Here is the final chapter of what has been a very long and personally-involved baseball AU. I am so glad people like it despite the length and setting. It just makes me very happy. Thank you to everyone who read, to Azertyrobaz for reviewing, to all those who may leave a review in the future, and, again, Kataoi for being my filter/proofer.
Three
It was her first major trade done as a general manager.
The Twins were eyeing two junior members of the Gallifreyans' bullpen, but were being shrewd with what they were willing to offer in exchange. Clara haggled intensely, not wanting to give up any of her boys without good cause. To her, they were worth more than a couple minor league vaguely-utility prospects and a draft pick in two years. It was really just a matter of convincing her opposition she knew the true worth of the contracts sitting in her hands.
In the end she got a spare outfielder, two pitching prospects, and an extra draft pick for later that month.
She really was very good at her job.
The clubhouse air was choked with tension. Nervously, the athletes watched from the locker room area while the Doctor and Clara stared one another down in the lounge. They waited, wondering who was going to crack first.
"Does your career have a death wish?" the Doctor asked, breaking the silence. "What on Earth possessed you to go through with that trade?"
"I don't know; does your career have a death wish with that quip you made earlier on the radio about the commissioner 'just needing a wank'? You do know Americans understand that, right?"
Shots fired.
"Oh, and here I thought you liked an honest man."
"What I like is a coworker who lays off and lets me do my job without causing more commotion."
"It's my job to worry about your job."
"If you're so worried and protective, then why don't you be the general manager and I'll stay home with the kids."
"You? A manager? That's like being the head coach, dear. You can barely recall which teams are in our division, let alone know anything about coaching."
"Oh yeah? Tell me: you want me to list them alphabetically, by age, or by current standing?"
It was always weird when the Doctor and Clara fought, because the members of the Gallifreyans could never tell if they were sarcastically flirting or not.
Calling a time-out, the Doctor glowered his way up to the mound. The pitcher, although taller than him, shrunk back slightly and the catcher had to force himself to even come within three feet.
"Kanzaka, what the fuck do you think you're doing?" the Doctor hissed under his breath, trying not to move his lips in case the cameras were on him. "Mendez signaled you a slider. You agreed on a slider. What did you just throw?"
"A change-up…?"
"You threw a fucking change-up, which just cost us a three-run shot and put us two behind. Do I look happy about that?"
"No…"
"What face is this, Kanzaka?"
"Um… your bollocking face…?"
"Yes. This is my bollocking face. Now give me the fucking ball and get the fuck off my mound before I change my mind and risk making the Powers That Be angry with me again, hmm?"
"Y-Yes, sir." The young man let the Doctor take the ball from his mitt and he slunk back into the dugout in embarrassment.
"Don't you dare tell your Mam I had to chew out Clark again," the Doctor said as he and the catcher waited for the relief pitcher to make his way from the bullpen.
"I think Miss Oswald will just be grateful you didn't shout this time."
"Fuck right she better be."
"Clara, how's it going?" the Doctor asked into his phone as he stared at the television set in his living room. On the screen was a roundtable of analysts making projections based on pure bias and empty conjecture. On the other end of the phone he heard discontented grumbling.
"All these gross old men keep on flirting with me… and when they aren't it's the gross young men. No one is taking either Susan or me seriously."
"It's a bleeding draft… you'd think they'd know when and where to pick their battles."
"I still wish you could have come with us—you'd scare them all away."
"You know I can't do that. You still have two more days there and I need to be on a flight to Seattle in the morning."
"Get Jimmy to manage; I thought that's what bench coaches were for."
The Doctor chuckled. "Stalkingwolf gets enough trouble out of me when I get ejected… he doesn't need me running off before a ten-game run on the West Coast."
"This makes me nervous, Doctor."
"You'll be fine. I've handled the kids while you're gone so far, so relax. Concentrate on the matter at hand and beat the Yanks at their own game."
"Thanks," Clara said. The Doctor couldn't see it, but he could hear the smile in her voice.
"What's that smell?" Clara asked as she let herself into the house. Instead of the residual smell of frozen dinners or reheated leftovers, the Doctor's house smelled strongly of garlic and rosemary and butter.
"I thought you needed something rewarding after getting leered at for four days while making some pretty decent contract negotiations, not to mention the fact that for some reason you tend not to eat on Wednesdays before you come over."
