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Watching the sunset after the end of the season sounded like a sentimental cliche, but for Logan it provided a sense of closure. It had given him something to do while he avoided his team’s celebrations in earlier years, at least. Crowds suffocated, drinking encouraged foolishness, the music rang in his ears and the barbecue smoke seemed to target his eyes specifically. Logan would take peace and quiet any day.
The worst part was when the team gathered around the campfire to reminisce about their performance. When it came to his turn, people scrambled to compliment Logan, but each time they were left stopping and starting sentences in a staccato rhythm. Bereft of positives, they would make jokes with a tone that implied good-natured fun. All Logan could hear was the biting undercurrent of frustration at his lack. Although they always begged him to stay for "just one drink!", the words rang hollow. Phantom sighs of relief followed him after he shook his head and told them he was going for a walk. He’d been sober for years, anyway.
There was no party this year. Where Francisco usually pulled out the grill the ashes lay cold and grey on the ground. Eizabeth was not curating a Splotify playlist, Sutton was not texting in the corner, Oscar was not eating the paper plates and Kurt was not bringing in a catch to put on the grill. Yellowstone was still despite its abundance of life, as if every organism had collectively decided to hibernate. A skeleton crew walked its grounds.
That was the funny part about it, if you could call it funny. Logan had finally found his groove with the accursed game and his remaining teammates (that weren’t abducted to Gods-knew-where or incinerated or confined to the shadows) were too busy trying to survive to cheer him on. He chewed on his thumbnail, wincing and tasting blood.
Logan's fellow lineup players were exhausted. They slouched during periods of rest, muscles taut, joints aching, bones grinding, bodies pushed far beyond their limits by the demands of the game. Fresh and old callouses alike decorated their hands. Lurid purple and angry blue bruises stained their skin, fading to sickly yellows and greens over an amount of time that didn’t allow a full recovery. Wounds healed but they left scars, dark or silvery or pink.
The team should have been happy, Logan thought. They had finished the main season first in the league. They had put up a good fight in the finals. There should have been more of them there to see the successes through.
Somehow, Logan remained. The park bench beneath him wasn’t the most luxurious seating but the spot he had picked was conveniently secluded. Yellowstone was perfect for hiding. The nature of the place made it impossible for him to become truly lost; his connection with it was one of trust and guidance and similar attributes that Logan regarded as mushy nonsense. A perk of the deal, however, was that the Park could conceal him when he so desired.
"There you are!" said a sing-song voice from behind him. A flock of birds rose from the trees Logan was overlooking, crowing and cawing.
Logan groaned. It worked to conceal him from most people, but not this one. Never this one.
"I must admit, it was harder to find you than I'd expected," Bevan said, taking a seat on the bench, robes billowing out as he did so. Without taking his eyes off of Logan, he began retying his hiking boots. "Never thought I'd see the day when Logan Rodriguez would get a taste for magic."
"It's not like I've been practising spells," Logan protested. "I didn't choose this! The park does its own damn thing and I'm pulled along with it." He shook his head. "It’s useful until someone spoils it."
Bevan chuckled. "That sounds more like Logan." He looked out over the Park from their raised vantage point. "Nice spot."
"Yeah. Private ." Logan looked down at his hands, picking at his nail beds. "What do you want?"
"To talk. Keep you company."
Logan barked out a laugh. "There are better people to keep company with, Bevan. Why would you choose me?”
“Because we’re teammates,” Bevan said matter-of-factly. “I had even begun to think we were friends after all this time.”
Logan blinked, a prickling heat rising in his cheeks. He stared ahead. “If that’s what you wanna call it.” He couldn’t see Bevan but sensed their self-satisfied smile.
“You seemed quite in harmony with the game this season. Your performance was exceptional, everything considered. You should be proud of yourself.”
Logan smoothed his hands over his legs, dusting off specks of dirt that weren’t there. He cleared his throat. “Thanks. Better than my usual, I know. You don’t have to tell me.”
Bevan tilted their head. “I wasn’t going to.”
“Like that matters!” Logan blurted. “Whether or not you want to say it, I was a terrible pitcher. The worst, even.”
Bevan rolled his eyes. “There are worse pitchers in the league, Logan. Some say there are epics written about their lack of skill, and so far I haven’t heard any mentioning you.” As he spoke, he gesticulated like his hands missed holding his wand, the rings on his fingers glinting in the fading sunlight. Logan would have made a dig at the quirk but his brain was short-staffed as it was that day. “If you’re so convinced that you were terrible, why didn’t you ever quit?”
“I literally can’t leave. None of us can. Unless… well, you know.”
Bevan shook their head. “I mean before, when you were a regular player.”
