Work Text:
You wake up slowly, relishing in the closeness of her, the warmth of her as she brushes the hair from your eyes watching you with that smile and those lips pursed and perfect and the dreamy dark eyes that tell you secrets without words.
She's saying your name like a prayer, like confession, reverent and breathy and just for you, trying to pull you back to her because she's awake and craves the momentum, craves sliding into home plate and you tagging her out and the crack of your bat, craves the high of being good at things and watching you be good at them too.
But you kinda have to be awake and participating for her to chase that high with you.
She wants more without being brave enough to ask for it so she gets you to offer it, makes the space safe for you to be vulnerable and want so she can give it back so effortlessly, the give and take of what an us could be.
What you're becoming.
You blink through the weight of sleep and you hear her sigh as her face lights up that you're present and hers again, as if curling beside her could never be enough. "Wake up sleepy." It's purred and she's perfect and how any of this is real, how she's real is still a mystery to you.
The bed and the room aren't yours and you're not sure how you're still here, rules and regulations and caution and all of it, how she hasn't woken you before this, how she's allowed herself to indulge in this closeness for this long.
Jess must still be away.
She tucks the hair away from your eyes again and presses a gentle kiss to your forehead and all you can do is sigh in the presence of her, relish in the closeness of being wrapped up with her, long for a lifetime of waking up just like this.
For a world where that could be possible.
You allow yourself a few moments always, but especially here and now to cherish the in between with her; awake and asleep, practice and games, home and away, ball to bat to glove, what you ran from to where you are.
Between being hers and confused whether you're still kinda his.
Learning that you're your own more now than either.
You'd snuck into her room, devious and determined because sometimes, now that you know, the intimacy of her is just too irresistible. Being near her, being just for her, her being yours, holds you in a way an embrace from him never has, never could.
It's exhilarating. Belonging.
It's never felt like a prison with her, always like freedom.
She's running her fingers down your arm, along your jaw, across your lips with her thumb in an absentminded kind of way that makes your heart hurt and you're not sure why. You wish you weren't so analytical, that you could just relish in the attention and not ask for why, but the pull to ask her, to understand her outweighs the quiet softness that being in bed and just being together offers. "You do that a lot."
She sighs and hums her response, sultry and deep as she rolls her lips into her mouth in contemplation. "Hmm. What's that?"
You wait for her to look you in the eye because you've never been touched like this before, worshiped like this before, and when you're alone like this, when you don't have to steal touches, sneak them in the shadows, she's constantly busy with her fingers and her hands, pulling you to her, claiming you in ways that are so overwhelming you feel like your head is constantly spinning. "Touch me."
She smirks and quirks an eyebrow as she chooses coy rather than unguarded. "I am touching you, or haven't you noticed?"
"Greta come on, I mean like this." You reach for the finger that's dragging across your collarbone, tracing and learning the edges of you as you curl her hand into yours and squeeze, holding it to you so she'll pay attention in the pause.
So she'll hear what you're actually trying to say.
What's the rush?
But now, lately, the rush is hers. Not to get you into bed, but to have more and touch more and taste more, checking off her senses so each is fulfilled before moving onto the next. Wanting and craving and taking like you're the last sip of water in the driest of deserts.
It's her now, always reaching, always caressing, skin searching for skin, featherlight and deliberate, like she's remembering and learning you at the same time. You can't quite wrap your head around it, can't decide if it's just your inexperience or part of being Greta you haven't had the chance or time to learn yet, but you want to know, have to know.
Need to know.
Because you're in her bed late at night and her touch has become almost second nature and you're always worrying when the last time might be, when she spooks and pulls away, when the ghosts of her fingertips across your skin become nothing but distant memories, when she hides her affections again. When things start to disappear.
She leans up a little more on her elbow as she eyes you curiously, not sure where this is going or why it's a conversation needed so late into the night when all she wanted to do, planned to do, was worship at the altar of you and this and together, over and over before you have to slip back into your room like none of this ever happened.
She shrugs a little. "I like your skin."
You smile gently and decide you're going to have to ease into this, that she listens better than she divulges and is direct because she's afraid the subtleties of her truths spoken aloud might swallow her whole. But you need her truth.
There's no more time or room for anything but real. "Don't be boring."
She tilts her head back, mouth falling open into a smile in that gorgeous, gentle way that she does when she's letting her guard down with you, easing your worry, making sure you know there's nothing wrong with you, not like how you felt with him.
