Obviously, I can scare up another guest room if I need to. Or, a series of them, as the case may be.”
Street stops suddenly and knots his fingers together. The tips of his ears are bright red, and Harden remembers happily that Street tends to babble amusingly when drunk, kills time better than anyone Harden knows.
“Rent’s due on the fifth, man,” Harden says, and Street ducks his head, grinning and nodding.
“See, I came to the right place.”
“You did, yes. And I get to be host to your little quarter-life crisis, it’s really win-win.”
Street rolls his eyes and leans back against the arm of the couch, one leg stretched out on the coffee table. He loosens at this time of night, after a game, smooths out his edges and lets his shoulders give, and sometimes Harden gets dizzy staring at the lazy slant of his body.
“I wouldn’t say it’s a crisis, so much. I’m just trying to get married, you know, I’d like to get it right.”
Harden doesn’t say anything, badly distracted by the skew of light and color over Street’s face and for a moment certain that they’ll go the distance this year.
So Street moves back in with Harden, all alone up there in the hills even though Danny Haren is three steep blocks over, Swisher and Blanton a straight shot down Las Cruces. He only has time to bring over a few carloads of his stuff, boxes of VHS tapes and his Rookie of the Year plaque gathering on the kitchen counters, a duffle bag unpacked enough to find sheets for the bed on the floor of his guest room, and then they fly north for Opening Day and baseball completely absorbs them for a week.
They go to Seattle and don’t do so well, go to Anaheim and do better. The games against the Angels are breathless one-run affairs, far too scratched-out for this early in the year, and Harden gets exhausted thinking about six more months of this shit, but that passes quickly. He pitches extremely well in his first start, and he and Bobby Crosby get blind drunk that night, until they feel invulnerable, making toasts to their injuries and vocally daring them to return. It’s terrible luck, of course, but Harden has played it safe in the past and where has that gotten him but back on the disabled list?
At the hotel in Anaheim, he comes upstairs pretty late, shambling on adrenaline and the red bull and vodka that had seemed like such a good idea at the time, and after a minute, a shoe or a mitt or something crashes into the connecting door.
Harden toes off his shoes and strips out of his button-up, socked in his thin undershirt and opening the door, leaning on the jamb. Street’s sitting cross-legged on the bed, looking like he’s still in high school with a slender strip of pale through the tan of his arm, the place where he wears his green rubber bracelet. He beckons Harden in and asks all about his night, pouring glasses of water and running down to the lobby to buy aspirin when the caffeine wears off and Harden’s head starts to ache.
Harden falls asleep on Street’s bed, after they spend several hours talking over HBO. It’ll be like this for the first few weeks, tired all the time and relying on each other for protection. Harden gets confused by the speed of life on the road, which he really expected to have grown out of by now.
He wakes up a little before dawn to find that Street is asleep next to him, though he is on top of the covers and still in his clothes, and Street is half-buried under pillows and blankets and his bare shoulder is peeking out.
Harden gently pushes the pillow off Street’s head, and looks at him for a second, the curve of his neck and narrow perfect skin at the corner of his eye. He takes off his belt and lies back down, staring at the ceiling until it’s light enough that he can make out the cracks in the plaster.
When they get back to Oakland, it’s overcast and cool and they spend a day at Ikea buying Street furniture. Street’s phone rings when they’re in line, and he goes outside to take it. His shirt is stuck to his body by the wind and Harden watches him through the front windows, one hand over his ear.
Street’s speaking sharply when Harden comes out of the store, a short ragged sheaf of his hair poking out, saying, “Look, you’re not allowed to complain about that. You wanted me to leave, remember?”
Harden rests his elbows on the handhold of the cart and studies the set of Street’s back, stiff rise of his shoulders. Street’s facing away from him, scowling at the highway.
“Yeah, babe, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Street says into his phone, and Harden starts because it’s almost a sneer, and that’s bizarre to hear in Street’s tore-up voice. “I can either live with you or you can shut up about wherever else I choose to.”
Harden considers that, then clears his throat. Street jumps and turns to see him, making a face and waving Harden off. Harden sighs and pushes the cart over to the car, checking over his shoulder to see Street weaving between the aisles, a flash of dark gold against the chrome and silver, the gray sky.
It’s clear, after that, that Street’s reasonable explanation for living with Harden is, at best, a totally misguided line of bullshit. Street didn’t move out on his girlfriend after an amicable and mature discussion; he got himself thrown out, which is really something of a trick, considering that he bought the house.
Harden bides his time. Street is still in a thanks-for-letting-me-stay kinda mood; he cooks and drives down to the 7-Eleven when they run out of milk and sugar. He goes out when Harden asks him to, unlike a couple weeks ago in Phoenix when it was like warfare, getting around his plans with Lacey. They stay up late and Harden will take advantage of this until it begins to wane, and then he’ll find out what the fuck happened to Huston Street.
Every time Street talks on the phone with her, they seem to end up fighting. Harden’s uncomfortable with the patio door open a couple inches, enough for him to hear Street out back, ripping off mean comebacks and bringing up their collegiate history. Street’s actually pretty good at fighting dirty, which knots something in Harden’s stomach.
But it is very much like undergrad, when every semester one of Harden’s friends would go through a transformative broken heart, first real girlfriend, first grown-up disaster, and Harden hadn’t expected to bear witness to another one of these, this late in the game.
