the drink will flow and blood will spill and if the boys wanna fight you better let 'em
Honestly? I'm eight blocks away from the White House. Won't you NOT BE MY NEIGHBOR. Temperatures dropped considerably in DC, from yesterday to today. Yeah, I'm taking that as a sign. I'm getting text messages from San Francisco, it's hailing at Ocean Beach. Apocalypse. A bit concerned.
Last time this happened, I was fucking obsessed with the election. I followed the primaries as close as I follow baseball during the season. This year I didn't even watch the debates (there were games on, yo). I'm a political science major because politics were my hobby when I was seventeen years old, and now I'm gonna have a shiny worthless degree and get a job selling hot dogs in the stands at the Coliseum. I'm gonna be deliriously happy. And broke.
Four more years? Are you serious?
Wanna run away to another country with me?
Wait, no, I already tried that. Hmm.
It’ll be okay. We’ll pack up baseball in a suitcase with all our lighters and Swiss Army knives and razor blades. Muffle it with socks and old T-shirts from when we were in high school, bought at thrift stores with the names of breweries and pictures of cartoon characters. Take the game with us and it’ll be the Edinburgh Yankees, the Birmingham Cubs, the Surrey Quays Twins and the New Cross (represent East London, motherfucker) Athletics. We’ll drink tea during the seventh inning stretch. Sing ‘God Save the Queen’ instead of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ Paste the Union Jack on our sleeves, maybe the cross of St. Andrew on our caps.
Okay, probably not. Better idea. Secede California from the Union. Put the governor in a box and mail him back to Austria. Landmines on the fault line until Los Angeles breaks free and becomes an island. It’ll be the top vacation destination of the year. Make Gavin Newsom president of our country. We’ll all learn to speak Spanish and Chinese, maybe some Yiddish. The fourth Aliyah, this time not just for the Jews. A new Holy Land, sure.
The borders will be open, but you have to cross the Rocky Mountains on foot. Price of admission. Fly the bear flag and the Eureka seal. Find some more gold. Everybody will have a green park and a view of the ocean. Windmills for power and desert pipelines. Take all the best parts of America and leave the rest behind. Learn from our fucking mistakes, for once.
The Republic of California will rise again! Happy happy kids on the west coast, and we shoulda done this years ago.
It’ll be so perfect, and everybody will see. The French will like us. Better weather than Canada. Prettier than anywhere except maybe Wyoming. Colonize Wyoming! But only a little bit. Give them a baseball team and they’ll be crazy about us. Big sky, right. Blue water, white birds, boats with red-yellow plaid sails on the water.
Only good rules in the Republic of California. Like, everybody has got to do their best, good enough. Like, don’t feed the sea otters, ‘cause they don’t like Kettle Chips, man. Like, no Astroturf, ever, and the pitchers have to hit. Love who you want. Define your family any way that applies. You’re not hurting anybody else, your life is your own. Electric cars for everybody! Public transportation and maybe winding paths of canals in Santa Barbara. John Steinbeck and Harvey Milk on the currency. Paperback Jack Kerouac in your back pocket. Everybody gets baseball caps and warm jackets for when we go to the mountains. Road trips, all the time, national pilgrimage.
San Francisco on postcards, the capital of the world. The Central Valley, food for the hungry. The desert, a place to go when you want to get lost. The East Bay, because we’re in touch with our gangsta roots. Grizzly bears and redwood trees and rattlesnakes on the American River. Bodegas stocking Golden Boy peanuts and every type of Reese’s there is. Sure, yeah. Parades and free concerts and Jerry Garcia’s somewhere nearby. Ice cream for dinner.
Your vote will count! All sorts of things to be decided. Keep the coastline clean and keep the traffic out of the foothills, because those gold-brown mountain lions are endangered, don’t you know. But not for long. Government you can be proud of, believe in this like we believed in amoral men from Arkansas, because fuck character, you’re a fucking genius, you’re good at what you do, that’s all that matters. Nobody gets sick, but if they do, they got a white bed waiting for them and a doctor with one of those old-school shiny metal circle headband things. Awesome. Justice takes a look at your heart and your mind, not your face. Nobody wants to hurt anybody else, there’s no call for it. Make sure everybody’s warm, make sure everybody’s fed. Make sure the roof doesn’t leak and your children’s shoes still fit. Schools beautiful like churches, philosophy and physics, free for all. Smart kids, growing up, better by the day.
