Work Text:
Scottsdale, AZ
February 2011
- Tonight, says Lincecum to Zito, his heart still pounding wild on the side of his throat, - tonight reminds me of New York that time, the All-Star Game.
He’s still out of breath, lying there on the edge of the bed, naked, hands folded on his chest like an effigy. The edge of his face is outlined by the lights shining from the garden through the big uncurtained windows. Outside, the lights of the Phoenix suburbs whiten the horizon. At eye level, over the crest of the hill, three radio towers blink, syncopated like the signals of cars stopped in traffic.
When Zito says nothing, Tim twists over onto his side to face him. Zito’s also lying there spent, his head cranked up a little by the pillow under his neck, the sheets wadded around his calves and ankles. He’s got one hand curled up against his face; he’s absently stroking the edge of his jaw with his fingernails.
Zito turns toward Tim, smiling lazily.
- I thought I’d killed you, he says. - I’ll never forget it.
- The hospital - the front-desk nurse was bugging me for your insurance card, Barry continues, - and I gave them my ID, I was all confused. They were wheeling you down the hall on a rolling bed like you’d been in a car accident or something, and the nurse, this short little fat little Jamaican lady, she comes around the counter and puts her arm around me and says - are you his partner? And I’m, like, fumbling through your wallet like an idiot- why the fuck’ve you got so much crap in there? - and when I pulled out your driver’s license, everything came flying out, splat, all over the floor.
- You know what was the most amazing thing? he says.
Tim’s looking at him, his eyes giving up nothing.
- She goes, - Sir? and I just go, - yeah? and she’s looking up at me with this huge smile on her face and she says, like - Ima copy the card, the machine’s across the hall, I’ll make sure it gets back to you, but you better just go get ‘im, right? Your guy?
- She’s wearing SpongeBob scrubs, and she puts her arm around me and squeezes my elbow, and at that point I just lost it, Timmy. Not like there were tears running down my face or anything, but I definitely had to get out of there.
Tim’s jaw has shifted sideways. The tip of his tongue’s at the corner of his mouth.
- Not that part of New York, what I’m thinking of, Tim says slowly, - More like the other part, the part where you wanted to kill me. Were trying to kill me.
- Oh, come on, says Zito, - It wasn’t that bad, Timmy.
Lincecum slides up to his knees and settles himself, straddling Zito, his straight arms framing Barry’s face.
- The fuck it wasn’t, says Tim, his voice deliberate, sinking down till he’s only a breath away from Zito, his long hair brushing the sides of Barry’s face. - You smashed my phone, you motherfucker. Ripped my shirt. Shoved me against the wall.
Their thighs slide together in practiced unison. When Tim’s hovering belly just brushes against Zito’s, Barry flinches and arches his back to match skin to skin. But Tim pulls away, lets the air cool between them. Zito’s eyes, wide and nearly black in the darkness, drift lazily over Tim’s face, from mouth to eyes and back again.
- You were messing around with that girl, Zito drawls quietly, - somebody had to stop you. It was public service, man.
Dropping his head over Zito’s face, Tim tilts his chin as though he’s coming in for a kiss. But he stops just short of Barry’s mouth. His lips brush against Barry’s and then vanish.
- You’re the one who flew all the way from Chicago, says Tim, knowing that Barry can feel, can smell his breath as Tim measures out the words. - You took it upon yourself.
Zito puffs out a hiss of frustration.
His cock’s hard and heavy and slick against the hollow of Tim’s hipbone, and he angles his hips to match it to Tim’s own hard-on. He slides his left hand between their bellies to take them both in hand, but Tim, his arm a flash in the darkness, wrenches it up and traps his wrist beside his head. Barry counters with his other arm, but Tim feints and grabs and in a single clean rip he’s got Zito pinned hand and hip to the mattress.
Tim presses his mouth against Zito’s ear.
- You were sick with it, motherfucker, Tim hisses, - you were gonna do whatever it took. Admit it.
Zito’s slipping out from under his grasp, trying to loosen Tim’s grip around his wrists. Tim sinks forward and looses his mouth onto the side of Barry’s neck, his tongue so darting and so insistent that Barry eventually stops struggling, tilts his chin, stretches toward it. Zito’s skin is salty and slick and faintly sweet, scented with Indian spices from the place they’d eaten tonight, and Tim feels a trickle of sweat roll down his own neck. He’s feeling loose and crazy, his thighs and his arms and his chest lighting up in the places where they’re touching Barry’s skin. Zito’s belly is heaving and his heart pounding where they’re belly to belly, his hips warm and strong and full of promise.
