She keeps her hair pinned up under her hat most days. It is uncomfortable at best, the constant tugging at her scalp and pulling of her hat leaves her absolutely steaming—as if the guys making endless jabs at her through the day wasn't enough alone to put her in a foul mood. It is only ever the nights like these, really, when she lets her hair hang down her back. She takes ball after ball flung at her from the pitching machine and sends them arching down the empty field. It is only then that she begins to believe that she might not have completely destroyed her life.
She should be resting her arm—knows if their manager ever found out about her impassioned late night practices he'd have her goddamn head for putting her literal livelihood (and his good name) at the risk of a generally unreliable machine shooting balls at her face. But there is something about the late-summer air of the Midwest that she has grown (or perhaps been forced, though she'll never know which) to find solace in—the delicate way the warm breeze feels through her hair and the utter silence of the field she has become so used to forcing herself to tune out anyway… there is something that helps her hit her troubles further and further away with every satisfying crack of ball on bat.
Tonight, though, something in the air is different-tenser. It is all in her mind, and it is really only this that she is sure of, the game that should have been a remarkably easy close still haunting in the back of her mind, the rookie who'd stolen it from her at the last moment at the very forefront of it all. Jones. She can't manage to shove him out of her thoughts and her safe haven, and it only makes her swing harder-missing far more balls than she should.
She keeps the lights out, most nights, allowing her eyes to adjust slowly to the moon—catching flashes of white after every schwoop of the machine, only hitting perhaps one in five until her night vision kicks in and she finds her groove. Crack. Crack. Crack.
"Emma?"
She hears David before she sees him and her body gives a natural start in spite of knowing exactly who it is—narrowly missing a 90 mph sucker punch to her gut and cursing as the ball sails blessedly just past her.
"No, the other female baseball player on the team." She answers with probably a bit more snap to her tone than entirely necessary.
He has moved into her line of sight now and he laughs shortly at her sarcastic words as he approaches the pitching machine from behind, flipping it off without asking her permission.
"You shouldn't be out here after dark," he chides, with a shake of his head, crossing back towards her now with his arms crossed against his chest. "How the hell do you even see the balls?"
"That machine has got nothing on me. How do you see the balls I throw at your face?"
He is close enough now that she can catch the flash of white as he rolls his eyes, smirk still playing at the corner of his lips.
"That is not what I meant and you know it, Swan." He sighs again then, shaking his head. "Your luck never fails to amaze me. Humbert is working late tonight and he would've had your head if he found you out here."
"He doesn't scare me," she mumbles honestly, because the young manager might be the least intimidating person she has met in the baseball world (and she is not the only one who sees it, either—unfortunately for him).
"Nothing does," David answers with a bit of a laugh—but his expression is proud and honestly, Emma appreciates his endless support. "I'll help you pick up, but you have to go home once we're finished, alright? Early game tomorrow."
"Not like I deserve to be put in again after today."
He fixes her with a glare, then.
"Quit moping. Tomorrow is a new day."
xxx
"Bad day?"
Emma doesn't think she has slammed the door too particularly loudly—nor had she particularly expected her blonde roommate would still be up, wrapped in a powder blue robe and sitting on their couch with her eyes on the door in a way that tells Emma she might have been awaiting her return.
She shrugs instead of answering her friend's pitying smile, dropping her bag to the ground in the way Elsa hates, bats clanging ruthlessly through the otherwise near complete silence—something sounding oddly like running water still carrying a soft buzz through the air.
"I'm going to shower." Because my goddamn team won't provide me with one in-house because I have boobs and no dick.
"What time is your game tomorrow?"
She shrugs again, and it's a wonder really that her friend has managed to put up with her for so long. It'd been one thing when they'd first moved in together because they were also sleeping together. She had never been one for commitment but it was before she was signed to a team and she had hardly a penny to her name—it hadn't particularly been rocket science to accept her equally-broke girlfriend's proposal that they rent together. At least then at Emma's prickliest, they could round out any given day with a bang. It had only been out of a winning combination of mutual laziness and general apathy towards their breakup that they'd kept their living arrangements-a move that has so far worked to the best for them both.
Emma ignores her sigh as she moves towards Elsa's bedroom and the far superior shower, stopping abruptly when Elsa clears her throat, fingers brushing the handle.
"My uh…guest… is occupying my shower at the moment."
