Nasty Hanging Curve

AN: Thought I\'d share a bit of baseball lingo I just learned watching the playoffs: When a pitch is far inside, the batter has to fist the ball. Does it even matter what that really means- it sounds so damn dirty! Also, more vocab added. http://www.livejournal.com/users/camliawaite/6571.html#cutid2

Chapter 2

It\'s not that Davey never struckout or had a hitless day or had an error or two on a game, it\'s more that he knew- knew it in his bones and his guts and his balls that he\'d done it to himself. His three strikeouts, his one impossibly easy to catch pop-up to deep center and his pitiful performance in the field (three errors) were due to Davey psyching himself out over Brody Deighton. Davey could just feel Brody\'s eyes on him- jinxing him and judging him when he was at bat. Davey could just tell that Brody was quietly watching him and waiting for him to fuck up in the field, even though Brody was mostly facing the other way when he was on the pitching mound.

All of which Davey\'s rational mind knew wasn\'t true. Brody wasn\'t watching him, wasn\'t jinxing him- Brody hardly knew him. Brody was thinking about his own game. Brody couldn\'t possibly have been that kind of focused on Davey and still pitch a shutout. Brody was a pro. But Brody felt like Davey\'s personal enemy, so Davey had his worst game since coming up from the minors, never getting his head in the game or Deighton out of his head.

\"Tough day, kid,\" Brody commiserated from behind him as Davey opened his locker and maturely slammed his glove and cap at the back of his locker in frustration. Davey couldn\'t help squinting up his face, chagrined at showing his own stupid self-doubt in front of Deighton of all people.

He forced himself to relax, take a deep breath and center himself before answering as casually as he could, \"Fat Lady already sang on this one- I\'m all about tomorrow\'s double header.\"

\"Twice as many chances to get it wrong,\" Brody razzed and slid up next to Davey to get to his own, still unlabeled locker. Davey ignored the brush of Brody\'s upper arm and shoulder against his chest.

\"Yeah, right,\" Davey agreed, not really paying much attention to the words. Brody\'s sweaty hair was plastered to his head where his ball cap had been and Davey wanted to reach up and touch it- muss it up to erase that line. Brody was stripping down now and Davey had to turn away \'cause watching would get him in so much frickin trouble. He pretended to be looking for something inside his locker even though he couldn\'t really focus on the things he was rearranging in there. Finally, Deighton was moving away and Davey risked a glance up. Brody\'s towel-clad ass was walking towards the showers. Davey flashed on his too vivid memory of a wet, soapy Brody and sat down on the bench to mentally kick himself really, really hard.

***

After some mediation, Davey was back on his game the next day. Deighton, being a starter, wasn\'t playing or waiting by the bullpen. He hadn\'t done his singing in the shower ritual either, though he was in the dugout showing his loyalty to his new team. Davey stayed at the far end from him all afternoon. Still, he couldn\'t help but notice Brody\'s deep laugh echoing down the bench as he talked to their teammates. It reminded Davey of him singing in the shower. Deighton\'s choice of songs aside, he had a pretty good voice- not perfect, but interesting- gravelly and smooth. Davey had to put that thought out of his mind before he lost his center and started fucking up again because his dick was hard and his brain was soft both over Brody.

They won both games and Davey had a fantastic day. He almost felt like he was past the weird hex that Deighton seemed to have put on him- not that he believed in such things- they only had power over him if he believed they had power over him and he didn\'t. He really didn\'t. Except maybe, it wasn\'t some kind of hex. Maybe it was Karma. Karma was something Davey did believe in- not in a strict following Hinduism sort of way, more in a do unto others, balanced universe sort of way. Maybe Brody spooked Davey so badly because Davey let himself feel so negatively about him and the universe was pointing that right back at him, which meant that Davey better get right with Brody or he was gonna be back in the same jinxed place in a few days.

So when Brody was tying his street shoes and most of the rest of the team had taken off, Davey sat on the bench next to him and said, \"You wanna get a beer, Deighton?\"

\"Sure thing, kid,\" Brody answered without looking up from his laces, \"Have to be root though, I\'m on the wagon.\"

\"Oh,\" Davey answered. That sucked- not that Brody didn\'t drink- that was fine, good really. What sucked was that Brody must have been through some stuff to get there- on the wagon. Davey didn\'t want Brody to have been through that. He couldn\'t let himself hate someone who\'d been through the fire. The Karma thing was looking more and more likely. \"You ever have bubble tea?\"

\"That the one with the tapioca?\"

\"Yeah.\"

\"Chrissy, my ex, drank it all the time- awful stuff. How about coffee?\" Brody countered and somehow picking a place to bury the hatchet Brody didn\'t even know was aimed in his direction was becoming a power struggle. Davey reminded himself that struggling wasn\'t how to get this done- he had to bend with the tide, sway in the wind or he\'d break.

