Tumgik
#born and raised UAW kid
whatbigotspost · 2 years
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Don’t cross any of the many active picket lines and pay close attention to what’s going on…
31K notes · View notes
ralbeleren · 5 years
Note
Accidental Dating/Accidental married, Mermaid AU, Pretty Woman AU, Didn’t know they were dating, A Dark Night in Cincinnati, Abusive Relationship AU, Witch/Witch’s Familiar AU, 1950s Infidelity AU, UGH Whatever, Psalm 91:11 >___>, I See the God Among Me, Fall Among Me, Found Family, and kill the lights
Cut for length! Only one of these didn’t have a snippet to post. 
Accidental Dating/Accidental Married: 
“First round is on me.” José squints at him a little bit, but he doesn’t protest, just sips on his drink and props his chin in his hand, watching James through half-lidded eyes. James tries to pretend that he doesn’t actually notice and that his palms aren’t sweating. It’s nerves; this could go really badly. “I’m not really sure how to go about this but…” James starts and looks at the bottles lining the wall, “… I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind doing me a favor.” José frowns a little, but sits up straighter. “Here I was, thinking you just like my company.” “No, it’s not that.” James says. “Dunno how you think that gonna make me wanna do you a favor.” “That’s not what I meant.” José raises his brows. “I mean, I need your help.” “I not agreeing to something before you tell me what it is, wasn’t born yesterday.” James doesn’t really know how to bring it up.
Mermaid AU:
He’d learnt, but he never stopped loving the water. When he’s about 12, his daddy lets him fish with them. The boat gleams in the summer sun. There’s a gleam of bright bejeweled blue and James wonders if he’s seeing things, as he’s sure he sees tails far too large to be any fish swimming in the murky depths. When he says as such, his dad brushes it off as old wives tales. James is about 12 when he sees his first merman. He can’t be much older than James, with dark hair and tanned skin, and a gleaming blue tail with the occasional red scale. He’s caught in one of the weighted nets, arms and tail tangled with it. James knows it’s one of those big crab hauling nets that their neighbors use and technically, he’s not supposed to be over in their yard. But vaguely, he remembers the pearl, remembers the tail and– not enough. But he wonders that maybe, maybe that was what saved him. “A life for a life.” James murmurs to himself and he picks his way over to the net. The merman struggles. “Shh, it’s okay.” James has a dog that he attempts to calm the same way, but the kid glares at him, dark eyes defiant and angry. James pulls out his fishing knife and starts to cut the rope netting. He has to saw at it, watching the strands break and snap, until he’s cut the net enough to let the merman free. 
Pretty Woman AU: 
This never got started but it was going to be Verlander and someone-- Scherzer I think, maybe? That was a prompt fill for the MLB Fic Exchange but I never got around to writing it because of the timing. 
Didn’t Know They Were Dating: 
José looks miserable, shoving his hands in his pockets.
"Was Boston colder?" James asks, the wind chapping his face as he leads José to his truck. José looks stung when James asks about Boston and James files the reaction away as José doesn't answer. It must be a sore spot still. He can imagine why, he wonders if that was why José was looking so upset at his phone.
"How you adjust? Is different than…" José squints at him. "Nebraska?"
"I should kick ya out of the car. Arkansas. But I grew up in California. And we had snow in Arkansas."
José chooses to turn the radio on instead and changes it from 99.5, jabbing at the seek button like it offended him.
A Dark Night in Cincinnati: 
“Is this a fire extinguisher?” Carson’s tone is incredulous and Guardian’s mouth presses into a flat line. Tony runs a hand through his dark brown hair and his brow furrows slightly.
“Of course it isn’t,” Tony says, shaking his head at him, “I’m not some kind of amateur.” Tony crosses his arms over his chest, a motion which causes him to twist his face a little and quickly uncross them. Guardian puts a hand to his elbow lightly.
“I mean, it’s a flame retardant chemical that’s been compressed…” Tony started.
“So it is--”“Let me finish,” Tony snaps at him. Guardian sighs a little, eyes moving towards the ceiling. Tony huffs at Carson. “Can you believe this guy?” “Tony,” Guardian’s tone is stern, but quiet.
“FINE,” Tony says and he turns back to Carson. “It has power dampening properties too.”
Carson frowns at that.
“That seems like a dangerous road to go down…” “And I suppose you would rather that Spitfire just continues to run rampant then?” Tony counters. Carson frowns even more.
“Just seems a slippery slope, that’s all.”
Abusive Relationship AU:
Jose always wears wristbands when they're on the field. And James watches him pull them on, sees the faint, fading marks on his wrists. They're faintly yellow, almost gone.
