Archive of Our Own

The Vault won’t let them in.

It’s quiet in the void of space, the Immortals one star in a constellation of long-dead teams, hurtling past the golden figure at the center of the map to seek refuge in the sterile Vault, where Parker, landing briefly in their makeshift ship on his journey between teams, says they will be safe, and promises a thousand stories when they get there. They make him swear to see them again before they’ll let him Roam, and when he does, it’s with confidence and joy and love, and Cell misses him again before he’s even gone.

But the Vault must know they’re dead. For others, teams full of living souls, its doors are wide open. For them, there is a chasm, and it consigns them to the ocean of the Black Hole, lapping at their shores.

Crits finds them standing out on the bow, watching the other distant stars orbit the event horizon.

"The world is ending."

"It already did." They've been dead for—for who knows how long. No one who's dead has a clear sense of it, and those who were in the Vault—Parker, Clare—seem to either. The rest of their old teammates, those on teams that survived, are just gone. Nothing is left of the world they knew. For Cell, that's as good of an ending as anything else. They're past that now. This is just another day after the end.

But Crits is looking at them again, the same way he's always done. "Mine didn't," he says. "Not yet."

And, oh, they think. That's as close as Crits might ever come to saying it out loud. They smile and take his hand.

"I love you, too."

Peace only lasts for a little while, and then the Hall, with a great groan, goes from sprawling and labyrinthine to tiny, rubber-banding all of its inhabitants—and oh, does Crits mean all —into the entry room, with the altar and the massive pillars shadowing fourteen towering statues. On one end of the room, grand doors that stretch up towards the soaring ceiling; on the other, leaderboards, cracked and dusty and all-but-forgotten. It’s a place Crits has never seen, and even the crowd in it is dwarfed by its size.

Cell is pressed in close to his side. They’ve been separated from the other Immortals, and no one close to them is anyone Crits recognizes. There is an air of anticipation that he doesn’t understand.

The Hall, the new dead people are saying, is opening. There’s going to be some sort of rush on the Hall. There is a labyrinth of passages and rooms claimed by people Crits doesn’t know, playing for teams Crits has never heard of. The League is all new, and they’ve slept through the deaths of more than a hundred people. Someone has a count, but Crits isn’t about to looking, because someone, recognizing their jerseys, says this:

Parker is back. He’s back, and he’s killing again, and he’s somewhere outside of those great doors.

Cell and Crits exchange a look. “There were never doors before,” Cell says.

“I wonder if they’ll open,” Crits finishes, and they grin at each other.

Turns out they aren’t the only ones to have that thought. Crits elbows his way through the mass of dead strangers, hand in Cell’s so they don’t lose each other. The music is getting louder. Some of the massive pillars they inch past bear the markings left by Ellie and Owen when they first arrived here, alongside the carved names and messages of new arrivals, a record of the dead. It’s as good of a history as they’re going to get, and Cell, passing by them, runs their fingers over the engraved lines.

Up closer to the front, it turns out their Immortals jersey carries some weight. People step aside and let them take a place by the doors. None of them are people Crits knows.

They are all standing together when the music stops, and something huge and dark speaks, in a voice so loud and simultaneously so not audible :

i quit. you’re on deck. get out there.

The massive doors open, and for the first time in so fucking long, Crits sees outside. Just for a moment, the vast expanse of space stretches out ahead of him, and something animal, buried deep inside him, yearns so hard to run that it almost knocks him down, and he thinks distantly this must be how Parker feels, and then Parker himself, wearing a uniform that says Tigers but doesn’t match the uniform the Tigers had when Crits was alive, comes racing through the doors and slams into him.

As if his entry was a signal, the Hall floods with people—living people, a crush of warm bodies with beating hearts and lungs full of air. The noise dial turns up past 11, and someone kicks on the music again. Parker gets off of Crits to throw himself at Cell, and Crits is pounding him on the back and shouting in his ear, and people keep coming past to say things to Parker, and someone tosses a flannel shirt at him.

They hear that Parker was in the Garages. It is explained to them that the Garages are a band—a blaseball team, yes, but also a band, and anarchists at that. Crits is grinning ear to ear like he’s found his people, and then it sinks in for both of them that Parker was in a band.

“Do you play an instrument?” Crits demands, clinging onto one of Parker’s arms. “Dude, you never told us you could play anything!”

“Songs,” Cell is saying at the same time. “Did you write any songs? Play any songs? Are there songs about you?”

“They were teaching me to play theremin,” Parker answers, shaking both of them off. “And yeah. There’s songs.” His eyes are a little deader than Crits remembers, the shadows under them a little deeper. Cell and Crits and the rest of the Immortals were Parker’s first fatalities, so they can only imagine how much the rest of the League’s inevitable deaths would have done to him.

But they’re not here for his crucifixion. They never were. They’re his best friends, and death doesn’t negate that.

“Come on,” Cell says. “You should come see the others.”

They guide him back through the crowd—easier, now, despite the living arrivals. People are too busy reuniting to be in their way as they drag Parker along to where the Immortals are standing in a little knot. When they get close, they don’t even have to push him.

Cell and Crits pause without discussing it, letting Parker close the distance first, almost running to the rest of the team. They haven’t seen him since they died; for him, it must have been so much longer. Cell nudges Crits’s hand.

“He’s afraid,” they say. “I think of us leaving him. The Immortals.”

“He’s afraid we hate him,” Crits agrees.

“Let’s see how everyone reacts,” Cell says. “I don’t think he’ll believe it if we tell him ourselves.”

