you can find me in the parking lot at city college

[candle_beck]

21524 words for helen aka iwrotethissong, who probably didn't intend this.

Lovely Lost Cause

Back at Pepperdine University, Noah Lowry and Danny Haren walked down to the beach after lunch on a regular Tuesday afternoon, the hottest part of the day. It was November but felt like spring. Haren took off his shirt when sand began to blow across the sidewalks, his wide shoulders peeling from an old sunburn, a yellowing bruise on the meat of his biceps. Lowry stuck his hands in his pockets, squinted almost blind against the sun.

They went down to the beach most days, and this was no different, knee-deep in the water whipping an Aerobie back and forth to each other, hooting and kicking up surf. Lowry's left arm ached pleasantly from the scrimmage he'd pitched four innings of yesterday, a rubbery kinda twinge as he snapped his wrist and let the ring go. He couldn't hear half of what Danny was shouting over the ocean, but he kept nodding along.

Two months into freshman year and this was all regular, unremarkable, and Noah had no real reason to suspect any different. Noah was generally the easy-going type, taking the world as it came and not complaining too much. Life had been good to him so far.

He was sitting on the beach catching his breath while Haren went up to the taco truck on the street to get them some Fantas, idly searching for sharks among the surfers and beach bunnies floating in the water. Sweat stung at his eyes and Lowry rubbed it away with the inside of his wrist, looked back over his shoulder to find Haren stopped short of the truck to talk with a couple of girls. Something happened to Lowry then.

Everything all around him was full-blasted with sunlight but it hit Danny different, or bled out of him, something, but he was over there in his soaked board shorts and nothing else, broad pink-tinged shoulders narrowing to hard chest and stomach, his hair gleaming black and wet-slicked back, clean-white ladykilling grin on his face, the blue of his eyes visible even from where Lowry was--it was as good as Danny Haren would ever look. It was his single best moment, eighteen years old and beautiful, and Lowry fell for him so hard his ears rang.

And it was still like that years later when they were almost done with college and still living in the same room. Noah had spent a few months in denial, a few months frozen in panic, and then the better part of a baseball season adapting to it, because that was what you had to do to make it at any level, any time it got harder because it always got harder: make adjustments.

He watched Haren go through two girls a month, and it was difficult at first but over time became oddly calming, constant reminder that he didn't have a prayer and at least it wasn't his fault. Lowry dated girls here and there, on and off, mostly just to kill the time and because it was expected of him, and he learned to predict to the day when she would break up with him, each time some new variation on, you are really obviously hung up on someone else and it's lame, and each time Noah sighed and nodded, not even bothering to deny it.

So now it was junior year and Lowry was still secretly in love with his best friend but he'd conditioned himself to think of it as some sort of medieval quest, a vow of fidelity he'd taken. It was this thing he could pine for and protect fiercely within his own heart, but never actually mention aloud. It seemed defiantly noble, all this loving from afar.

But things hit a breaking point that spring, when they were obsessing both separately and as a pair about the draft, the next six months of their lives. Lowry had trouble sleeping and Haren stayed up to keep him company because Haren was that kind of guy. They played catch barefoot on the silent commons at two in the morning, yawning and bleary-eyed and sapped of color by the fuzzy yellow lights cast sideways across them. They were both going to be drafted and probably pretty well, but Lowry was still wearily petrified to see anything change, half-wanting to punch a brick wall and fuck up his hand so that he'd have an excuse to quit everything and just follow Danny Haren around for the rest of his life.

Lowry was in a bad way. The hopelessness of the whole thing was part of the appeal, a terribly romantic spike of despair every time he dragged his eyes away from Haren making out with the girl of the night in the corner of the bar, but he'd reached his limit.

It burned in him, red-lit along the edges of his mind, this crazy thing he was going to do. He hadn't slept in a couple of days and the draft was bearing down on him like a plane falling out of the sky. He had all kinds of good excuses.

He waited until they were back in their room, tossing their mitts with Haren's busted Chucks on the floor of the closet, and then Lowry grabbed Danny's shoulder and pushed him up against the wall. Haren was wearing his red Skynyrd shirt with the logo chipping off, and Lowry had a hand wrenched in his collar, staring up at his best friend and building his nerve.

Danny kinda laughed, "What? What'd I do?" like Lowry was about to hit him instead of kiss him, and Lowry kept swallowing hard, his mouth working uselessly.

"C'mon, I know you're not drunk," Danny started to say, smile crooked on his face and Noah didn't think, just cupped his hand on Haren's cheek and said rough:

"Danny,"

and he put everything into it, his whole heart offered up plain and free, and Haren's eyes went huge, baffled. He shoved Lowry away from him, Lowry's hand ripping Haren's collar and feeling something rip in his chest too, and then Haren stepped forward into the occluded moonlight fighting its way past the palm trees outside. Haren looked stricken, totally stunned.

"Noah, wh-what, what the fuck?" and he didn't sound angry, his voice kinda thready and warped.

Lowry turned his back, covered his face with both hands. His nose was mashed down and he almost couldn't breathe and he concentrated on that for awhile, slow constant struggle for air. He could feel Haren twitching, freaked out and wanting to bolt but sticking around because they'd been best friends for three years. The history alone was obligation enough.

"Sorry," Lowry said muffled to his palms. "I know you're not, you never, there's never been any reason to think you were but I just, I, I didn't want to never even try."

He bit the flesh at the heel of his hand, shutting himself up before he could say any more. Stuffed into his throat Lowry could feel all the crazy stupid things that wanted to come out, the mindless romantic in him running loose, but he tamped it down. This wasn't that kind of story.

"You, you're," Danny stammered, and Lowry cut him off, blushing fever-hot and not wanting to hear Haren say it out loud.