He’s learning secrets about Street that neither the team nor their last two seasons as roommates could have taught him. Street fucked around on Lacey back in Texas, and not just one time, either, but actually had another girlfriend for a couple of months. Lacey had done something in retaliation that makes Street’s voice go low and cold whenever she mentions it, but Harden can’t figure out what exactly it was. Lacey left a lot behind when she followed Huston out to California, and Street keeps saying, “But you said you wanted to! I said you didn’t have to!” which Harden also did not know.
And there’s something else. Harden’s sitting on the roof eating an ice cream drumstick, and Street comes out the front door, talking to nobody. Harden peers down and sees him barefoot and pacing, his phone stuck to his ear.
“You made it into this huge deal that it totally isn’t, Lace,” Street’s saying. “It’s not that weird, and it definitely isn’t cause to fucking leave me.”
Harden licks at his fingers, stunned. Street scoffs at something she says, and Harden can see him latch a hand onto the sunburned back of his neck.
“I do not need to figure out what I want,” Street tells her. “I’ve told you. I’m just staying here, that’s all.”
Harden startles and bites down hard on the tip of his tongue. He looks over again to see Street knuckling his forehead, his eyes wrenched shut. Like all the afternoons of their life these days, something monumental is happening.
“You act like it’s a foregone conclusion! Like, oh, this plus that has to equal this other thing. When, in reality, he’s my best friend and where the fuck else am I supposed to go when something like this happens?”
There’s a pause. Harden lies down on his back on the roof, flattening one hand over his chest and blinking up at the wide blue sky. He sucks on the sore spot on his tongue, picturing Street down there in the worn-thin Babe Ruth League jersey tee with red sleeves and lettering that he wears on their off-days sometimes, Street all warm and bright with anger.
“I don’t want to be here,” Street says plainly, taking Harden’s breath away. “I want to be at home, with you, and this is just, it’s so messed up, babe, you should really let me come back.”
But Lacey won’t let him. Street puts the local Domino’s on his speed dial, pins a few photographs to the walls, and finds a shortcut to the highway. Harden breathes out, now that Street is two doors down once again, now the season has truly begun. Street still acts like he’s in exile, martyred and piteous, but Harden’s working on not being so entirely suckered by Street’s sad puppy face.
Anyway, it’s not just cosmetic, whatever the damage is between Huston and Lacey. Street stays awake some nights, walking the hallways, making hot chocolate in the kitchen, and there is something so sorrowful and lonely about Street in the middle of the night that Harden tries not to disturb him, like Street’s sleepwalking and if he gets woken up, he could die.
Street continues to bicker with Lacey before dinner and after midnight, and Harden eavesdrops intentionally this time, slipping into the pantry when Street comes into the kitchen, sliced up by strips of light with his ear pressed against the door. Best he can piece together, Street did something that Lacey considers unforgivable, though Street is convinced that it’s not a big deal. Lacey threw him out and Street’s been trying to talk her into taking him back, which Harden finds odd if only because they’re always baiting each other and setting cruel traps. Also, Lacey has a problem with Street moving in with Harden, which may or may not tie back to the aforementioned unforgivable trespass.
Harden tries to fill in the blanks as the days pass and Street falls asleep more and more often on the couch in the living room, his phone moving gently on his breathing stomach. He’s never particularly liked Lacey, but he thinks he kept that pretty well concealed, on the rare occasions that they’d met. Street is and always has been devoted to her, so there’s never been much point in saying that she seems to him like the kind of woman you marry too young, live to regret.
In the meantime, he and Street fall into their old patterns, the ease of living together surprising Harden every spring. They go through the White Sox and Yankees and Angels on that first homestand, and they end up every night fucking wrenched by exhaustion.
The Yankees series, in particular, is far too dramatic for April. Thirteen innings and walk-offs and Travis Buck coming out of fucking nowhere, huge ovations in his twelfth major league at-bat, a stun of extra-base hits making his name for him.
Harden finds it nostalgic. He remembers when it was Street and before that it was Swisher and before that it was Crosby and before that it was Harden himself. It’s something that binds half the team together; they all once went by ‘kid.’
Back at the house, they lie around on the couch and the carpet for hours without talking, the television on and the lights off. They eat breakfast together and generally take one car into the ballpark. The night before they go out on the road again, Harden realizes that they’re sharing a tube of toothpaste.
Early season baseball is as much about establishing proper circadian rhythms as anything else, and Harden’s still awake in Texas at two in the morning, sitting with his back against the connecting door. Street’s on his phone again in the next room, because it’s only midnight in California, but Harden can’t make out what he’s saying, just the familiar rise and run of Street’s voice like a vibration.
Harden dozes off, and the door is quiet when he wakes up an hour later, groggy and sticky-mouthed. He stumbles to his feet and goes out into the hall to the vending machine for a bottle of water, where he rests his forehead on wall for a second, trying to remember what city they’re in and what year it is and what position he plays.
Street’s sticking his head out into the hall when Harden comes back, his face scrubbed clean and swollen-eyed. He spots Harden and freezes, then smiles.
“You’re still up?”
Harden shakes his head, yawning and pressing the cold bottle against his hip. “I’m really not.”
“You wanna, um. Come hang out for a minute?” Street looks mildly panicked, hanging onto the doorframe with both hands.
