content warnings; talk of car crashes
+ ALSO, angst. This isn't really a happy soulmate au.
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(Mike, 2014)
Everybody always gets caught up in the different ways that they could've found out about their soulmates. It's a mixed bag out here, so some people see the world in black and white until they meet theirs, then it turns to color. Some people have the matching birthmark. Some people even have the cool countdown that ticks down the seconds until they meet for the first time. But Mike's none of the cool ones. His mom had been one of the ones who has the first words that their soulmate will say to them on their arm. That's how she ended up sleeping with his dad even though Dave Grissom already had a wife and a kid. Nine months later, Mike popped into the world, sans arm writing, cool birthmarks, and with every color of the rainbow available to him.
He went through all the fun stages of trying to figure out whether or not he was broken. Eventually, Google became a thing, forums popped up, and people started talking more about another subset of mates out there. Mates who met and saw, in near perfect clarity, the moment that their mate would leave them. Mates like that got a glimpse of the future and figured out then if being together was something that they actually wanted to try.
Lucky Mike, right? One day, he'd meet some smoking babe, see exactly how she would break his heart, and have to make the choice of whether or not to go through with it. But the thing that the forums didn't mention is that this flash thing takes pictures into account too. It's not just one quick glimpse of the future when your eyes meet for the first time. Flashes can happen for every picture, every video, that you see up until you two actually meet in person.
First time Mike sees Ginny is in some video on Twitter. 2014, she's barely legal, curly hair tucked under her baseball cap, lips pursed, jaw set, and he gets this quick glimpse of her lashes fluttering down, her breath against his beard, they're forehead to forehead, and she says, "You've got an early flight."
Mike's actual head throbs instantly, and he closes the video without looking again. Pushes off from the couch and dumps the rest of his beer down the drain. He even grabs a water bottle from his mini-fridge for good measure. Whatever this is, he tells himself, he doesn't have to give into it. Doesn't have to waste another second on some little daydream about a wanna be athlete who'll barely make it beyond a trivia question.
But the next day, she's all over the locker room. The guys pass around her picture on their phones before the game, and every time it passes him, he gets these twinges - bad headaches and flashes of a girl as an island doing that thing that they're not supposed to name; flashes of a bunt (what an asshole) that fucks everything up; he hears this crunch of bone and ligament that there's no way in hell he could actually hear if he's supposedly out on that field too. And up above them, Al tells the whole world that Ginny Baker's easy on the eyes, that the guys would love to have her with them, and the cheers barely cover the rush of wind that zaps out of Mike when her picture pops up on the live screen down there.
His knees practically give out with the feel of the damp dirt beneath them. The stadium around him winds up in a frenzy, somewhere between screams and whatever strangled cries lodge in their ribcages and make breathing damn near impossible. Mike stumbles over to his seat then and doesn't talk until he can breathe again, until he stops feeling grass under his fingernails and can shake off the feeling to lift this woman he doesn't even know into his arms - knee pain be damned, he can ice them in her hospital room if he has to, he has to get her out of there, he's not gonna stand by and watch her cry, not when he could -
Blip kicks Mike's shin in the locker room. Mike keens like a dog, but it brings him back to the moment.
"You good, Cap?"
Mike nods. Scratches at his beard and turns around so he can't see the TV anymore. "Stop staring and get ready," he barks out to the room. "Look at her on your own time, boys."
Sonny laughs. "Like you don't want to look."
"I'm married." And his wife probably won't take too well to the fact that he's definitely having visions of someone else. Not that he and Rachel didn't think this was possible. They'd talked about it back before the wedding, how neither of them had a soulmate and believed that all of that mattered. How his mom had been abandoned by hers, so what was the point in putting any stock in what fate thought would be good for them? And now it's only more real. Fate couldn't have given him a soulmate his own age? Fate couldn't have chosen someone who doesn't spend half her time grimacing at every camera pointed her way? The girl barely smiles, and when she does, it's that half-smirk she does after one of her screwballs. It snags the sun and pockets it in her dimple and buries every spare ray it has in the lines of her lips. And no, he's not staring when he sees pictures. He can't stare when his brain's turning to goo inside his skull. He just somehow, he doesn't know, he just knows that it does that.