But that's her line and you stole it and if she weren't proud she'd maybe have been a bit perturbed with it being used against her. "Hey, I'm never boring, I do like your skin."
You shift a little out from under her on the bed, the mattress dipping as your weights are distributed more evenly as she adjusts accordingly, always making space for you, always making sure you feel safe with her. "Okay fine but that's not entirely why, right?"
"Is it too much or...?" She stills her movements but doesn't pull away and you've made her self-conscious when all you really want to know is what she's afraid of, what she desires, where she is when she loses herself in that far off gaze as she's touching you, as she's watching you.
You shake your head because asking why definitely doesn't mean stop.
"You could never be too much." Her chest swells a little as she takes in a breath and holds it in in a stomach dropping gasp and she craves, craves, craves and reaches for you again, licking the corner of her perfect lips and twirls an unruly strand of your hair that refuses to stay behind your ear, cradling your face in her palm with those adoring, awed brown eyes and you swoon.
A few seconds pass as you give her the space to answer you, to know that she can and you'll still want her right now, want her forever. She watches you, head tilting side to side, always comfortable in the silence, always comfortable in her awe of you, always surprised that you can surprise her.
Well, I've never met anyone like you.
"I'm memorizing you."
"You're what?"
Your eyebrow raises and a smirk draws across her face at the reaction.
She loves drawing them out of you.
Appreciates you flustered as much as assured.
Loves... you?
You wonder.
The tension ebbs from her shoulders and she blinks a few times softly, giving herself a few beats where she can collect her thoughts. You're not sure of the other women she's been with, or the men, but she's always bordering on flabbergasted when you elicit honest, open conversations with her. Want them with her.
That you don't just want her because of who she can become for you.
That you don't just want an easy fling.
"I want to remember you, like this, here in my bed, lazy and warm with sleep, your pulse under my fingertips," she shifts her grasp and presses her thumb so you're aware that she can feel it racing, burying her fingers in the hair at the base of your neck and you can't help the way your back arches at the touch because she pulls. "I want to remember you beautiful like this because..."
Her exhale is staggered and stuttered and pained as it catches in her throat and she closes her eyes and stops herself from admitting a truth that she's narrated to you in moments of conflict before. Because it's easy to say the words when they're barbed and frustrated, when one of you can storm off and not have to face the honesty behind them, but to say them quiet and safe like this is a vulnerability she's been hurt too many times to face head on.
"Because?"
"Carson, please don't, let's just lie here a little longer." She pulls you a little more into her, settling down to look at you like she had under the night sky as you counted and named constellations together. She leans in and presses a kiss to your lips and lingers, lingers, lingers and you'd swear you could feel her trembling if your heart wasn't racing and skipping and jumping with her close like this.
Her perfume is faint now but mesmerizing, her touch gentle but exhilarating.
The press of her lips, desperate but delicious.
A distraction.
"Why do you have to memorize me when I'm right here in front of you?" You know it's dense, you know she's doing it because she believes with her whole heart that this isn't going to last, that she believes she could never be chosen. That she has to cherish it as the days pass by because nothing is guaranteed, never for her, because of who she is.
But if an all woman professional baseball team can be a thing, can defy all the odds and win games and you can fall for a woman like this, if the universe can give you her, anything is possible.
God do you want to choose her, you're just not sure the logistics of how yet.
" I just need to, okay?" It's hushed and pleading and sad and you wonder what her life has been like, having to let go of so many people, so many loves because nothing about this is safe for her. By circumstance and by choice. Where her mystery and her intrigue ultimately just translate into perpetual grief that she can't face or she'll crumble under the weight of loss.
It's why she runs.
She knows the famine so well she's never allowed herself the feast, because if she does, the risk of losing herself is too great.
"I can choose more than one thing you know. I can choose myself and I can choose baseball and I can choose you and even if none of it lasts forever, I'll still have chosen you, don't you see that? I'm choosing you right now. Can't you feel that?"
"But you don't, not really, and you won't, nobody ever does and I can't lose a lo--"
You interrupt her because her voice is wavering and her breathing has changed and God this woman cannot cry, not because of you, not again. "I'm not them, okay? Why can't you let me be different? Why can't you let this be different, why do you have to be so afraid?"