"Just a little. For you, anyways. I never. I don't ever do anything with guys, never."

Haren grabbed his shoulder from behind and Lowry jerked, spun around. He tilted away from Haren because he couldn't have Haren's hands on him just now, it wouldn't go well for either of them.

"But, me?" Haren's voice was too high, openly flabbergasted. "Why the fuck would you want-" and then he choked, made a sound like he was being strangled and fell silent, his eyes gaping at Lowry.

Lowry bit the inside of his cheek, drilling the knuckle of his thumb into his eye socket. He wasn't looking at Haren, gaze averted to the poster of Fernando Valenzuela rearing back with his eyes rolled up to the sky. Pitching blind, which was what this felt like, facing each other in their dark dorm room with no idea how to fix it.

"I dunno," Lowry said in a mumble. "You're my best friend."

Haren didn't say anything right away, and Lowry snuck a look, found Danny staring at him like he was throwing a perfect game, fascinated and increasingly amazed. It struck a small matchlight in Lowry, pulled his shoulders up straight.

"It's probably not that weird," Lowry said, surprised by how even it sounded. "People are probably fucked up all over. I won't, you don't have to worry about me trying anything again. That was just, just the moment. And really, I'm fine keeping it a secret, and it'll probably work out better for everybody this way."

He smiled, and it didn't hang too badly askew on his face, even if he was experiencing a diminishing sensation in his stomach, something essential sucked out of him. Haren's face was pinched and concerned and he didn't look like he was buying it, but he took Lowry's hand when it was offered in friendship, long fingers pressing on the pulse at the inside of his wrist.

"You're crazy," Haren said low, his heavy eyebrows beetling down. Lowry nodded, teeth in his lip, still trying to hold the smile.

"Not tellin' me anything new, Danny, so why'd you bother?"

And Lowry tugged his hand away from Haren's, turned away. He sat on his bottom bunk with his head bowed, rubbing his palm on his jeans and remembering the rasp of Haren's face, chasing the tingle of it. From the corner of his eye he could see Danny standing numbly by the door for a long moment, and Lowry wasn't quite holding his breath, but it was a near thing.

It worked out, anyway. Haren snapped back to himself after a minute and moved about with a foreign expression on his face, all tipped eyebrows and weak mouth. He shucked his jeans without thought like it was any other night, climbed into the top bunk with his knobby feet disappearing last. Lowry squeezed his eyes shut, bent over with his forehead on his knees wondering what the fuck he'd just done, but then Haren said, kinda distracted, "Night, Noah," and just that quick, he knew it would be all right.

They got drafted and dropped out of college, and on their last night in Malibu they broke into the old mission and went up the spiral stairs to the bell tower, cobwebbed corners and red-eyed bats and empty creaking eaves. They were trying to stay quiet but they were pretty drunk and Lowry for one couldn't stop giggling, rocking his weight to hear the splintered wood sigh.

Danny offered a toast to the San Francisco Giants and Noah offered one to the St. Louis Cardinals. They drank to split-fingered fastballs and change-ups that vanished like smoke, to left-handed hitters with holes on the inside half, to umpires who'd grown up wishing to be pitchers. They drank until their hands felt blurred and the starlight glittering on the ocean was indistinguishable from the smeary gold streetlights caught in the green.

Noah rode a frequency of contented melancholy, eyeing the pale stretch of Haren's throat when he tipped his head back for a drink. They'd arrived at an understanding these past couple of weeks, thankfully unspoken, that Lowry could yearn quietly all he wanted, and Haren would only make fun of him for it when there were no other people around. Nothing important had changed between them, and Lowry was so grateful for that he didn't have the words.

In a month they would both be in Single-A. He would go to Oregon for the short season and Haren would go to Jersey, and Lowry was drunk enough to like the idea of starting out with the whole country between them, thinking diffusely that the distance would cure his poor heart, shape him into the better man he was meant to be.

Then Danny leaned into him, slung his arm around Lowry's shoulders. The damp smell of the old wood filled his head, making him dizzy and he slouched against Haren easily, hating that perfect fit.

"Even crazier," Danny said, half-slurring and picking up a conversation from weeks ago, "crazier than your crazy ass is me, and you know why? You wanna know why, man?"

"Yeah," Lowry answered, eyes shut and Haren's arm draped so heavy and warm around him. "Tell me."

Haren kinda coughed, sighed a little all hoarse and loose. "I think I totally have a giant crush on you too and it sucks because you're a dude. I think if you were a chick I'da been nailing you for years."

Lowry started to laugh, turning his face into Haren's shoulder. He clutched at Haren's shirt and felt his arm tightening where it hung down his chest. Lowry's vision fragmented as if he couldn't breathe, and he was laughing hard now, wild stunned feeling in his chest. It felt sorta like he was losing his mind, but in a good way.

He got under control after a minute and lifted his head to see Danny grinning down at him, soft around the eyes and making a slow fist close in Lowry's stomach. Lowry put his hand on Danny's face again and Danny didn't flinch this time, only grinned wider as Lowry leaned up and pressed a kiss to his cheek, open-mouthed and vaguely desperate but somehow still chaste.

So that was okay too, and they walked home to the same place for the last time that night, close enough to bump arms and not talking. They said goodbye in the student parking lot the next morning, sunglasses on so they wouldn't have to meet each other's eyes, hugging seconds too long in the blasted light.

They managed to stay best friends throughout their minor league careers, though their schedules and timezones worked persistently against them, the technology kept getting better and better, never out of touch unless you were in a plane and they were both still in the bus leagues.

One night in August Lowry's team bus broke down on the way to Boise, a great clonking yank forward as something in the engine burst and dirty-colored smoke began bellowing out of the grill. A sixteen year old infielder from Honduras was standing in the aisle and got thrown down, gashed his cheek open, but that was the only damage and cured by a couple of butterfly bandages, and it gave him "Scarface" as a pretty cool nickname for the rest of his baseball life. They milled around outside for three hours waiting for the second bus to come pick them up, games of pepper starting up on the deserted highway.