Better by the day.
Who’s coming?
hum de dum. I got Limewire working. Best. Thing. EVAH. Trying to catch me up on the O.C. that I missed while in London. That's goddamn right the O.C.! Also y'all need need need to go download the Mountain Goats' cover of 'The Boys are Back in Town,' because alfkdja;lkf. And stuff.
la di dah.
Good Straight Boy from Long Beach
Bobby Crosby gets home and the grocery list is in his pocket, but he’s only carrying one bag. Really, tortilla chips and beer don’t take up all that much space. He goes round back and elbows the sliding glass door open. There’s an A’s cap floating in the pool.
The kitchen’s as empty as ever, hollow cabinets and the two clunky stacked six-packs look lonesome on the fridge’s white grid of a shelf. On the door, there’s a half-full (Bobby’s an optimist) jar of mustard, scraped knife marks on the side, milk and orange juice, and some of those fucking gross garlic pickles Harden likes, but that’s it.
It’s quiet, and it’s nine o’clock in the morning, a Saturday. They play at night, the Rangers are in town.
When Crosby was a kid in Long Beach, his bedroom window faced east, and he got woken up every morning by the sun. Not that he didn’t have curtains, but what good are curtains like tissue paper against the full force of the day’s light. Every single morning, woken up at dawn, until it was clockwork to him and now he can’t help it.
Anyway, that’s why he was out running errands when his housemates were sleeping off the night. Because he still wakes up at dawn. He’ll take a nap, later, at the ballpark. Get his second wind during batting practice. And he’ll be fine.
Crosby pours himself a bowl of cornflakes and kicks his way through the gnarled video game controllers to the couch. He finds an old rerun of “ER” on TNT, and chews with his mouth shut even though there’s no one around.
He calls the girl he’s kinda sorta seeing, to say good morning, because she has to go into work even though it’s a Saturday. She sounds sleepy and keeps saying how sweet he is. He asks her what she had for breakfast, because he’s always interested in dumb stuff like that. She says she didn’t have time to eat breakfast, and he makes a mental note to buy her a box of Poptarts for when they see each other next.
The “ER” episode ends, and another one starts up right away. The bleepy-bloop theme music is going on and Mark Mulder is shuffling down the hallway. He’s wearing sweats and a Grant High School Athletics T-shirt that’s so old it’s practically see-through, stretched thin over Mulder’s shoulders.
When Crosby ‘graduated’ from kindergarten, he and his whole class got grown-up T-shirts, bright yellow with their class number on the front. They were five years old and the T-shirts hung down their miniature bodies like dresses, puddled on the tops of their Keds, lost in the sleeves. The point was to hang on to the shirts until they graduated high school, and then the shirts would fit. Crosby’s still got his, somewhere.
Mulder gets himself a bowl of cereal and a glass of orange juice, and slumps down next to Crosby on the couch. His eyes are swollen and half-closed and he grunts something in greeting, which Crosby doesn’t bother answering. Mulder’s not exactly a morning person.
Crosby was brought up by good conservationist parents who recycled and bought from the hippie grocery store, so now he’s skittish about leaving the water running when it doesn’t have to be, and never turns on a light until he starts bumping into stuff because it’s too dark.
So the lights are off, but that’s not a problem now because it’s ten in the morning, just past, and the shades are never drawn in this house. Clean squares of sunlight at the window, rainbows in long skinny rays through the Windexed glass (the windows are Adam’s job, and he’s kind of OCD about it). Fractals, crystals, and Crosby’s thinking about that girl he knew in college named Summer, soft hair and green eyes.
They watch George Clooney save some little kid’s life, and Mulder’s legs are stretched out, feet on the coffee table with his ankles crossed. Mulder’s slouched down and the bowl of cereal is resting on his stomach, rocking back and forth slightly with every breath.