Crits hums agreement. They’ve almost caught up when Parker reaches the Immortals, and Luka sees him and screams. Everyone tenses for a second but then she's launching herself at him, and he kneels to catch her, and she's shouting shrilly about something or other. Crits makes out I missed you! and grins.

Cell takes his hand. "I guess there was nothing to worry about," they say, and Crits squeezes it back. His heart is so bright and full it feels like it might explode and he'd die again, except with a lot more gore this time. He missed Parker, too, and he missed this.

From her position clinging to Parker, Luka spots them, and points. Cell's face drops.

"Cell and Crits got married! " She shrieks, and Parker turns.

Oh, fuck, Crits thinks. They're still holding hands. Crits should, he thinks distantly, put some kind of performance into this. Pretend to be caught in the act. But he's grinning so wide he can hardly feel his face, and he knows Parker, knows him well enough to hear the joy in his congratulations before the words even make it off his lips.

He's still holding Cell's hand. Fuck it. He's never letting go.

Cell blinks and they're aware again. It's like waking up from a deep sleep. They aren't where they were, the last time they remember anything, but Crits is still there, looking back at them, and when they reach out to touch his cheek he does the same thing, and the feeling is familiar, like they've done this many times before.

"Good morning," Crits says. "Sleep well?"

Cell opens their mouth. Closes it. Tries again.

"God, Crits," they hear themself say. "That's the first thing you say to me?"

Crits grins. "The first thing you say to me is that ? You're lecturing me? We've been gallivanting the Hall doing fuck-knows-what for god-knows-when and your first instinct is to make fun of me?"

"Oh, God."

"Just remember, you married me!"

"Don't remind me," Cell moans. With their hand still against Crits's face, they feel it when he laughs. Around them, the Hall is waking up. Vidalia is talking to Luka. Some people in the brown and tan uniforms of the Truckers are talking to the Excavators. The Parrots, the Whales. The Fireballs. Everyone Cell used to know, even in passing. A whole lot of strangers, too, in familiar uniforms, just as vibrant as the day Cell died—brighter, even, in the darkness.

And standing in the middle, Cell and Crits, looking at each other's faces, the first thing they see when they wake up.

There are scratches in the granite walls of the Hall. Two dots like stars, and a line that connects them. They are chasing something, always just a little too far away to reach.

This place—they've taken to calling it the Hall, a horrible idea on the part of Crits and Aubrey and Agustín, who called it the Hall of Flame, laughing at the pun—it's begun to fill up, in the last few years.

It's Parker. Most of it, anyway. He's dooming entire teams at a time, and Cell doesn't want to blame him but the more that people come here the worse the newcomers seem to feel about him.

Cell is spending less and less time out of the Immortals' claimed area, now.

Luka is the first one who can't find them. They don't even notice at first, but between one day and the next, they stop seeing her. Then Aubrey, then Ellie and Blossom, then Sticky and Owen and Agustín and even Vidalia—all of their teammates, all of their friends, vanish from them, until the only face they ever see anymore is Crits's.

"What's happening to me?" They ask when he comes to visit. If it comes out scared, they won't acknowledge it. They've been seeing lines, scratched into the walls around them, patternless, like tallies or reminders.

"I don't know." Crits seems more serious than usual. Worried. For them? "But it's not just happening to you. People keep vanishing."

In the distance, an eerie wail penetrates the gloom. Cell shivers and burrows further into their parka. It's been getting colder, too, and darker.

"I think I'm losing my mind," Cell admits. "I keep blacking out. Not seeing anyone for a long time… I wasn't made for this."

No one was, they add silently. Being dead isn't conducive to life. They didn't put that much stock into immortality , but—Alaska forever. When forever fails, they're just stuck with it.

They have to force down the panic. It feels like when they were small, scared of getting lost in the endless alone, where they could shout and shout and no one would hear them but the birds, and no one would come to rescue them. They know that that isn't what this is, and yet panic creeps in like a fog, impossible to beat and hard to ignore.

"Me either." Crits's voice is small and they look at him, surprised. "I mean, I still—I still see everyone, but I've got these big gaps in my memory, too. And I keep waking up like I've been screaming. Other people, some of them… Well."

They sit in silence for a minute together, listening to the distant howling. Cell blinks. Another line is scratched into the ground in front of them.

"It's getting longer, isn't it? The time we spend like this."

"Uh huh." Crits is nodding. "At least, Vidalia thinks so. The League is ending," he adds. "The lights are going out."

Cell stands and walks over to sit beside him. "Let's go together."

"Huh? Go where?"

"Crazy," Cell says. When they take his hand, their tattoos meet again. Cell can see those lines when they close their eyes. They know them better than their own mind. When they lose everything else, they hope that they'll still have this. That they'll able to look down, in the middle of scraping lines into the black stone of the Hall, and remember, if vaguely, that this was important to them. "Let's go out on our own terms, instead of waiting for it to come for us."

Crits looks down at their joined hands. They know he is thinking about their tattoos, just like Cell is. They never got to have rings, so they make do with this.

"Okay," he says, after a long enough pause that they began to worry. "Okay, fine. But if I'm going to lose myself, then—" he brings their hand to his face and cups it against his cheek. When he lets go, they leave it there, and let him do the same to their face. He's staring at them, like he's searching for some sort of answer, some sense of self, in their eyes. They meet his gaze. "Then I want to do it looking at you, and I want you to do it looking at me. I want the last thing I see to be your face."

"Deal," Cell says, like it was ever a question.

Crits is laying on his back on a pillar that, for some reason, is sideways. Cell is also sideways, from his perspective, standing and looking up at him with their hands on their hips.

