#blaseball minific

[thehallstara]

(hi minific moments)

Here’s the thing– you barely see the ump coming before they almost get you.

All in all, it’s a pretty nothing game; you’re losing, of course– the Magic had gotten three runs by the third and nothing since by either team. It’s fine in the way all of this is fine because it has to be; at least there’s no metaphorical sword at your neck this time.

Out of the corner of your eye, you spot it: a mass of silver lunging towards you sharp and swift. Fifty years ago it would have been muscle memory, but you’re older and tireder now, slower too, and so your bat barely makes it up in time to block the very real sword coming for your jugular.

Your feet slide on the damp grass, it’s a struggle to not lose your footing against the weight of them.

You manage.

(You think about young Tisha, out there on a quest somewhere, and Simon too. You think of Vela Alstott, dead on the ground just days before this. You think of yourself the last time you were in the shadows, drowning in immateria and then burning up with it.

You think of all this, and say: Not today.)

[fourteenfifteen]

deja vu

blaseball minific // 0.5k

light unreality cw

~

you can’t place where you know him.

dale pitcher, short and blue-haired. you don’t know when you would have met. you don’t think you’ve ever been to this side of the country (even when the salt-and-gasoline smell of it digs at something in the back of your head).

you know what his voice will sound like the second before it comes out of him. like he’s something that split off of you - you feel him like a phantom limb.

catching him looking at you is a foregone conclusion. him walking over to you isn’t, but for some reason you’re expecting it anyway.

“do i know you?” are the first words out of his mouth. your team is fielding behind him. you aren’t pitching today, which begs the question of why you’re even here.

“do you?” you respond.

“edric tosser.” like you wouldn’t have caught his name when he went up to bat or read it off the back of his jersey. “you don’t actually go by baby, do you?”

other people have asked that, but somehow this feels different. “ruthless, mostly.”

edric’s eyebrows shoot up. “is that a joke?”

“are you a joke?”

he laughs. the world tilts with deja vu. “nice to meet you, ruthless. there’s no way we’ve met, i’d fucking remember you.”

“well, where are you from?” the suggestion that you may have met after all makes you feel like you’re showing your hand - ridiculous, since you don’t have one to show.

he gives you a look, then says, “joliet, illinois. near chicago.”

chicago. that’s something. you- you don’t-

you haven’t been there. except for games. never mind the way it shook in your chest when you were there, never mind the way you didn’t once open the maps app on your phone that whole series.

he’s looking at you expectantly. “san francisco,” you reply.

edric hums. “lucky you, falling close to home.” you give a noncommittal grunt. “or not?”

“not interested in going back.” that’s more than you’ve said on the subject to any of the garages, but he doesn’t need to know that.

“fair enough.” he hesitates. “this might be weird, but… does any of this ever seem familiar to you?”

this - blaseball. a game you’d never played before and yet somehow know everything about. books and umpires and lines your brain wants to draw between them. cities you recognize, people you recognize, lives you recognize but never lived.

“maybe,” you say, and you can tell on his face that he knows what you mean.

he pauses, looking at you hard, and then looks away. “right. well, we’ll see.” edric glances over his shoulder. “i should… i’ll leave you to it. let me-“ he tears a scrap off a paper stapled to the dugout wall and scribbles on it. “if you ever want to text me. not trying to hit, just- well, i don’t know.”

“right.” you don’t text people usually, but, fuck it, you might.

“right,” he echoes, already turning to leave. “see you around.”

[waveridden]

mike and lenny + bagels

“I grew up in New York,” Lenny says exasperatedly, “which means that I’m allowed to have mean girl opinions about bagels, and just because you’re making your own doesn’t mean they’re going to be better.”

Mike hums and doesn’t stop kneading the dough as he says, “Mine are made with love, so quit being a brat about it.”

Lenny kicks him in the shin. “Bagels aren’t supposed to be made with love, they’re supposed to be made in New York.” She pauses. “And with sesame seeds, so unless you have some hiding somewhere-”

Without even looking up, Mike reaches under the counter and picks up a tub of sesame seeds.