Lowry snuck around to the back and climbed on top of the bus without anyone seeing him, camped out up there with his cell phone and six trillion stars, Danny Haren murmuring half-asleep and mostly incoherent in his ear.

On top of a broken-down bus on the highway to Boise, sitting cross-legged beside a scummy-green hotel pool in Yakima, hiding in an alley outside a Vancouver bar--on the phone with Danny Haren. Lowry lived so he could tell his best friend all about it.

It was always how's your game, how's your motion looking, what new pitches have they taught you, and I can throw that, I learned how to throw that years ago. Danny ragging on him from 2500 miles away felt like a full-body hug.

They talked about baseball because it was the bulk of their experience, and they told the same stories from Pepperdine over and over again, the same nights replayed and reshaped in memory until they gleamed like icons, some bygone age. A couple times a week, Danny got drunk and called Noah to ask what kind of candy he should get from the gas station.

Lowry came to terms with it sometime in Double-A, when he was in Norwich, Connecticut, and Danny was still stuck down in the Carolina League. They'd stumbled upon the strangest form of friendship he'd ever known, where they were both sorta in love with each other but Noah was the only one physically able to act on it. It was clearly some kind of sick joke of God's part, making Danny so irretrievably straight, but it was going to be okay. Noah had the important parts of him, he didn't need the sex. He'd always felt like he was meant for epic things, and this, this lovely lost cause, this was starting to look like his life's work.

In the off-seasons they came back to Southern California, their childhood homes ninety miles apart and the weather always the exact same for both of them. Lowry learned every foot of the drive between Ventura and West Covina, sun setting in his eyes going out and rising in his eyes coming back. He memorized the order of dozens of exits and chanted it to himself like a psychotic's catechism. He was seeing Haren tonight. He was happy, or pretty close, at least.

Before the season started in 2003, Lowry stole Haren's red Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt with the rip in the collar. 'Stole' was not the right word, exactly, because he wore it around Haren at least once and saw Danny tick his eyebrows in recognition, but he never asked Lowry to give it back. Danny never said anything about it at all, which made Noah think that the shirt was probably his now.

They both made the bigs that year. Haren got called up by the Cards first, at the end of June, and he spent the last half of the season getting lit up pretty bad and not caring at all, describing every pitch to Lowry, every foul tip. Lowry kept having trouble getting his breath when Haren was talking about being a major league ballplayer. He wasn't sure whether it was the proximity of his own future, or just the crazy light-filled note running all through Haren's voice.

Lowry was in Fremont, wishing on shooting stars and eyelashes and pitching brilliantly, painlessly, his left arm formed into a magic thing. He was happy, almost all the way this time.

The Giants called him up after the rosters expanded in September, and he found some kind of fantastic higher level, his body whittled down by the impossibly long season but he located in himself just enough extra, this hidden cache of change-ups packed into his shoulder. He pitched out of the bullpen four times, six innings without a run, and at the end of the season they said to him casually, like it was nothing, "See you next year, kid."

Lowry and Haren both started in Trip-A in the spring; both made it back to the bigs by midseason. Haren said, "Here to stay, baby," and Lowry yelled at him for jinxing it, and then they talked for the next five hours, until the sun was coming up and Lowry's voice was a pale little rasp.

He was a starting pitcher on a major league baseball team and he started his career out 7-0, better than anyone in San Francisco history. There had always been that itching doubt in the back of his mind, that he'd make it to the Show pitching as well as he possibly could, and the batters, all those fearsome baseball-card idols would just be better than he was. Lowry had nightmares of launched home runs, scorched down-the-line doubles, but he was here now and they couldn't hit him. They couldn't touch him.

He'd never been happy before, never been close. This was a whole other plane.

The Giants won ninety-one games in 2004, but lost the division torturously on the second-to-last day of the season, down in Los Angeles in the wicked white and blue night. It hurt, but not as badly as Lowry was expecting, not with the way they talked about him, the way they talked about next season.

Lowry went to Phoenix for instrux, giddy and kinda removed, watching himself from the outside. When he got drunk, very late at night when he couldn't call Danny because Danny's team was still in it and they had a game tomorrow, sometimes Noah got badly scared, because everything was going just like he'd planned, as good as he could have dreamed, and he couldn't really trust it. He understood how narrative arcs worked. There was a reversal of fortunes ahead of him, but he could only see it when he was drunk.

And then the St. Louis Cardinals won the pennant.

And then they lost the World Series.

Lowry wasn't sure if he could count that as his own tragedy. His team had gone home earlier, but he knew Haren felt worse at this moment than he could possibly conceive.

He was back in California by then, and there at LAX to meet Haren's flight. Haren's hair was greasy under his cap and his eyes were sunken, hollowed. He hooked his arm around Lowry's shoulders at baggage claim and leaned almost all his weight on him, and Lowry rooted himself to the spot, made himself sturdy and trustworthy.

It was only a couple of weeks before Haren was able to shake the postseason, and Lowry thought that Danny was like sand, smoothed over so easily and by nothing more than wind. Every third person seemed to be wearing a Red Sox cap that winter, and by Thanksgiving it didn't even make Haren flinch anymore.

They met up in Malibu, roughly halfway between, and sat on the beach drinking like they were freshmen again, screwing fists into the sand to make pockets for their bottles. Shoulders knocking together, Haren kept saying he saw sharks in the water even though Lowry never believed him.