Shrugging, Harden shuffles into Street’s room, already half-planning to wake up here tomorrow, on top of the covers with Street underneath. He sits on the bed and opens his water, his palms slick and cool, and sees on the table, in the shadow of the television set, the hard glass shine of one of the bottles of Kentucky bourbon that Joe’d brought back. It’s only a quarter full, and Street is, upon closer examination, swaying a little bit.
“It’s amazing how much trouble you manage to get into just by sitting around in your room,” Harden tells him.
“What? Trouble? I don’t think so, man.” Street falls more than sits down, bouncing onto his back as Harden smirks.
“You’re hammered.”
Street arrows a finger at him across the few feet that separate them. “Well, that. That’s true. Wow.” He rubs his face with his hands. “When did that happen?”
“You called home?” Harden asks stupidly. Street’s face crumples slightly, and he nods.
“Yeah, think I did. I gotta. Gotta quit doing that.”
Harden snorts and nods in agreement. He kicks off his shoes and folds his legs on the bed, staring at Street’s fine bent profile.
“You know I couldn’t agree more, dude.”
Street smiles kinda sadly down at the carpet and turns his fist into the side of his head, a pained, forlorn gesture that Harden has seen him do hundreds of times. He’s going through hell, oddly enough, and Harden keeps forgetting that.
“It’s just, I keep saying the same stuff and it won’t, it never works. I can’t think of any other ways to explain it, she’s just, like, deaf.”
Harden closes his hand around his own ankle and spots the crack in Street’s defenses, holding his breath.
“Explain what, man? What happened?”
Street doesn’t answer for a while, and Harden’s sure that he won’t, though this is vintage Street, sweet drunk rambly Huston Street who has confessed all manner of things under the influence. This is different, built up in Harden’s mind to be as bad a thing as Street has ever done.
Street falls back on the bed, stares up at the ceiling and Harden eyes the edge of his stomach where his shirt is pulled up, the foreshortened stretch of his body and long legs.
“She found something.”
Harden waits expectantly, but Street doesn’t continue. “Yeah?”
Street sighs, closes his eyes. “On my computer.”
“Oh.” Harden thinks for a minute. “Oh! Shit, dude.” He starts to grin, glad that Street is lying down and can’t see his face. “She found your porn?”
Street winces, nods, a blur of red traveling up his neck to his face. Harden laughs silently, manically, for a moment, shaking his head. “Password protect, Huston, come on.”
“It’s a new computer. I’m still figuring everything out on it.”
Harden laughs out loud that time, and Street squints one eye open, thinly scowling at him. Forcibly calming, Harden claps Street on the knee, shakes his leg a little bit.
“She kicked you out because of that? Because, dude, that is a ridiculous overreaction. Good thing you found out now, huh?”
But Street’s shaking his head, his eyes scrunched shut again. One hand fists at his side and pushes at the bone of his hip; it looks more like a compulsion than anything else.
“It wasn’t just the stuff itself. It was mostly the, um. Content.”
Harden lifts an eyebrow. “Livestock?”
Street twitches and sucks in a fast breath. “Dude! No! Gross.”
Grinning, Harden pats his knee apologetically, his mind working desperately past the recycled hotel room and the haze of bourbon that’s clinging to Street’s skin. Street folds his thumb inside his fist and turns his face away from Harden.
“There were ones with guys. Um. Just guys.”
Harden goes completely still, his fingers still alit on Street’s leg. A flood of images overwhelms him, strong enough that it would have buckled his knees had he been standing. Street in blue computer light, on the twin bed that he’d slept on for the first two months of his rookie year, his hand down under the sheets and his tongue caught between his teeth. Street, watching guys.
Street’s looking at him, peeking from under his eyelashes. He’s blushing so bad it looks like it hurts, and Harden almost wants to laugh again.
“You’re a fucking secret agent, dude,” Harden says, his heart hammering. This could change everything. “You didn’t think to mention that you liked dick?”
Street jerks his head to the side, hunching. “I don’t. I’m not. Fuck, Richie, that’s what she keeps saying.”
Harden chokes back a cackle, of course, of course. “She said that to you? She called you a-” He cuts himself off, presses the underside of his wrist against his mouth, sick with a bizarrely frantic glee.
“She thinks it means something it doesn’t,” Street says, his voice shaking. “She thinks it’s, like, that’s what I want, but really I just. Sometimes I like to watch it. It’s nothing. It’s normal.”
“You don’t need to defend gay porn to me, Huston.”
“Thank you,” Street sighs. Harden tips his head to the side.
“Of course, I fuck around with guys.”
Street groans and covers his face with his hands. “Why do I always forget that about you?”
“Search the fuck out of me, man.”
Harden sounds a little sharper than he intended, because it’s not like he’s ever kept it a secret. Street should be old enough to recognize when someone’s flirting with him, especially when it happens for two years straight. Harden checked every last avenue into Huston Street, the first few months they knew each other, intently trying to see if there were any circumstances under which Street would let him bite the back of his neck and press his fingers into the dents of Street’s hips. But Street only ever smiled and played dumb, and maybe he wasn’t so much playing, either.
“It’s not like that for me,” Street says firmly, a shoddy tear opening somewhere in Harden’s chest. “It’s like, you know those girls that like watching lesbian porn?”
Harden snorts. “Those girls are a fucking myth.”