Emma sighs then, shifting slowly away from the door and forcing her attention and a rueful, dry smile at Elsa—head hung just slightly because she doesn't do smiles and it feels like such an unnatural pull but really, she's been a bitch.
"I'm sorry. Prickly." She owns up hesitantly and Elsa smiles back, softer still, and nods towards the television in front of her—and Emma groans, letting the smile fall swiftly from her lips because she knows just what that motion means.
"I watched."
"I really wish you hadn't."
"It wasn't that bad," Elsa concedes, but the corners of her lips twitch downwards in her awful, obvious tell and Emma groans again, louder.
"We lost to the fucking Cubs. No one loses to the Cubs. That is not a thing."
Elsa smirks at that, ducking her head sideways in a failed attempt to hide the response. Emma's eyes narrow into a glare and she cannot imagine what the hell her friend could find amusing.
"Statistically," she starts slowly, and Emma swallows yet another groan because really Elsa should be outlawed from following baseball, even if Emma is the one who got her into it in the first place, "the Cardinals lose more games to the Cubs than any other team."
"Do tell," Emma deadpans dully, and Elsa misinterprets, probably on purpose, entirely because she is the biggest asshole Emma has ever met—shy demeanor truly a foolproof cover for the beast beneath.
"They've been making pristine rookie picks."
"Their tongues sure as hell aren't pristine," Emma grumbles, loud enough Elsa can hear and give her a chiding sigh.
"We've already concluded all of your rivals are misogynistic assholes Emma. I obviously don't know how it feels to be out there getting catcalled and laughed at all day but it really would do you a world of good to just block them out. Maybe if you focused on the game, you'd be able to throw something Jones can't hit."
She presses the still aching wound with a hard stare and words that promise Emma that yes, she did indeed watch every awful moment of the game, and Emma nearly growls in annoyance-mention of the man a completely uncalled for invitation for the invading thoughts of those goddamn eyes to return happily to the forefront of her mind.
The water has stopped flowing and Elsa gets up from her spot on the couch, moving to pass Emma towards her door.
"Sleep, and let it go. You'll get them tomorrow."
xxx
As it turns out Humbert finds her perfectly capable of closing in spite of the absolute shit-show she'd put forth the day previous. He tells her in the locker room before the game when she comes out from the ducky shower curtains the guys had surprised her with on her second week.
("It's shit they don't think a second locker room is worth the money."
"Our star closer shouldn't have to change beside a urinal."
"Ducks, get it? For Swan?")
(She suspects it is in part because she has made the mistake of walking in on them in their underwear on occasion, which she finds with intrigue that they are particularly vulnerable infants about. But they are her team as well and where the other teams certainly don't accept her, she has given them no choice but to at least respect her).
(It is a process).
She's pulling her hair up into her hat when he comes in in a bit of a bustle, and she can hear the roar of the crowd momentarily slip into the room before the door muffles it out behind him.
"I need you to close it out."
He gives no preamble—short and to the point, a trait Emma has learned she greatly adores about her otherwise fairly soft-spoken coach.
"Oh?"
His features tighten slightly into a grimace and he lets out the slightest sigh.
"You haven't been watching post-show, then?"
She furrows her brow, sure it is a test because he has absolutely forbidden her from the practice since she put a rather inconvenient hole in a wall that apparently was on the opposite side of his office.
As if she'd known.
"Gold and I, we have a past," he mutters, referring to the Cubs less-than adored manager, "Obviously he is not particularly fond of us to begin with but he seems to have made it his personal mission to make our team out to be incompetent."
His accent thickens in a clear sign of his carefully contained rage, and Emma is quick to identify "our team" as her.
"So you want me to prove that I do, in fact, know my shit."
"That would be ideal."
She considers the smirk that came over the rookie who'd ended the game on her yesterday—a rugged scruffed, messy dark haired disaster with a permanently fixated twinkle in his blue eyes that quite clearly broadcasted just what hot shit he considered himself to be—and just the thought makes her blood boil.
"You're asking the right girl."
(If she passes him on her way out to the field for warm-up and grumbles something about looking forward to beating his ass it is really all a part of the game.
If he smiles at her with goddamn stars in his ocean eyes and tells her in a startlingly honest voice that it would be his ass's genuine pleasure to be kicked by such a talent-she might just pretend that it is all a part of the game, too).