That was where they were about a week before Christmas, sitting on the beach keeping an eye on the ocean. The winds had come screaming down the coast and they had a cheap red kite bought from a kid in the parking lot, flickering and dancing above them. Danny's hair was blown off his face and he was grinning like the Cards had actually gone the distance and the kite string was tied to the heavy gold ring around his finger.

Noah was happy too, happy beyond the telling of it, but there was a black shadow growing behind him, because he wasn't a kid anymore and the romance of the whole thing was beginning to wear through. He wasn't thinking about that, wouldn't allow it, stubborn like a teenager but that wouldn't last either.

Haren's phone, half-buried in the sand, burred to life, and he passed the kite's reel over to Lowry, picked up and learned that he was now the property of the Oakland Athletics.

Lowry dropped the reel. The kite tugged it immediately away, rolling down the beach and unspooling fast, kicking and leaping up higher and higher the lighter it got. Lowry shouted and took off after it, catching hold just before the surf took it. He came back up the beach to find Haren looking poleaxed, blinking up at him with his phone loosely clutched in his hand.

Lowry dropped to his knees, grinned at him hugely. "Danny, this is excellent news. Dude. Oakland's like fifteen minutes away. It's right there."

Haren considered that, his face scanning, eyebrows tipped up kinda questioning and helpless. He scratched at the little scruff of a beard he'd let come in, ran a hand through his hair. He was searching for his bearings.

"But, we, we just played in the World Series," Haren said, still stuck in the past.

"Oakland'll get there."

"How? That, it was Mark Mulder they just gave up, for me and Kiko and some hot-shot bush leaguer. And wasn't it like freakin' yesterday that they got rid of Tim Hudson? The fuck have I just gotten myself into?"

Lowry punched Haren's knee, still more pleased than otherwise, thinking, right there.

"You're a better pitcher than Mulder is," he told Haren. "Will be, anyway. Billy Beane did it to get you, man."

Haren shook his head automatically, moving ahead in his mind in great fits and starts. "I, I need to get a place, and fuck, I'm going to Phoenix in the spring now, this is the craziest shit."

Lowry just grinned at him, this high feeling like a chime ringing in his chest. Haren squinted at him, suspicious, said, "What," and Lowry told him plainly:

"I wanna kiss you but obviously I'm not gonna. This is gonna be so great."

Laughing, Haren fell back on his elbows, shaking his head in amazement. He tipped his face to the sun and Lowry's cheeks ached from smiling so hard.

"Nothing cheers me up like reminders that you're completely queer for me, Noah."

Lowry pounded his fist joyfully on Haren's knee. "Come live with me in San Francisco."

"You think you get me to the Motherland and I'll turn completely queer for you?"

"You are completely queer for me, Danny, you just don't have the sack to do anything about it." Lowry tugged at the edge of Haren's board shorts, flicked at his leg. "It's okay, though."

Haren sat up, batted Lowry's hand away. He angled Lowry a sideways grin, looking a little less taken aback. Just uprooted and flung to the far side of the country, but Haren got over it quickly because at the end of the day, he was coming home, back to California once more.

"So," Danny said, stealing a sip of Lowry's beer. His phone lit up in the sand again but he didn't even glance at it, eyes intent on his best friend. "Tell me about this place we're gonna live."

Before they could get to that, though, there was spring training. They drove out to Phoenix in a two-car caravan, each with a bulky yellow plastic walkie-talkie propped on the dash so they could talk and insult each other's musical tastes. The desert had never appealed to Lowry more, the primal edge on everything and the knowledge that if you got far enough out and just started walking, you'd die of thirst before seeing another human face. He was in an odd fatalistic kind of mood a lot of the time, dreaming up macabre mass casualty events that the two of them might barely survive.

They checked into the same extended-stay hotel and got dinner, stayed up till one playing PSP and watching a marathon of Saturday Night Live reruns and only drinking in moderation. Saying goodnight at the door, Haren told him, "I have a good feeling about this," and Lowry said, "Yeah, fuck, me too."

Haren met up with him at the bar after his first full day with his new team, shooting some commercials with the other pitchers and doing a short session. Haren came in already laughing, collapsed into the booth across from Lowry and rolled his head in his hand.

"Jesus Christ, you won't believe what happened to me today," Haren said, and that was how Lowry found out Barry Zito was gay.

"Mad déjà vu, man," Haren was telling him, and Lowry was watching his mouth move. "Is there, like, some gay boy manual tellin' you how to hit on straight guys?"

Lowry recoiled, faintly horrified. "He did what now?"

"Basically the same thing you did, except it didn't take him three years. I'm having trouble deciding if that makes you slow or him crazy."

Vast amounts of alcohol seemed called for. Lowry waved down a waitress kinda frantically, ordered a fuckload of shots as Danny smirked at him from across the table. Lowry didn't know why he was so surprised. He knew what Danny looked like to a filthy-minded teammate.

"Is that. That's gonna be kinda weird now, yeah?" Lowry asked, sounding mostly regular. "He's like the ace of your rotation and stuff."

Haren shrugged. "Whatever. He's fine. I think he probably is a little nuts, 'cause he just threw it out there ten hours after meeting me, like, without knowing I wouldn't kick the shit out of him or go telling everybody or something. But I just shot him down and he was like, ah well, saw that coming. No harm no foul, you know?"

Lowry nodded carefully, not wanting to give away more than he already had. He was trying to picture Zito, kept seeing him how he'd looked winning the Cy Young two years ago, unshaven and bed-headed in his press conference and Lowry's mother making him promise that if he were ever so blessed as to have such a thing happen to him, he'd at least wear a collared shirt.

"You still gonna be friends with him, then?" he asked. Haren smiled, kicked him under the table.

"Still friends with you, ain't I? Hell, I'm almost getting used to this shit."