“No, because there was this guy on the team back home, and his girlfriend was like that. But she was still totally straight. They had sex, like, constantly.” Street’s forehead knots. “It doesn’t mean I like guys all of a sudden.”
Harden’s pretty sure that that’s patently untrue, but Street’s clearly on unstable ground here, and Harden has no desire to further jeopardize him. “Lacey disagrees?”
Pushing his teeth into his lower lip, Street swipes a hand at his eyes. “She says there are things that I have to figure out without her. And she’s not gonna do anything binding unless she’s a hundred percent sure.”
“That’s probably smart. Marrying a repressed homosexual rarely ends well.”
“I’m not-”
“I’m joking.”
Street clenches his jaw and glares up at Harden, lace-thin line of garnet sparkling. Harden loses his breath and stands, crosses to the bourbon, which shines and beckons and honestly, if ever there were a time to have a drink.
He clicks his teeth on the glass, a trail of heat rolling down the center of him, and looks back at Street sprawled on the bed, thinks that it wasn’t much of a joke, after all.
“So what’re you gonna do?”
Street looks down, disconsolate. “I’m trying everything, man, I really am.”
“How’re you even. I mean. How do you argue something like that?” Harden takes a long drink, watching Street warp in the curve of the bottle.
“I’ve never done anything remotely gay. This is so out of nowhere.”
Harden snorts and tries to cover it, but Street straightens and gives him a narrow look. “You wanna share the joke, Rich?”
Moving his shoulders, Harden grins against the mouth of the bottle, a low burr stretching under his skin. He wants to tell Street about the first three or four weeks of their acquaintance, when Street’s measured voice and lidded watchful eyes had taken Harden’s mind to bad places, and the way Street sometimes loses his train of thought when Harden’s not wearing a shirt. Harden wouldn’t spend this kind of time on someone he didn’t think he had a chance with, and that’s what there’s always been between the two of them, a bottle of bourbon, middle of the night, on the road, a backwards realignment and the staggering long shot that he might wake up one morning with Street’s mouth on his throat.
“You know it’s not an absolute,” Harden says instead. “It doesn’t have to be, like, either-or.”
Street’s face opens, slightly panicked, and he looks away. He licks his lips and Harden figures he’s probably still pretty drunk.
“You don’t get it, man. What, I’m supposed to throw away everything I’ve wanted for my whole life just on accounta this?”
“You kinda already did,” Harden points out, but Street winces and he feels like a heel. “Sorry.”
“It’s just not that big a deal,” Street says to the floor. “It’s not enough to mess everything up like this.”
“I don’t know, Huston. You got this whole double life thing. I’m actually kinda impressed.” Harden’s mostly joking, but like everything else he tries tonight, it does more harm than good, bending Street’s mouth down.
“No one ever believes me when I say I’m not gay,” he whispers.
Harden groans inwardly and crosses to sit back down next to him, passing him the bottle. “I believe you, man. I don’t mean to say that you’re lying or something. But I think maybe you’ve got depths that have yet to be explored.”
Street blinks at him foggily. “What?”
Harden shakes his head, smirking. His grip on sobriety is nicely loosened; he feels bright and mildly invincible.
“Maybe your double life is really like a quadruple life, because even you don’t know about it.” Street just looks confused, so Harden continues, “I can’t really speak from any kind of experience, but I don’t think gay porn is every straight boy’s secret.”
Curling his shoulders, Street pushes his fingers together and doesn’t say anything for a long time. “You do think I’m repressed.”
“No, just, you’re not sure yet. I get it.”
“Look, I’m not, like, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. If I were gay, I’d be gay. I’m not like, that thing, where you hate yourself?”
“Um. Internalized homophobia?”
“Yeah. That. If I were gay, I’d do something about it.”
Harden holds his breath. “Yeah?”
Street eyes him carefully, and licks his lips again and Harden thinks he must be doing that unconsciously, he can’t know what it does to Harden. Street’s got an arsenal of tricks like that, moments when Harden is shoved back and pummeled, dry-mouthed.
“I figured this stuff out years ago,” Street says, mostly to himself, and Harden wonders if he weighed the fucking pros and cons back when he was thirteen and trying to decide whether he wanted to kiss girls or boys. It’s not entirely innocent, the idea that Street thinks it’s a choice.
“You never did anything?” Harden asks, because he knows an awful lot of straight guys who’d been at least jerked off by another guy, and maybe that’s a bad situation to fit Huston into when Harden’s drunk and Street’s right next to him on the bed smelling like toblerone and bourbon.
Street draws his shoulders up, looks down. “Nobody’s completely clean, Richie.”
Harden puts his fingers on Street’s jaw and lifts his face and kisses him.
It takes everyone by surprise.
Street’s eyes are open and huge and white. He’s remarkably warm, his shoulder against the inside of Harden’s arm and Harden’s hand sliding up his face. Harden licks across Street’s lower lip, figures, fuck it, and darts his teeth for a second, feeling Street gasp and jerk backwards.
“No fucking way,” he breathes out, and Harden has absolutely no idea what he means. He pushes the tips of his fingers into Street’s hair and Street looks distracted for a second. “Richie, what’re you-”
“Just, just know that you have options,” Harden says, having trouble thinking about the moment several seconds from now when Street will pull away from him. He thinks it might feel like getting his arms broken. “Not necessarily that you’ll take them, but just. There. For you to have. Whenever you want.”