“Dude,” Crits says. “You know what just occurred to me?”

“What?”

“We’re dead now.” Crits is waving his hands around like he’s had an epiphany, but Cell only raises an eyebrow, unimpressed.

“That only just occurred to you?”

“Cell, think about it.” He sits up and loses his balance as gravity rearranges itself and dumps him on the floor beside Cell. They offer him a hand and he takes it, standing up, and their matching tattoos form a tiny constellation between their wrists. “We died in our twenties, Cell. We’re never going to be 30.”

“Yes.” Cell still isn’t getting it. “I’ve already felt appropriately sad about this.”

Crits puts his hands on their shoulders, stares them in the eye. Their really nice eyes actually, he hasn’t done this that much and he’s kinda getting distracted by it. “Cell. We will never get married first. Neither of us won our bet.”

Cell blinks slowly. “Oh.”

“ Yeah. ”

“So, now what, then?” Cell still hasn’t pulled away—they’re just letting him keep his hands there on their shoulder. They’re close enough that Crits can literally smell them. (They smell good, actually, Crits wasn’t really thinking about that but now he is because they’re dead, so that shouldn’t be possible, and everything in the Hall smells like salt and dampness except for Cell, who also sort of smells like salt but mostly smells like a kitchen and fresh sea air. What was he talking about?)

“Uh,” Crits says blankly. “What?”

“Married,” Cell prompts, and Crits shakes his head as if to clear it.

“Right! Married. Well, uh, I don’t—I don’t know, actually.” He glances around and then looks back at Cell, and Cell is struck with a desire they don’t really care to acknowledge. Crits doesn’t know it, but his face is flushed—he doesn’t have to say things out loud, but over the time they’ve known each other, Cell has learned to decipher his secret, unspoken language. He won’t look them in the eye, and his face is red, showing just the hints of freckles Cell would otherwise never see. He’s embarrassed, and he won’t say why.

Cell has a guess, though.

They look around. No one else is near them—this place is as huge and as cold as the state from which most of them hail, so it’s easy to lose people to its chasm-like depths. It makes rounding people up for team meetings and morale boosting harder, but it also makes things like this easier to do without being judged.

Well, judged by anyone but Crits.

Cell resigns themself to their fate, lifts their left hand to their shoulder and takes his right hand in theirs, and leans forward and kisses him.

It’s sort of magical, actually. Cell doesn’t want to think that it is but it really is, and maybe it’s because they never let themselves imagine it, kissing this stupid idiot, but now that they’re doing it they kind of just want it to never stop. His lips are dry and cracked because he never uses chapstick and maybe on anyone else it would be unpleasant but on Crits it’s just perfect, because it’s just him. And he leans into them, too, which is also perfect, his left hand clutching at their sleeve like he’d fall without them there, and have they mentioned they never want to stop kissing him?

Except they have to, to breathe, and when they break apart they don’t go very far, just leaning far enough out of each other’s space that Cell can watch Crits’s eyes come back open.

“Oh,” Crits says. Cell can’t help but smirk a little bit, smug. “Oh, Cell. That gives me an idea.”

“And what would that be?”

“Let’s get married to each other.”

Cell drops their head and sighs. “God help me.”

“That’s not a no, ” Crits sing-songs, and laughs when Cell punches him in the shoulder. “Come on! I’m your best friend—”

“Debatable.”

“—you love me—”

“I admit to nothing.”

“— and you lost the bet,” Crits finishes, spreading his free arm out in a broad, triumphant gesture. He looks like the cat that got the cream, and Cell kind of really wants to kiss him again. “So, marry me!”

“I didn’t lose the bet. And that was a shitty proposal.”

Crits’s grin gets bigger, taking on a hint of challenge. It’s incredibly familiar in a way that makes Cell’s stomach do flips. “Oh, really? Bet you won’t say yes, then. Bet you won’t marry me.”

“Really?” Cell lets go of his hand at last and shoves him. “I could so marry you. I could marry you right now. I’d be the best spouse you’ve ever had.”

“I’ve never had another spouse!” Crits exclaims, and laughs. “And, prove it! Marry me. Marry me right now.”

“Fine.” And Cell steps away from them and turns off to march to the center of the Hall. Crits scurries after them after a beat.

“Where are you going!”

“To get Vidalia,” they say, like it’s obvious. “We need someone to be the priest.”

“Ohh, yeah.” Crits falls in step beside them to their left and takes their hand in his, swinging them. “Good point. Do you have vows?”

“Yes. Do you?”

“Obviously.” It’s not like he’s been writing them since they met, back in high school, or anything. He doesn’t have to admit to that. The scrap of paper in his bedside drawer died with him, or whatever, except that it literally didn’t, just the gum in his pocket did. So there’s no proof. Good thing he has it all memorized.

Cell nods firmly like this decides everything, and doesn’t question him anyway, and they keep walking. The Hall isn’t exactly the most clearly laid out place ever, almost as if by design. They’ll find the rest of the team eventually, but it might be a bit. Ellie and Owen have started scratching little arrows in landmarks, but they are few and far between once you get outside of the usual Immortals stomping grounds.

But it’s plenty of time to just walk together, hand in hand, ignoring both the elephant between them (how long have you wanted to do this? Why did you say yes so easily?) and the screaming in their heads (oh god, he’s going to know I love him, and I love him more than just as friends. They kissed me, they kissed me, they kissed me, they kissed me—).

“You know,” Crits says after a few minutes. “Technically if neither of us ever gets married, we'll never win the bet, but we'll never lose.”