"What makes you think I don't eat?" Clara sat down at the kitchen bar and watched as the Doctor checked the contents of a simmering pot. He looked over his shoulder at her and frowned.
"You ate an entire tin of my good biscuits last time you were over on a Wednesday. If you're going to eat dinner while you're here, it might as well be a proper one."
"How abnormally kind of you," Clara smiled. She went to take her laptop from her bag and stopped. No, not yet. She put the bag down on the ground and nudged it aside with her foot. The Doctor walked around the kitchen island and put down on the bar two plates piled with chicken and seasoned rice and broccoli.
"Eat up," he said, sitting down next to her. Clara just marveled at the plate.
"There's no way I can eat all this! I guess you've absorbed more American habits than their slang, haven't you?"
"Just shut up and eat, okay?" the Doctor muttered through a forkful of food. "If you eat slowly, you can get in more. We've got all night."
At least she couldn't argue that point.
"Jaime? Jaime! Where'd you go?" Clara shouted into the offices. The social media manager popped out from behind a row of cubicles and looked at the general manager curiously.
"What's the matter, Clara?" he asked.
"You've got to look at this," Clara giggled. She took and dragged Jaime over to the window and pointed out over the field. "What do you see?"
"Uh… practice…?"
"Yes, but who's down there?"
Jaime was confused. Carefully, he squinted and tried to concentrate on the men darting around on the field. It took some time but one finally stuck out.
"Is that…?"
"Yes!"
"How on earth does he run like that…?" Jaime marveled. He watched in blank awe as the Doctor ran from second base to the warning track in center field, upright and gliding and leading with his wrists.
"I don't know, but I think it's time you learn how to put that mobile of yours to good use," Clara grinned.
Jaime never agreed to something quicker in his life.
The Doctor really did not know why they had to designate a day specifically for the players and staff to bring their kids in as a family day sort of thing. Quite a few of the members of the Gallifreyans were childless due to a combination of young bachelorhood and a lack of wanting to change their lives at home with their wives or girlfriends. Those that did have kids, however, seemed to make up for those that didn't, which meant that there were children everywhere, making it virtually impossible to practice. Not even all the kids were there at the park, since some of them were still out with whatever other relative took care of them for the day—how were there still so many kids despite them not belonging to the whole team?
"Remind me later to ask Clara why she thought this was a good idea," the Doctor mused aloud as he watched Clara lead around a gaggle of grade-schoolers around the outfield. Upton, one of the dads that had brought his kids that day chuckled and leaned up against the dugout wall.
"Oh, you'd understand if you had kids," he smirked. "I'd rather let them run around like that for a few hours and let my fielding practice run late than tell them they can never come with me to work. How many kids can seriously say their dad's a professional athlete?"
"Not enough, based on that swarm," the Doctor frowned. As he watched, there was something different about Clara that he could not put his finger on that made her seem so… different. The way she carried herself and talked did not seem normal. He kept on staring, trying to figure out what it was that made her look so… so…
"She's good with kids, huh?" Upton said. The Doctor snapped himself out of his gaze.
"Huh?"
"I said she's good with kids, isn't she?" the outfielder repeated. "Just look at her face; she's in the wrong profession."
"So that's what that is? Being good with kids?" the Doctor asked. Upton shrugged.
"For the most part, yeah. It's a good trait to have… well, someone has to be and Mom's usually a solid bet."
"…and what the fuck is that supposed to mean…?" The Doctor glared at Upton, who had a cocky grin on his face.
"Nothing, Dad. Absolutely nothing."
It was early in the morning and the Doctor had come in to get some work done. He had even gone down to his clubhouse office, knowing the majority of the athletes wouldn't be in until at least ten. Everything was nice and quiet and peaceful until…
"Fantasy…?" Clara asked, slightly confused. "Why do you need to pretend to manage a baseball team if that's already your job?"
"The difference is that you don't trade, at least my league doesn't, and you can draft players on your team that would never be able to be together in real life. You could have a team whose contracts are worth more than the previous three White Sox's payrolls combined in one, if you're lucky, and the points you get are all based on the real players' performance." The Doctor looked across his desk at Clara, who seemed to be piecing rationality of the pastime together. "It's a lot like what you do, crossed with what I do, but is easily elevated to an obsessive level."