Street shakes his head, sucks on the corner of his lip. He looks completely lost, and Harden moves his hand to cup the side of his neck. “You’re not losing anything, Huston. This is all just a bonus.”
Snapping a glance up at him, Street’s fist winds in the back of Harden’s shirt, and Harden didn’t realize that Street’s arm has been around his waist since Harden kissed him. He makes careful note of that, watching the color rise in Street’s cheeks.
“Everything’s so weird right now,” Street kinda whines, which is endearing to Harden for reasons that he can’t quantify.
“Yeah. Old news, kid,” Harden tells him, and fits his mouth over Street’s again, because he’s learned to take advantage when things are momentarily available.
Street inhales and Harden kisses him hard when his mouth opens to say something, and something crazy happens when Street pushes back against him and gets right the fuck into it. Though he tastes kinda desperate, Harden can’t remember anything better, Street licking at his lips. Harden holds Street’s head in both hands, angling up on his knee to get a nice downward tilt and feel Street’s neck reach and bare for him.
Breaking away, Street buries his face in Harden’s neck and hugs him tight and quick around the waist with both arms. Harden chews at his shoulder and nips his ear, pushes his hands down under Street’s shirt collar, wide between his shoulder blades, checking the knit of his fingers into Street’s spine.
“I, I can’t understand why this is happening to me,” Street says, not quite muffled enough to hide the break in his voice.
“It happened to the rest of us like ten years ago, man,” Harden answers absently, Street everywhere and all around him. “You’re just on the short bus, so don’t worry about it so much.”
He tries to kiss Street again but Street ducks and abruptly slides away, standing and pacing to the center of the room. Flushed with his face looking strangely battered, his eyes, his mouth, Street tries to smooth down the edge of his hair, but it sticks back up straightaway.
Street looks helpless and ambushed, saying a little too loudly, “You gotta quit doing this. You’re so bad for me.”
Even badly injured the way he is, Harden still manages to laugh at that. “Sure, like when I took your homeless ass in after you pissed off your beard. I’m such a jerk.”
Street’s blank with shock for a moment, before he snarls and disappears into the bathroom, the door clapping like lightning and Harden jumping. He’s shaky and numb, staring at the place where Street was a minute ago, feeling the burn in the palms of his hands.
It takes him almost an hour to remember that this isn’t his room, and by then he’s drunk enough that moving would be disastrous, so he kicks his way under the blankets and curls up. He can’t sleep, and it’s not until dawn that he hears the bathroom door open and Street come out. Harden holds perfectly still, a breath caught in his chest. Street gets in on the other side of the bed and Harden is honestly not sure whether Street even knows he’s still here, and he spends the next three hours lying there, wondering.
His courage gives out eventually, and he sneaks back to his room seventeen minutes before their wake-up call. He walks the short path between door and window, thinking about this mess he’s gotten himself into.
Street plays it cooler than Harden would have expected from him, wearing sunglasses through breakfast and blaming a hangover. The guys are raucous, eating muffins and cornflakes and talking about where to go tonight. Street folds himself in with Swisher and Buck, half a shoulder turned against Harden, protected from interrogation. Harden glares at the slash of Street’s cheek that he can see and stabs his toast beyond recognition.
“Dude. Bobby Orr, two Rs, right?”
Harden looks over at his own Bobby, who’s stealing his orange juice and wearing a sleep crease on his cheek. “Um, yeah.”
“He says I’m right, Danny,” Crosby says over his shoulder, and then turns back to look at Harden critically. “You look like shit.”
Harden coughs on a laugh, rubbing his wrist against his leg under the table. “That fucking bourbon Joey brought back? It’s poison.”
Crosby grins and nods. “You were hanging with Huston last night?”
Harden starts and his fork falls onto the floor. He bites the inside of his cheek, ordering calm. “Who told you that?”
“He’s hungover on that shit, too. Damn. I really would have expected better from Joe.”
Fixing his eyes on the table, Harden shrugs. “I was already fucked up from the trip out, anyway.”
“Right? Tell me about it.” Crosby pushes Harden’s glass back towards him, sticky-mouthed. “It’s four in the morning and I’m like, more shots please. In addition to avoiding Joe’s liquor-don’t fucking dare the rookie.”
Harden snorts, rubbing at his forehead with the heel of his hand. Crosby half-smiles, eyes bloodshot and brackish, drag of messy curls and he hasn’t shaved in two weeks, spending almost all his time with Travis Buck.
Harden lets Crosby distract him for awhile longer, and then there’s a bus and a ballpark and three more hours to kill. Harden’s not starting, and being constantly adjacent to Huston Street is doing strange things to him, so he prowls around the batting cages under the stadium, turning a pitching machine up to ninety-eight and throwing in time with it, trying to beat the machine’s ball to the backstop. He has to stop after only a little bit, though, his shoulder tightening almost imperceptibly.
Street’s not thinking clearly, Harden decides, kicking baseballs down the length of the cage. They’re both having some kind of mental crisis, but Street’s got a lot further to fall, and no real reason to risk anything on Harden. Street could probably go on happily believing that jerking off to guys having sex is something that everybody does and nobody talks about, and never have to worry about this kind of disaster again.
And Harden gets a little pissed off, thinking that Street’s got no right to act like it would be so awful, not when he pressed up against Harden and kissed him all stunned and hot and into it. It’s not as if Harden wouldn’t do fucking anything to make sure Street had a good time.