Lowry was somewhat reassured, not wholly sure why but willing to take it on spec. He didn't like the idea of some other guy, some more-current teammate also having a crush on Haren, but he was pretty secure in knowing that if Danny ever decided to give dick a try, Noah would be the first and only name on the list. Miracles didn't actually happen in real life, of course, but a boy could dream.

Haren took Lowry along to hang out with his A's teammates because the Giants' median age was thirty-five and the entire Oakland organization was basically a frat house with corporate sponsorship. Lowry kept quiet like he always did when he was meeting new people, especially in groups. He hung back, his cap pulled down over his eyes, and observed, let Danny tell their stories for him.

Barry Zito was exactly as Lowry expected, kinda manic and dumb and painfully obvious in the way he looked at Haren, followed his broad shoulders through the crowd. Zito chewed on the lip of his glass, staring at Lowry's best friend, and Lowry rolled his eyes so hard he almost hurt himself, thinking that he had never been that bad.

Zito kept pestering Lowry for factoids and anecdotes about Haren, wanting to know about those split-sole black Chucks of his and whether he talked in his sleep. Lowry went along with it because it was a bit fascinating, like talking to his own nineteen year old incarnation, Zito's huge eyes, his eager mouth.

And he was very good-looking, Lowry caught himself thinking absently, and then suddenly his mind was sharp and clear because outside of Haren he never really thought about guys in those terms. Rarely, there were men that he felt compelled to fuck around with in bar bathrooms without even learning their names first, but that was different than looking at Zito and hearing the back of his mind report, goddamn but he's pretty.

They had a lot of time to waste down in Phoenix, and Danny kept bringing Noah around, until everybody got used to him and he talked a little bit more. Zito was always watching him and Haren, narrow-eyed, trying to figure out how closely they fit.

In San Francisco, they moved into the same apartment building, Haren taking the place directly above Lowry's. Lowry was ham-fisted as they assembled furniture on the floor, punch-drunk from having Danny so close again. He dreamt up crazy gadgets, tin-can telephones between the windows, some kind of pulley system for little messages and stuff, but they ended up just running up and down the stairs, crashing on each other's couches and living out of each other's refrigerators, roommates again for all intents and purposes.

Haren liked his new team a lot, hooligan stories trickling back to Lowry, idiotically reckless pranks and kangaroo court held every other week. The A's couldn't win, ten games under .500 and still struggling, but they didn't talk about that. They could read each other better than the weather at this point, their conversations choreographed and in shorthand.

Their teams faced each other in the Bay Bridge Series and it was the first time they'd both been home at the same time in a while, and so after the day game Haren and Lowry went down to their complex's pool for the last few long hours of daylight. Zito was hanging around, as he seemed to do a lot, just kinda occupying space in Danny's orbit like if he did it often enough Danny would eventually trip and fall on his dick. Lowry wished he could find Zito more amusing than he did.

Zito probably felt the same about him, and when he caught Lowry gazing at Haren floating on his back in the water, he came and sat on the cement beside him, eyes narrowed and wet hair shoved back off his forehead.

"He's not, you know," Zito told him in a muted tone, and Lowry bit into the inside of his lip to keep a straight face. He breathed out careful and slow.

"I know," he said. He looked away, covered a smirk with his hand. As if that were news. As if that weren't the defining obstacle of Lowry's whole goddamn life.

But Zito seemed somehow pleased by Lowry's response, a different kind of calculating respect in his eyes when he looked at him, and Lowry felt it hot under his collar, his fingers itching at the hem of his shirt. Zito's full attention was difficult to withstand for too long.

The season rolled on and Oakland started playing better, San Francisco mirroring them on a downward slide, and Lowry was distracted by baseball for awhile, creating movement at the tail of his two-seam like carving a hook out of marble. He and Danny talked on the computer, mostly, and sometimes by dozens of text messages a day, cycling briefly away from each other.

But then he came back to San Francisco and the A's were still in town, Danny already drunk when Noah got to his place and Zito was there, smiling half-heartedly at Lowry, wearing a battered white shirt and jeans with tears across both knees.

Lowry focused on Haren, funny hammered Danny with his face Irish-glowing and his bad jokes coming machine-gun quick. He was working on ignoring these strange responses that Zito called up out of him.

They'd all three gotten pretty well obsessed with Lost, and they watched a couple episodes, sitting in a row on the couch with their feet kicked up on the coffee table. Lowry got sorta loaded, eyes skidding around from Haren's loose body, his sloppy smile, over to Zito slouched all dark-eyed and tired-looking at the other end of the couch. He couldn't follow what was happening on the show, but it was still really good.

"You still got some of those cookies from your mom, Dan?" Zito asked, and Lowry's attention zeroed in because Danny's mom's cookies were the shit, but there was no answer, and they both looked to find Haren asleep with his arms crossed and his chin resting on his chest.

Zito said, "Aw," and Lowry felt a wide grin burst suddenly across his face, stupidly endeared to Zito in that moment, Zito and Danny and everything, the whole world. Zito's eyes went big, taken aback, and then he favored Lowry with a grin of his own. It changed Zito's face, lit him up, an uncertain feeling racing through Lowry's chest.

They carried Haren to his room, huffing and cursing and bumping into the doorframe. Heaved him onto the bed and stood over him, talking just to fill the air and looking at the low place revealed on Haren's stomach, his shirt all twisted up. Haren had his hands in fists with his thumbs on the insides like a kid, and Zito kept glancing at Lowry, making heat curl in him. He could kinda guess what was about to happen.

"You see how his hands are like that?" Noah said, his throat dry, eyes locked on Danny because he'd wanted Danny so long, it was nothing new and nothing that could scare him, not like looking at Zito might. "He always does that when he's asleep."

Zito took Lowry's chin in his hand, lifted his face and kissed him hard on the mouth. Lowry buried a hand in Zito's hair, kissed him back open and quick, deeper than hell.