"Because I don't want to lose you, don't you understand that? The second the season ends I'll go off to California and you'll go back to your farm and to Charlie and what, we'll write to each other? Maybe? Until you forget about me and the letters stop or he figures it out and forces you to stop?"
"I wouldn't let him... he can't..."
She gives you a look, pointed and deliberate and damning that says just enough to make your stomach turn with regret for even bringing it up. Acknowledging him because he's easy to forget. But not for her.
"All we have is right now and I'd rather spend it living than thinking about the future because there just won't be one, there never is."
You exhale your frustration because why does it always come back to her telling you what you'll choose rather than giving you the option. "None of those things are... I don't live on a... why do you assume things wouldn't be different for me after this ? That everything isn't different now. I don't... why are we here right now like this if you don't think this can be real?"
"Oh Carson, it's always real and lovely until it's not, that's how this life goes. It's a fantasy, a dream, you and me, it has always had a deadline."
"That's a really shitty way to have relationships with people."
She scoffs, head thrown back in the clipped laugh of placation that she reserves for men. "Relationship? Is that what this is?"
You're a little angry now, not wanting this to be a fight but willing to fight, for her, for this, if she needs you to show her that you will. That it doesn't have to be easy to be worth... everything.
You lean forward and press your lips to hers desperately and she gasps into it, stealing your breath and taking it for herself. She resists after the first two, not wanting to get lost in this, pulling her mouth from yours trying to sit and look, on high alert, eyes darting behind you, even though the door is locked and Jess is off at a bar and you won't have to worry about being caught for at least another few hours.
Freeze or flight.
You huff your frustrations and push her back down, firm set to your jaw and she looks at you eyes wide, hair unruly and breathtaking as push her on her back and throw your leg over her waist, burying your fingers in her hair, your palms pressed to her neck as her pulse races against your grasp. She tries to keep up with you, tries to understand what the two of you are doing.
What this means.
You're pressing into her and pushing down onto her and you're kissing her rushed and impatient, kissing her so she remembers this too, kissing her so she feels you deep inside of her so that she can't forget that you're real and you're here and tomorrow doesn't have to be goodbye. That you can do this and you can choose her and it doesn't all have to come crashing down just because the season is ending.
There can be a choice in distance too.
You can choose yourself and choose her.
Because right now you're choosing her in every way you're able and she should get to feel that.
She throws her head back as your lips trail up the expanse of her throat, offering herself to you as you explore and taste and lavish, not wanting to leave an inch of her without adoration. Because you do, adore her.
You hum into her skin, drag your teeth along the strain of tendon as it jumps under your attention, lost in the movement of her body, as she yanks your mouth to hers and the taste of her tongue as it presses against yours. You pull back when she gasps out your name, watching, making sure she's okay, making sure she's here and this is good and you're doing it right and exactly how she wants you.
You drag your nails along the outside of her thighs as they bracket either side of your hips now, you've both shifted and settled and "Oh my God." It rushes out of her deep and unencumbered. Sexy and sultry and beautiful. "Please don't stop. "
You could never.
You're doing something right.
You're tempted to just... give in as her fingers are exploring, silky and smooth against your skin as she moves against you, finding friction in the motion as she bites her lip, eyes you pleadingly and when she settles you just right she breathes deep and calm and ready.
It's as far as the two of you have gone in the house and you're a little nervous in starting something you're not sure you'll ever be able to finish.
She grips the sides of you, desperate and firm with the strength of the grip on her bat and every ounce of your body is screaming at hers to take you. To prove that this is.
Her thumbs drag down and slip under the elastic at your waist as you move in time with her and when they slip down a little lower, fluidly in your attempt at friction, you can't help but throw your head back because God do you lose yourself with her.
She hums her pleasure, right there with you and you fall forward, arms bracketing her face and when your eyes meet they flash with something you've never seen before, not like this, hungry and heavy and when you kiss her she gasps into your mouth, lost in herself and in you.
It stops you, because however many moments ago she was panicking, looking to the door, fearful that someone might walk in and now she's inching closer and gripping you tighter and conducting the movements of your body masterfully. And the shift is jarring enough to uncloud the haze that moving with her, kissing her, leaves over your brain.
But something about this feels off, like she's not all here and not in this with you and you worry instantly that you're pushing her too far and she doesn't want this, that she just wants to prove to you that she'll choose this if you demand it and that's not Greta.
"Woah woah, wait, can you..."