He doesn’t have any luck figuring out a plan of action on his own, so Harden calls Zito, the only guy in his dispersed circle that he can realistically bring this up with. Zito turned out to be actually straight, shock of Rich Harden’s young life, but he doesn’t mind when Harden poses gender-neutral hypotheticals to him.
“So, let’s say there’s this person you know who maybe you want to try something with, but, like, it’s not clear if they’re really interested or just kinda fucked up.”
Zito chews thoughtfully into the phone. He’s home in San Francisco, playing the Cardinals, fighting back a terrible start to the season, desperate to be out of April. Preparing for the National League has slowed Zito’s response time, set him on edge.
“Can I take a guess and say that this probably fucked up somebody will be in your immediate proximity for the next six months?”
Harden coughs out a laugh, sits with his back against the fence. “That might be accurate.”
“Okay. I mean, give me something to work with. What happened?”
Drumming his fingers on his knee, Harden tries to find a way to sum it up, three sentences or less because goddamn if he’s gonna go deep with Zito again. Last time, they were up till five in the morning, drinking liquor with caffeine and intricately debating how to pitch in the cold.
“There’s been some. Mixed signals. Or, well, extenuating circumstances. I can’t really take anything at face value. He’s very very confused, but there’s a strong chance that he wants to make out with me, too.”
“Hmm. What’s he confused about?”
“Oh. Me. The guy thing.”
Zito laughs. “You’re breaking him in?”
“Fucking trying to. He’s kinda, like, denial boy. Like, he’ll do this stuff and then be all, I didn’t mean it, it doesn’t mean anything.” Harden pushes a baseball back and forth on the dirt, wearing a groove down to the wood a couple inches underneath.
“Well, it’s very unsettling, you know. Being accosted by someone like you.”
“I did not accost him, Barry.”
“Scarred him for life, probably.”
Harden glares, and keeps stonily silent, waiting for Zito to take him seriously. Zito’s permitted a few cracks because Harden used to get drunk and try to feel him up, but he’s over his limit.
“Bitch,” Zito says, not unkindly. “Honestly, though, you want to deal with this shit right now? Because, like, it sounds like it’s gonna get worse before it gets better.”
“Yeah. He’s just so tortured about the whole thing.” Harden sighs. “It’s such a Catholic coming out. Who lives like that?”
Zito takes a long pause, then says dryly, “That kinda narrowed down the potential number of people that you could be talking about, dude.”
Harden shakes his head, rubs at his eyes. It’s amazing to be in this early summer heat again; the East and Midwest are still frozen over. “Whatever. Tell me what I should do.”
“Well. There’s the responsible thing to do, and then there’s getting something out of the situation. I say get him drunk.”
“What?” Harden says, aghast.
“I hate to think that you’ve forgotten so quickly, Richie, but I was on staff with this kid for two years, just the same as you. He is never not ever gonna admit it while sober. Which isn’t to say that it’s not true, because, hello, he’s been sick over you since, like, day two.”
“Whoa. Back the fuck up.” Harden sits up straight, popping his knee out. “That’s some new goddamn information.”
Zito laughs, and it’s kinda difficult that he’s not right upstairs right now, that Harden won’t see him tonight, probably not till interleague. The A’s are an extremely weird team without Zito, a totally incongruent thought when considering the weirdness of the man himself, but he’d been around so long, and now the foundation of the team is reduced to one narrow support in the person of Eric Chavez, all the rest of them still so new.
“That thing, where he does your laundry? Yeah.”
“Hey. He likes doing laundry. It calms him.”
“Dude.”
Harden exhales heavily. “Okay.”
“He’s definitely fucked up about it, though.”
“I know, right?”
“So. In vino veritas, and all that.”
Rolling his eyes, Harden grins hard against the heel of his hand. “Get him drunk.”
“And the truth shall set you free.”
“You know, I actually already did get him drunk.”
“Yeah? What happened?”
Harden flushes, remembering the slide of Street’s skin under his hands, and grudgingly cedes Zito the point. “Once he’s drunk, though, then what?”
“What, you want me to hold your dick for you, too?” Zito snarks, and then bursts out giggling.
Harden senses that Zito’s a little bit drunk himself, and he changes the subject to that for awhile, bitching about how his tolerance is coming back up and he needs, like, six beers to get buzzed. They try to talk about baseball, but it doesn’t really take, and then Harden’s got to go, Chavez shouting at him from the tunnel to get his punk ass into the card game already.
They get back home with Street still pretending nothing happened, not quite ignoring Harden but not exactly talking to him, either. Harden’s frustrated and pissed off and tired, making Buck carry his bags. He throws a balled-up paper cup at the back of Street’s head on the bus, and lets Danny Haren get blamed for it.
He’s not counting on Street to come home tonight, this latest betrayal doubtless enough to send him back to Lacey once and for all. Harden thinks, good, enjoy the closet for the rest of your life, motherfucker, but then he feels guilty, unnerved by the house all on his own.
Four days like that, Street laughing across the clubhouse and walking out to the bullpen next to Harden without saying anything, Harden lying awake with the television muted, listening to how quiet it gets out in the hills. Four days like that, and Harden hears from Crosby that Street is actually sleeping at Zito’s apartment in San Francisco while the Giants are out of town. It feels like a slap in the face somehow, though Harden’s not sure if he’s mad at Zito for taking Street in or Street for abandoning the team at the first sign of trouble.