Mulder hasn’t showered yet, so his hair is still spiky and flat and messed up, bitten highlights making Xs on his forehead. It takes him awhile to get any kind of decent stubble going, but maybe it’s been the better part of a week since he’s shaved, because there’s rough on his jaw, his neck.
There’s a shallow dent on Mulder’s face, where he slept on a crease in the sheets.
Crosby’s feeling warm and drowsy and there are dust motes all around them. When he was a kid, he used to run around at noon when the light was good and try to push the motes all together. He wanted to see a cloud of them, fill up a jar and keep it on his windowsill. He was a weird little guy.
Mulder finishes his cereal by the second commercial break and leans forward to clatter the bowl on the coffee table, his shirt pulling up at the small of his back. Mulder sits back, his feet off the coffee table and his knees sprawled open lazily, and kills his orange juice in one long swallow.
Rolling his head back, cracking his neck, Mulder is waking up bit by bit, and he asks, “What’re you doing today, rook?”
Crosby shrugs. “Already went to the bodega. Maybe go over to that new guitar store in Fremont.”
Mulder’s eyes get a little exaggerated, full of blue warning. “Don’t go to Fremont. Fremont’s bad luck.”
Crosby’s mouth crooks up. “Yeah?”
Mulder nods seriously, and then takes a moment, trailing his gaze slowly over Crosby’s face and down his chest, back up again. Mulder lets his lips part slightly and breathes like that so that Crosby can hear the dim whistle. His eyes are sharp and foggy, somehow both at the same time, starting to darken.
Mulder’s always doing this. Crosby swallows and it feels like there’s a tiny shard of cornflake wedged in his throat, so he keeps swallowing and Mulder keeps looking at him, getting that familiar wet-mouthed shadow across his face.
“Hey,” Mulder says, very low, one hand on the back of the couch and inching finger-by-crawling-finger closer to Crosby. “You wanna fuck around?”
That’s the good thing about Saturday mornings, the good thing about this happening while they’re both sober. Otherwise, Mulder wouldn’t bother asking. Just press Crosby down to some flat surface and take what he wants.
Crosby clears his throat and he’s feeling off-balance. Richie and Adam will be asleep at least until “Law and Order” starts, they were up pretty late. Mulder sneaks a grin, tight glint of teeth, and his hand touches Crosby’s shoulder.
“Sure,” Crosby answers, and already he’s getting that sick hot excited feeling in his stomach, because he never really knows how to deal with this, when it comes up, which isn’t that often, just enough to be kinda unsettling.
Mulder slides his hand to the back of Crosby’s neck and moves closer to him. Mulder reaches across and when he fits his other hand to Crosby’s side, Crosby twitches and he’s about to pull away.
But Mulder is dropping his head and biting at Crosby’s throat, shoulder, ear, and his hand on Crosby’s side is pulling, tugging at him. Crosby shivers and Mulder’s mouth is open on his pulse, and Crosby lets Mulder pull him on a pivot, until Crosby is straddling him, knees pressing into the couch cushions on either side. Both Mulder’s hands are on his hips now, and Crosby’s shadow is all over him.
Crosby hesitantly puts his hands on Mulder’s shoulders, then on his neck, pressing his fingers into Mulder’s hair, and it’s so fucking strange, short hair and the strength of Mulder’s back. He’s such a guy, there’s no denying it.
And Mulder’s licking his chest through his T-shirt, and Mulder’s hands are pushing up on the bare skin of his back, his hands are so big, fingers stretching from shoulder blade to shoulder blade. Crosby grinds down and Mulder lifts his hips to meet him, and there’s really no way Crosby can pretend Mulder’s anyone other than who he is.
Mulder’s fingers are all the way up to Crosby’s neck with his arm a bar down the middle of Crosby’s back, and he pushes on the top of Crosby’s spine like he’d push on anything that gives him leverage, angling Crosby’s head down so Mulder can get their mouths together.