Cell glances at him out of the corner of their eye. “You're too chicken to marry me?”

“I am not. ” They walk a minute longer. “Actually, it’s kind of like tying. We’ll get married at the same time, so we both win and lose.”

“Crits?”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up.”

Crits grins. “Make me.”

And what, is Cell supposed to just not kiss him again?

So it takes them a little bit to find Vidalia, because they keep getting sidetracked by stupid shit, but eventually they find her, on her own for once, near the big room with the big altar that Crits doesn’t like to think about. She’s sitting on a pillar, deep in thought, but looks up as they approach.

Crits gestures at Vidalia, and he does it with the hand that Cell is still holding, and Cell tries their best not to outwardly show that their heart skipped a couple beats.

"Marry us," he demands. Vidalia raises an eyebrow, and he shrinks and grins sheepishly. "Uh, please."

"Marry you," she repeats. "Are you sure?"

"We've already been over this," Cell says, at the same time as Crits says, "I'm not chicken!"

"I don't mean," she waves a hand and hesitates. "All that."

Cell gets it then, and turns to look at Crits. "The others will make fun of us," they say flatly.

"The others will make fun of you," Vidalia confirms with a nod.

"Oh." Crits thinks this over. "We could have a private ceremony?"

"We're dead. This is a private ceremony."

"Marry me anyway," Crits says then, and squeezes their hand. It's just as intimate as kissing and twice as meaningful. "Who cares?"

What a thought. Marry him anyway. Maybe it’s a joke, maybe it’s a bet, maybe it’s neither of those things and they’re both just too cowardly to say it, too busy pretending to not be able to stand each other to say they love each other, but Cell gets it, feels it in the squeeze of his hand in theirs. The hand has a direct line to the heart, after all.

Cell is standing in their mother’s kitchen, helping to make dinner, the Immortals game on in the living room, when they feel it: a rush, a sense of impending danger, the violet instability surging from them to meet the sky, to meet—

Light, through the roof, a beam like a spotlight, glowing gold. It would be pretty, they think, if it weren’t an inferno, sent to drag them to hell for the sin of being friends with Parker. It burns when it takes them—burns doesn’t even cover it, but it’s over so fast that they forget to scream. They close their eyes, wanting to remember what life was like—

And then, nothing.

They open their eyes.

Around them, death doesn’t look or feel like what they expected. It’s an expanse of nothing, a wasteland of blackness and desolation. They are… They are alone.

Their first thought, and they should feel more ashamed of this than they do, is not for their family, but for their team. They are alone . If they are here, the other Immortals should be, too. They are not stupid, they know how this must work. If they are dead, so must be the others.

But—But they are alone, and they were alone when they died. (They died, hell, they died, they’re dead, they’re panicking about it a little bit, and they can’t breathe but also they can’t breathe , and there’s no pain because they’re dead but if they were, their chest would be heavy and tight.) They were alone when they died, and they cannot see their team anywhere.

They don’t want to be alone. They take a breath. 

“Crits!”

The void swallows their voice, muffling it under the power of a thousand leagues of dead seawater, and they tremble, folding their arms around themself. They scream again, louder. “ CRITS!”

In the distance, a faint reply. “Cell! Cell?”

They shout for him again and they hear his voice again, louder, as his shape begins to emerge, gray and blue, from the gloom. They are running for him before they think to do it, their legs a step ahead of their brain. “Crits!”

He slams into them and they lift him off the ground, hugging him as tight as they can, and it doesn’t even matter that they might crush him so hard he can’t breathe, because they are both dead, and they will never breathe again. Cell doesn’t spare it another thought, and Crits doesn’t either, clinging to Cell and speaking, shrill nonsense in their ears. He knocked their hat off. They can’t stop thinking.

“I thought—I couldn’t find any of you,” Cell says, interrupting Crits’s mile-a-minute babble.

“We couldn’t find you !” Crits responds, voice high with emotion. “We found Ruth and Owen, and then we couldn’t find you, oh, holy shit—”

“I’m here,” Cell says, and tries to believe it. This has to be real. “I’m right here, you’re here, we’re both here.”

“The others were just behind me,” Crits says, right as Cell can see their other shapes starting to move in the dim distance of this place. They set Crits down and try not to feel empty. “Are you okay? I mean, you know, okay, like, are you—are you—you know?”

Cell raises a hand, looks at it. It’s still shaking. They swallow hard and lower it. “I think I will be. I just—I was making dinner, and then I was here, and I couldn’t find you.”

“I know.” Crits must really be shaken, too, because his voice is so gentle, if still tinged with panic, and Cell feels a little sick. He’s so—He’s so—They’re both dead, and he’s so gentle . Cell reaches out and takes his hand, the flesh one, the one with their matching stupid tattoos, the ones that Parker gave them. Parker isn’t here, can’t be here, but—

They’re dead. Cell wants to cry.

Crits looks at their joined hands, then up at Cell’s face, and his expression is so worried and so soft, and he curls their fingers together, patiently allows Cell to rearrange it until it feels right. The rest of the Immortals catch up to them, then, and if any of them notice them holding hands, they don’t mention it. It’s been a trying day for all of them, and Cell greets Aub and Agustíin and Owen, everyone relieved just to have found each other.

Crits doesn’t let go of their hand, and they don’t let go of his.

Crits has been raging for days about voter fraud.

“No one on the Immortals wants you gone,” he keeps reassuring Parker. Their friend seems to have had the life punched out of him, and has been sitting slumped on the couch in the clubhouse like a sad balloon with its air let out, staring into oblivion. No one’s asked him to leave yet. None of the Immortals are going to. He’ll probably be sitting there until the League itself comes in to make him go.