"Doesn't mean you can't look. Sanders, tell him."
Blip shakes his head. "Ginny hates people staring at her. Always has, always will. Just let it go."
Mike starts in his chair. "You know her?"
"Did three years with her." Blip turns quick back to the rest of the room. "And, no, I'm not giving any of you horndogs Ginny's number. Evie would kill me. So'd Ginny's manager."
Mike laughs, but the sound comes out hollow. Comes out like every question he's forming keeps cutting through the part of him that wants to reach for humor. Blip knows Ginny Baker. Blip's met and worked with, spent three whole years beside Mike's so-called soulmate. Evelyn knows her too, which only means that maybe this isn't just some bad joke. Maybe... if Ginny's popping up in their interviews, and she knows his friends, then maybe he really is supposed to know her too. Maybe -
"Lawson!" Oscar pokes his head into the room. "Rachel's out here."
Right. Right, right, right. Mike gets up off his seat and grabs his bag. Maybe doesn't matter. Maybes are dumb dreams and fantasies. Bed times stories for people who need a reason to be miserable and hold out forever. Excuses to never really live. But Mike has a life, and a wife, and all of that's real.
Besides, he's had at least two different distinct visions of Ginny Baker supposedly leaving him. What's the point in having a soulmate if all you do is lose them? Mike's already lost his dad, practically before he even had him, so the thought of having something that's gonna disappear and leave him aching doesn't exactly inspire him to care very much about actually getting to know Ginny Baker.
He tells himself that over and over again. The whole walk out, and again once he wraps his arm around Rachel, and again as they settle into bed and he rolls away from her grip to lay on his back and stare up at the ceiling. Soulmates are dumb. Ginny's a joke. He's fine right here with his life. That's the mantra. That's the plan.
(He spends the next day scrolling through Ginny Baker's new Twitter page; Aspirin on the bedside table, water next to that, and a quick eye for avoiding new pictures. The plan still holds. He's just a little curious is all. The kid's got talent. Too bad she's gonna blow out her arm though.)
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(Ginny, 2001)
Somehow trips to the mall with her mom always wind up in weird territory. Not physically, because physically they pop into a few girly stores before Ginny undoubtedly steers them over to where she can get new sneakers for her runs and a few more pairs of socks since hers never seem to last very long without hers wearing down. No, the weird territory usually comes from whatever her mom's musing about at the time.
Like that one time that her mom couldn't stop wondering about what Will was going to be when he grew up. And Ginny had nothing to contribute to that conversation since Will mostly just brought her snacks while she was training and sometimes pretended to fight with her so she had a good excuse to run up and hide in her room.
But today, all her mom wants to talk about are soulmates. Ginny blames Forever 21. They've got these awful jackets that seem cute and normal, but the back says, Want to see my mark? Now all her mom wants to talk about is soulmate this and soulmate that.
"Before I met your father, my whole world was black and white." She smiles to herself, but it doesn't light her up all the way. Like it got muted somewhere inside of her. "Even now, the world still revolves around those colors. Baseball's everything to that man. I swear, sometimes I think his world colored in once he laid eyes on a ball for the first time." She laughs when she says it, but something rough lives under those words. Something echoes in her eyes that makes Ginny's mouth dry up and her arms itch to wrap around her mom.
Ginny's always had color. Sometimes, she wonders about what it could be like to never see the green of the grass, or never see that perfect, cool gradient as ice melts in a drink and new shades blur right before your eyes. But the color helps. Helps to see the tiny change in hue in a batter's grip on the bat. Helps to pinpoint the flush of her mom's cheeks and know if it'll be a good day or a bad day when the family comes in for dinner.
"Maybe I'm like Dad," Ginny says. She doesn't have any of the other cool signs of having a soulmate, and having one would only distract her from the game. "Maybe it's the game and everything else second."