Tim steadies himself. He’s nose-to-nose with Zito, whose eyelashes are wet with sweat and his cheekbones flushed. He lets himself smile, enjoying the way Barry’s eyes widen in anticipation when he does. His eyes linger on Zito’s half-open mouth while he feels Barry squirm and twist beneath him, the left-hander’s breath short and harsh.
- You don’t learn, do you? says Tim quietly, his eyes dark and hard on Zito’s. - Or maybe you think I don’t. We’re not doing this.
//
Bent over, his back to the bed, Tim fumbles on his jeans and sweater blind. He crams his watch in his pocket, hooks his Rainbows with his fingers by the straps, and gets himself out of there.
As he pads down the unlit hall, part of him is listening for Zito’s voice, for footsteps behind him on the tile floor.
But when the big front door creaks shut behind him, there’s nothing except the sound of the wind in the brush and the drone of a jet descending. His eyes grope along the shadowy shape of his car at the edge of the driveway.
Not till he’s halfway down the hill, as he’s sitting in the front seat, the engine panting, waiting for Zito’s security gate to open, does Tim glance down at the too-long sleeves and realize that the sweater he’s wearing is not his own.
//
The wound on Buster’s forehead is healing just fine till the ninth inning of the Cubs game, when Lincecum serves up a way-too-inside fastball that smacks Buster straight on the eyebrow and spins his mask sideways. Suddenly the gash is bunged back open and he’s bleeding like his eye’s been shot out.
- Oh, for pity’s sake, says Buster, wrenching off his mask. A little comet of blood arcs over Starlin Castro’s pants from his belt to his shinguard. Muchlinski, the home-plate ump, steps back and folds his hands over his chest. He swipes a big black shoe at the ugly darkish puddle that’s started to spread by the plate.
Groeschner takes one look and orders Buster out of the game and downstairs for stitches.
The sting of the anesthetic needle is no big deal - Buster’s had more stitches than he can remember. But when assistant trainer Tony Reyes presses the plunger, Buster’s eyes still tear up and flood over. When Reyes turns away to the counter to get the suture thread and the quarter-needle, Buster swipes the corners of his eyes with his knuckles, quickly, so the trainer doesn’t see him do it.
As his skin above his eye begins to buzz and numb from the novocaine, Buster’s eyes flicker forward. Tony’s standing between his knees now, his dark eyes focused at the bottom edge of the gash, close enough that Buster can smell his aftershave.
- Bar fight, unh, big guy? says Reyes, the inside of his wrist grazing Buster’s cheekbone as he pulls the thread through the flap of skin.
Buster, in no mood for jokes, quirks up one side of his mouth.
- Close your right eye a minute? says Reyes. - I need to get in there close, and I don’t want to, like, blind you or something.
As Buster winks his right eye closed, his left eye trails over Tony’s shoulder through the training room’s open door, into the locker room. There’s a clubbie wheeling an industrial clothes rack jammed and swaying with clean unis. Guys are trickling back in from the showers, subdued. Matt Garza had his breaking stuff working today and the Giants hadn’t been able to see much of anything he’d thrown.
Abruptly, right over Tony’s shoulder, appears Bumgarner’s sock-puppet of a head, the big blue eyes. His hair’s slick with wet from the shower, and his eyebrows pucker upwards like two fuzzy caterpillars in an exaggerated expression of concern.
- ‘Swhat happens when you let ‘im out of his cage, drawls Madison to Tony, - man’s a danger to himself and others. Buster biohazard Posey, idn’t that what they call it?
Matt Cain’s turned up now, behind both of them. He’s smirking.
The edges of Tony’s eyes curl up. His hand jiggles - he’s laughing, Cain and Maddy are laughing, and Buster, who’s about to lose it, struggles to keep his face expressionless.
- That’s what the mask’s for, drawls Matt from behind Reyes’s hand. - It’s not to protect him, for fuck’s sake. It’s to protect us. Boy is Satan himself. Man, he says to Tony, all serious now, - I wouldn’t let the inside of my wrist get too close to his mouth if I were you.
When Reyes is finished tying off the suture, he leans close in and mumbles something about Hannibal Lecter.
//
Buster’s never told anybody this, it’s too embarrassing, but when he first got called up to the majors, he wasn’t sure how he’d handle it.
Not the catching part. That’s never been the problem.