“He knows that,” Cell says from the breakfast counter where they’re sitting, one leg crossed over the other. They fret in a different way than Crits does. The concerned look they keep giving Parker is the way it manifests. “You know that, Parker, right? Also, that isn’t how voter fraud works.”

Crits huffs dramatically, peeks at Parker, and sees the same empty stare. He folds himself over the couch back and tumbles to sit beside him. “Listen, Parkie.” That gets a reaction, a blink and an appalled look, and both Crits and Cell are a little cheered by it. “Listen,” Crits says again. “So, maybe we didn’t have the best season ever.”

Cell snorts. “You think?”

Crits ignores them. “And, okay, maybe you kinda a little bit sucked this season.” He definitely did not suck this season. Sometimes other people are just better. Plus, the Crabs got Megan Ito, and she had a great season. Crits and Cell definitely have noticed Parker’s late night phone calls. But Parker smiles a little bit at Crits’s words so he keeps going. “But it’s not enough to make us revoke you. I-D-K. Some stupid person just got a lucky vote. Or a really unlucky one.”

“Did you actually say the abbreviation out loud?” Cell starts to say, but—Parker’s gaze has gone distant again. His friends exchange frowns.

Parker doesn’t talk a lot about—well, about anything. Talking a lot is kind of Crits’s role, and then sometimes Cell’s. But he especially doesn’t talk about himself, or his family. What Crits and Cell have pieced together over the last few years is that Parker’s mom is putting a lot of money, money that they don’t really have, into the Immortals—and now, into the League, and Parker is expected to make it back for them. And Non-Profit, the mod that the Immortals haven’t put a lot of thought into, kind of throws a wrench into that plan.

“Okay, well.” Crits stands up and hustles Parker to his feet. “We still have the off-season until you go somewhere else. Let’s go out and party tonight. Aub said they got tickets to some shitty concert. Let’s go. I promise to have you home by 1 or whatever.”

Cell boxes Parker in on his other side, a half-step behind so that he can’t fall behind and sneak off to be miserable. “What concert?” Crits only laughs. “Crits. Crits , what concert? ”

His wrist itches where his tattoo is still only freshly healed. At least they'll have something to remember each other by. Then he tries not to think that way. No mourning until tomorrow comes and Parker will be gone with the dawn. No mourning while it's still today. They still have tonight.

Season B isn’t going half as well as Season A did.

There isn’t really a reason why. The Immortals had a great election, plus or minus the Firewalker bit. Parker got a stat boost, and he’s easily one of their best players now. Cell is killing it on the rotation. But they can’t hold the whole team down themselves, and the Immortals are sinking into the bottom of the standings.

It’s fine, though. All of the Evil League is really good, so even if this turns into a slap fight between the Crabs and the Fridays, Crits won’t feel too cheated. Besides, this is his dream—playing blaseball on a big stage like this, surrounded by people he actually likes (and Cell). It’s so much better than high school.

And yet, here he is, laying on Parker’s bed, upper body hanging off the side, head just brushing the floor, with his two best friends, who are, like the rest of the team, just sort of moping around like beasts without purpose, now that they’re out of playoffs contention.

“Let’s do something fun,” Crits says, looking at Cell and Parker who, from his perspective, are suspended upside-down from the ceiling. All the blood is going to his head.

“Like what?” Parker spins idly in the desk chair and then sets his chin on his hand. “We could go practice.”

“That is not something fun,” Crits says at the same time as Cell looks up from their phone to flatly refuse the idea. Parker shrugs.

“I was just suggesting.”

Crits eyes him. He’s picking at his hands again, fingernails ragged. Parker’s not exactly hard to read: he’s anxious again. He tends to get this way when he’s left to his own thoughts. He exhales hard and pushes himself off the bed, a graceless flailing to the floor that prompts both Cell and Parker to look at him.

“Okay,” he says, when he’s recovered a little bit of his dignity. “I have an idea. Parker, give me and Cell stick and pokes.”

“What?” They both say at the same time, and Cell gives him a look that is so patently Cell that he has to laugh.

“I,” Cell says, drawing themself up indignantly. “I did not volunteer for this.”

“But?” Crits looks at them, meets their glare with an innocent bat of his eyelashes. “Come on, you know you wanna.”

They hold the glare a moment longer, but Crits sees their eyes jump to Parker, watching the two of them with a little bit more life in his eyes, the little stuck ink lines on his fingers, the intricate shapes on his shoulders. Cell wavers, then sighs. “But, I’m in. If Parker does it.”

“Okay,” Parker agrees readily. “I have all the stuff here, so, yeah. Can you move the chair?”

Cell dutifully rearranges things to Parker’s liking, then again when Parker changes his mind, and Crits sits down to watch them from the bed, right-side up this time. They’re wearing a black shirt and it hides nothing , and Crits is pretty entertained until they finish rearranging things and come sit beside him, and then he has to look away so that they don’t catch him in the act. Crits watches Parker unpack inks from a case he gets from the closet instead. He can feel their gaze on him anyway.

“Wanna chicken out?” He asks them without looking, and hears their snort.

“No.” They pause. “Do you?”

“Nah. …I’m not crazy about needles, though.”

“Oh my god, Crits.” Cell drops their face in their hands, so the next words come out a bit muffled. “This was your idea.”

“I know!” Crits rolls up his sleeves, then rolls them back down when it’s actually a little too cold with them up. There’s no comfortable temperature in this room. “I wouldn’t’ve said it if I wasn’t cool with it.”