\"There\'s a good place for coffee on fourteenth.\"

The coffee shop was crowded, but the girl recognized Davey and they got offered the first open table. Davey had tried to refuse- there were others waiting when they got there, but she would have none of it, so the first thing Davey did was tell the girl that he\'d be paying for a round for the entire shop. It wasn\'t meant to impress people just balance the Karma, but the girl made a big announcement and he felt like a showoff, which was fine on the field- he got paid to do that on the field, but it made him uncomfortable in real life- it felt like having sex in front of his Great-Aunt Sadie. Then people kept coming up to thank him and ask for autographs and neither he nor Brody could get a word in. Plus, nobody was recognizing Brody, which sucked. Davey looked at Deighton, who was laughing at him and shaking his head and they didn\'t stay.

\"Don\'t worry about it, kid,\" Brody had told him before getting in his cab never having gotten any coffee or let Davey make right his imagined sins. Davey went home and had some bubble tea, hoping it would sooth the off kilter feeling he got when he thought about Brody.

Davey wasn\'t actually in the closet- if anyone had asked him, he wouldn\'t have lied. It would have been too big a lie to have on his soul- too much of a self-betrayal. Still he didn\'t go out of his way to advertise his bisexual tendencies. In fact, he hadn\'t dated any guys since high school- only partly because he wanted to avoid confrontations with the less open-minded people in the game and the press. Mostly he\'d only dated women the last few years because they were the ones who came on to him the most often. They were the path of least resistance. There were always a few guys making eye contact or slipping him a phone number whenever Davey was out somewhere loud and dimly lit and public. But, just like all but a few of the women, they were just trying to bed a pro-baller- to fuck someone famous and, believe it or not, Davey, at twenty-one years old, was looking for substance.

***

The next day, Davey purposefully sat next to Deighton in the dugout, planning to be the right kind of friendly- jovial but not drooling, but for some reason, Davey couldn\'t seem to come up with anything jovial to say and ended up just nodding and agreeing with whatever Brody was saying without adding anything of value. And yes, he wasn\'t adding anything, wasn\'t giving anything to Deighton, but he wasn\'t letting himself stew about Deighton, wasn\'t sending all that negativity he\'d been feeling at Brody, so he felt better about things. And it showed in his game. Davey had another stellar day and walked off the field thinking that maybe he could do this. Maybe.

After the game, Davey was walking out to his car when he overheard Deighton talking to someone. Brody was on his cell, standing in the parking lot- there really was no coverage inside the stadium under all that concrete.

\"Look, if Chrissy wants to fuck around, that\'s none of my business anymore. I\'m out of that, I\'m clean and I\'m staying that way,\" Brody said, and then he paused, listening. \"No, I\'m not responsible. Chrissy made choices, so did I. I made this choice now and Chrissy is just gonna have to live with it.\" Deighton noticed Davey walking past and nodded an obligatory hello. Davey gave him a smile, but kept walking. Wasn\'t Chrissy the name of Brody\'s ex? \"Listen, I wish you luck. I wish Chrissy luck, too. I just can\'t take on his problems and fix his life. I gotta go, now.\" Brody stopped to listen again and Davey tried to reconcile the fact that Deighton had an ex named Chrissy and that Deighton was talking about a man named Chrissy- one and the same? \"No, my date\'s waiting. Yes, I said date. Go ahead tell him. Maybe it\'ll help him move on. I gotta go. Bye.\"

Brody hung up and caught up with Davey. \"Listen, kid,\" he started, \"I don\'t know how much of that you heard, but I\'d appreciate if you kept whatever you did hear under your hat. I\'m trying to make a bit of a new start here and old baggage tends to complicate that type of thing.\"

\"I\'m not wearing a hat Deighton and you can\'t really go back into the closet once you\'ve come out of it, you know?\" Davey told him.

\"Still don\'t have to sing show tunes in a Vera Wang and high heels, now do I?\"

\"Now there\'s am image. Relax. I won\'t spill anything, but I won\'t lie.\"

\"Fair enough,\" Brody agreed and they went their separate ways.