[bluntforcefem]

there once was a stuffed cat who lived happily with the girl who had gotten them for a present. they were a soft calico—colors faded with time, and joints aching with worn seams, but held just as close as when they were new.

one day, the girl's father had to move for his job. the move was sudden, and unexpected, so the family had to rush to pack. in all the chaos, the little stuffed cat was left on the porch, and left behind.

they sat there for what felt like years, as the seasons and weather passed them by. the porch was only so much protection, but they stayed. the stuffed cat didn't know where their family went; the stuffed cat wouldn't even know where to start.

but then they felt a call, from somewhere very far away. the stuffed cat knew that must be where their family went, and so they mustered up all their strength, and made their little cloth-and-stuffing limbs walk.

it was a long walk. people that the stuffed cat didn't recognize occasionally offered them a ride, if they saw them on the side of the road. the stuffed cat had no way to talk, and so they kept stubbornly walking, following the call.

after a long, long time, the stuffed cat arrived in chicago. the call did not tell them where their family's house was—the call stopped telling them much at all. but it told them they belonged here, and they listened.

their little cloth-and-stuffing limbs finally gave out. in their journey, their fur had become unrecognizable, a mottled, dirty brownish cream. there were tears in their fabric, and most of their stuffing had fallen out. the stuffed cat couldn't fix themself. they didn't know what to do, but wait again.

a tall figure appeared in front of them, her eyes kind and curious. “you've come so far to see them again,” she says. the stuffed cat dips their head forward in a nod. “but you're falling apart. you will not be here very long, unless... would you like to help them one last time?”

the stuffed cat nods again. the figure picks them up, hands careful with their damaged limbs, and smiles. “you are from chicago,” she tells them, “and you are loved. those will be enough.”

for a long moment, the stuffed cat cannot see anything past the blinding light of a fire.

and then:

“—replaced by socks maybe!”

the stuffed cat opens their eyes. they are no longer a stuffed cat—they look more like their family, with an outfit like their girl's dad used to wear, in different colors. the jacket, puffy and covered in patches, is new. the call is a quiet thrum in the back of their head.

you will play blaseball, it tells them, discordant yet soft. socks blinks, slow. you will see them again someday.

socks is not sure how to stand, or how to bat. the voices around them are loud, and they can make a voice of their own. it's overwhelming.

but they want to go home. so they'll play.

[bread--quest]

21 22 23 :3

21. a fic about a little-known player

maybe a little less player little more team but personally i'm always incredibly curious to know more about the ohio worms so i'm going to recommend my excellent friend rain @suitablysolemn's minific for the second day of blasetober, certified blaseball moment!! it's an excellently riveting Splorts Story about the little wiggly team that could and a really epic game you might not have heard of. love da worms baby

22. the fic i’m proudest of (if i’m a writer)

so i already answered this once but this is probably the answer i would have given if i'd only gotten this question once. how to read a map. do you want 3000+ words of semi-surrealism about season 24 and stories? do you want to cry about blaseball? do you want to see your team get referenced? yes you do. please read my fic it has all those things (crying may vary based on personal individual but i have it on authority this has elicited tears from at least a few eyes)

23. my favorite fic about the vault

*excited wiggling* YESSSSS yess YESSSSS!!!!! this is kind of cheating because it's about my own blaseball oc, but it's also not really because SOMEONE ELSE WROTE A FIC ABOUT THEM AAAAAAA. go read forever in a day, which is about the Vault, and also about its assistant/creation wyatt mason xix, aka sunny!!! it's by @polyboros and it makes me so ecstatically happy

[mudkept]

noooooo 1am blaseball minific pit...stop that...ouchy...ouch

[charaznablescanontoyota]

yes i am restraining myself from requesting bizarre rarepairs from everyone doing the blaseball minifics

[leonstamatis]

hmmmm 15 for laynaconrad maybe??