It was the San Francisco part that really knocked him off balance. And not just because it was California. At FSU, when he’d been drafted by the Angels junior year, Chad and Simpson and Davis and them had pestered him for weeks, singing wish they all could be California girls and writing ‘Hollywood’ on his locker. But, what with graduation and the wedding and getting settled in the house, he hadn’t given it much thought. And when he actually got there, the hotel rooms in San Jose and Fresno’d looked pretty much like crummy hotel rooms anywhere else in the country: a bed with greyish sheets that kept peeling off, half a roll of toilet paper, and a plastic pay-per-view card on top the TV.
It meant something to him, though, the day he’d finally gotten called up. He’d jammed the phone between his chin and his shoulder and started packing while Sabean’s admin was still filling him in on what time and where. He’d left Fresno that afternoon, the back seat so crammed with boxes and Hefty bags that he couldn’t see out the rear-view as he darted in and out of the truck traffic on 99. It was like one minute he was in the country - dry grassy hills, beef cattle, scrub oaks - and the next he was flying by the supermalls and the subdivisions of Silicon Valley, lanes banked by concrete pylons and everyone driving way too close way too fast.
The San Francisco motel where he’d stayed that first month, the Bay Bridge Inn, was in the shadow of interstate 80 between an auto-body shop and a vacant 7-11 with broken windows and trash piled in the doorway. Like Lynn in the front office had told him, it was walking distance to the ballpark. But that was about all you could say about it without swearing. Nothing worked, including the vent fan, and his bathroom window opened on an alley full of fifty-buck hookers and a homeless guy who sang the same two lines of a blues song all night long. The parking spaces were so puny that, half the time, the manager had to make the guy in 219 move his truck off the line so Buster could pull his Camry into the last space on the left.
He’d quit walking to the ballpark after that time three punked-up looking guys followed him home after a day game. It was still light outside, lots of people around, but they’d kept after him, wolf-whistling and taunting - hey, country boy, where ya goin? Wanna date? Looka that tight ass. Then somehow one of them managed to skip around in front of him and was suddenly right up in his face, walking backwards, shimmying his shoulders, stinking of something like cat. The other two were still right behind him, so close he could smell them, hear them breathing.
Buster knew that the only thing he could do was just stop in his tracks so abruptly that the two guys behind nearly banged into him. Then he’d taken advantage of their momentary discombobulation to sucker-punch the dreadlocked guy right in the solar plexus, Buster’s up-hooking fist leaving him bent double and sucking wind. Then he’d landed a quick punch on the front guy’s left cheekbone, close enough in to shiner him good. The sound the punched guy’s mouth wasn’t making was as good as ice on a burn, and when Buster turned back uphill towards Harrison, slowly resettling the strap of his gym bag on his shoulder, he hadn’t looked back. The wide eyes and closed faces of the strangers trying to hurry past on the far edge of the sidewalk told him what he needed to know.
Within a month he’d gotten himself out of there and into a higher-rent place, all gleaming wood floors and modern plastic-and-metal furniture and shelves with books that weren’t meant to be read. Now he could actually walk to the yard - the Archstone was only four blocks from AT&T - and now he was dodging yuppies with lattes instead of thugs. But the unease he’d felt since his first spring-training stint with the Giants persisted. Every day, as he slid his card through the reader that opened the clubhouse doors, he’d felt the walls go up around him, sealing him off from all the looks and remarks and silences he’d come to expect here, the things that were as unnerving as a face in the window of a vacant house.
//
Even before he arrived in San Francisco, Buster had sized up the situation. He’d knew he’d play first base to start, but he was already thinking ahead, looking forward to the day he’d be the Giants’ everyday catcher.
He figured that for starting pitchers he’d drawn two pair and a one-eyed jack: two normal guys, a crazy-ass head case, and two guys who were the biggest open secret in major-league sports.
Normal - that was the two southerners. Matt Cain was from Dothan, Alabama, a town as small as Leesburg, but turns out he’d actually done most of his growing up in a newish suburb of Memphis. And he’d left Tennessee early, married a girl he’d met when he was in college in Arizona. The night they’d had Buster over for drinks and dinner, Chelsea Cain, elegant and remote in a long silver sweater and diamond earrings that glittered in the light of the dining-room candles, had made it clear that the Cains were in California to stay. Buster noticed she’d rolled her eyes just a little when Matt talked about how happy his father was that his brother’d agreed to take over the family trucking business.