Her mom's shoulders droop down. Honestly, even her hair seems a little flatter at the thought of that. But what's so wrong about committing to something? What's so wrong about having a dream? Everyone always says that focusing on what makes you happy is the greatest thing you can do. And Ginny's spent her whole life being told she has to work twice as hard in everything - her schoolwork, her training, even just being a nice person who never gets too upset so that no one thinks she's one of the bad kids, which isn't even fair because she literally only plays baseball and does homework. She has no time for anything else. No time to be a bad kid, or a hoodlum, or even imagine anything beyond this life.
Her throat's getting itchy. She scratches it and hikes a thumb towards the new sports shop that opened last week. "Can we go in?" But she doesn't wait for an answer. It's not like she's avoiding looking at her mom again, but she just would rather look at something that doesn't look so disappointed in her. Her mom gets these shadows behind her eyes and her jaw lifts up just enough so that Ginny stares straight up at her nostrils, and it only happens when Ginny shows just how much like her dad she really is.
So Ginny wanders through the store until she finds a box of new rookie cards. The cashier tells her not to scuff them up, and her spine straightens instantly. She keeps her hands - both hands - in sight from then on and doesn't reach towards her bag after that.
Most of the cards pass through her fingers quick, but one makes her head spin and her chest tighten up. She can almost feel the scratch of his beard against her cheeks, then her chin, and the muscles above his eyebrow move against her forehead, and he breathes out a "Yeah," that somehow sounds apologetic and assured at the same time.
But if he's leaving, then this doesn't have to be it, does it? This doesn't have to be all that they are.
Ginny blinks though, and she's back in the shop in an instant. Cashier staring her down hard as she tries to separate whatever that just was from Mike Lawson's rookie card. He doesn't have a beard. He's old, sure, but not that old. And where could he be going that she would know about? What's going on? Why - Ginny whips around to ask her mom, and their eyes crash into each other. Something warm and grounded hangs in that stare. And her mom's got this tight hold to her cheeks that says that whatever moment Ginny just had isn't just a momentary day dream.
Her mom reaches out her hands, and Ginny passes over the card. His stats aren't that impressive, but he's got the makings of a good catcher. His number's thirty-six, not bad, easily divisible, which might be a weird thing to have in a number. Or note in a number. Ginny needs to note something other than whatever she'd felt though. Something that's not a glimpse of a bar sign and the chill of the night air against her exposed feet. Why was she wearing heels?
"Mike Lawson, huh?" Ginny's mom turns the card over in her hands. When she glances back up, a spark's in her eyes that hasn't been there in days. "Maybe there's something to be said about the game after all."
They wind up buying the card. Ginny sticks it in her wallet right behind her school I.D. card, but she never gets another flash from it.
She Googles him when she gets home, and the whole world rushes and crashes around her. Her pulse races. His name's on her phone screen - or will be on her phone screen; she doesn't even have a real cellphone at this point, so definitely future flash - and she ignores the call because of someone named Amelia?
Her dad calls her name. This part's real. This part's now. "Little girl! If you aren't down here in ten seconds, you won't be eating!"
"I'm coming!"
She closes out of the browser window. Shuts down the desktop for good measure. Whatever this is, it's not light stuff. Not something she should spend a lot of time on if she can help it.
And she can help it.
(She comes home a few weeks later to a rolled up poster on her bed. Mike Lawson, #36. Her arm burns, and her eyes tear up, and she cries out before she can stop herself. In real time, she hears Will rushing over from his room, she can see him as he reaches out to her, but most of her's trapped in whatever this other moment is. There's a game going on so no one can go with her in the ambulance. Will's gone. Dad's gone. She's all alone, and she can't stop crying over how fucking close she was to making history all over again.
She doesn't hang up the poster for another two weeks. Not until the phantom pains stop and she can look at the roll without wondering why everyone in her life seems to disappear when she needs them the most. What does Mike Lawson end up doing to her? And, most importantly, in that flash, was she pitching at Petco?
She's gonna be a Padre, isn't she? She's gonna be the first girl in the majors. She's gonna make history!)
/
(Mike, 2016)
By this point, he doesn't watch her interviews, doesn't read her articles, doesn't follow her on social media even when it's announced that she'll be joining the team. The last thing he needs is a play by play of whatever awful future they could have together. So he resolves that until they're actually up there on the grass at Petco together that he will avoid all things Ginny Baker. It's only hard if he wants to open his eyes.