15. washing the other's hair

(all credit for this conrad twelve, supernatural magnet and trucker, goes to hen @fourteenfifteen)

By now, Layna knows a bad day when she sees one.

In the Hellmouth, it was the black, smoky haze of wandering too close to the edge, the burnt skin and chapped lips of too much time in the desert sun, exposure to something dangerous. In Boston, it was the dazed look of someone who'd wandered down the wrong street and found themself in a pocket dimension or a time anomaly - or someone covered in poison ivy, if the Garden was in a particular mood.

Seattle isn't consistent, though. Bad days range from coming home soaked through with icy rain to the tired, starved eyes of someone who wandered through the labyrinthine tunnels of the Big Garage for too long.

Today, Conrad stumbles into her apartment in a shirt that is more coffee stain than fabric, hands shaking and pupils narrowed to pinpricks. Sweat beads on hir forehead and ze smells, overwhelmingly, of pastries.

"Oh no." Layna sets down her own mug -- mint tea, thank goodness, she doesn't have to dump it out. "The place on South Hudson?"

Conrad drops down at the kitchen table and lets out a shaky sigh, running one hand through hir damp hair. "Yes. Bitches wanted me to try their cold brew. Said it'll feel like time stops moving."

Layna fights back the urge to smile. "Did it?"

"Depends. What day is it?"

"Wednesday, the twenty-second. You left for a grocery run four hours ago."

Conrad slumps until hir forehead rests against the wood of the table. "Fuck. Groceries."

"I wouldn't worry about it," Layna says, easily enough. "We can order takeout for tonight. I'll run out for supplies tomorrow, since you're apparently prone to waltzing into establishments determined to ruin your day."

She'd seen the new cafe, too. The baristas had smiled at her with perfect, pearly teeth and well-manicured nails. But Alaynabella had heard it, too, when they called her inside. Under their words was a hissing, sneaking thing, something that wanted to steal her away to a place she couldn't return from. Suddenly, the baristas' teeth had seemed just this side of too sharp, and their nails looked a little more like claws.

She'd tried to teach Conrad to see through those sorts of things. But even when ze could see the traps, there wasn't any avoiding them; either Conrad would walk into this cafe and endure their brand of torment, or the grocery store would be swallowed by eldritch horrors on hir way through the parking lot.

Conrad is still silent, still leaning heavily against the table. Layna finishes off the remainder of her tea and comes to stand behind hir, running her hands over the tense line of hir shoulders.

"You smell like burnt sugar," she says, wrinkling her nose.

Conrad sighs. "I don't ever want to see another crepe."

"We can arrange that." Layna moves her hands up Conrad's neck, fingers carding through hir hair. It's grown a little longer than ze likes, but it means Layna can pull the gentle curls apart with her fingers. "Come on, you should get cleaned up."

Conrad finally sits up, tilting hir head back until ze can look up at Layna, eyes still bloodshot but gaze tired. "You gonna help with that?"

Layna hums. "We can arrange that, too."

They move slowly, quietly. But the bathroom isn't all that far and Conrad isn't wearing much anyway, so it doesn't take long for the two of them to get comfortable: Layna seated on the edge of the tub, shower head in one hand and soaps arranged nearby, Conrad in the basin between her legs.

"How's the water?" she asks, running her nails over Conrad's scalp.

Conrad sighs and brings a hand up to rest on her knee. "Fine."

Alaynabella Hollywood has had her fill of being the go-to for supernatural entities of all kinds. The Big Garage may whisper and the baristas may beckon, but she closes her eyes and pushes past it. It's not her problem, not anymore. Except...

Except that Conrad very much is her problem, in a "found a stray cat in need of a bath and a good meal" kind of way. In the bustling aftermath of the Gachapon, everyone had been so busy assigning living spaces that no one seemed to notice hir at all. Staring off down a tunnel of the Big Garage, a tunnel that glowed a hazy, underwater blue. Ze'd taken a step forward, then another, and Layna couldn't stop herself from running forward and yanking hir back by the wrist.