"It's like what we do? Really?" she asked. The Doctor shrugged.
"Yeah. I can bring up the office league if you want and show you."
"Oh, please do! This sounds interesting."
The Doctor quickly turned to his computer and logged in to the website Jaime had set up with the office league. He was about to turn the monitor towards Clara when she appeared next to him, leaning on the desk and staring at the screen.
"So, uh, this is it…" he said. Clara took hold of the mouse and scrolled, bending in half so to easier read the screen. Her eyes were locked on the page, processing, absorbing.
"Hmm… interesting…" she said. Without taking her eyes off the screen, she sat down in the Doctor's lap. He leaned back, trying to figure out a way to shove the captivated woman off without actually physically touching her.
A few minutes passed and the sweet sound of the clubhouse doors opening graced the Doctor's ears. He watched out the open door of his office, waiting for someone to walk by. Sure enough, the bench coach nearly walked in but looked up from his phone in time to see the Doctor with a panicked look on his face and flailing his arms to try to signal for help. The bench coach bit the inside of his lips and thought quickly.
"Clara…?" he squeaked. Clara snapped out of her daze and looked up at him.
"Yes, Jimmy?"
"Miss Foreman was asking for you when I came in. I think she wants to talk to you about something."
"Oh, thanks! I wonder why she didn't just call…" Clara said. She stood up and walked out of the office without another word. The bench coach looked at the Doctor and opened his mouth to question what had just happened, but the Doctor cut him off.
"We are never speaking of this, you hear me?"
"Uh…"
"Never."
"Okay…?"
"Ramón, what is this?" the Doctor asked, gesturing to the five-year-old clung to his leg. The shortstop put on a cleat and shrugged.
"My wife asked if I could bring him, since I ride the bench today," he explained. "I hope that's alright."
"Are you my grandpa?" the little boy asked the Doctor.
"No," he frowned. "What makes you think that?"
"Daddy comes home and talks about having a mom and dad at work. You kinda look like one of my other grandpa's friends."
"I am not your granddad," the Doctor frowned. He picked up his foot and tried to shake the little boy off. He stayed put, with his father snickering from the chair near his locker. "CLARA! HELP! YOU HAVE A DEGREE IN CHILDREN!" Clara made her way from the lounge area, weaving in and out between the other staff members and athletes until she found the Doctor still attempting to shake the child off.
"Oh, why hello there," she said, squatting so that she was eye-level with the boy. "You must be Ricardo. Your dad told me you'd be coming today."
The boy crouched down and hid his face behind the Doctor's calf, carefully peeking out. "Hello."
"My name is Clara. Would you like to stay with me while your dad works today?" Ricardo shook his head, effectively wiping his nose on the Doctor's uniform sock. "Well then, what would you like to do?"
"I wanna stay with work-grandpa."
Clara bit her thumbnail for a moment, trying to both think and not burst into laughter. "I can take you up to the offices, and let you meet the owner, and then we can have lunch and watch the game from one of the fancy suites."
"You mean, the rooms high up? The ones where the TV guys are?"
"Not the one specifically with the TV guys, but we can stop by the TV guys on the way there." The little boy looked at his father, who was also doing his best to not laugh.
"Go ahead, kiddo. You can go with Miss Oswald. She's a nice lady."
"Okay," the little boy said. He detached himself from the Doctor's leg and moved closer towards Clara. Now that he was standing he was taller than Clara, who still had her knees bent. "So, what do you do? You're in a dress, so you're not gonna play like Daddy."
"Nope. I'm the general manager. My job is figuring out who plays best with what team and trying to put them on the team that is best for them. Sometimes a player stays with one team his entire career. Other times, he has to play in many different cities before he finds the right one for him."
"Is Daddy in the right city?"
"For now, yes," Clara said. She stood up and bent in half, so that she still was closer to the boy than at full height. "I can't guarantee that he won't need to go on a super-important mission elsewhere though. Sometimes those pop up and you never know who you're going to need to send."
"Wait… so you're like that guy that tells the superheroes where to go and what to do!"
"That's right. I'm the Superhero Boss."
"Cool!" The little boy grabbed his backpack and held out his hand towards Clara. "Do you have cool stuff in your office like they do in the movies?!"