“Oh, God.” Logan pinched the bridge of his nose. “‘Sunk cost fallacy’ or something. I know everyone thinks I’m just a stubborn asshole, and I am , but it’s more like... If I’d put all of those years into being a no-name, a mediocre pitcher that no one looked at twice, then wouldn’t that be a waste?” Logan frowned. “There’s nothing but Blaseball for me. I don’t have any kids, let alone grandkids, or a partner. No other career prospects, nothing saved up. Nothing outside of the game is waiting for me.” He shrugged. “So I guess it’s good that the swap happened when it did, huh?”
Silence fell between the two as they sat, the sun sinking further toward the horizon, the air growing chill. Logan traced a pattern in the dirt with the toe of his sneaker. The soles were worn, yawning away from the base of the shoe. Tears had formed in the collars when Logan had forced them on without untying his laces. Bevan ran a hand through their hair, unknotting tangles as they went. Too much hair, Logan thought. Seasons ago he had told Bevan that they should cut it “because the Merlin look didn’t suit them”, only to receive a glare that could have knifed through tungsten.
There was plenty that Logan didn’t understand about Bevan, and he had understood even less when they had first met. Logan was a guy, a regular human guy, and a crabby old one at that. Bevan was a wizard, perpetually looking as if he’d climbed out of an old fantasy novel illustration. He wore an ostentatiously large pointed hat, kept his flowing white hair long and braided in places, and had an impressive beard to match. Logan had been surprised that there wasn’t an owl perched on his arm. Bevan kept to himself in the earlier seasons, doing whatever wizards did in their spare time. There seemed to be an air of superiority about him, his gaze uniquely piercing and judgemental, as if drawing runes and wielding a staff made him better than everyone else.
Most of Magic was carefully polite toward Bevan. They skirted around his summoning circles, fetched the esoteric ingredients he requested, deferred to his magical expertise and avoided intrusive questions. Logan, on the other hand, took a certain delight in getting a rise out of Bevan. Disturbing the order of his multitudinous tomes and vials, pestering him in the middle of a ritual, rolling his eyes at his grandiosity- all of it worked a treat.
When Bevan made objects glow or levitate or he made something out of what looked like nothing, it did ignite certain childlike awe within Logan, but he was practised in scowling. So he would do just that, arms crossed and chin upturned, watching Bevan’s hair frizz and crackle like a storm cloud, eyes alight and violently purple. When those eyes met Logan’s, they would narrow and Bevan would mimic Logan’s own scowl.
Somewhere down the line things had changed. Logan and Bevan had never been buddies but an irritatingly familiar face, it turned out, was better than no faces at all. Maybe it was the incinerations or the feedback or the sheer but uncertain quantity of time the two had spent playing together but, eventually, Logan felt relief upon merely seeing that Bevan was still there. To Logan, they felt like an eternal fixture of the Park, as much as Old Faithful or the Grand Prismatic Spring. To imagine the place without them was like imagining the sky without Sun 2 or the moon or the stars.
“Do you think we’re going to make it out of this?” Logan asked, his voice hoarse.
Bevan hummed, looping a strand of hair around their finger. “I hope so.”
“Can’t you foresee it?”
“I don’t have precognition if that’s what you’re asking.”
“No, not that.” Logan waved his hand. “The divining stuff you do. Prophesying, foretelling, whatever your word of choice is. With the augury, or the water, or the animal guts, or- you know what I mean.”
“You’re mixing up your rituals, but I get the gist,” Bevan said, smiling wryly. He shrugged. “It’s not so simple. If it was I could have predicted this whole miserable ordeal and have tried to stop it. I felt something coming, but the details were blurry, as usual. I try to plan but the variables are endless.”
“ You have no idea what you’re doing?” Logan chuckled dryly, hopelessly, throwing up his hands. “So we’re screwed!”
Bevan tutted. “Such a pessimist.”
“Can you blame me?” Logan nudged Bevan’s arm with his elbow. “You’re as grouchy as me but you dress it up better. All elegant and mysterious.”
“You think I’m elegant?”
Logan pursed his lips and remained silent. That damn wizard, he thought.
“I might act like I’m above it all, Logan, but I do care,” Bevan said, quietly. “I miss our teammates dearly. I worry for them.” They linked their fingers in their lap, rings clinking together.
“Do you want them back?”
“Of course I do! I would do anything for them.”
“Even Oz?”
Bevan blanched, his mouth twitching. He cleared his throat. “It’s- it’s complicated. But yes, even Dollie.”
“It’s always complicated with you. Can you just tell me straight for once? I know I’m not exactly a shining example of good manners but you were so hostile to it, Bev.”
“My relationship with Oscar is strained because… because I have serious concerns about its place of origin and method of entrance into the Park, and because sometimes a degree of suspicion is necessary to prevent disaster.” The words rushed out of Bevan, punctuated by a sigh. “Variables, Logan. Variables.”
Logan rolled his eyes. “Thank you so much for the riddle.”
“Oh Gods, what do you want me to say? I regret my treatment of Oscar,” Bevan said, “and I would like it back, with us, if only because it makes monitoring it easier. And because it is my teammate, and I care for it. In a way.” He raised his eyebrows at Logan. “Is that better?”