Four days, and then Street runs out of clean boxers and shows up at their house in the afternoon with an empty duffel bag and a persistent blush on his face. Harden comes into the hall when he hears keys in the door, his heartrate up almost imperceptibly.
“Hey, Richie.”
Harden breathes out, realizes kinda way too late that this isn’t some secondhand crisis, he’s not just a witness anymore-he’s fucking in love with the kid.
“Hey, Huston.”
Street nods awkwardly and holds up his bag. “I came to get my stuff.”
“Yeah.” Harden makes fists, swallowing hard, saying fast, “Really you shouldn’t, though.”
Looking caught, Street drops his hand and blinks at him. Such a pretty little headcase, honestly. Harden makes a sound like a laugh and rubs at his mouth with the side of his hand.
“Why’re you leaving?”
“Oh, well.” Street sorta smiles, not looking at him. “It’s just. It’s weird, huh?”
“Your whole life, man, so what’s a little more?”
Street glances up and he’s more than a bit screwed up, with the raw line of his mouth and the jagged slant of his eyes. Hasn’t been sleeping, probably, torn up like any good straight boy would be.
“I can’t stay here anymore,” Street says low.
“Because I make you do terrible things,” Harden answers snidely, hating every time Street blames this on him.
“Because you will.” Street flinches, hadn’t meant to say that and Harden’s staring at him. Street lets out a long breath and slouches back on the door. “If I stay here, something’s gonna happen with us. You know that.”
Harden nods, his mouth dry. “Yeah. I. Yes.”
“And it can’t, okay? Because it. It can’t.”
Street’s talking to the floor. Harden’s stuck back on Street thinking something was bound to happen between them, wondering if the stuff Street imagines is the same stuff he comes up with himself. But Street looks like his heart’s breaking and Harden’s not built to withstand that.
“Okay,” he says softly. “Nothing’s gonna happen.”
It’s tougher than he thought, especially when he sees Street’s face fall, eyelashes flickering. Harden can’t figure out the right thing, everything he does just makes it worse.
Nodding, pained, Street hunches his shoulders and picks up his duffel bag, walking with his head down towards Harden, and Harden falters, grabs his arm, freezing them both.
“I’m sorry,” he says immediately. “I thought. Isn’t that what you wanted me to say?”
Street drags his head to the side, closing his eyes. “I guess, man, I don’t know.”
“Huston.” Harden starts to lift his hand to Street’s face, but it’s shaking and he hides it along the line of Street’s side instead, feeling Street inhale sharply. “Kid.”
He’s very close. Harden can’t stop staring at him, all clean untouchable skin and the frightened move of his eyes, his mouth. Street glances at him, something secretive and dark, and licks his lips, his eyes widening when he sees how Harden reacts to that, Harden’s hand tightening and a small noise cracking in his throat. He looks at Harden in disbelief, but doesn’t move away.
“You’re gonna have to stop me right this second, or I swear-” Harden cuts himself off, because Street’s already shaking his head and swaying forward and Harden meets him in the middle.
Exponentially better this time, Street coming from somewhere other than drunk and confused, wrenching his hand in Harden’s shirt and pinning him to the wall, kissing him deep and angry and hot, jesus. Harden gets hold of Street’s hips and digs his fingers in and slams Street back into the other wall, grinning against Street’s mouth, licking the tip of his nose.
“See, not so bad,” Harden says breathlessly, before Street slides his hand around the back of his head and kisses him again, messy black-eyed boy in the hallway shadows with his mouth soft and weirdly blurred as Harden smooths his fingers down Street’s face. Street’s other hand is busy unbuttoning his jeans, and Harden likes the way he thinks, hiking Street higher up the wall and letting Street close his legs around his waist.
Working together, they get Street’s shirt almost off, hanging from his forearm, and both their jeans open, and Street has one arm flung out, gripping helplessly at the wall, the other wrapped around Harden’s shoulders. Harden can’t see for wanting him so badly, even now that he’s got him, Street gasping and arching his back, his throat exposed, his hair plaster-dusted and damp. He can’t believe Street’s got it in him to look this good, writhing and stuttering, “Oh fucking Christ Richie please.”
Harden’s making sounds he’s never heard before. Street rips Harden’s shirt at the shoulder and his nails bite into skin. Harden never wants to take his hands off Street, never wants to look up and not see Street panting with his eyes half-closed. Street is still almost fully dressed, his feet off the carpet and his back braced hard on the wall, and Harden’s got one hand pushed into Street’s shorts and the other bearing half of Street’s weight.
It ends quick, which is to be expected, after the week the two of them have had. Harden’s legs give out from holding Street up, and they both drop heavily to the carpet, breathing hard. Street’s legs flop over Harden’s, but he figures that’s really the least of their problems.
For awhile, they just lie there on the floor, something companionable between them that feels wrong even though Street came all over Harden’s hand and Harden, sadly, came in his shorts. Harden reminds himself that all they actually are is a pair of friends who’ve now fucked around once. This is so commonplace there’s more than one name for it, but it seems like it should be different with Street because they’ve always been more than friends, in one way or another.
Harden sighs, reaching down and curling his fingers around Street’s ankle, making him twitch. Harden’s just wrecked over Street. He wants to take him home, keep him there. He wants to fuck with Street’s mind just enough that Street might give him a chance.