"I have some things from my home, if that's considered cool."
"Neat! Bye Dad! Bye Work Grandpa!"
"Thanks, Miss Oswald! I owe you one!" the shortstop called out as Clara was dragged from the clubhouse by his excited son. He and the Doctor watched as they vanished from sight.
"Oh, great, now I'm going to have to change my sock," the Doctor groaned, looking down at his calf. It was covered in Ricardo's snot, wet and slimy. "Ramón, teach your kid to carry a kerchief or something."
"Sure thing, work-grandpa," the other man snickered. The Doctor narrowed his eyes and stormed off, completely forgetting what it was he had come over to talk to Ramón about.
The Doctor was ready to kill Jack Harkness.
The marketing manager, in all of his glory and tact, had been trying to come up with different promotional items to give away before games when he came up with one of the most horrifying things he had ever seen: a bowler hat made of blue-and-white tartan.
"What the fuck is this?" he spat.
"It's the giveaway item for next Friday's home game," Jack said, holding it out for the Doctor to take.
"It's an abomination."
"How? It's no different from the maracas we gave out in May, and those were a hit."
"We also got several complaints about them, if you remember correctly. Do you realize how wrong it is to use the tartan on a bowler hat?"
"It's just plaid. That's Scottish, right?"
Taking a deep breath, the Doctor silently counted to ten before speaking again. "Yes, tartan is Scottish, but the bowler hat isn't."
"It's all English though, right? I mean… both come from the UK, which is England, and you and Clara and Jaime and several other staff members are from there, and it's not like anyone in Iowa knows the difference…"
"Call me fucking English again and I'll make sure every time you try to sleep with an intern they take one look and run away screaming," the Doctor hissed. Jack, not exactly wanting to know what he meant by that, pulled the bowler hat back and began to edge himself towards the office door.
"Okay… well… just to let you know this is the promotional item and I'll never do it again okay bye!"
The Doctor narrowed his eyes at the open door before turning back to his email. It was bad enough he had an overflow of messages thanks to someone coordinating the All-Star Game accidentally CCing him in the mailing list, but some of them were actually important as they pertained to a couple of his players and their eligibility status.
Ach… just the stupidity Harkness was displaying! Being a marketing man, the Doctor was flabbergasted that he was unaware of the differences between what was offensive and what was ironically amusing. It was his job, after all, to know these things. If the Maraca Mayhem hadn't been enough, this might be enough to get the man a couple lessons in culture sensitivity (which he seemed to not have despite displaying an unabashed appreciation for every culture under the sun, which struck the Doctor as an odd dichotomy). The Doctor was about halfway through his inbox when Clara walked into the room, completely unannounced.
Uninvited, unannounced, and cheerfully wearing Harkness's abomination atop her head.
"Hey Doctor! Look what Jack just gave me! Isn't it cute? I guess we're giving these away next week after the break! He said I can model it for the promotional material."
Yes, the Doctor was definitely ready to kill Jack Harkness.
Clara rested her head on the couch cushion and looked at her computer screen. She had the device balanced on her knees as she scrolled through some stats compilations, her feet propped up on the armrest and perpendicularly resting her back against the Doctor's shoulder. It was a lazy evening, with the television on, but muted, and the remains of takeaway littering the coffee table.
"I'm thinking about Jory," she said aloud. The Doctor flipped through the binder and found the page for the individual in question.
"Riddled with injuries… I wouldn't."
"Only for a period of three years. He's been fine since then, but has had a bad reputation since. I'd say he's worth a look." Clara paused and tapped the side of her computer. "Hey, an off-topic question alright?"
"Sure, go ahead."
"Why does Susan call you 'Uncle John'? Are you and the Foremans related?"
"No. Ben Foreman took me in as a teenager. I babysat Susan a lot when she was little, so she naturally thought I was her uncle. I'm the closest thing she's got to one, so I don't mind."
"Oh, okay," Clara said. She thought for a moment and scrunched up her face in thought. "Wait a second… I thought Susan was younger than me, but you were babysitting her as a teenager?"
"No, I never said that—I babysat her when I was in my twenties, and I'll have you know that she's thirty-four."
"No!" Clara gasped. She swung her legs around and sat properly on the couch. "She looks at least ten years younger!"
