Work Text:
Dickson Games hated playing against the Shoe Thieves, but not for the reason anyone expected. He knew he should hate Cornelius. He knew that most of the Millennials did, even if they were all either too polite or too emotionally compromised to say it. Some days it seemed like half the league hated Cornelius Games for their own reasons, including several players on Cornelius’s own team. Dickson had every right to hate his husband, but he didn’t.
He wasn’t even sure why he didn’t. Maybe he had spent so long telling himself and everyone else he didn’t care that it finally came true. Maybe part of him still wasn’t sure that it hadn’t all been his own fault.
But when Dickson stepped up to the plate, adjusted his grip on the bat and looked out at Cornelius on the mound, his husband’s eyes meeting his with a perfect facsimile of unrecognition, he didn’t feel angry, only empty.
He remembered the other emotions he used to see in those eyes: mischief, lust, excitement, anger. He knew Cornelius hadn’t been different then, not really, and he had given up on trying to explain to people how everything had happened, how they had been in love.
He remembers the night they met, some stuffy fundraiser more about rich people patting each other on the back than about actually helping anyone. He’d gotten invited as a blaseballer, none of the other Millennials wanted to go but Dickson was never one to resist a party, whether for the free drinks or the chance to make the tabloids. Cornelius had marched right up to him and said, “Hello handsome, I’m about to rob these snobs blind,” and Dix had laughed and said “let me grab you a drink first and you can tell me all about it.”
Dickson remembered the thrill of pulling their first heist together, the adrenaline of egging each other on, daring each other into stunts ever bolder, riskier. He remembered the fights, the shouting matches neither of them were ever willing to back down from. He remembered proposing, choosing the name Games together, declaring the rest of the world their plaything.
Cornelius founded the Shoe Thieves and things began to shift. His eyes held mirth less often than steel, a coldness somehow worse than anger. Dickson fought ice with fire, then Cornelius did, then they were both ice, both fire, and nothing snapped so much as was slowly stretched out over time, past the point where it could ever truly hold its shape again.
So now at the plate, ready for the pitch, all Dickson could think about was everything he used to feel. He couldn’t bring himself to hate his husband, and that is why he hated playing the Shoe Thieves.
***
When the book opened everything changed. Jaylen died and suddenly nothing felt safe. When Scrap Murphy was the first of the Millennials incinerated, Games grieved with the rest of the team but felt a nagging sense of dishonesty. He and Scrap had never been close. Even though it had been a few years since he’d stopped spending time in Charleston and his general temperament had softened somewhat, distanced from the things they all hated about him, he still rarely felt truly himself, more often tiptoeing around hurt feelings or picking fights to deflect from anyone from getting too close.
In some ways the soul swap was worse. Games knew it should be better because Teddy was still there but it wasn’t really Teddy, not the Teddy they knew. Teddy who, despite being a wall of muscle was incredibly sensitive, who Games had truly believed would be a great writer someday, not that they had ever told it. This might be Teddy in some ways but it wasn’t the same person who had listened whenever Games had needed to yell about Cornelius, who was always willing to sit with him in silence or distract him with stories of its latest twitter beefs.
Games knew he felt something inside himself shift that day too. He was pretty sure Winnie, Fynn, and Conrad did too even though none of them ever said anything. For the most part he tried to not think about that day.
Losing Chorby was different. They sacrificed themself for Dom and no one knew what to do with that, least of all Dom. They could all tell that Dom wasn’t okay but no one had any idea how to help. Dominic was the heart of the team but Chorby had been the Soul, even beyond the joke. Games had never been one for comfort or emotional conversations so he did what he always did, he kept moving. The ground was suddenly unsteady and only getting worse but he kept moving.
Games was up to bat when Landry was incinerated. They could never have guessed the degree to which the entire world had just changed again.
***
Then came the Feedback.
Games had been suspicious of the microphone from the beginning, before any of them even knew what it did. Once the first players were swapped they understood why, then they watched the weather forecast, wary all season from a fear they didn’t even dare say out loud.
It was the bottom of the ninth and they were fielding third base when all of a sudden they weren’t. They were on third but they were at bat and Fynn was pitching and everything was so loud he was at third why was he at bat he was drawing a walk and the noise was unbearable. He didn’t even fully realize what was happening until he was in the home field dugout and it was wrong everything was wrong and he looked over at his now former teammates avoiding his gaze, faces full of pity. The noise began to fade and he heard the crowd too, murmurs as rumors began to spread in real time, the hushed comments, fans who didn’t know better already excited to see the Games husbands back together.
The rest of the Millennials went home to the shared apartment he had always hated and Dickson went home to the empty apartment in Charleston he had kept for all these years. They’d used to joke about Dickson trading to the Shoe Thieves someday, laughing it off as though it was his poor batting ability that kept him away, rather than everything else that had slowly broken between them.
Cornelius was pitching next game, they would see him, if he didn’t already know. Surely he already knew. Dickson wasn’t afraid of his husband, even after this long he knew him well to know all his tricks and tells, knew his brashness was all talk. But seeing him would mean facing the fact that this was all real. This was going to be his life now. Far from the friends he had finally failed to keep at arm's length, on a team with the man he no longer loved but couldn’t bring himself to hate.
Time kept passing. The Shoe Thieves were different than The Millennials; a different kind of a team, a different kind of family. The barbs came quicker but cut less deep. It was familiar, in some ways. The Thieves were loud in all the ways The Mills were quiet. Anger boiled to the surface instead of simmering underneath, emotions running wild out in the open which was as foreign in some ways as it was comfortable in others.
Some things stayed familiar. Dickson kept finding himself in fights with the Millennials, but never for the reasons he expected. Gennzy hated him. Or maybe she just missed him. It hurt too much to think about how much he missed her, all of them, so instead they threw cans off the roof of Battin’ Island and pretended nothing was different. Eventually the fights burned out, boiled away with his anger. He kept moving.
Time kept passing. Things started to feel as normal as they ever did. Laughing at Cornelius’s latest bullshit with Esme. Stu regaling them all with tales of her most outlandish blimp heists. Getting drunk with Paula. The tug of the grappling hook as he stole second base again.
Another season passed. Another game began. He stepped up to the plate.