She smirks, filthy and flirty and dangerous as she all but shoves her entire hand down the front of your shorts as her mouth drops open and her left hand grips tighter because of what it's doing to her too.
"We should, as much as I love this... I think we should.... no but you can't do that because I can't think when you... Greta, please I just want..."
She drags the nails of her left hand down your lower back. Digs in, holds on tight. "What? Me? Oh I know you do, I can feel it."
"Oh God." It's different though, bashful and flustered and in disbelief of your own learning curve because she's so forward she makes you blush as she pushes up against you, teasing you, trying to get you to engage and fall into this with her.
You grab for her wrist and pull it from your shorts, pinning it above her head in an attempt to get her to pay attention to you, keep her from diving back in, and close your eyes in an attempt at composing yourself, not sure why you're stopping this, not sure how you're going to get through this conversation when she looks like that and wants you like this and you can barely get your head to stop swimming with the sensations of her.
"Greta, please, can we please stop?"
She gasps and stops breathing then, hands up in surrender, fearful that she's pushed you too far or done too much or taken away your ability to consent to this. So you take a second, you take a breath, and then you reach to run your thumb over her bottom lip, tidying the remnants of her lipstick from hours of kissing her, stained and painted, wild and wanton, where you definitely smeared it, proudly.
You can't imagine what your mouth must look like, unhinged and desperate, and it sends a jolt of something delicious that settles low in your belly in a way that only she can quell. Later.
Intimacy.
You smile at her and she nods, understanding that this isn't a little goodbye, that you're still here.
That this is safe, even if it's scary.
"I need to say things."
She chuckles a little with a faux exasperated huff, and you watch the tip of her tongue as it ghosts out of the corner of her mouth in her own nerves, the little tilt of her head, sweet and lovely and she bids to you to keep going, keeps looking at you like you're the most precious gift in the world. As she watches you.
"You do tend to need that in situations like this. It's sweet."
You give her a pointed look and then roll your eyes because you do not. But also fine you have to, she has to know. "When you first kissed me you walked away from me, left me alone after my entire world shifted for you."
She blinks, stunned and silenced and can only mutter a syllable, not predicting at all where this was headed. "Oh."
"And then when you first... when we..."
"When we what, Shaw?" There she is, direct, making sure you say exactly what you mean exactly how you intend to say it, no bullshit, no ephemera, just you at the core of who you are meeting her fully. If you're going to be in this there's no hiding any longer.
"When you fucked me, Greta." It's out quickly, exasperatingly and her eyes open wide and so does her mouth, shocked that you threw it back to her so effortlessly, the little gasp slips and tumbles and God would you rather catch it, taste it with your mouth, bite at her lip and get her to do it again.
You hone in now, ready to say what you need to because you're tired of her leaving you behind when life altering things happen. "You left me then too, the second we were back home you shut down, pulled away from me when all I wanted was more of you."
She's a little confused, maybe even a little hurt that sexy and sultry is suddenly this honest, but she sighs and meets you because it's obviously something you need if you're stopping all of this. "Carson, look, you know this is dangerous, that we're living on borrowed time, that I have to..."
You keep your voice soft, calm, this isn't an accusation or an argument, this is just you trying to process, to catch up. "Protect yourself?"
"Protect us both.
You shake your head because it's not her job, it's not her burden to carry alone. "You nudge me out onto these little ledges with no safety net, with no you beside me. You wanna tell me what I'm going to choose? How about what you choose? Why are you so afraid?"
She scoffs, a look of distaste and offense at how direct you just were considering your current positions and moves to sit up a little underneath you to put some space between you. "And I understand why. You're allowed to be, you're allowed to protect yourself from getting hurt again."
"Right, okay..."
You take a deep breath and the tension in your body ebbs almost in defeat because you don't know how to say these things, not really. Not with her looking at you like this and her breathing fast and her jaw clenching in defense. "But you're showing me you don't believe in this by deciding the outcome for me. You said you still want this, did you mean it?"
She opens her mouth to retort, but searches your eyes instead, and you give her the space to process what you just said because it is lonely sometimes, choosing her, and she doesn't make it easy to be brave for her. She closes her eyes and swallows hard. "Every word."
She shakes her head tracing the hem of your shirt with her finger breaking eye contact with you, a distant memory drowning you out as her eyes close and she clears her throat with nerves. "Please just talk to me."