James frowns a little as he notices them and he moves over to Jose. He grabs his hand and prevents him from finishing putting on the bands. There is loud Spanish reggaeton playing from a boombox and James takes a quick glance around to make sure that no one is paying attention.
"What happened?" James asks. José frowns and jerks his hand away from James's grip.
"Was just an accident." José finishes tugging on his wrist bands. "You probably dunno how it is, when a pretty chica wanna play around."
James raises his brow at him.
"Play around?" James repeats.
José nods a little but he doesn't meet James's eyes.
"Yeah, you know, she likes to tie you up and play around."
James can't help but imagine that and his cheeks flush red.
"Forget I asked." James shakes his head a little.
José laughs -- but it sounds a little forced. James doesn't know if he knows José well enough to know it's fake, but it's just lacking something that he's heard before. James frowns a little at José and squeezes his shoulder. 
Witch/Witch’s Familiar AU:
James remembers dying. When he closes his eyes he can still feel it sometimes. The sharpness of steel between his ribs, and the way the blood felt as it trickled from the corner of his mouth. He remembers laying there, with surprise and horror, unable to move, staring up at the brilliant blue sky-- so bright it almost hurts.
It was a beautiful day to die on and sometimes when he dreams, he dreams of that.
He remembers that he dies and that his name was lost-- so he keeps it burned into the back of his tongue like a word he can't quite get out, that he chokes on when he introduces himself.
James doesn't know why he was reborn-- perhaps just the way it goes, when someone is praying for a miracle, any miracle.
When he's young, skinned his knees and his mom is wiping them up with astringent peroxide, bubbling away the infection, she tells him he was her miracle baby. How he almost died.
James remembers dying, but then he forgets.
1950s Infidelity AU:
He makes his way downstairs and grabs the newspaper and some coffee, looking at the headline. He reads through the article about GM and the UAW but the looming threat of the strike at the Ford plant he works at causes him to quickly flip through the pages, leaving behind the more serious stuff to check out something else.
There's a real fear there looming, although it wasn't too long ago that things were negotiated differently, and that the threat of a strike was eased off of. But the worry still settles there like a lump of coal low in his belly. Christian and Kane and Jess don't deserve the leanness of having to tighten their belt loops if James was to be out of work.
He reads through the sports pages and tries not to feel some kind of way, looking through baseball news.
"That Bucky Harris is a smart one." James says to himself, mostly, looking at the rainout news and what the plans had been, the all-righty line-up versus a southpaw. Too bad for the rain and he eventually puts the paper aside to work on getting breakfast.
The twins fight over the comics page, until Jess hushes them and takes the paper away.
"Have a good day at work, hon." Jess kisses him on the cheek and flutters away to do the dishes, sending the kids upstairs to get dressed for whatever they planned to do that day, and James heads off with his leg still aching.
Fear still settling in the bottom of his stomach.
But it should be okay-- he's certainly survived worse. His street is relatively quiet this early, muggy and humid, it feels like breathing in water. It's gonna be a long day and on the ride to work, he's already sweating through his dress shirt.
UGH Whatever: 
Los Angeles has been hard. He doesn't mind. He knows-- he feels-- this team is going to get him what he wants. Not that it changes the fact that he misses Detroit and the culture and the grind. Or that he misses Texas in spite of how he felt he was treated.
But it feels like ages ago. The feeling fades and the anger becomes more manageable and more secret. He doesn't wear it on his sleeve as much.
He had wanted to retire with Detroit, in Detroit. But he knows it's business, it's all business. Wants and desires only extend so far. And Ian, as much as he misses the other places, he has his own desires too. He wants to win a ring. He wants to have a shot at the hall of fame. He wants those things, with the prestige. The parades.
And while he has his preference whether he's wearing Angels red or anything else, he doesn't care as long as he can raise that World Series trophy. He's a gamer. He works hard and he doesn't know if deserves is a good word. But he wants.
It's a powerful thing, to want.
He knows he's lucky too. As he checks up on his old friends. Naps is out for the year, maybe the rest of his life depending. They're not young guys anymore, harder to bounce back from surgery. Harder to get back right after being out for so long. (It makes him feel a dread of mortality, his age looming like a spectre behind him, waiting for the one misstep before it makes itself apparent.)  
It wasn't that long ago the same thing happened to C.J., going for surgery and never coming back. And shit, things with Josh.
Then there's guys who had gotten to the top, now toiling away in the minor leagues. Salty is doing that and he had a World Series ring. He knows all this stuff is fleeting and he tries hard not to think too much about Salty.
Psalm 91:11 :
Daniel sees God in all things. The people that he meets, the stories he hears, the places that he goes -- where he searches for peace amidst a troubled soul, and everything else on the Earth.