Lowry let Zito take him down to the floor, flushing all over and twisting his hands in Zito's shirt, pulling it away from his body. Zito licked the birthmark under his eye and it made Lowry shake.

He was going to do this. He rolled to get Zito under him, felt Zito spread his legs to let him slide between, and Lowry pushed his face into Zito's throat, breathing heavy and ragged. He was going to do this, yes, and it wasn't going to be like the guys he'd fucked around with all frantic and anonymous in dingy bathrooms, because he knew Zito's name and history and what pitches he threw, and then Zito was pulling his face up and kissing him again and none of it mattered. Lowry lost his train of thought. He lost everything that wasn't Zito's mouth on his, Zito's big hands shoved up the back of his shirt.

Lowry ended up sucking him off right there on the floor next to Danny's bed, Danny's foot in its white sock sticking out over the edge. But he wasn't thinking about Danny, not really, not with Zito's hips shuddering in his hands, Zito's fingers scrabbling through his hair. Lowry took him down, took him as deep as he could, his mind all fucked up and overloaded on sensation, the slick and unmistakable reality of it, scent and taste and weight and Zito crying out too loud at the end, spooking them both pretty bad.

Zito came back to his apartment with him that night, and then he stayed there for the next two days. Lowry had never done anything with the same guy more than once, and it was novel and exciting again, like girls had been in high school before Danny showed up and ruined him for anything soft ever again. He learned Zito, learned what he could do to a man's body.

Zito was much less irritating when he had his hand down Lowry's pants, predictably enough. There were actually several different ways to shut him up if you were willing to play dirty (check), and after he'd gotten off he was chill, pliable and sleepy and lolling around like a cat in sunlight. Noah could put him in front of cartoons with a box of sugar cereal and not have to worry about him for awhile, and when Zito eventually got restless and came nosing around into Lowry's business, it was usually because he wanted to blow him, and these were sacrifices that Lowry was all too capable of making.

Before the A's left town to go on a swing through the Midwest, Haren had them both over again for macaroni and cheese that he somehow managed to scorch inedible even though Lowry had been making that stuff since he was, like, seven, and so they called for Chinese food instead. Zito dared him to get the super spicy by-request-only option, and Lowry was bound by the laws of boyhood to accept, even though it nearly cost him the use of his sinuses.

His face still felt too hot, a thin band of sweat at his hairline, when he and Zito went back downstairs to his apartment. Zito pushed him up against the door as soon as it was closed, kinda laughing against Lowry's mouth, pushing his shirt up and hooking his hands in Lowry's belt. Lowry kissed him and Zito's mouth was blessedly cool, sweet from the ice cream sandwiches they'd had, Zito's tongue curling against his own and making him shiver from cold.

They made it as far as the living room, and then Zito fucked him for the first time on his back with his legs wrapped around Zito's body and his hands braced on the arm of the couch. Zito was bare to the waist, jeans tugged down far enough, and Lowry's pants were hanging off one ankle. He was still wearing his shirt, and he would have felt ridiculous but there was no room for that in him, not right now. Lowry kept pushing back helplessly against Zito, moans jerked out of his open mouth and his whole body rapt with what was happening inside. He had to keep his eyes shut, his face turned to the side, because he couldn't watch it happening, you couldn't ask that of him.

Coming down, his thoughts honing into clarity again, Lowry had a thought that was about ten years overdue and maybe completely obvious. He wasn't just in love with Danny and ruined for all girls everywhere; he was pretty much just gay.

He felt a little disappointed. His situation had been so complex and borderline epic before, so much more interesting. This, people went through this kind of thing every day, it was as common as a cold. But he could see how it made sense. None of the girls he'd fooled around with in high school and college had ever had the effect that Danny and now Zito had on him, and he certainly wasn't in love with Zito, that was for goddamn sure. Those guys in the bar bathrooms, the ones he'd picked up because they might have had hands like Danny's or pale blue eyes or heavy eyebrows, each a really good excuse on his own but they all had one thing in common and that was a dick, and maybe Lowry was actually just really, really dumb.

Zito was still lying on top of him, his head on Lowry's chest and his damp hair brushing under his chin, and Lowry tapped his fingers contemplatively on Zito's shoulder, thinking that life was so strange, so unexpected no matter what you did. The small heat each time Zito exhaled made Lowry's skin prickle.

"You done that before?" Zito asked, muffled.

"Shouldn't you have asked that before you did it?"

"No, 'cause then if you haven't we have to talk about it for at least a little while and I wasn't in the mood for talking. Anyway, figured you'd take a swing if it wasn't your scene." Zito paused, his wristwatch scratching at Lowry's side. "Hey, excellent deflection of the question, by the way."

"Clearly not," Lowry told him. "And the answer is yes. Of course."

That was a lie and not a very well-delivered one, but Zito couldn't tell. Zito didn't really know him at all.

Zito's hands spread out on Lowry's sides, spanning his ribs and finding the tender lines of muscle between. Lowry let his fingers tangle in Zito's hair, thinking about how he'd never felt comfortable holding girls, never known where to put his hands or if they were okay resting on his bony shoulder, and yes, maybe very very gay because this lying naked with a guy on top of him felt completely natural.

Lowry sighed, chest rising and making Zito's hair tickle against his mouth.

"You fuck around with other ballplayers a lot?" Zito asked him next.

"You're the first, lucky you."

"'cept Danny."

Lowry twitched, his hand snagging in Zito's hair. "I never fucked around with Danny, you know that."

Zito kinda laughed, warm little puffs against Lowry's chest. "Everything but, though, huh? Never met anybody so hung up on someone they never even fucked around with."

"Shut up, would you." Lowry gave him a brief hard tug and Zito hissed between his teeth. He was smiling, Lowry could see, the corner of Zito's mouth upturned. Lowry didn't know what the fuck went on in Zito's head.