Mulder tastes like orange juice, which is better than beer and better than tequila and better than just about anything. Bobby is thinking about school-day mornings and his mom pouring him a tall glass from the Florida orange juice carton with the big gold sun on the front.
Crosby sort of molds down onto Mulder so that their chests are together, and opens his mouth, and now it’s a kiss with tongue but it’s slower than it usually is. All of this is slower than it usually is. Crosby blames Saturday morning for that.
They’re rocking slightly, easy rhythm and if Mulder minds Crosby’s weight on him, he’s not saying anything about it. In the background, the television is talking in complicated medical terms, but they’re not paying attention. MTV generation and they can tune out anything, the rest of the house so quiet and still it’s almost like a freeze frame.
Mulder’s hands skim off Crosby’s back, circle his waist and start plucking at the top of his shorts. Crosby makes a small groan and twists down closer, Mulder wearing sweatpants with nothing underneath, which is basically the hottest thing that’s ever happened.
He lifts his head for air and Mulder goes back to work on his neck, mumbling, “What do you want?” and Crosby flushes all over, squirms, the possibilities, man.
His mind is flicking through it, into dark places where he doesn’t usually let his thoughts go, places where Mulder’s hands are around his wrists and Mulder’s bending him over the back of something, Crosby’s teeth in the mattress and Mulder heavy on his back, dark alley thoughts.
But Bobby Crosby waited until he was sure he was in love before he first had sex, although it didn’t take much, because Bobby falls in love very easily, his girlfriend in high school who was small and light above him and he wanted to hold on to her and never let go, make sure nothing ever hurt her.
This isn’t like that, and he never used to think about guys. Still doesn’t, really. Just Mulder.
Mainly they were in the stairwell of that hotel in Boston, because Crosby’s got a minor phobia about elevators that gets worse when he’s drunk. And he was pretty drunk. And his heel slipped on the corner of the stair, he was falling. But then Mulder’s elbows were crooked and braced and catching under Crosby’s arms, Crosby’s face slamming into his chest. Mulder was laughing and then his tongue was on Crosby's neck and Bobby wasn’t paying enough attention, forgot to tell him no.
It’s easy and a good way to kill time and actually kind of amazing, but Crosby’s always forgetting about it until it happens again, which means it’s not anything like serious, so he pulls his mind out of the alley, back into the sunlit living room and Mulder’s body shifting and arcing against him.
“Um,” and Crosby’s blushing hard because he’s a nice well-mannered boy and he doesn’t like to say certain things out loud. “You could, ah, you, you could . . .”
He can’t say it, embarrassed, so he draws Mulder’s tongue into his mouth and tries to show, not tell.
Mulder breaks away and he’s breathing deep, smiling. “You want me to suck your dick, Bobby?” he asks in a raspy tone. Crosby shudders and nods, presses his face into Mulder’s neck, Mulder’s long smooth neck and his coarse cheek on Crosby’s forehead.
Then suddenly Mulder’s pushing him off, thumping him to the carpet, and it’s like being torn away, the way they’re all at once apart, and Crosby thinks he must have done something wrong, clutching his hands on Mulder’s legs and staring at him with his bruised, orange-tasting mouth, blinking dumbly.
But Mulder just smiles again and runs a palm over Crosby’s head, down his face. “Rookies go first,” Mulder says, his thumb rubbing across Crosby’s lips.
Crosby licks Mulder’s thumb, and tries out a smile of his own. His hands go to Mulder’s waist and tug at his sweats. Mulder sighs and lets his head fall back.
This is still pretty new to Crosby and maybe he’s never done this in particular when not sloppy drunk, but Mulder always lets him know when he does right, hands wide on the back of his head and Mulder bucking shallowly.
Crosby thinks about his maybe-girlfriend working on a Saturday, who thinks he’s so sweet, and he is, honestly, he’s a good kid on his way to being a good man, and he wets his lips, bends his head down.
He’s a good straight boy from Long Beach and he’s not too worried about what any of this means, because they taught him when he was young to follow his heart, and if he’s not sure of anything else, at least he knows that this is where his heart wants him to go, right now, this is where he’s supposed to be.