“What are you going to get him to do?”

“I can hear you both,” Parker interrupts mildly. He is, after all, like three feet away. “But keep talking.”

“I was thinking a constellation or something.” Crits frowns. “But I was just going to let Parker pick.”

“Match with me.” Crits looks at Cell, startled.

“What?”

“Match with me.” They shrug like it’s just a suggestion and not basically a proclamation of undying love. “I like stars. Parker has one of Ursa Minor. Let’s do Canes Venatici.”

Crits watches Parker look up and cast Cell a suspicious glance. “How do you know I have Ursa Minor?” Cell just shrugs in response. Crits is thinking hard, brows furrowed.

“Isn’t—Isn’t that just a line?”

“Two stars,” Cell says. “Two dogs. I have one star and half of the line, you have the other.” A pause. “If it’s not detailed enough—”

“No, no, that’s fine.” Crits isn’t going to admit how much he likes that. It’s simple enough that no one else will know what it is just by looking. Only the three of them will get it. “Parker, come on, man. How long is this going to take?”

Parker looks up and points at him. “I’m ready, and just for that, you’re going first.”

Crits makes Cell talk to him the whole time. It’s still the best decision he’s ever made.

Cell gets locked in the stadium.

It’s an accident, really. Aubrey is a prankster but no one is actually mean enough to go this far, even if they don’t know how Cell feels about it. It’s just that they were taking a little longer to clean up after practice, and the team was going to go out to dinner, and Crits had Cell’s key to the apartments but then he got distracted by Parker and Aub, and their buddy system was ruined, and one thing led to another, and then—

Cell is left alone, and the lights go out.

They don’t like crowds, but they can’t stand—they cannot cope with being alone. Alone, locked in a dark, wide-open area. They don’t know what the word for the opposite of claustrophobia is, but that’s what they have: a crippling fear of this sort of exposure.

They crouch in a corner of the clubhouse, keeping an eye on the exit and on the doorway to the tunnel to the field, while they dig their phone out of their pocket. Vidalia would be the best to get ahold of, but she left a while ago, skipping out on dinner to take care of things in town, and they’re not sure if she’d even see their message until tomorrow. Aubrey would make fun of them, although ze wouldn’t mean it. Scoop and Luka are out of the question.

They call Parker.

“Hey, Cell.” Parker answers after a second, sounding tired. He ran himself ragged this game. There are still scorch marks on the infield grass, and Crits, in the dugout, was making jokes about if Parker would even have the energy to make it home. Cell takes a shaky breath. “Cell? What is it?”

“Um,” they say. “I—You guys left. Uh, without me. I’m still—I’m locked in the clubhouse.”

There’s a pause. Cell can hear Crits asking Parker what’s going on. “Um,” Parker says, and Cell can’t tell which of them he’s talking to. “Uh, okay. Um. Cell got locked in the stadium.” That must be to Crits. Cell can hear the explosion of swearing. They’re not sure Crits even knows they’re panicking, let alone if he’s figured out why. But it seems like Parker has.

They take a desperate swallow of air.

“Okay. Cell, we’re coming back.” At least Parker sounds more awake now. And not very likely to make fun of them. “We’ll be, um, what do you think—” his voice gets a little fainter as he turns his head to talk to Crits. “Like, ten minutes?” A beat. “Okay. Cell, we’ll be there in five minutes.” He pauses again. “Are you… Going to be okay until we get there?”

“Yeah,” Cell says, and their voice breaks a bit on the middle of the word. They swallow around the thickness in their throat. “Yeah,” they repeat. It sounds a little stronger. They try to close their hands around the sound of it, make it stick in their chest. “I’ll be okay. I’m um, I’m by the door.”

“Okay.” Parker waited for a minute. “Do you want to stay on the phone while we walk?”

Cell has to pull the phone away from them while they sigh, more relieved than they want to admit. “Yes. Yeah, that would be nice.”

“Okay.” Parker hums. “I’ll put you on speaker. Say hi, Crits.”

“Hi, Crits!” Crits says, and laughs at his own dumb joke. Cell smiles. “We’re coming for you, man. In the meantime, I saw this cool bug…”

Crits is good at filling the silence. Cell leans their head against the wall and listens, idly interrupting his chatter with the occasional comment. They don’t even really notice the time passing.

(Crits and Parker get there in three minutes. They must have hiked through mud part of the way, but they don’t mention it and Cell doesn’t either.)

Blaseball goes on a break, for Gods’ Day. They still get their full players’ salary, though. It’s nice to have some time off, except that Parker seems to be going, like, stir crazy. A few of the Immortals, like Parker, come from out in the middle of nowhere, and a couple come from the contiguous states or overseas, so it is, for most, easier to just stay in Anchorage, and so they do. 

The first snow of the season happens the week after they win the Internet Series. Crits whoops for joy when he sees it, tugging a cap over his hair, lacing up his boots. “Come on!” He’s yelling to the others from the common room as he does. “Hurry up!”

“You’re a child,” Cell sighs, also pulling on their own boots. “Even Luka isn’t as excited as you.”

Which is not to say Luka isn’t excited. She is, bouncing around as she waits for Vidalia to get their coats. Crits rolls his eyes at Cell and bounds to his feet, offering a hand to help them up, which they accept. “It’s fresh snow ,” Crits emphasizes. “Unwalked in. We have the whole grounds to trample.”

“I’m going to build a snowman!” Luka adds from over by the hallway. Crits nods like she’s said something deep and profound.

“See? She gets it.”