They were both quiet for a minute, Zito's thumbs rubbing the points of Lowry's hipbones slowly, almost meditatively, breathing out steady and calm. Lowry was drifting, wondering how long he'd have to wait before asking Zito to fuck him again if he didn't want to seem like a slut.

"Anyway," Zito said eventually, picking up right where they'd left off. "I think it's adorable that our hopeless crushes on the same straight guy have brought us together. I think this would make a fantastic made-for-TV movie."

Lowry couldn't help his snort of laughter. Maybe it was all the orgasms, but Zito was starting to say some pretty amusing things.

"You're really kinda weird, huh?" Lowry said. Zito nodded, agreeably sated, biting at Lowry's chest and grinning. Lowry wanted to kiss him, and so he did.

Towards morning, Lowry said they should tell Haren about the two of them, which was his way of obliquely warning Zito that he would probably let it slip some night after drunk-dialing Haren from the other side of the country. Zito wasn't exactly amenable to the idea, and he was the one who had to see Haren every day, so Lowry let it slide for the moment.

Zito left with barely enough time to catch his flight and Lowry returned to his ever-consuming job, the rhythm of every fifth day. His left arm buzzed and hummed, palpably warmer under the skin, and there was movement in everything he threw these days, this trapdoor on the inside corner that he kept nailing again and again. This was exactly what he'd been expecting of major league baseball, even if his team wasn't very good, neither was the division, and everybody was kinda in it, ten games under .500 or no.

The A's were playing as if they'd been ignited. All through the stultifying heat of summer, the forceful gusts of wind off the ocean, the A's kept winning and winning, tearing out of the cellar of their division on crazy bursts, five games in a row, seven, twelve out of fourteen and coming home to the Coliseum, until they finally caught the Angels in August, seesawing back and forth with them for the last six weeks.

Noah heard about it from Danny, and now from Zito too, Zito who apparently did 90% of his communication via text message, updates on the game and the weather and his teammates and all the other random shit that populated his brain. They sounded like they were having an awful lot of fun. Lowry didn't want to live secondhand, wasn't interested in envy because what could you do, these first six years when you were just an asset to be used or traded at a whim. It was just the luck of the draft.

There wasn't much opportunity to meet up with Zito, but they made the most of it when they did. They jerked each other off in the men's room at the San Francisco airport once, when their paths into and out of town happened to cross. One time Lowry's game in Philadelphia got rained out and he rented a car sometime near midnight, drove to New York City because the A's were in for a three-game set at Yankee Stadium. He called Zito from the sidewalk and Zito came down beaming and soft-haired and slow from being woken up but not caring, so eager his hands shook. He dragged Lowry around the corner to the nearest shadowy city park and pressed him to a tree, dropped to his knees. The weather didn't hold out as long as Noah did, the sky cracking open and drenching the two of them and Noah was laughing, both hands hidden in Zito's soaked hair.

They had thirteen hours together in Noah's Los Angeles hotel room when Zito was down to play Anaheim. Lowry begged off dinner with the boys, claiming a headache like a housewife avoiding sex, and then he snuck down the back stairs and let Zito in the side door, Zito hilariously disguised in all black with his sunglasses on even though it was nighttime. Zito's teammates were covering for him; they had all night.

They were familiar to each other by then, having tried most things at least once, and Lowry felt admirably well-settled into his gayness, felt like he was starting to get pretty good at it. He knew the places Zito wanted him to leave marks, and when he wanted to be held down by the throat, and how crazy it made him when Lowry twisted his hands in Zito's hair and pulled his head back. They spent hours on it, fucked each other out until they could barely move.

Lowry was lying mostly asleep on Zito's arm, liking everything about this. He couldn't for the life of him figure out why this shit had taken him so long, but he supposed it had to do with Danny Haren. He'd always been hell on Lowry's big-picture perspective.

"Hey," Zito mumbled. He tugged feebly and Lowry rolled off his arm, blinking fuzzily. Zito smiled at him, touched his hair with the backs of his fingers. "You goin' home for the winter?"

Lowry nodded, yawned into the pillow. "Getting a place on the beach. Not even looking if it's more'n a five minute walk."

"'s a fair requirement, I think."

Zito was looking at him, an indecipherable expression on his face, gaze overly intent considering the hour. He did that sometimes, just looked at Lowry like he was a puzzle of some kind. It made Lowry a little uncomfortable, because he really wasn't as complex as Zito seemed to think, no good reason for anyone to stare at him that much.

"I'ma be in Van Nuys, you know," Zito told him. "We should meet up."

"Hm," Lowry said non-commitally, and got up to get one of the apples he'd put in the mini-fridge. He ate a lot of apples as the season narrowed down, because he was antsy and fidgety and hungry all the time and he couldn't just have a zillion fun-size Snickers like he wanted to because he was a professional athlete and stuff.

He got back in bed, sitting cross-legged with his back to the headboard, chomping away. Zito butted his head into Lowry's hip and craned his neck, opened his mouth for a bite. Lowry held the apple for him and juice burst onto his wrist, sticky and sweet as he licked it away. Zito was still looking at him, eyes slitted.

"If you invite me to your housewarming party, I'll bring hundred year old Scotch," Zito said. Lowry cocked an eyebrow.

"Housewarming party? That's the gayest thing you've said all night, which, wow."

Zito snorted, turning onto his stomach. His ears were red like they got when he was embarrassed, which Lowry found a little strange. He was getting used to that with Zito, the persistent echoes and hollow rings that seemed to trail him like bound spirits. Zito was usually working off a completely different map.

Lowry finished up his apple, chucked it across the room into the wastebasket. "Dude, did you see that? That was really impressive, what I just did there."