Everywhere he goes, it's Ginny this, Ginny that. Even the groupies he takes home want to ask him about whether or not he's really going to have to a girl in the locker room. They want to know if they could go in there too if they tried real hard. He swallows down whatever part of him wants to make a comment about needing a lot more than just boobs to get in the locker room, but he's pretty sure it's Baker's boobs that help get her this fear. Boobs and whatever twisted fuck decided that he needed a kid as his soulmate. And, whatever, maybe a little bit of talent. Maybe some skill.
He gets ready quick on her first day. Soaks in his bath and stays out of the clubhouse. So when Mike Lawson sees Ginny Baker for the first time, in the flesh, they've got matching outfits down to the shoes. When Mike Lawson sees Ginny Baker for the first time, in the flesh, she meets his eye from where he's laughing and instantly pulls one leg up in a stretch. And when Mike Lawson sees Ginny Baker for the first time, he also sees the veins in her neck straining as she yells at him. Sees fierce, angry tears race down her cheeks, burning through deep scratches on the sides of her face. Sees the loose sleeves of her hospital gown ducking away with the force of her screaming for him to just leave her the fuck alone for once in his goddamn life.
He turns his empty chest into an echo chamber. Forces a laugh through and steers himself over to her since at least she won't freak out over how winded the glimpse makes him. Only she doesn't seem winded. Like she's practiced channeling what these moments do into something else, but her eyes are red-rimmed when they meet his, and he wonders for the first time if they have the same visions each time. Or if she sees a different future than he does.
"Look what we got here," he says, "Ginny Baker, in the flesh. You know you must be tired."
She rolls her eyes. "Because I've been running through your mind all day? Try again, that line's-"
"All day?" he scoffs. Plants his feet hip width apart and meets her stare dead on. "Try two years, Baker. I hope these visions stop pretty soon because I just seem like an asshole in all of mine. You seeing the same things I see?"
Her mouth opens and closes a few times. "Two years?" Her nostrils flare like she wants to pretend to be affronted, but he's seen her affronted. Seen the way she responded the first time someone asked her on live TV if she was only in it for the guys and which players made her top five list. (That particular interview cost him a vision of her storming out of the house, door slamming loud enough that he wondered if his glass house would shatter around him. Future him rushes for his car keys and meets her a block down from the house with a grumble about how he'll drop her off at Blip's.)
"Yeah, two," he says.
She drops her eyes to the grass. "Does everyone know?"
He circles his jaw. "Blip does." But she doesn't have a reaction to that, so he figures Blip probably knows from both sides by now. "So, keep up, Baker, how far are you?"
"I don't know." She rolls her shoulders back. "There was a crash and-"
So they're at the same point then. Nice to know it's synced up at least. "Great. Then we can get to it then. Hey, would it be inappropriate to say that you might be the second prettiest teammate I've ever had?"
There. Perfect way to knock her down a peg, prove that just because they're soulmates doesn't mean he's going to treat her any different than anyone else out here. So what if the whole world's obsessed with her? He doesn't have to be.
She plays her part well though. Settles away from whatever vision wanted her attention and comes back to the field. "It would." She processes a little further. "Second prettiest?"
"Yeah, I was in this charity softball game with DiCaprio. Beautiful eyes." Nothing like Ginny's in that first flash though; back when the worst way she left him was outside a bar, when every nerve in his body fired for her but his phone vibrated and the whole moment got left on the sidewalk.
Ginny blinks away whatever moment she'd been in. "Um, the crash." It sounds like the start of a sentence. "That's how far you've seen?"
"Into the future, yeah." He pops the gum in his mouth. "You and me in a car. Don't know when it happens. You barely ever seem to age, so it could be anywhere from now until the end of time. Guess we'll get there when we get there."
"You're not..." She shakes her head. "This isn't freaking you out, or anything? I had your rookie card. I mean, the first time I saw you, I was holding your card and nearly passed out."