THE END
wait a minute, was that story not insanely angstful and fucked up! what the hell! i don't even know who you are anymore, man.
Last time this happened, I was fucking obsessed with the election. I followed the primaries as close as I follow baseball during the season. This year I didn't even watch the debates (there were games on, yo). I'm a political science major because politics were my hobby when I was seventeen years old, and now I'm gonna have a shiny worthless degree and get a job selling hot dogs in the stands at the Coliseum. I'm gonna be deliriously happy. And broke.
Four more years? Are you serious?
Wanna run away to another country with me?
Wait, no, I already tried that. Hmm.
It’ll be okay. We’ll pack up baseball in a suitcase with all our lighters and Swiss Army knives and razor blades. Muffle it with socks and old T-shirts from when we were in high school, bought at thrift stores with the names of breweries and pictures of cartoon characters. Take the game with us and it’ll be the Edinburgh Yankees, the Birmingham Cubs, the Surrey Quays Twins and the New Cross (represent East London, motherfucker) Athletics. We’ll drink tea during the seventh inning stretch. Sing ‘God Save the Queen’ instead of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ Paste the Union Jack on our sleeves, maybe the cross of St. Andrew on our caps.
Okay, probably not. Better idea. Secede California from the Union. Put the governor in a box and mail him back to Austria. Landmines on the fault line until Los Angeles breaks free and becomes an island. It’ll be the top vacation destination of the year. Make Gavin Newsom president of our country. We’ll all learn to speak Spanish and Chinese, maybe some Yiddish. The fourth Aliyah, this time not just for the Jews. A new Holy Land, sure.
The borders will be open, but you have to cross the Rocky Mountains on foot. Price of admission. Fly the bear flag and the Eureka seal. Find some more gold. Everybody will have a green park and a view of the ocean. Windmills for power and desert pipelines. Take all the best parts of America and leave the rest behind. Learn from our fucking mistakes, for once.
The Republic of California will rise again! Happy happy kids on the west coast, and we shoulda done this years ago.
It’ll be so perfect, and everybody will see. The French will like us. Better weather than Canada. Prettier than anywhere except maybe Wyoming. Colonize Wyoming! But only a little bit. Give them a baseball team and they’ll be crazy about us. Big sky, right. Blue water, white birds, boats with red-yellow plaid sails on the water.
Only good rules in the Republic of California. Like, everybody has got to do their best, good enough. Like, don’t feed the sea otters, ‘cause they don’t like Kettle Chips, man. Like, no Astroturf, ever, and the pitchers have to hit. Love who you want. Define your family any way that applies. You’re not hurting anybody else, your life is your own. Electric cars for everybody! Public transportation and maybe winding paths of canals in Santa Barbara. John Steinbeck and Harvey Milk on the currency. Paperback Jack Kerouac in your back pocket. Everybody gets baseball caps and warm jackets for when we go to the mountains. Road trips, all the time, national pilgrimage.
San Francisco on postcards, the capital of the world. The Central Valley, food for the hungry. The desert, a place to go when you want to get lost. The East Bay, because we’re in touch with our gangsta roots. Grizzly bears and redwood trees and rattlesnakes on the American River. Bodegas stocking Golden Boy peanuts and every type of Reese’s there is. Sure, yeah. Parades and free concerts and Jerry Garcia’s somewhere nearby. Ice cream for dinner.
Your vote will count! All sorts of things to be decided. Keep the coastline clean and keep the traffic out of the foothills, because those gold-brown mountain lions are endangered, don’t you know. But not for long. Government you can be proud of, believe in this like we believed in amoral men from Arkansas, because fuck character, you’re a fucking genius, you’re good at what you do, that’s all that matters. Nobody gets sick, but if they do, they got a white bed waiting for them and a doctor with one of those old-school shiny metal circle headband things. Awesome. Justice takes a look at your heart and your mind, not your face. Nobody wants to hurt anybody else, there’s no call for it. Make sure everybody’s warm, make sure everybody’s fed. Make sure the roof doesn’t leak and your children’s shoes still fit. Schools beautiful like churches, philosophy and physics, free for all. Smart kids, growing up, better by the day.