Logan smirked. “Thank you for the vulnerability, for once.”
“You’re one to talk.”
Logan took off his cap, picked at a yellow thread that was unravelling from the logo emblazoned on the front. “I wish I had been less… That I had shown all of them more…” Logan paused, grasping for words. He pulled the thread taut. “I wish I was better. I wish it was me gone, and not them.” The thread snapped and Logan allowed it to flutter away. His throat ached with emotion, welling up in his throat like blood from a fresh wound. There was a stinging in Logan’s eyes, and he pressed his palms to them. He tried to centre himself in the darkness and subtle pressure.
“You’re shivering,” Bevan said.
“What a deduction.” Logan’s words lacked bite, defanged by exhaustion and grief.
The last residues of sunlight were vanishing below the horizon. Stars were blinking into existence in the sky, a shade of blue newly born, the moon beginning to climb its eternal path. Bevan cupped his hands and a small purple flame flickered to life between them. He placed one hand on Logan’s shoulder. Their skin was warm, even behind the barrier of the fabric of Logan’s jersey, but not burning. Logan focused on keeping his muscles relaxed under Bevan’s touch.
“You can have my cloak,” Bevan said, beginning to shrug a layer of his robes off.
Logan rubbed his eyes, sniffed. “You don’t need to do that.”
“Please let me take care of you, for once,” Bevan said. He stood, draping the fabric around Logan’s shoulders. It felt silky where it grazed his bare forearm and surprisingly light considering the quantity of fabric, like someone had turned wisps of smoke into cloth. “I don’t have many people that I can do this for anymore.”
Despite himself, Logan hugged the cloak closer. He breathed in its scent; it smelled like herbs and untouched, overburdened closets. The colours appeared to shift from moment to moment, undulating across the fabric like rolling clouds. Purple, with hints of green, dashes of red, ghosts of blue. “Thank you,” he said. He stared at the ground, then at the sky. Anywhere but Bevan’s face. “I’m tired.”
“I know. So am I.” Bevan paused. “Can I perform a charm on you? It will only take a moment.”
Logan looked up to Bevan. Their face, usually painted with shadows, was visible now that their hat was clutched in their hands. Logan couldn’t place their expression but their eyes were intently focused on him, as if memorising his shape.
“Are you planning on going spelunking again?” Logan said, wrestling a smile onto his face.
“Perhaps. Variables, you know?” The night air smelled earthy and raw, the atmosphere pregnant with the promise of rainfall.
“OK then,” Logan said. “Will it hurt?”
Bevan quirked an eyebrow and laughed a little bit. “No, Logan.” He stepped toward Logan, and tilted his head upward, holding his face in his hands. Logan closed his eyes. His muscles tensed, his cheeks were hot, his eyes stung.
With the tip of their finger, Bevan traced the planes and valleys of Logan’s face. It tickled, but not unbearably so. He drew some shapes that Logan lost track of. Runes, he suspected, which he couldn’t read. Bevan could have been cursing him for all he knew. At that moment he didn’t particularly care. Bevan murmured incantations under their breath as they worked, their voice low in their chest like a bass instrument. The rhythm of their voice melted into the sound of the breeze whispering through the trees. Once, Logan had overheard Bevan educating Eizabeth about the importance of the verbal and somatic components of a spell. Voice and motion, a pair entwined in dance.
The murmuring stopped, as did the contact, but the pause was broken by a wet, cold sensation on Logan’s forehead. He wrinkled his nose. “You can open your eyes now,” Bevan said. “I’m finished.”
“What was that ?” Logan said.
Bevan held up his thumb and pointed it toward his mouth. “My saliva. It links us, a tether of sorts.”
“Your spit ?!” Logan cried, scrubbing his forehead with the back of his hand.
“Traditionally the charm is completed with a kiss to the forehead, but I decided to make a substitution!” Bevan huffed and crossed their arms. “Would you have preferred the other option?”
“I mean if you’d just asked ...”
The two glowered at each other, before breaking into peals of laughter. Tears beaded at the corners of Logan’s eyes and before he could wipe them away they were running down his cheeks. He rose, stumbling, and embraced Bevan without allowing himself a moment for doubt. The force almost bowled both of them over. Bevan released a shocked squawk, hair and robes ruffled like a disgruntled bird. They were rigid in Logan’s arms before their awkward posture melted and they leaned into the hug, resting a hand on his back.
“The team cares about you, Logan,” Bevan said softly. “It doesn’t matter if you’re the best or worst player alive, all right? You matter to us.”
“You’re getting soft in your old age.”
“I should make you my apprentice since you're so taken with magic now.”
“OK,” Logan said. If I can grind on a skateboard, I can learn a couple of spells , he thought. “If we make it through this then I’ll take you up on that.” He meant it.
And when the election results rolled in the next day and Logan visited Bevan’s cabin, he was only half-surprised to find it empty.