Madison Bumgarner, on the other hand, was the real deal, raised in a one-traffic-light town in the North Carolina piedmont. When Buster’d heard that Madison had given his wife a bull calf as a wedding present, he’d relaxed a little. Here was a guy who knew that Ducks Unlimited wasn’t a branch of the Sierra Club, a guy who could fix a busted fuel pump in the time it took most guys to put gas in the car.
The head case, Jonathan Sanchez, had spent most of his time with the Giants organization bouncing around like a pinball from the bullpen to the minors to the DL. In his few stints in the rotation, he’d been occasionally brilliant and consistently unpredictable. Sanchez’s mound meltdowns were legendary - something that took Buster less than one game to confirm, as he watched the left-hander load the bases with three base hits and then walk in two runs, two runs, in a game against the Rockies.
The pitcher’s lack of control was bad enough. But the way Sanchez’d scowled and sworn all the way back to the dugout after Bochy took the ball had sealed it for Buster. Nothing worse than a guy who couldn’t hold himself together.
As for Lincecum and Zito, the first and fifth starters - well, he’d been warned.
In Triple A there’d been plenty of guys cycling up to the majors and back. A few of them were heavy hitters like Pat Burrell and Edgar Renteria, guys who’d been sent to Fresno for rehab after a stint on the DL. Then there were the Crash Davis types, the ones who’d been up for a cup of coffee once, maybe even twice or three times. Guys who knew who you should pitch inside on the ‘Topes, and why the Purple Sage is only the third-worst motel in Tucson. Guys whose birthdates were fading further into the past every day.
Steve Holm, red hair all in the wrong places, his tiny eyes like raisins poked deep into the dough of his face, had been called up to the Show and sent back down to the minors so many times that he bragged that he could do the drive to the City in his sleep. The day Buster arrived in Fresno from Single A, Holm had had that guarded look on his face, equal parts resignation and resentment, a look that signified he knew Buster was on his way up. But as the Grizzlies’ longtime starting catcher, it’d been Holm’s job to show Buster the ropes. Buster’s schoolboy focus, his determination to soak up everything he saw and heard, had had the effect of making Holm generous with his advice. It was Holm who’d warned Buster about Jonathan Sanchez, Holm who filled him in on Cain and Bumgarner. Holm had also briefed him on Bengie Molina - how to get on his good side, how to take advantage of the brief window of goodwill while Buster was still playing first and not yet fixing to eat Bengie’s lunch.
It was what Holm didn’t say about Lincecum and ZIto that got Buster’s attention.
- They’re left-coasters, those two - hippies, Holm’d said, - spect you know all about that junk. Yoga and dope and shit, and Zito’s always leaving himself little notes on his locker. Like that’d help, Holm had said with a little snort of contempt.
It was the evening after a day game, and Holm and Posey were having a couple of Bud Lights at the Jackrabbit after a game of eight-ball. Buster’s head still ached at the temples from the too-tight pads on the hockey-style mask he’d used in his afternoon bullpens.
Holm had jerked his chin at the bartender for another round and then looked back at Buster. - Zeets and Timmy, he’d said, - well, what can I say? It’s San Fran-fucking-cisco.
- They’re kinda mirror images, Holm had continued, - Timmy’s on his way up and Zito’s on his way down. Timmy’s so wild and he throws so hard you’ll be all bruised up when he gets done with you. Zito, it’s like he’s tossing fuckin’ beach balls, man, it’s just pathetic. You think you’re gonna die of boredom out there the days he pitches.
- So no love lost there, between those two? asked Buster.
Holm’s pale-lashed eyes flickered up and then away.
- That’s the thing. They’re tighter’n bedbugs. Never see 'em not together, said Holm slowly.
Then abruptly Holm had picked up his glass and drained it, and then looked at his watch. - Time I got you home, Cinderella, he drawled, - we got nine o’clock call and you need your beauty sleep.
//
When Reyes is finally done stitching him up and Buster goes back out to dress, Cain and Bumgarner are sprawled out on the leather couch in the middle of the locker room watching SportsCenter, Cain with a cotton sweater draped around his shoulders preppie style and Madison in the chinos and laceup oxfords he usually saves for the plane.
- Butt in gear, Peach, says Cain, - we’re taking you out. Alexander’s.
Buster grins. Alexander’s is a high-end restaurant near the stadium that serves dry-aged steaks and pork belly and wagyu sliders. Meat’s the main point, but Buster suspects that Madison’s favorite thing about Alexander’s is the complimentary cone of designer cotton candy they always bring out with the check. Last time it was banana-flavored, but the kid’s also crazy about the orange blossom and the grape.