“Luka,” Cell says, pulling on their gloves. “Is an actual, literal child.”

“Just get outside,” Crits sighs, and yanks open the heavy main door. Light floods in, the kind of sharp white of a fresh snowfall, almost blinding in its intensity. It’s freezing cold. It’s the best thing ever.

Crits is the first of the Immortals to break the fresh snow, taking a full leap out into it and landing up to his shins. He grins and starts wading through it, pausing every few moments to throw a handful of snow into the air and laugh as it falls back down around him. It isn’t actively snowing anymore, but it must have just stopped, because the sky is still gray and the snow sparkles.

“You’re such a child,” Cell says, hopping after him in his footprints. Their hat is jammed so far down on their head it’s starting to challenge their eyebrows for space.

Crits rolls his eyes. “You’ve said that already,” he jeers. “Get new material!”

Cell doesn’t dignify that with a comment, and branches off from Crits’s path to forge a new one towards a fallen log, where they brush off some snow and sit down. It is pretty, the winter wasteland that’s accumulated overnight. Crits wavers, then follows them.

“You’re lucky this snow isn’t sticky,” he says, kicking some of it in their general direction. “Or else I would nail you with a snowball right now.”

“Get a life,” they answer, and kick some right back. Crits is close enough now to pick up some snow and flick it at them, and they briefly devolve into a little scuffle, until they both are decently dusted with the stuff, and Cell’s face is flushed.

Crits flops down beside them. “Hey, you know, that reminds me. Are you single?”

Cell splutters. Their face gets redder. “What—why are you asking me that? No! Why are you asking?”

“I just noticed that a lot of blaseball players are single.” Crits looks up at the sky and tries to judge if it will snow again later. “Or date within the League, too. I mean, we’re pro athletes. You’d think we’d get all the girls. And guys. But I haven’t gone on one date since I started playing.”

“Oh, you poor thing,” Cell drawls, seemingly having composed themself, although they could still probably melt the snow with how hot their cheeks feel. “Now you’ll just have to be single until you’re in your 30s.”

Crits picks up another handful of snow and tosses it at them, as if that’s something good marriage candidates do. “I will not, ” he retorts. “You and your sarcasm will be single forever.”

“Not longer than you.”

“Wanna bet?” Crits turns his shoulders to face them, grinning. They kick snow at him instead of meeting his eyes.

“What, that you’ll be single longer than me?”

“Sure. Whoever gets married first, wins.”

Cell groans. “This is so dumb. Sure.”

“Shake on it,” Crits insists, holding out his hand, and Cell makes a face but takes it. They want to make it linger.

Someone swears, followed by the distinctive flump noise of a person going face-first into the snow. Crits and Cell turn in unison, hands dropping to their sides, watching Parker lift his head out of the snowbank he’s fallen into. He looks annoyed but otherwise not worse for wear, so Crits calls out:

“You good, Parkie?”

“Yeah,” he calls back, sighing, and sits up, looking down at himself. He’s frowning. Cell exchanges glances with Crits.

“What happened?” Cell calls over this time, and gains Vidalia and Owen’s attention with the mild concern in their voice. Parker stands, and Cell sees it, a moment before he says it.

“I guess they’re taking this Firewalker thing really seriously.” All the snow has melted at Parker’s feet, and when he takes another step, he steps through the snow, and now that he’s listening for it, Crits can hear the ssss of snow rapidly melting beneath a hot object. Or, in this case, a hot shoe.

“Huh.” Cell frowns. “Well, you’re alright?”

“Uh-huh.” Parker edges his way through the snow a little ways further, then sighs. “I think I’m just gonna lay in it.”

Crits snorts, watching Parker flop down again in the snow, making a half-hearted snow angel before Luka bounces over and does the same. “I guess that’s one way to make lemonade.” When he turns, Cell is watching him, but they quickly look away.

“Yeah. If you say so.”

They win the Internet Series. The Immortals throw a party.

Two hours into the night, and not nearly enough bowls of punch, Cell slips away. Out of the corner of his eye, Crits spots them just as they’re leaving, ducking out into the wind outside. The party is still in full swing. He frowns, excuses himself from the knot of people he’s stuck in. Parker gives him a helpless look as he leaves, and he shrugs at him, grinning lopsided. Parker could use some more socialization. Like a nervous dog.

Anyway, he steps outside, too, and follows them down the catwalk to the roof over the courtyard, where they’ve climbed up onto the wall and are staring out at the city below.

“Go away, Crits,” Cell says before he even gets close.

“How’d you know it was me?”

“Lucky guess.” They turn their head to look at him, then, and he grins. They stare flatly back at him. “Leave me alone.”

“No. Dude, what’s wrong? We won! It’s time to get our party on.”

“I don’t like crowds.”

“It’s our big day, it’s Parker’s big—did you say you don’t like crowds?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.” Crits turns this over in his head, then climbs up on the wall to sit beside them.  Cell kicks his foot, and he kicks theirs back. The silence becomes comfortable. Then: “Do you want me to make them all leave?”

Cell snorts. “God, no. That’d—That’d be such a pain.”

“I’d do it.”

“You don’t need to do that, Crits.”

“Are you sure? ‘Cause I could get up on a table. I could get one of those champagne glasses, do a little ring-ring-ring. Get everyone’s attention.” Cell is smiling now. “Hey everyone, listen up! I’m kicking you all out now! Real winners go to bed early! Maybe if you didn’t spend so much time partying, you could actually beat us in blaseball.”