"Her mam was like that," the Doctor shrugged. "Barbara… it was almost like she stopped aging after a while. Her and Ian… now that was a match."
"Oh… I never knew…" Clara said. The Doctor patted her knee and stood up.
"Don't worry too much about it. Would you like some more water while I'm up?"
"Yeah, sure."
Clara groaned as she saw the piece of paper taped to the elevator doors. OUT OF ORDER, it read, which meant she was going to have to go down to the clubhouse herself. In her hands was a stack of papers for the Doctor—a report she had drawn up breaking down the statistics they would need to produce in the second half of the season in order to make the playoffs in either a divisional leader or wild card position. She rushed down the stairs, trying not to break out into a full run as she navigated the empty stadium. She had promised him a paper copy half an hour ago so that he could have it during his meeting with the players. This was just lovely.
She got to the clubhouse and was met with a cheer; the Doctor had been keeping the team hostage in the lounge area until she arrived. Clara arriving meant that the meeting could start and the sooner the meeting started, the sooner they could get back to things like practice drills and weight lifting and resistance exercises and other things they had been casually ignoring since coming back from an incredibly long road trip.
"I was beginning to worry about you," the Doctor said as Clara walked into the lounge. He was at the front of the room, half sitting and half leaning on a foldable table. "Nothing's wrong, is there?"
"No… just I couldn't get the thing to print and found out too late that the lift's busted."
"Again…? This stadium is brand new… I knew Foreman got the land too cheap. Must have been an old burial ground or something." Clara passed him the report and he gave her a peck on the lips. "Thank you."
"You're welcome," Clara smiled. She turned around to leave, but froze after two steps.
The clubhouse had gone dead-silent. Clara's eyes went wide and her face burned red-hot. She could see the players in her peripheral vision, some staring at her and some passing money between themselves. She turned her head the other way to look back at the Doctor. He had realized what had happened too late as well, with his gaze aimed at the report yet far-off and distant. His face was the same color as a beetroot, and his knuckles were white on the hand he gripped the table with. The Doctor looked at Clara and as soon as their eyes met, she ran.
Something deep in the recesses of Clara's mind knew it was a good thing that running up a flight of stairs was easier than running down them. She sprinted through the TARDIS as fast as her heels would let her, but had to stop running as she went through the offices though in an attempt to not reveal her panic. Once she was in her own office, Clara shut the door, kicked off her shoes, and sat underneath her desk, looking out the one-way glass wall at the amber soybean field on the other side of the parking lot.
'What was that…?!' she thought. She was shaking and her breath was ragged from running and nerves. 'He's your friend, Clara. He's a friend, a mate, a coworker… nothing more than that. He shouldn't be any more than that. You let this mum-and-dad joke run long enough.'
Clara closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing. There was no use in panicking. It was useless to panic. Adults don't panic.
'…but we just kissed… in front of the team. We didn't even realize that's what we did. How did we get to this? You like him as a friend, Clara Oswald. He's your friend.'
Friend. A friend. Friends don't kiss each other so casually like that. Friends can tease each other and go to one another's houses and crack jokes about their relationship and cook for one another and…
"Oh no…" Clara whispered to herself as the realization hit her.
The best relationships start as friendships, and sometimes, if you're not careful, friendships turn into something else entirely all too quick.
Clara inhaled sharply as the door opened. It closed again, which caused her to breathe a sigh of relief until she heard the Doctor's voice.
"Clara?"
'Oh no.'
He hadn't meant to kiss Clara, at least not intentionally. Everything about that minute of conversation had been so light, so natural, that it just happened. Not long after Clara had run from the clubhouse, the bench coach took the report from the Doctor's rigid hand and chuckled.
"Go talk to her; I got this."
The Doctor nodded and forced out a thank you, his voice dry and distant. Still in a stupor, he walked out of the clubhouse with whistles and wishes of luck behind him. He kept the dazed pace as he navigated the TARDIS—there was no use in running. It was still the middle of the work day and Clara wasn't going anywhere in the middle of a work day.
Eventually he got to the door of her office. It was shut, but he knew she was in there. The Doctor carefully opened it and slid in, shutting the door behind him. The entire room was dark, but Clara's heeled shoes sitting discarded on the rug affirmed his suspicions.