"Well you survived. Now you can live out all your little fangirl dreams. But, uh, don't tell me how old you were. Makes me feel old." He pops the gum again. "Anyway, glad you're here. We could use you. Mind if we go over the hitters in the trainer's room?"
She stumbles over her words. "How are you so calm about this?"
He's spent the last two years working on this calm front. Smooth and collected and the gum absorbs the part of him that wants to shake until he's a pile of old bones and goo on the grass.
"It doesn't mean anything, Baker. Not to me anyway." Maybe it's the wrong thing to say. Her jaw sets to one side after he gets the words out. Her nostrils flare for real this time.
"Fine. Let's go over the hitters."
He leads the way, slaps her ass when he passes her backside. The other guys laugh from where they're at, but it's not like he hasn't done it to everyone. But Ginny doesn't take it as well as she should.
"Hey!" She stalks up after him, shoulders set and eyes square on his. He won't mention it, but it's nice to see her face and only see one copy of it. Nice to know this moment is real instead of some glimpse at something that might not even happen. "I don't know if this is some soulmate thing, or just the usual bullshit, but what, you think that's funny? You think you're the first teammate to slap my ass to get a laugh from his friends?"
"What, no, I-"
But she doesn't wait for anything else from him, just launches into some speech. It's a good one. Maybe they can make this a thing. Still, she says, "I've done two years winter ball and five years in the minors. I've done stints in shitholes you haven't seen in a decade, superstar. You want to put on a show for your friends, find another scene partner. I'm here to pitch. Any questions?"
She turns to go, but then she turns right back. "You know what, one more thing: I didn't come here because I want us to live happily ever after somewhere. I didn't get into this game so I could wear matching outfits with my boyfriend and be the pitcher to your sorry ass catching skills. My first love is and always will be for this game. If you play your cards right, stop being such an ass who cuts people off every time they open their mouth, then maybe you can come second and we can find out the good moments in between all the shitty ones we've been watching for fifteen years. But if this is how you want to be, then just let me know now so I can make sure to skip to the one where I don't come back."
"What?" The word slips out of him before any of what she's said has finished processing. Because when he thinks of their future, he's at a crash, and he's had two years of seeing them together. But she's had - she said fifteen years. As long as he's been a Padre, she's been seeing them break and shatter and splinter all over this timeline. She's - "What have you seen?"
Her jaw tucks in in the way he'll come to know means that she's got a better idea than he does. "Let's go over the hitters." She walks off. Calls out after herself, "And it better have been young Leo. Old Leo looks like a fish."
/
(Ginny, 2016)
She pulls damp fingers through her hair until her ponytail starts curling up around her. It's a shit habit to have, wetting and re-wetting her hair, but there's something immensely grounding about her hair responding to her. Little strands wrap around and pull in like being closer to her makes everything better somehow. And it works, normally. But normally, she isn't hiding out in the bathroom because her soulmate's exactly the kind of asshole she knew he would be. Normally, she's not gulping down air in an attempt to keep her breakfast from scorching its way back up her throat. Normally, she's not -
"Fuck!" Her scream echoes in the bathroom, but it's not like any other girls exist to care. Amelia's somewhere else, probably yelling at someone, and Ginny wouldn't have a good explanation for Amelia anyway. What would she say? That Mike's just now reaching a crash that she saw years ago? That while he's seeing scratches or whatever, she's seeing their fucking wrecked closet? Because here's the thing that Mike doesn't seem to know: he gets into nearly three separate crashes. To the point where Ginny has to be medicated, or hypnotized, to stay calm anyway near a car.
One's the crash he probably saw, where it's the two of them arguing after he stupidly told the whole world about her being pregnant. The next is a night where he's pissed and tries to drive off even though he's been drinking, and she refuses to leave the driveway, so he almost runs her over before getting out of the car and stalking off down the street in the rain. Then there's the big one, the bad one, the time she needs out and has Evelyn pick her up. And it's her and Ev in the car, halfway to Ev's place when Mike comes roaring up behind them. Ev brakes on a yellow, Mike doesn't, and the crunch of the metal's nothing compared to the sound of Mike's knees.