Cell laughs and nudges him with their shoulder. “Don’t do that, you stupid idiot. I like hearing the party from here. Besides, Aubrey owes me twenty bucks if she can’t get the signatures of one pitcher and one batter from every team on the photo of us with the trophy.”

“I would think you’d want to end the party early more because of that.”

“Nah.” Cell leans back. It got dark a while ago, and there are some stars out. Crits follows their gaze to Ursa Minor. “I play fair. Also, it includes us, and I already told the other pitchers not to sign it.” Crits laughs, surprised. Cell’s fidgeting, though, so he waits. “I don’t like when it gets quiet. It really is nice to listen to them. I just don’t like being inside, and everyone trying to talk to me.”

“You’re like a cat,” Crits says, nodding, and Cell heaves an exaggerated sigh.

“I hate that you had that comparison ready.”

“Locked and loaded!” Crits grins cheerfully when Cell nudges them again. “Okay. Well, at least let me sit here with you. I was getting so bored in there anyway. So many people who want to know how I carried the team and won the championships all by myself. It’s so hard being this cool.”

“I’ll push you off this roof,” Cell threatens, but doesn’t make him leave.

The Immortals facility is bigger than anything Cell’s ever seen. They guess that comes with the sort of funding the League must have behind it. They aren’t about to complain, but they do spend a few minutes openly gawking at it. Their minor league team wasn’t that badly-off, but wow. Holy hell.

They’re busy trying to figure out how many batting cages can fit in the building when someone crashes into them and they go sprawling to the ground.

“Oh, shit— ”

Cell rolls over, squinting up at the wrecking ball masquerading as a human person who knocked them to the ground. He’s got long black hair, carrying a bat bag over one shoulder and the other extended to help Cell up, looking a little frantic and more than a little embarrassed. Suspiciously familiar. Cell squints.

“It’s you!”

Crits pauses in the middle of apologizing, hand still offered to Cell, sitting gaping up at him from the ground. A few emotions flicker over his face before he settles on pleased incredulity: “You remember me?”

“Of course I remember you!” Cell bats his hand away and stands on their own. They’re a little taller than him, and they stretch up to full height, as subtle as they can, and hope he doesn’t notice them doing it. “You were at my last high school tournament. You distracted me all game!”

“You thought I was distracting?”

“That,” Cell says, “is not the point. What are you doing here?”

“I’ve been invited to join the Immortals,” Crits answers, and gestures to his shirt. Alaska Forever. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ve also been invited. Nobody gave me a shirt, though.” They hope they don’t sound as jealous as they feel. Although it’s a pretty lame shirt. Merch is merch is merch, though.

But Crits is shaking his head. “I made this one,” he says, and Cell blinks.

“Oh. Really?” A nod. “Well. It sucks.”

“Hey!”

“Anyway, have you gone in yet?”

Crits shakes his head. “Nuh-uh. I just got here.” He pauses. “You’ve been just standing outside looking at it, haven’t you?”

“I’m not talking to you anymore.” Cell looks back at the stadium. What if it’s empty? What if there’s been a mistake, and they aren’t supposed to be here? They’re good, and they know they’re good, but what if—

Crits brushes past them. “Well, I’m going in. You can come if you want to.”

They bristle. “I am going in first!”

They jostle each other to the door, Crits laughing in Cell’s ear, and when they open the doors together, it turns out everyone else is already there.

They meet by chance at a blaseball tournament in high school. Cell is a senior, about to age out, playing their final games as a high school pitcher before moving on to the minor leagues; Crits is a freshman, and he hasn’t made the team yet—he’s just here to watch.

Crits has been playing blaseball since he was a kid, in Blittle League and pickup games on the street where no one kept score. But Blittle League isn’t as big out here as it is in other places; here, it’s all about the high school scene.

Crits is in line for the concession stand when the person behind him clears their throat pointedly.

“Uh,” Crits says, turning around, getting all ready to be offended. “What can I—Uh, what… What?”

The person behind him is gorgeous , like, in a way that should be illegal. Crits blinks, takes in the pristine uniform pants, the hoodie over what he presumes is their uniform shirt, the stupid fanny pack that doesn’t take away from them at all . He totally forgot what he was doing.

Unimpressed, the person raises an eyebrow. “I didn’t say anything.”

“Oh.” Crits looks down at their shoes, looks back up. “You cleared your throat at me.”

“I did not. I just cleared my throat.” Their disinterested frown has slid into a scowl. Crits knows he should stop, but he kind of just wants to keep talking to them. “...What?”

“I didn’t say anything.” Crits grins. “You play?”

“Yes. Later.”

“What position?”

“Pitcher.” They look him up and down. He tries not to feel like a tiny mollusk under a microscope. “You don’t play?”

“I mean, I do, but uh—not at this tournament.” Crits shoves his hands into his pockets. “I’m just a freshman.”

“Oh.” The pitcher leans onto their toes, and Crits glances over his shoulder. Just checking the line. There’s still a couple people between him and the front.

“Yeah. So, um. I’m Crits.”

The pitcher blinks and looks back to him, as if they’re surprised he’s still there, still talking to them. “Cell.”

“Nice to, uh, meet you?”

“It’s your turn,” they say, which doesn’t make sense for a second until he turns around. Shit. It was a group in front of him, he was fooled —

When Crits gets done ordering his snack, Cell is already walking away, carrying a couple of water bottles. He considers chasing after them, but…

Nah. That’d look desperate.

(He does, however, look them up on the program. Cell Ramsey will be pitching for the Bearcats, on their third game. The Bearcats are only now playing their first game. He grins to himself. He’s going to want a good seat.)