Buster’s nearly finished dressing. He’s bent over, shoe horning his feet into his penny loafers, when he feels the warm touch of a hand on the small of his back. He straightens right up; it’s Lincecum.
- Hey, man, sorry about that pitch, says Tim, ducking his chin and grinning apologetically. - I can’t believe I got you all bloody all over again. I wasn’t even trying.
Buster can’t help smiling back.
Tim’s wearing two or three T-shirts, a Weezer hoodie that says if it’s too loud turn it down, torn-up jeans and leather flip-flops. Buster glances down at the hand that was so recently touching his back - there’s a woven leather bracelet on Tim’s wrist, and silver rings on his thumb and third finger.
Tim’s eyes track Buster’s, and as though he’s been caught out, the pitcher curls his hand under one elbow, crossing his arms.
Then they’re both silent for a moment, awkward.
- You - , - we’re, Buster stammers softly, - You wanna -
- I gotta go, says Tim carefully, and Buster watches his eyes flash up and connect, across the room, to those of Barry Zito.
The left-hander’s standing there in jeans and a cotton sweater and a black leather jacket. He’s got a messenger bag over one shoulder, and his whole body points towards the clubhouse door.
With a jolt of surprise - he can’t believe he never noticed this before - Buster sees how straight Zito stands. Barry’s face is blank, his mouth set in a straight line, his eyes narrowed with something like fatigue.
//
Buster, always careful about what he eats, tries to minimize the destruction at Alexander’s by ordering a six-ounce filet so that he can feel okay about wolfing down an entire order of truffled french fries. By the time he’s eaten that, and the three of them have shared a tray of hamachi shots, a plate of crab cakes, and some unpronounceable thing that comes between the courses, Buster sinks into the leather back of the banquette, exhausted and replete. He waves off the dessert menu but he changes his mind when they bring Matt a slice of pineapple upside-down cake with house-made ice cream. By the time they bring out the cotton candy - tonight’s flavor is mango-passion fruit, which Madison says is OK but nothing to write home about - Buster’s in such a food coma that he wonders how he’ll manage to stay awake enough to drive home.
So when Buster gets in the car, he rolls down the windows and keeps pressing the scanner button on the radio till hears the familiar voice of Trace Adkins:
Well, my heart didn't skip a beat
When I saw you standin’ there
And suddenly it feels good to sing along, pretty much at the top of his voice, all the way up the drive and past the gate and kiosk, the cool night air buoying up around him like water:
I couldn't sleep last night,
But you weren't on my mind.
He’s still singing as he lets himself in the front door of his apartment and tosses his keys onto the table in the entryway.
So baby if you want you can sing along,
But this ain't no love song.
But just as he’s finished hanging his jacket up in the hall closet, he stops short as though he’s forgotten something.
After a moment of silence so pure it makes his ears ring, he puts the doggie bag from Alexander’s down on the hall table and twists open the button lock on the front door.
Then he lets himself out into the dimly lit, lemon-soap-smelling corridor, moving quickly so he won't hear the door click shut behind him.
//
TIm’s home with the TV on, Intentional Talk on mute, mostly for the injuries-and-free-agents crawl at the bottom of the screen, watching with one eye. He’s curled up on the living-room couch clutching a big pillow, cold and getting colder, reluctant to get up. His French bulldog Cy’s settled smack up against him, snuffling around his bare feet and rooting hopefully for crumbs in the cracks between the cushions. The dog, Tim muses as he strokes the dog between the ears, is probably the last thirty pounds of pure and selfless love he’s got.
If Cy were a guy instead of a dog, it’d all be good, Tim thinks to himself. Then he shakes his head a little as though to jolt himself out of it. He can’t figure out whether he should be appalled or amused at the way he’s wallowing in self-pity. It’s past midnight and they’ve got an early call tomorrow, but he’s wide awake, his body still in the grip of a tension that hasn’t let him go since he left Zito’s house night before last.
The rage comes and goes in waves, some of them bigger than others, and some of them rogue enough to push him out of whatever he’s in the middle of doing and put him down somewhere else. Between the waves comes a feeling that’s less easy to define, regret and lust and longing all mixed together. It’s a mess of emotion that leaves him feeling as though he’s been washed up naked and broken like a body on the beach.