The mark of her claws still lines Conrad's skin, a thin bracelet of pink. It had been accidental, instinctual; Conrad hadn't even flinched.

Layna traces one finger along the line now, leaving a trail of suds and warm water in her wake. Conrad sighs at the touch, and the corner of hir mouth twitches up in the ghost of a smile. The water runs over hir head and down the drain, washing everything from coffee brown to beige to clear and clean.

[thehallstara]

more minific moments bc blaseball is coming for the jugular this week so have some baby ruthless pov (cws for incineration/death, grief)

You can feel it before you actually hear about it; in the subtle rumble of the bricks beneath your feet, the way the rafters start to shake. It reminds you just a little too much of the day that Josh died, and that’s why you start to run.

On your way out of the dugout, you barrel into Hank head on, who stumbles back a few feet with the weight of you. Steadying your shoulders, you know he can see the panic in your eyes, the fear in your chest, and it stings even worse.

“Rue,” he says, voice low but steady, “what’s going on? Everything okay?”

You shake your head, unable to get the proper words out. “Something’s wrong, I can feel it.”

You don’t say the truth you know to be real at this point: by wrong, you mean dead.

He glances towards the field, uneasy. “I’m sure no one will notice I slip away for a minute,” he wavers, though you can both see the two outs on the board even from here.

The shaking’s gotten more noticeable in both you and the building, and you haven’t felt an urge to run this strong in many decades.

“No,” you say, slipping past him, “I’ll be right back.”

“Rue!” He yells, but you’ve already broken into a sprint and you don’t turn back because you need to get out of here before they announce it, you can’t– you need to see it for yourself first.

Here’s the thing. You know this building better than anyone on the premises; fifty-odd years will do that to a person. These are the stones and bricks you grew up with, in every sense but literal, and so your feet take you exactly where you need to go.

You barely make it to the door of the garage before you’re stumbling, tripping over your own two feet as a cry confirms your worst thoughts.

On the wall you see it: Rivers Rosa in shades of glass, sitting perpendicular to Tyreek Olive. You take one heaving breath, and then your  legs are giving out.

And it’s that position Hank finds you in after the game, eyes still glued to the window.

[thehallstara]

(hello tumblr have a brief late night nerdfamous moment)

“Is this what waiting for ascension felt like?”

A quiet room, your head on their chest. Slow breath catching in their throat; a pause.

“A little bit, probably. A little different, too. Back then, we didn’t know what would happen. Now…”

“Yeah.”

“Are you scared?”

“Less than I thought I would be? It’s just… It’ll either happen, or it won’t. We made our choice and we stuck with it and now we wait, for better or worse.”

“Mmmm.”

“I… I think you should go spend the election with Spears, maybe. Or at home.”

“I can handle–“

“Famous. It’s for me, okay? I need you not to be here, I can’t deal with that. So go wherever and sleep through it, and I’ll call you once it’s through. And if I can’t–“

“Don’t say that.”

“And if I can’t, you’ll go find Spears or Dunlap, okay? Promise me.”

“I…”

“Famous.”

“Okay.”

“…Good.”

[waveridden]

reflections in glass w the Van’s Haunted crew?

“So is it just you?” Lenny asks. She’s lying on her back, feet braced against the wall of the van. “Like, should we be aware of more ghosts haunting our van, or is it just you?”

“Your van?” Derrick repeats before he can stop himself. She’s obviously trying to bait a reaction out of him, and he hates that it’s working, but seriously, her van? “Just because you stole it-”

“What, are you gonna drive it?”

“I live here!”

“Well, you’re not paying for gas, so-”

“I’m paying for gas, actually,” Chorby says. “So I think it’s my van, if that’s how it works. And I want to know how haunted it is.”

“I don’t think what I do counts as haunting,” Derrick says. “I’m really just hanging out here because there’s nowhere else to go.”