“So. Little less repressed, now?” he asks eventually, because dumb jokes at inappropriate moments are never out of style.
Street tugs his ankle lightly, but doesn’t break Harden’s grip. “I don’t know.”
“Hey, come on. That was incredibly convincing, I thought.”
“Shut up, Richie.”
Harden does, looking up at the ceiling and playing his fingers along the bone of Street’s ankle. He’s in a place of joy and comfort at the moment, sticky and used on the floor with Street’s legs all mixed up in his own, but he can already see that this won’t end well.
“I really didn’t want to be like this,” Street says, and Harden can’t tell what hurts more, what Street said or how he said it. Street sounds like he wants to be buried alive, like he’s running out of oxygen.
“It’s just one of those things, Huston,” Harden tries, holding onto Street’s ankle for dear life. “It’s like the weather.”
There’s a pause. “The weather?” Street says doubtfully.
“Whatever.” Harden pulls on Street’s leg a little, thinking blackly that they’re lying here talking about this and Street’s still teasing him. “It’s stuff you can’t fix.”
Street’s throat clicks as he swallows. “I can’t get married now?” and Harden doesn’t think Street meant to make that into a question.
“You can, fuck, man. You can do whatever you want. You can sleep with me. You can sleep with Lacey, marry Lacey if that’s better. This is the end of your big gay revelation. Now you get on with your life.”
Harden definitely didn’t mean to say that. He sits up, taking the time to fix his jeans, and crawls to sit next to Street’s head. Street looks whipped and scared, flinching, watching Harden with distrust. His mouth is slightly swollen, thank god, and it gives Harden something to focus on.
“Just. This is who you are. It’s not like bad luck or something. You’re fundamentally unchanged, and the people who count aren’t gonna care.”
“Really,” Street says, almost too loudly, his eyes flaring white. “Lacey’s not gonna care?”
“Once you stop fucking lying to her about it, dude, I’m sure she’ll get a rainbow button for her bag.”
Street snarls, strange from right above him the way Harden is. “You’re real fucking funny when it comes to me and her. Which is just what I fucking need right now.”
“Look.” Harden pokes his finger into Street’s shoulder. “I get that you’re in a bad place, but quit acting like fucking around with me has put a black mark on your soul or some shit. It’s irritating.”
Street turns his face away, glaring. Harden glances back and sees that Street’s got his fists low on his stomach. A fine line breaks the plane of his forehead, his teeth pushing out his lower lip. It’s a petulant and juvenile expression, and for reasons Harden doesn’t bother exploring, one of his favorites on Street. He keeps being caught off-guard by reminders that he is, in fact, fucking in love with the kid.
“Shoulda just gotten you drunk,” Harden mutters, and Street’s eyes flash to him and then away again. “Okay, you see how I’m all secure in my bisexuality? Doesn’t this look like fun?”
Street glares directly at him this time. Harden sighs and pushes a hand through his hair, giving up for the moment and letting his shoulders fall. His knee is against Street’s side, a warm impression left. He’s not handling this right. They really need to get the fuck out of the hallway.
“End of the day, man, either you want to stay or you don’t,” Harden says at last. “That’s all it should really come down to.”
He weaves his fingers together and rests the back of his hand on the slick run of Street’s side. He doesn’t want to look at Street anymore, treachery in Street’s face and the way his mouth is going to thin right before Street tells him no. Harden wonders how bad this is gonna hurt, and for how long.
“Maybe,” Street starts, and then stops. One of his fisted hands slides up careful from his waist and bumps into Harden’s folded fingers. “Maybe I’ll stay tonight.”
Harden looks up sharp enough that his neck pops. “You’ll.”
Street still looks scared, but something else too, recklessness, curiosity, dangerous signs. He’s almost smirking at Harden, biting his lip. “Maybe just for tonight, because, fuck, Richie, I want to, I really do.”
Harden stops him with a kiss and there are Street’s arms around his neck again, there they go in reverse. He resolves, at some point tonight, to do this proper and in a bed, but that’s not this time, this time it’s carpet burn and Street hooking his hand in the hole in Harden’s shirt and ripping it clear to the hem.
This time Harden keeps an arm slung across Street’s stomach after, and Street combs his hand distantly through Harden’s hair. In the slant of light from the living room door, Harden thinks that Street looks happier than Harden’s ever seen him, and it just tears the heart out of him.
He sleeps through dawn, though only barely, and wakes up alone. Street has taken one of Harden’s shirts and left a half a glass of orange juice on the kitchen counter. Harden sits down at the table, yawning. He pokes at the newspaper and stares at the walls for a while. Then he sorta crumples, curling until his arm is around his stomach and his cheek is on the table.
“Fuck,” he says with his voice hoarse. He squeezes his eyes shut and presses his fist into his forehead. He thinks, stuff you can’t fix, and Huston Street is one of those things, and Rich Harden too, and it hits him then, crippling and incomplete: it’s gonna feel like this forever.
THE END
Endnotes: And that takes us right up to Harden getting hurt again! So, clearly, fun times ahead.
Title from ‘The Oldest Story in the World,’ a Plimsouls song that, like, four people in the world know about. But it’s very good, and you should look that shit up.
you’ll never change me
you’re no better than the weather
you’re cool but there’s rain in your heart
you’re blown like a feather
and that’s the oldest story in the world