//
Tim’s closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the arm of the couch, the jacked-up sound of a mattress commercial echoing huge and ugly in his brain when he feels Cy ball up with tension and growl. Then there’s a current of cool air and his eyes bug wide open. Posey’s standing there between the back of the couch and the door, his arms crossed low across his belly, his blue eyes wide open like he’s just seen something he can’t shake.
- Jesus fuck, don’t you knock? barks Lincecum - roused, confused, sleepy. He sits up, dumping the big pillow and two remotes onto the floor. Cy’s risen on his hind legs, forepaws propped on the back of the couch, his ears straight up and a low growl making his big head hum.
- You’re one to talk, says Posey, - if you’d’a knocked, I wouldn’t have these fuckin’ stitches.
He hates the way this comes out sounding prissy and uptight - words like fuckin’ don’t come naturally to him - but, man, Lincecum has a way of putting him on edge.
Lincecum yawns. - Still pissed at about that? he says, cracking a tiny smile. - What, Posey, you here to beat me up? Yell at me about today? What?
Tim’s smile eases him a little; Buster puffs out a breath and feels his shoulders drop. Suddenly he’s angry again, and tired and frustrated and confused, and he wants to say something but he’s not sure what.
Lincecum’s just looking at him, eyebrows raised, waiting. - So sit? he says, motioning with his eyes towards the empty end of the couch. Buster hesitates a little, and then drops down onto the cushion. He reaches under his hip to pull out a red plastic dog ball that’d yelped when he sat on it. Tim picks up one of the remotes and clicks the sound back on. How You Like Me Now? comes blaring out of the TV speakers and abruptly Tim turns the TV off.
- Rocks finally took Maine day before yesterday, says Tim, settling back against the corner of the couch - but I don’t think we’ll see him.
- Djou see the O’s signed Vladi? says Buster conversationally, - Jeez, I thought he was done.
- Done, maybe, or he’s juicing, says Tim. He looks down at the remote in his hands, presses the light-up button, then tosses it down onto the carpeted floor. The bulldog, who’s been sitting straight up between them, eyeing Buster with suspicion, seems reassured by the way their voices sound. He collapses against Tim’s thigh and tucks his head down between his paws.
- How’s it feeling? Your eye? says Lincecum, finally looking up. - Man, I already told you, but I’m sorry about that pitch.
Buster’s eyes have met Tim’s, and they hold the gaze a few seconds, and then a little longer, and finally Tim looks away. He yawns and stretches his arms up over his head, lacing his fingers. Then he leans forward and heaves himself off the couch onto his feet, turfing the bulldog onto the floor. Cy scuttles off, his white stub of a tail bobbing in the half-darkness of the hallway.
- So if it’s all the same to you, Posey, it’s late and I’m gonna turn in. You can let yourself out?
Now Buster’s also on his feet, feeling absurd, awkward, like he’s an unwanted guest who’s overstayed his welcome. He’s aware that his face is flushed, like he’s embarrassed, and his palms are sweating. He takes one step towards Lincecum and nearly freezes, because Tim’s just standing there, looking at him like he’s a homeless person or something. But the momentum carries him through, and he takes a deep breath and lifts his hand up, runs it along the side of Tim’s neck - the pitcher’s skin is cold, and up this close, his mouth’s half open and his eyes are huge and wide and wary.
Tim doesn’t move - his hands are still at his sides, and Buster feels himself just standing there like an idiot, in the middle of a gesture he hasn’t planned.
- Something you want to tell me? says Tim softly.
Buster leans in towards Tim and closes his eyes and tips his head and slowly, certainly, their mouths touch, dry and quiet. Tim’s still frozen in place; Buster feels the tip of his nose, cold against his own flushed and sweating skin.
As he pulls away, letting his arm drop and his hand slide away from Tim’s neck, Buster’s seized by an embarrassment that makes his gut drop.
- I’m not an experiment, says Tim, - if that’s what you think.
- It’s not, says Buster, although now that he considers what Tim’s said, it makes sense. He’s still not sure what he’s doing here or why, and he’s pretty sure that tomorrow morning he’ll wake up and know himself for the crazy man he is.
- I’m here cause I wanna be, says Buster impulsively. The sound of his own voice is foreign to him, like something from a movie; in some crackpot part of his brain, he thinks there ought to be a soundtrack.
- Yeah? says Lincecum. - Prove it.
He turns and walks away, down the hall towards the bedroom, not bothering to flip on a light. Buster watches his form as it’s slowly swallowed by the darkness, and then he follows, his heart in his throat.
.