Lenny cuts a glance over at him. “What do you think haunting means? I’m not saying you have to do any scary ghost shit, although it was very scary when you just popped up one day and asked if you could have some of my fries-”

“It’s my van, I get fry tax!”

“Our van,” Chorby says, in what she probably thinks is a peacekeeping tone of voice. “All three of us, together, get van dibs. How’s that?”

Lenny looks pointedly at the windshield. Derrick meets her eyes through the reflection — windows are easier than mirrors, for some reason, and he likes that. Makes him feel a little more solid. He has new rules to play by now, and those rules involve prolonged eye contact with Lenny Marijuana in the windshield of the van.

“My van,” Derrick says.

Unfortunately, Lenny says faster and louder, “He can’t own it because he’s a ghost.”

“I’m going to get better at haunting just to make your life miserable,” Derrick says sourly. Lenny laughs in his face.

[waveridden]

55 with van's haunted crew?

55. finding old photographs you’d forgotten about

“Is there gum in here?”

“Why-” Derrick stares. “Why would you want any gum that was left in here? It’d be so gross.”

“Chorby leaves gum places sometimes, maybe you noticed her doing it.” Lenny pops open the glove box and starts rifling through it. “And I could use some- holy shit.”

“What?” Derrick pops up and looks down. “What’s-”

The words die off immediately. She’s holding a polaroid, one that’s a little yellow around the edges from being in the glove box for a while. He forgot that he put it in there, actually.

It’s… well, it’s him. And Mike, and Tiana. They’re all in the Big Garage kitchen together, Mike making something (cake? was it someone’s birthday?) and glaring at Derrick, who’s practically sideways on the counter trying to stick his hand in the batter to taste. Tiana’s on the counter laughing at both of them. He can’t remember who took the picture — Shaq, probably, or maybe Tot or Luis or something.

He can’t take his eyes off of Tiana, the way her shoulders are hunched up around her ears. He can’t take his eyes off Mike, the furrow between his eyebrows, how relaxed he looks.

“Wow,” Lenny says quietly. He’s expecting her to say something about Mike, but to his surprise her fingers brush against him in the photograph. He looks ridiculous, one of his legs kicked back behind him comically. His own face is blurry in motion. He doesn’t like looking at it.

“I know,” he says, trying to lighten the mood. “My hair looked like shit.”

“Still looks like shit,” Lenny mutters, but her heart’s not in it, he can tell. “What’s this from?”

“I don’t know,” Derrick admits. He wonders if Mike would. He’s the only person left who would.

[waveridden]

59 for randy emmett and nagomi?

59. orange sunsets

“I always thought Hellmouth sunsets look different,” Randy says.

Nagomi makes a quiet noise that Emmett parses as [agreement, waiting for more input]. They’re learning all of these: the intimate gestures, the things that they overlooked at first. Emmett is learning not to overlook them anymore.

“Like, maybe it’s a city thing,” Randy continues. “Obviously it’s different in New York, and in Connecticut or wherever Gomi’s from-”

“Boston,” Nagomi says. The smoke on the side of her face flares up, but her voice is not [strained, frustrated], it is [strained, hiding laughter]. Randy can tell too, because he smiles.

The three of them are sitting at a jagged cliff’s edge. There’s something [venomous, deadliness unknown (likely high)] at the bottom. Emmett doesn’t bother with knowing what exactly it is, because the venom won’t hurt them, and they’ve learned by now that Randy and Nagomi don’t appreciate being told when things are deadly. The two of them, they prefer holding their lives in their own hands.

After a second, Randy looks over at Emmett. “Have you seen a lot of sunsets? What do you think?”

Emmett sees 15,293 sunsets flashing through their mind’s eye at once. They ignore all of them and look at the sunset in front of them, orange and looming as it sinks beneath the teeth and crags of the hellmouth.

“[Big],” they say at last, and both Randy and Nagomi smile.

[waveridden]

Van’s haunted + 41?