"You mean you threw something and it went where you wanted it to? What do you do for a living again?"

Smacking him, Lowry rubbed his sticky hands through Zito's hair, over his bare shoulders and back. Zito kept his face angled away, the flush spreading down his neck and up his cheek, but that was just him starting to get turned on again, Lowry knew well enough.

He fit the heels of his hands under Zito's shoulder blades, let his weight bear down until a low groan was pressed out of him. Zito's eyes were closed, a pinched line drawn on his forehead.

Lowry leaned down, brushed his lips on Zito's face. "You wanna go again?"

Zito didn't answer for a second, and Lowry nosed against the back of his neck, nipped at the high points of his spine. Lowry was thinking about how he wanted it this time, Zito on his back and Lowry astride, both hands braced on the headboard for the right leverage, and he almost missed Zito answering with the slightest break in his voice:

"You never have to ask, dude."

Lowry never told Haren what was going on with him and Zito. The right moment never presented itself, or was forcibly ignored when it did, and after awhile he forgot why he'd thought Danny had to know in the first place. It had seemed logical, maybe, because Haren knew the backstory and should know about the latest not-so-surprising twist too, but Lowry could see that that was kinda bullshit now. Haren knew the backstory because he was the backstory; this didn't have anything to do with him anymore.

He didn't talk to Haren as much as he used to, anyway. Haren had a new girlfriend named Jessica and she was apparently extremely engrossing. Haren was always running late to meet her, or just sitting down to dinner with her, or getting a call from her while he was already on the phone with Noah and ditching him flat. Danny was infatuated and distracted and neglecting his best friend something awful. Noah didn't want to get pissed off at him, and was kinda surprised to find that he wasn't, really.

Every time he looked at his phone, he had a new text message from Zito, and they were always stupid and pointless and a waste of electrons, but it had switched over at some point from annoying to endearing. Lowry wasn't sure what to make of that.

Then one day in September, Lowry got home from the ballpark to find Zito asleep in the lobby of his apartment building. Zito was conked out on the tiny bench in the defunct phone booth, his legs stretching out onto the shiny floor. Lowry kicked him awake, watching Zito twitch and bang his head and mutter to himself.

"Hey," Zito said, faint sheen of hesitation on his face like he couldn't quite remember what he was doing there. "You guys win?"

"No. Come on." Lowry pulled him up, steered him to the elevators. "You catch a ride with Danny? What'd you tell him?"

Zito shook his head, yawning into his elbow. "Let him get ahead of me, caught a cab. Just, I know you're leaving in the morning, haven't seen you. I dunno."

They got in the elevator and Zito immediately hung his arm around Noah's shoulders, leaned on him all heavy and warm. Lowry stood straight under the pressure, let Zito grope him a bit because he still wasn't all the way awake and anyway, it was a nice way to be welcomed home.

Inside, Zito pushed Lowry ahead of him into the bedroom, tugging at his coat and shirt, sliding his hand under Lowry's belt. Lowry shoved him onto the bed so he could toss his bag and get undressed, Zito leaned back on his elbows and watching steadily, dark gathering heat in his eyes. Lowry grinned at him, threw his T-shirt at Zito's head.

Zito grabbed hold of him as soon as he was close enough, dragged him down and wrapped around him arms and legs and everything, and Lowry huffed out a laugh, caught off-guard because Zito was just hugging him, face jammed into the bend of his shoulder. Lowry waited for him to move, open his mouth, run his hands down, but Zito only held on, breathtakingly tight.

"What're you doing?" Lowry said into Zito's hair. Zito shook his head, his cheek rasping on the skin of Lowry's throat.

"Shut up for a second," Zito mumbled, flexed his arms against Lowry's sides.

Lowry obliged him, confused but not as badly as he wanted to be. He was maybe kinda slow on the uptake but he was trying to get better at that. He took stock of the moment his life had brought him to, white stucco ceiling and wrinkled blue sheets, the calm feeling spreading through his chest and the heat rushing all over his skin because Zito was touching him everywhere. Zito was holding him like it meant something, and Lowry thought that was probably because it did.

"Fuck," he breathed out. His hand on Zito's back clawed, and Zito flinched.

"I'm okay," Zito said right away.

"I know," Lowry answered, thinking, you're also in love with me, and he laughed out loud, amazed.

Zito lifted his face, studied Lowry with his lower lip pulled between his teeth. Lowry pushed his hand into Zito's hair, saw his eyes go thin with pleasure. Lowry smiled at how easy he was, wondering if Zito knew it himself, and then wondering if he was in love with Zito too and deciding he probably wasn't. He wouldn't have had to wonder about it if he were.

"You're not mad I came over?" Zito asked. The tension was seeping out of him, his grip on Lowry loosening, molding them together. Lowry half-shrugged.

"Depends what you're gonna do for me."

"Anything," and that was too quick, too sure, something burning overbright in Zito's face, and Lowry got a tiny snaking sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, but then he kissed Zito and it went away for a little while.

He made Zito chocolate chip pancakes in the morning, and Zito watched him like the earth might swallow Noah if he looked away. The back of Noah's neck itched, his fingers ill-coordinated, very conscious of the scrutiny. He shot Zito a few glares and Zito blushed, commenced staring at the comics page, his eyes trained and unmoving. Lowry sighed to the cabinets. He didn't know what to do; no one had ever been in love with him before and he'd never really anticipated it in any kind of concrete way.

He ended up not saying anything. He fed Zito and let him hang around while he packed for the road trip, let Zito push him against the wall and go down on him before he had to leave. Lowry filled his hands, tipped his head back and groaned Zito's name experimentally, felt the vibration of his answering moan on his cock and Lowry almost lost it right there.

It was good that he was going on the road. He needed some fucking space.

continues without intermission