Better by the day.
Who’s coming?
hum de dum. I got Limewire working. Best. Thing. EVAH. Trying to catch me up on the O.C. that I missed while in London. That's goddamn right the O.C.! Also y'all need need need to go download the Mountain Goats' cover of 'The Boys are Back in Town,' because alfkdja;lkf. And stuff.
la di dah.
Good Straight Boy from Long Beach
Bobby Crosby gets home and the grocery list is in his pocket, but he’s only carrying one bag. Really, tortilla chips and beer don’t take up all that much space. He goes round back and elbows the sliding glass door open. There’s an A’s cap floating in the pool.
The kitchen’s as empty as ever, hollow cabinets and the two clunky stacked six-packs look lonesome on the fridge’s white grid of a shelf. On the door, there’s a half-full (Bobby’s an optimist) jar of mustard, scraped knife marks on the side, milk and orange juice, and some of those fucking gross garlic pickles Harden likes, but that’s it.
It’s quiet, and it’s nine o’clock in the morning, a Saturday. They play at night, the Rangers are in town.
When Crosby was a kid in Long Beach, his bedroom window faced east, and he got woken up every morning by the sun. Not that he didn’t have curtains, but what good are curtains like tissue paper against the full force of the day’s light. Every single morning, woken up at dawn, until it was clockwork to him and now he can’t help it.
Anyway, that’s why he was out running errands when his housemates were sleeping off the night. Because he still wakes up at dawn. He’ll take a nap, later, at the ballpark. Get his second wind during batting practice. And he’ll be fine.
Crosby pours himself a bowl of cornflakes and kicks his way through the gnarled video game controllers to the couch. He finds an old rerun of “ER” on TNT, and chews with his mouth shut even though there’s no one around.
He calls the girl he’s kinda sorta seeing, to say good morning, because she has to go into work even though it’s a Saturday. She sounds sleepy and keeps saying how sweet he is. He asks her what she had for breakfast, because he’s always interested in dumb stuff like that. She says she didn’t have time to eat breakfast, and he makes a mental note to buy her a box of Poptarts for when they see each other next.
The “ER” episode ends, and another one starts up right away. The bleepy-bloop theme music is going on and Mark Mulder is shuffling down the hallway. He’s wearing sweats and a Grant High School Athletics T-shirt that’s so old it’s practically see-through, stretched thin over Mulder’s shoulders.
When Crosby ‘graduated’ from kindergarten, he and his whole class got grown-up T-shirts, bright yellow with their class number on the front. They were five years old and the T-shirts hung down their miniature bodies like dresses, puddled on the tops of their Keds, lost in the sleeves. The point was to hang on to the shirts until they graduated high school, and then the shirts would fit. Crosby’s still got his, somewhere.
Mulder gets himself a bowl of cereal and a glass of orange juice, and slumps down next to Crosby on the couch. His eyes are swollen and half-closed and he grunts something in greeting, which Crosby doesn’t bother answering. Mulder’s not exactly a morning person.
Crosby was brought up by good conservationist parents who recycled and bought from the hippie grocery store, so now he’s skittish about leaving the water running when it doesn’t have to be, and never turns on a light until he starts bumping into stuff because it’s too dark.
So the lights are off, but that’s not a problem now because it’s ten in the morning, just past, and the shades are never drawn in this house. Clean squares of sunlight at the window, rainbows in long skinny rays through the Windexed glass (the windows are Adam’s job, and he’s kind of OCD about it). Fractals, crystals, and Crosby’s thinking about that girl he knew in college named Summer, soft hair and green eyes.
They watch George Clooney save some little kid’s life, and Mulder’s legs are stretched out, feet on the coffee table with his ankles crossed. Mulder’s slouched down and the bowl of cereal is resting on his stomach, rocking back and forth slightly with every breath.
