Work Text:
2nd, pedro
You are children. You are eating ice cream on a park bench in the city. It drips on your thigh and because you are a child, you do not care. Instead, you poke at it-- watch it disperse into the fibers of your shorts, watch it stain. He elbows you and points it out, sugar-sticky and keen-eyed in the way many children are. You roll your eyes, and announce “I like writing letters. Today was fun.”
Today your teacher taught you all about them. Dear Valentine, yours said. You sign it with your initials, PRD. Your mom told you it was fancier that way, smiling as she leaned over the counter to observe your diligent homework.
~~~
2nd, val
When Brock introduces you, he doesn’t realize that you’ve already known each other for so long. You make a big show out of shaking Pedro’s hand and offering dramatic pleasantries, laughing with him when his face finally cracks into a goofy grin.
You’re happy for the excuse to see him in person. You’ve kept up with your letter-writing for the most part, but since school changes and family moves and summer trips, it’s been a while. He got new glasses, and he seems taller, but that could just be the leather jacket, lip piercing, and newfound gender. He told you in letters about starting HRT early last year but seeing him now… He looks practically radiant.
~~~
2nd, val
Pedro comes alive in battle like you’ve never seen him. His eyes are bright and you can see his teeth shine white through the smoke as he dodges behind cover.
When the dust settles, all is quiet and calm. Even him.
~~~
2nd, val
You’re both on the east coast when it happens, at the very least. You tell him to be careful over the phone on day 61, as you sit in your hotel room in Boston, watching the sports anchors as they grin widely and speculate loudly. The weather forecast. The instability chains, and where they stand. Your boyfriend, where the two meet.
He smiles, and you can hear its fakeness through the phone. He says he always is. After the game, he’ll call you again and tell you he was right. He doesn’t mention that tomorrow will be more of the same.
That second day, Murray Pony doesn’t even last through the first inning. Your hands shake in the dugout as the commentators read off the news, it’s standard to keep track of such events even as they happen hundreds of miles away. You stand up and pace, retrieve your phone from your locker. You leave it in your pocket when you slide home at the top of the second. It will leave a bruise on your thigh, you think, but it doesn’t crack.
At the top of the eighth, a teammate elbows you. Gestures to their laptop. Single round trip ticket, Boston to Miami and back again in time for the next game.
-
The bruise formed right across his chest. His binder is in a heap with his jersey on the floor, next to the bed where he sits and stares blankly at the wall in front of him, twirling a pen in one hand and trying to massage out the ache with the other. it looks like an old bruise, green and yellow and purple, even though he got it today. An echo, passed along with the instability. Presumably in the same place the ball hit Dominic Marijuana to start the chain, though you haven’t watched the clips.
He doesn’t say anything when you walk in, easily bypassing the hotel’s simple lock and closing the door quickly behind you. He knew you were coming, after all.
“Please don’t make me talk about it,” he says. “Ken’s been trying since we got back. Forecast is blooddrain tomorrow, and then the week’s over. It’s over.”
You didn’t plan what to say, only that you knew you needed to look him in the eyes. So you sit. As close as you can manage, and wrap an arm around his waist. The two of you breathe for a while, and that’s all you could have hoped for.
~~~
Nagomi always was different, after she came back. That’s what they say about all the players who disappeared. Different in some intangible way, a distance in their eyes and an aloofness to their posture but the same cadence in speaking as usual. Unnerving. Different. [editor's note: i have no fucking clue where i was going with this]
~~~
it’s not like either of them have ever pretended to have the luxury of time. they’ve seen too many friends die for that. between the flicker of the feedback that lingers, refracting and sparkling, between val’s fingers and the smoke pedro sometimes swears he still sees roll of the back of his arms-- no. they don’t pretend they have time.
~~~
2nd, val
You have mourned each other before. He has gone to a place you thought you could never retrieve him from, but then you did. You are merely doing the same.
What do you do, though, when you know your luck is running out?
You know you’ve been lucky. Despite it all, somehow you have been. Through the blood and ash and dirt and grit, you’ve seen the world. You loved, lost, and learned to love again. You met incredible, impossible people. In your room are records of the best of them, piled high but neatly sorted by date and recipient. You’re watching the sun rise over a beach in Hawai’i, feeling the sand rough against your feet and the breeze cold on your back. Yes, you’ve been lucky.
