Chapter Text
“We picked up who ?” Lance asked incredulously.
Allura tapped her pen on her clipboard and sighed. “Lance, you know this isn’t up to me. Plus, he’s a good player-“
“Yeah, a good player who’s gotten kicked out of three games so far for trying to fight people.” Lance crossed his arms over his chest. “It’ll be months before we can get him to simmer down from his last little incident .”
“C’mon Lance, at least meet the guy first.” Shiro laid a hand on Lance’s shoulder and shrugged in Allura’s direction. “Maybe he’s already cooled off.”
Lance let out a throaty laugh.”Shiro, we watched that game together. He tackled the first baseman on his own team .” Lance held his palms up towards the ceiling. “Seriously, who does that?”
Allura dug her hand into her hip. “Enough, Lance. That’s all in the past from where I’m concerned, and I expect you to be open-minded about this.” Allura looked back down at her clipboard, frowning. “Especially since it looks like he’ll be starting second base.”
“ What ?” Lance yelped. He stepped forward, reaching for the clipboard. “No, no, no, he’s starting ? There has to be someone else.”
“Adam’s out with a fractured wrist, you know that.” Allura explained.
“What about Shay?” Lance offered.
Allura made a face. “You’re kidding, right? She’s the best relief pitcher we’ve got, we can’t put her on second.”
Shiro put his hand to his shoulder instinctively. He’d injured it last season from pitching too much and the summer had been a long road of rehab for him. “She’s amazing at closing out games, Lance, and we’ll probably need her more this time around.”
Lance rolled his eyes, making an exasperated noise. “Is Coran doing this to torture me? That’s it, isn’t it?” He leaned in and narrowed his eyes at Allura. “It's some kind of test and I know it.” He pointed a finger at Keith’s name on the roster. “I’m onto you.”
Allura chuckled and dropped her mouth open with a scoff. “I’m your coach, Lance, not some evil mastermind.”
“But Coran- “ Lance started.
Shiro flicked Lance’s baseball cap down in front of his eyes. “Is our gracious team owner , and also not an evil mastermind.” He finished, smiling as Lance shifted his hat back on his head. “Now stop pouting and go take a shower.”
Lance made a face and crossed his arms defiantly . “I wasn’t pouting! I was discussing.”
“Are you seriously pouting about not pouting?” Allura asked, her eyebrows raising as she smiled.
Shiro laughed and looked her direction. “He definitely is.”
Lance let out a disgruntled noise and turned on his heel. As he started to walk away he waved a hand in the air. “Fine, fine, you all win, see you tomorrow.”
“With a better attitude!” Allura called after him.
Lance looked over his shoulder. His eyes were narrowed, but his lips pushed into a tight half smile. “We’ll see, Allura, we’ll see.”
***
Lance arrived early for practice the next morning. When he wasn’t too busy or too tired he liked to get to the field before everyone else, before the nightly frost lifted off of the freshly mowed grass.
He had played a lot of games of baseball at this point. Most of them were at night, when the city was alive and bustling around with the noise of cars and conversations at every corner. In the field it was even louder. Lance was a small town kid and it had taken him a while to adjust to the roar of the crowds at every game. He really didn’t go to a big stadium game until he was seventeen years old. Even that had only happened because a recruiter bought tickets for him, hoping to win him over. Which almost worked.
The baseball fields he remembered from his childhood were always the quiet kind. He could hear the soft crunch of dirt under his cleats, the stretch of his leather glove, the wind rolling across miles of farmland. Most importantly, the ever-satisfying clang of the bat on baseball contact, echoing well past the outfield. He wished all games could be quiet like that.
It turned out though, that people actually wanted to watch him play, which was weird at first. Lance , who never sorted his laundry and thought it was acceptable to answer interview questions with finger guns. Lance , who couldn’t figure out how to manage his hair poking up in the back unless he had a hat smushed on top of it. Lance , who put fifteen pieces of gum in his mouth just last week because Hunk told him he couldn’t. People cheered for him. Made signs even. Turns out the goofy, small-town kid was pretty damn good at playing first base.