And after that one, it's all apologetic Ginny and every flash she has from there on has him in a funk, her trying to fix it and trying to have a career at the same time, and then there's the moment from earlier. When she saw Mike for the first time, and all she could see was him on the floor of their wrecked closet. Wheelchair turned over on its side, walker nearby bent to hell, kid wailing in the distance, and her opposite him with her hair still dripping down the front of her shirt. He wouldn't look at her, and all she could do was look at him. And his words to her were, "Pick him up, and we're done." And she'd seen herself get up.
And now there's no way to know how that turns out. No way to know if that's the time she leaves, or he leaves, or whatever when it actually sticks. No way but to live it. And how could living any of that actually be worth it?
She digs her nails into her scalp. Not hard enough to bruise, but enough to feel the pinch. Enough to remember that all of that other stuff hasn't happened yet. It doesn't even have to happen. She could leave sooner than the version of her in the visions. She could stay with the Padres long enough for her to be able to go somewhere else. Or just never take the stupid charity gig where they coach kids. Never sleep with Mike, even if the thought of that fucking beard has driven her crazy for the last fifteen years. She could get away.
But this game is all she's ever worked towards. This game is everything her dad gave his whole life for. She can't leave. She can't fight fate. She can't do anything.
The bathroom door creaks when it opens. Mike's got a hand over his eyes. He says, "It was young Leo. Old Leo's got nothing on you."
She snorts. He chuckles, low and maybe a little afraid.
She says, "I just want to pitch. That's all I've ever wanted."
"Then you'll pitch. Forget everything you saw. We don't - we don't have to do any of that. We won't go to a bar alone. We won't let you pitch a no-hitter. We won't volunteer with kids who want to grow up to be just like you."
He's trying to help, but that honestly sounds awful. The kids want to be her because she gives them something to root for. The kids should get to hope and dream and learn from their heroes when their heroes aren't awful human beings. And whatever bar they were at had her feeling warm and safe even as everything was supposed to change. And a no hitter hasn't been done by a Padre in forever.
Wait, a no-hitter? She never saw that.
"I pitch a no-hitter?"
He scoffs. "Almost, rookie. You throw out your arm on a bunt. I try to carry you out of there, but-" he slaps the hand not covering his eyes against the side of his knee, "-these guys don't like that idea much."
Yeah, they wouldn't, would they? "They last pretty long. You've got at least another three years before they give out on you."
He nods. "Nice to know."
"So we don't know everything."
"No way to know it all. But, we could try piecing them together. Figure out how to tackle problems before they even pop up."
They could change fate. They could... "We could make this work."
"Hey, Baker?" He takes a step into the bathroom. "Can I open my eyes?"
She takes a second to look in the mirror. Her cheeks are bright red, eyes a mess, and it's a good thing she's never been a fan of make-up because it'd all be shot if she did. But, all things considered, he's probably already seen her much worse.
She starts to say he can when she figures that there might be a better idea. She takes the few steps over to him. Watches the way his ears and cheeks perk up at the sound of her moving. His arms tense before relaxing. His fingers spread so he can peek through. She wonders if her eyes sparkle at him. Wonders if he sees her crossing now and imagines her at the bar, or some other moment.
Her fingers wrap around his as she pulls his hand down. Their eyes lock. Breaths mingle. And she borrows from that first moment and brings her forehead up to his. Muscles contract, and his beard scratches against barely there acne, and she probably shouldn't laugh the way she does. His eyes mist over before he closes them, and a tear tracks down his face until it crosses over to run down the rest of hers.
She tells him, "We've got to run the hitters."
He nods, but he stays right there with her, in this moment. "Yeah."
First, though, they've got a lifetime of bad memories to cover. A lifetime of good ones to find out about. And so what if the first time they kiss is in a clubhouse bathroom, they've already been through a hell of a lot worse.
/
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notes: Tell me how this was for you, friends, because i have a lot of feelings rn.
let me know if you could follow what was happenings in the flashforwards as well. I've got other moments that I wrote out for this verse, but only these four make the cut for what gets posted today for the official prompted one. future parts should have some happy and some re-working of show events + Blip and Evelyn