Mulder hasn’t showered yet, so his hair is still spiky and flat and messed up, bitten highlights making Xs on his forehead. It takes him awhile to get any kind of decent stubble going, but maybe it’s been the better part of a week since he’s shaved, because there’s rough on his jaw, his neck.
There’s a shallow dent on Mulder’s face, where he slept on a crease in the sheets.
Crosby’s feeling warm and drowsy and there are dust motes all around them. When he was a kid, he used to run around at noon when the light was good and try to push the motes all together. He wanted to see a cloud of them, fill up a jar and keep it on his windowsill. He was a weird little guy.
Mulder finishes his cereal by the second commercial break and leans forward to clatter the bowl on the coffee table, his shirt pulling up at the small of his back. Mulder sits back, his feet off the coffee table and his knees sprawled open lazily, and kills his orange juice in one long swallow.
Rolling his head back, cracking his neck, Mulder is waking up bit by bit, and he asks, “What’re you doing today, rook?”
Crosby shrugs. “Already went to the bodega. Maybe go over to that new guitar store in Fremont.”
Mulder’s eyes get a little exaggerated, full of blue warning. “Don’t go to Fremont. Fremont’s bad luck.”
Crosby’s mouth crooks up. “Yeah?”
Mulder nods seriously, and then takes a moment, trailing his gaze slowly over Crosby’s face and down his chest, back up again. Mulder lets his lips part slightly and breathes like that so that Crosby can hear the dim whistle. His eyes are sharp and foggy, somehow both at the same time, starting to darken.
Mulder’s always doing this. Crosby swallows and it feels like there’s a tiny shard of cornflake wedged in his throat, so he keeps swallowing and Mulder keeps looking at him, getting that familiar wet-mouthed shadow across his face.
“Hey,” Mulder says, very low, one hand on the back of the couch and inching finger-by-crawling-finger closer to Crosby. “You wanna fuck around?”
That’s the good thing about Saturday mornings, the good thing about this happening while they’re both sober. Otherwise, Mulder wouldn’t bother asking. Just press Crosby down to some flat surface and take what he wants.
Crosby clears his throat and he’s feeling off-balance. Richie and Adam will be asleep at least until “Law and Order” starts, they were up pretty late. Mulder sneaks a grin, tight glint of teeth, and his hand touches Crosby’s shoulder.
“Sure,” Crosby answers, and already he’s getting that sick hot excited feeling in his stomach, because he never really knows how to deal with this, when it comes up, which isn’t that often, just enough to be kinda unsettling.
Mulder slides his hand to the back of Crosby’s neck and moves closer to him. Mulder reaches across and when he fits his other hand to Crosby’s side, Crosby twitches and he’s about to pull away.
But Mulder is dropping his head and biting at Crosby’s throat, shoulder, ear, and his hand on Crosby’s side is pulling, tugging at him. Crosby shivers and Mulder’s mouth is open on his pulse, and Crosby lets Mulder pull him on a pivot, until Crosby is straddling him, knees pressing into the couch cushions on either side. Both Mulder’s hands are on his hips now, and Crosby’s shadow is all over him.
Crosby hesitantly puts his hands on Mulder’s shoulders, then on his neck, pressing his fingers into Mulder’s hair, and it’s so fucking strange, short hair and the strength of Mulder’s back. He’s such a guy, there’s no denying it.
And Mulder’s licking his chest through his T-shirt, and Mulder’s hands are pushing up on the bare skin of his back, his hands are so big, fingers stretching from shoulder blade to shoulder blade. Crosby grinds down and Mulder lifts his hips to meet him, and there’s really no way Crosby can pretend Mulder’s anyone other than who he is.
Mulder’s fingers are all the way up to Crosby’s neck with his arm a bar down the middle of Crosby’s back, and he pushes on the top of Crosby’s spine like he’d push on anything that gives him leverage, angling Crosby’s head down so Mulder can get their mouths together.
Mulder tastes like orange juice, which is better than beer and better than tequila and better than just about anything. Bobby is thinking about school-day mornings and his mom pouring him a tall glass from the Florida orange juice carton with the big gold sun on the front.