"Clara?" he asked to the quiet room. Noticing that her chair was in an odd position, the Doctor began to cautiously approach the desk. He saw her toes poking out from underneath, which allowed a great weight to lift from his shoulders. He crouched down and looked at Clara, her brown eyes filled with uncertainty.
"I'm sorry, Clara," the Doctor said. He shoved her desk chair to the side and sat down with his back against the window. "I… I don't know what I was thinking that made that an okay thing to do."
"I don't know what I was thinking that didn't let it register right away," Clara replied quietly. She rested her chin on her knees and sighed. "What are we doing?"
"I thought we were sticking together. We're expats from the UK working in baseball, of all sports… we should be friends and allies."
She hesitated. "Obviously, it's gotten beyond that."
"How…? Four and a half months ago, we were at one another's throats."
"I… I don't know." Clara crawled out from underneath the desk and sat next to the Doctor, resting her head on his shoulder. She took his left hand in her right and brushed her thumb over his knuckles. "Who was she?"
"Hmm?"
"Your first wife. You couldn't have been married long."
'No, I wasn't,' the Doctor thought sadly. He had never thought that he would ever need to explain that whirlwind in his past, but now was a good a time as any.
"A professor, older than me by a bit. Even though we were both smart and witty and were at the top of our games, our worlds were very different. We couldn't make a marriage work with her entrenched in academia and me living and breathing an athletic sport. Any divorce is difficult, but I think the most difficult are the ones where you're still in love."
"So you couldn't find yourself wanting anyone else?"
"My life is baseball, not some trashy dime novel. I just wasn't all that interested afterwards. It was nothing against anyone nor was a thing to build up some self-important vendetta… it was just a thing. Besides, what about you, a cute northern girl who has been unspoken for this entire time? Is there a story behind that?"
"University slowly took up all my time, then my job, then relocating out here and getting used to everything this job entails. I thought that maybe I'd try dating again in the offseason, when there's less pressure here."
'I thought that too, a long time ago.' The Doctor looked at the hand holding his, how small and petite it was. It was soft, just like her arm—he had taken hold of her arm once, two weeks prior when guiding her through Wrigley Field. They had locked elbows and strolled through the ballpark early one morning, Clara having come in to watch the Gallifreyans play one day during a three-game series against the Cubs. Fuck… it had been a date.
A date… they really had been dating for a while. Their work sessions, where Clara invaded his home and blurred that divider line he had kept up so well, had stopped being purely work a while ago hadn't they? He looked forward to them, tried to plan nicer dinners for them… he even missed them when they were on the road and Clara was still in her TARDIS office figuring things out for herself. Yeah she was a bit bossy, but she was just so clever. She was clever and cute and so incredibly cheery that he had failed to realize their work wall had crumbled between them quicker than Jericho.
The Doctor licked his lips in thought. 'There's no harm in it; it hasn't affected your ability to manage, and she's been doing brilliant in her position. It's worth a shot.'
"I think…" he breathed, "I think you can try sooner than that, that is if you don't mind a sour old man who shouts too much and isn't really who he was born as anymore."
"You're still Scottish, what are you talking about?" Clara chuckled.
"I haven't been Scottish for a long time, but I'm not American either. I'm like… an alien that's lived amongst humans for so long that he doesn't know if he belongs with them or with his mother race in the stars."
Silence.
"Well, I think you're very sweet… and a poet too." Clara turned towards the Doctor and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. "I think I can live with that."
"I'm not too old?"
"You may be fifty-five, but you can occasionally act five, so average that out and that puts you at about thirty. You're perfect."
Smiling, the Doctor leaned closer to Clara and kissed her lightly on the lips. He paused for a moment, leaning back slightly to look at her. 'She could have her pick of any number of men,' he thought. 'Younger, with more to offer than a workaholic's schedule for over half the year with a job that essentially boils down to league-sanctioned verbal abuse. She's young… almost too young…'
Not even a second passed before he made up his mind. 'Fuck it.' He then kissed her again, deeper, with her kissing back cautiously.
"Hey Clara…?" the Doctor asked as he broke the kiss.
"Yeah?"
"How would you fancy a trip to Scotland? In autumn, after the season's over?"
"I think I'd like that very much."