41. a door closing

It’s not that Derrick worries about Lenny and Chorby. Worrying is pointless, considering that he’s pretty much stuck to the van. And for another thing, he doesn’t always notice when they visit. He’s a busy guy. Sleeps a lot. So it’s completely normal that he hasn’t seen them for a few months. Nothing to worry about.

Still, he notices right away when the back doors swing open. “Finally,” he says, sitting up just enough that he can see Lenny. “Where have you been? And where’s-”

He only gets a flash of the look on her face before she swings the doors shut. And something in that moment, that heartbeat of honesty, is enough to make his stomach drop.

Derrick doesn’t venture outside the confines of the van very often, but he pokes his head out. “Lenny?” he says cautiously. “What happened?”

She’s sitting with her back against one of the tires, knees pulled up to her chest. She doesn’t look at him, and so he decides not to look too closely at her.

“Did you know,” Lenny says at last, “that players can come out of the shadows too?”

Derrick’s quiet as he processes this. The answer, of course, is no: he didn’t know about the shadows until he was dead, and he knows about as much as Lenny does about how the shadows work, which is to say jack fucking all. But there’s something about the way she looks right now, the stiffness in her neck and her fingers fluttering against her leg, that makes him think she doesn’t want to hear that.

Blaseball is evil, he thinks. Blaseball takes people away, kills them, erases them, rewrites them. But she doesn’t need to hear that right now either.

“That means there’s hope for you yet,” he says at last. It doesn’t quite hit the mark, he doesn’t think. But she doesn’t burst into tears either, so, whatever, small victories.

[waveridden]

any garages of choice + hotel rooms for the 3 sentence meme!

The hotel room assignments have been the same since the beginning, something that Teddy insisted on - Mike thinks it’s less out of stern captainly duty and more because he just doesn’t care enough to change anything, not that it matters much one way or the other.

In the beginning it was him and Jaylen, and the two of them would stay up late before games where neither of them pitched, watching movies or writing intentionally shitty songs; then it was him and Derrick, listening to some new band one of them discovered, getting high and talking about nothing and everything.

Now it’s Henry, and for the first time Mike thinks he’d rather bunk alone.

[waveridden]

sebastian/mike and 19 bc townseb has been living in my head rent free since you talked about them & they make me emo

19. things you said when we were the happiest we ever were

“I could never get the hang of baking,” Sebastian admits.

“Cooking’s an art, baking’s a science,” Mike says serenely. He doesn’t even pause in kneading his sourdough. Sebastian is not allowed to touch the sourdough. Apparently it’s a whole... thing, for him. Which is fine, because Seb’s perfectly content to watch Mike in his element. He’s focused and content, and it’s kind of incredible to see.

“I could be a scientist,” he says, trying to sound mockingly upset. “I’m incredibly smart, you know. A genius.”

“Whatever you say,” Mike intones, and Sebastian grins. “If it helps I’m not much of an artist.”

“You cook just fine, shut up.”

Without even turning, Mike grabs a fistful of flour and throws it in Sebastian’s general direction. Most of it dissipates in the air, but some of it hits Seb’s face, and he splutters indignantly. “Mike-”

“Can’t do that when you’re cooking,” Mike says smugly.

“Can do it when you’re spectating,” Seb says. Mike looks up just as he scoops some flour off the counter and throws it straight at his face.

“Huh,” Mike says, and takes off his glasses. Sebastian laughs, bubbling up before he can stop it. It just looks ridiculous, his whole face covered with flour except the area around his eyes. Mike shakes his head. “You’re a goddamn menace.”

Seb leans one hip against the counter. “What are you gonna do about it?”

“Finish kneading my sourdough,” Mike says dryly, but his eyes are sparkling.

Sebastian hums and leans in. “What about after that?”

Mike turns and leans in. Sebastian holds his breath, and Mike’s lips brush over his, just faintly, just for a second. When he pulls back he’s smiling, wide and breathtaking. “After that,” he says, “is the fun part.”