Things aren't coincidence to him, they are the points he needs to be. It wasn't a stroke of luck, but the hand of God himself that gave him his love and talent for baseball, but the mind to stay humble.
In small ways, this is reinforced and in large ways too. Daniel doesn't believe in coincidence. He believes in Fate, he believes in a divine plan. He believes that he is wholly created to be just as he is -- flaws and all.
It's difficult sometimes. It's hard to reconcile his concept of a loving God when horrors happen. It's difficult to figure out why he was blessed and others weren't. He wishes he has an answer, he wishes he knew what made him worthy. What makes him special. Surely, everyone in their own way, but when he gives money to a homeless person, knowing that will never be him, he feels as though there's something.
Daniel often meditates on this, when he's standing on the beach with the waves lapping against the bared skin of his ankles.
I See the God Among Me, Fall Among Me: 
Nick hates to see James cry. He hasn't seen it a lot -- mostly due to injuries-- back in the clubhouse away from the cameras. But he still hates it. He still feels a grip of something like panic settle in the center of his chest and clench in so tight he almost forgets how to breathe.
But this -- this is different. It's worse. It's nothing anyone could have prepared him for. James had wanted to be a dad so bad and for this to happen has crushed him. Nick wishes he has some special thing to say, or a place to lay his words that would banish the hurt.
Found Family:
He supposes someone whose kid looks up to him as a role model though isn’t going to be inclined to be forgiving. Or to care about the jumbled mess in his mind. They wouldn’t care about how he’s always desired to wander free or just be himself and do his own thing. But he’s always been beholden to someone or something else.
When Jess left, that restraint left too.
But no one would care-- if he was getting his grief out or if he was just rebelling against years and years of an institutional demand to hold everything back. Those parents wouldn’t care. That wasn’t their problem. Their problem was knowing what he was like away from the ball club.
So publicized too.
He thinks maybe it’ll blow over.
But the guys are the guys and of course there are jokes. He isn’t sure who put the blow up doll in his locker down in Lakeland, there’s too many people laughing to really pin it down and he’d be lying to say if his cheeks didn’t burn.
This humiliation is nothing -- nothing at all -- compared to his first Spring Training start. There’s an honest to god protest and he’s not entirely sure what to do. They’re set up behind home plate, jeering and quoting stuff at him. He’s sure it’s not the Florida sun making his neck feel so hot.
James wants to tell them to fuck off. But there’s small spaces of him that feels that they’re right.
“Damn man,” The Houston batter up in front of him says, “You really making some enemies out here.”
James doesn’t recognize him and he stands up and gets in his face, shoving him in the chest as anger that’s been bubbling up for a while now explodes off of him like a firework. Sudden and bright and loud.
“Maybe shut your fucking mouth,” James hisses at him and throws a punch. One of the new kids he doesn’t know yet has his arms around him almost as soon as his arm goes round-- trying to pull him back. And the batter is getting held out of the way by the umpire but he gets ejected and he can’t even care.
kill the lights:
His mama always told him it'd been something that he was making up, but he doesn't think he could have maintained a charade like that for so many years; pretending there was something there wasn't, just to stick it to her that he wasn't just imagining it. But he'd stopped mentioning it to her. He'd stopped mentioning it to anyone.
Somehow, it's stronger in Detroit.
When he lays in his bed at home, he hears it calling. The sound of it lulling, almost like a siren song. The hissing almost sounding like whispering. Saying his name, calling him closer. Like a voice down so many distant halls, echoing like the breezes stirred the curtains. Calling him endlessly in the darkness.
He tries to shake it off, like he always does, and he never succeeds. Why can't he shut it out? Why does he get out of his bed and follow the noise. Walking towards the back part of the house and into the backyard.
It's midnight-- ink black with just the dim white light from a street lamp lighting one corner. There's a hatch there, like those old tornado shelter ones he's seen in Kansas, with rusted handles, and old wood that's a little bit cracked and splintered.
Had that been here when he'd bought this house? It's weird he suddenly can't remember and he bites down on his lower lip and considers going down there. He reaches the spot and grabs the handle which is cold enough to make his hand feel like he shoved it into an icebath despite the July humidity making his hair stick to his forehead and beads of sweat to prickle all over his skin, make his shirt cling to his shoulders.
"It's cold," Mikie says, mostly to himself and jerks his hand back. There's an odd line like he's been branded that flashes on his palm for a moment, before it disappears and he's sure he's imagined it. There's some shrill inhuman shriek he hears and it's right in his ear but it's also echoing beneath him and some birds spook from a nearby weeping willow and flutter off in the night.
He feels a chill go through him and when he turns back, the hatch is gone.
0 notes