So he had ended up being picked for the Lions. More than that, he had started playing for the Lions. As an actual starter. Lance had never dreamed that he would be so lucky.
He stared out at his field, his home field. Red and blue accents dotted the empty stands. Crisp lines of grass laid across the outfield. A breeze rolled in from the river, just beyond the outside of the stadium, behind right field.
Lance spread his arms out in a stretch and closed his eyes, breathing in the morning-
SMACK
Lance let out a short, pained yell as he felt a solid object thunk into his face. His eye, specifically. His hands flew up to his face and he stumbled backwards, dropping into a sit so that he wouldn’t topple over.
“ Ow .” He said to himself. “What the hell- “
He squinted his left eye open, leaving the right one shut, since it would probably be swollen shut anyway in about thirty seconds. He looked around, and found his answer lying in the dirt a few feet away from him. It was a baseball. Makes sense. That would be the most likely culprit, since he was, like, in a baseball field.
In a moment he heard the sound of cleats jogging up to him, which answered his next question of “Where did the hell did that even come from?” Except not really, because they were cleats he didn’t recognize. Entirely black with bright red accents, definitely not someone on his team. He followed the figure upward with his eyes- correction, his ONE eye- until he met the gaze of deep blue-gray eyes staring back at him between tufts of black hair. Keith.
“Why didn’t you catch it?” Keith asked plainly.
Lance stared at him dumbly and pointed at his chest. “Why didn’t I catch it? Well for starters, I didn’t even know you were about to throw a baseball at my face. Could’ve used a warning there, bud .”
Keith’s brow furrowed, “What? You told me to.”
Lance dropped his hands into the dirt and began sliding them underneath himself to stand up. “How could I have told you to, when I didn’t even know you were there .” Lance raised an eyebrow in Keith’s direction.
Keith took a step back and crossed his arms. “Whatever, you made that hand motion. The one that means ‘hey, throw the ball to me,’ right?”
“Oh, you mean the one I did WITH MY EYES CLOSED?” Lance threw his hands up, digging his cleat into the dirt.
Keith threw his own hands up in response. “How was I supposed to know that?”
“I dunno, but maybe you should thinking twice before going around hitting people all the time.” Lance retorted. He hardened his expression and locked eyes with Keith meaningfully, expecting to get his aggression reflected back at him. Instead Keith’s eyebrows turned outward softly, his shoulders slumping slightly.
As Keith looked away Lance saw a flash of… something across his face, his mouth twisted into a frown. Keith slid his foot back another step, but this one looked just the tiniest bit off balance. He took in a breath to say something, but snapped his mouth shut before it could come out.
Frustrated, Keith smacked his fist into his glove, pulling it off in an instant and throwing it onto the ground, hard enough so that a puff of dirt flew up around it. He turned sharply towards the dugout and stalked off the field.
Lance was left alone in the field. Except now, after all of whatever that was, the silence of his quiet morning seemed to weigh on him. His head was still ringing and his eye was definitely starting to swell up now.
He should get ice, but he didn’t want to risk running into Keith again in the locker room, so he decided to wait him out a bit. He shuffled over to the dugout, abandoning Keith’s glove in the dirt and landing heavily on the bench.
Lance was usually pretty even-tempered, but something about Keith set him on edge. Probably the fact that he had leveled the last first baseman he had played with, and Lance was pretty determined to not have that happen to him. (Although he was off to an awful start).
Keith’s fight on his other team was unreal. Mostly because it had happened randomly during the middle of the game. Between pitches in a relatively uneventful seventh inning. It looked like something in him snapped, or something set him off, or who knows because one second he was standing in position and in the next he had a guy pinned into the dirt, his arm pulled back in about to deck him in the face.
Lance groaned, dropping his head into his hands and tapping his feet anxiously in the dirt.
Good going, Lance, you managed to piss off the angriest guy in baseball .
Allura was going to be livid.