Her eyes snap to yours and she takes a deep breath, preparing.
"I don't want there to be little ghosts of us." Her eyes close again and you can feel that she's struggling, caught between lust and deflection and discomfort at having to face these feelings, but that she's trying because you've all but begged her. "But I keep creating them with you because I can't stop myself."
She's starved for intimacy, you think. Lasting, permanent, reciprocated intimacy and you've tried to offer it back to her, running your nails on the inside of her palm, tucking the hair behind her ear, studying the flecks of color in her eyes, dotting the freckles across her cheeks, tracing her fingerprints, loops and swirls and destiny etched in every one, memorizing... oh.
And it hits you square and hard and you're almost brought to tears because when you love someone, really love them, there's not a single piece or part or nuance of them that you don't crave the intimacy of, the familiarity of.
Fuck.
She's been telling you long before even you knew.
Because you could sit here for hours, tracing and teasing and smiling and being fully here with her, no baseball, she's better than baseball, no outside world, just you and her and this and now and God how had you been so blind to what she's been doing all this time?
Loving you.
"I carry around a decade of ghosts inside me, okay? But these, the ones I'm creating with you? They're the biggest of them all and I don't know how I'll be able to hide from them. I don't want to hide from them."
You shrug. Easy.
"So don't."
She eyes you curiously, brows furrowed and eyes squinted in confusion at the directness, as if nobody had ever told her anything like this before. As if she's never had to have a real conversation about it before, just an unspoken agreement between them both that it would end and there really was no need for discussion.
They always go back to their husbands.
Charlie, Charlie, Charlie.
Moments pass where she says nothing at all, lost in her head, lost in the past, but she's still grounding herself in the brush of her skin with yours, a swipe of her thumb, still trying to stay present with you even as she processes everything you're telling her.
"I don't know how to trust anyone but Jo not to choose what's easy and comfortable, to not choose me." She hangs her head a little and you reach with your finger to lift her chin to look at you.
"So you just tell them they won't and it hurts less?"
"Actually, no." She laughs a little self-consciously because it really is a silly coping mechanism hearing it out loud. "I don't think I've ever had a frank conversation about it, just accept that it's understood and then move on."
"So then why do it?"
"Carson, there are only so many games left for us here, and it's just how these things go. Seasons begin, seasons end, new state, new people, everyone eventually lets go and then we leave, onto the next adventure."
"Do you want me to let go?"
Her eyebrows crease at the question, confused why after I still want this you'd ask her that, but you can feel her ring, Dana's ring, a tiny shackled reminder against your skin and you know that you're going to have to keep asking her, keep making sure she knows that you're still in this, and it's okay for her to be too. That it's really all you think about in quiet moments where forever echos so loudly in your ears that you ache with the reverberations of it.
"Well, not of me, but I think that's obvious."
You smirk at her forwardness, smirk that the two of you can do this, proud of yourself for being able to turn this, play with her while having a serious conversation, that not every time you get her to slow down and talk has to lead into one of you storming off in tears.
She laughs and it might be the most beautiful sound you've ever heard.
"I never want to let go of you."
It's lofty and honest and sounds a little like the forever that stays locked tightly in your mind, foreign on your tongue, more genuine than even your I do was, and you're worried that it's a promise you can't keep, even if you're desperate to exist in a world where that'd be possible, where you could keep her safe and help her want to stay, where you could go with her.
A true lifetime of adventure, seeking, not running.
"Oh, that's good then because you've kind of got me pinned down here and I'm enjoying myself, aren't you?"
"I think you know that I am." You shift your weight a bit to watch her reaction, eyes wide as her chest expands because her stomach has just dropped and God this woman fuels your soul in a way no other person ever has.
She smiles and sighs and tucks the hair away from your eyes, just because she can, because effortless touches when you're alone like this are never to be wasted. "So what do we do?" You wonder if she's ever asked that before, ever included her partner in any kind of discussion like this. Ever valued the relationship enough to try to figure it out before it's too late.
"I don't know the answer to that."
She sighs. So do you.
"But I meant what I said, I still want this, more than ever, so maybe we stop saying goodbye every moment we spend together? I...I like you, and I don't... I really don't want to stop."
She nods slowly, eyes fixated, dilated. She licks her lips. She flexes her fingers.
"So don't stop."
And maybe, for now, it's as simple as that.