Crosby sort of molds down onto Mulder so that their chests are together, and opens his mouth, and now it’s a kiss with tongue but it’s slower than it usually is. All of this is slower than it usually is. Crosby blames Saturday morning for that.
They’re rocking slightly, easy rhythm and if Mulder minds Crosby’s weight on him, he’s not saying anything about it. In the background, the television is talking in complicated medical terms, but they’re not paying attention. MTV generation and they can tune out anything, the rest of the house so quiet and still it’s almost like a freeze frame.
Mulder’s hands skim off Crosby’s back, circle his waist and start plucking at the top of his shorts. Crosby makes a small groan and twists down closer, Mulder wearing sweatpants with nothing underneath, which is basically the hottest thing that’s ever happened.
He lifts his head for air and Mulder goes back to work on his neck, mumbling, “What do you want?” and Crosby flushes all over, squirms, the possibilities, man.
His mind is flicking through it, into dark places where he doesn’t usually let his thoughts go, places where Mulder’s hands are around his wrists and Mulder’s bending him over the back of something, Crosby’s teeth in the mattress and Mulder heavy on his back, dark alley thoughts.
But Bobby Crosby waited until he was sure he was in love before he first had sex, although it didn’t take much, because Bobby falls in love very easily, his girlfriend in high school who was small and light above him and he wanted to hold on to her and never let go, make sure nothing ever hurt her.
This isn’t like that, and he never used to think about guys. Still doesn’t, really. Just Mulder.
Mainly they were in the stairwell of that hotel in Boston, because Crosby’s got a minor phobia about elevators that gets worse when he’s drunk. And he was pretty drunk. And his heel slipped on the corner of the stair, he was falling. But then Mulder’s elbows were crooked and braced and catching under Crosby’s arms, Crosby’s face slamming into his chest. Mulder was laughing and then his tongue was on Crosby's neck and Bobby wasn’t paying enough attention, forgot to tell him no.
It’s easy and a good way to kill time and actually kind of amazing, but Crosby’s always forgetting about it until it happens again, which means it’s not anything like serious, so he pulls his mind out of the alley, back into the sunlit living room and Mulder’s body shifting and arcing against him.
“Um,” and Crosby’s blushing hard because he’s a nice well-mannered boy and he doesn’t like to say certain things out loud. “You could, ah, you, you could . . .”
He can’t say it, embarrassed, so he draws Mulder’s tongue into his mouth and tries to show, not tell.
Mulder breaks away and he’s breathing deep, smiling. “You want me to suck your dick, Bobby?” he asks in a raspy tone. Crosby shudders and nods, presses his face into Mulder’s neck, Mulder’s long smooth neck and his coarse cheek on Crosby’s forehead.
Then suddenly Mulder’s pushing him off, thumping him to the carpet, and it’s like being torn away, the way they’re all at once apart, and Crosby thinks he must have done something wrong, clutching his hands on Mulder’s legs and staring at him with his bruised, orange-tasting mouth, blinking dumbly.
But Mulder just smiles again and runs a palm over Crosby’s head, down his face. “Rookies go first,” Mulder says, his thumb rubbing across Crosby’s lips.
Crosby licks Mulder’s thumb, and tries out a smile of his own. His hands go to Mulder’s waist and tug at his sweats. Mulder sighs and lets his head fall back.
This is still pretty new to Crosby and maybe he’s never done this in particular when not sloppy drunk, but Mulder always lets him know when he does right, hands wide on the back of his head and Mulder bucking shallowly.
Crosby thinks about his maybe-girlfriend working on a Saturday, who thinks he’s so sweet, and he is, honestly, he’s a good kid on his way to being a good man, and he wets his lips, bends his head down.
He’s a good straight boy from Long Beach and he’s not too worried about what any of this means, because they taught him when he was young to follow his heart, and if he’s not sure of anything else, at least he knows that this is where his heart wants him to go, right now, this is where he’s supposed to be.
THE END
wait a minute, was that story not insanely angstful and fucked up! what the hell! i don't even know who you are anymore, man.