strike-outs
summary: rust colored dirt, old jerseys & game winning strike-outs
word count: 2.3k
a/n: this has been brewing in the depths of my drafts for a hot minute. college!au because i said so. this is my take on baseball!steve who lives and breathes in my head constantly and if you don’t agree then cry about it. just kidding.
MARCH 1987 - GRAND RAPIDS, MI.
It’s an unusually warm day for Michigan in March. The sky’s a vibrant blue with picturesque cottony clouds scattered across. Sun rays warm your cheeks, a welcoming kiss after last week’s frigid cold. You roll up the sleeves of your university crewnecks to feel the sun on your arms.
Music flows through the orange padding of your headphones, walkman clipped to the waist of your jeans. You walk past the baseball field, eyes focusing in on the lone figure standing on the pitcher’s mound. It’d be almost embarrassing to admit that you recognize it to be Steve Harrington almost immediately.
Your feet stall, rooting you in place near the third base dugout as you watch him wind up and throw. The ball hits the ground and ricochets against the fence behind home plate. There’s a ringing of metal as the chain link fence reverberates. The ball rolls back towards home plate, stopping just a foot away from a worn pair of cleats, covered in a rust colored dust.
Davenport might not have been Steve’s first choice but it was the one that put the most distance between him and his father and that was good enough for him. It was also the only school that took a chance on a small town kid with shit grades so Steve really couldn’t complain.
Steve bends to pick the ball up and when he turns to walk back to the mound, he notices you. Your eyes meet just as Let’s Hear It For The Boy starts to play. A heat not induced by the sun creeps across your cheeks. It only worsens when a charming grin lifts his cheeks.
The two of you stare for a beat too long before someone breaks the silence.
“Hey,” he calls, walking towards the fence that separates the two of you. You step closer, pulling your headphones to rest around your neck. Steve catches a few notes of the song before you pause it. The toes of his cleats bump the bottom of the fence, the metal shaking briefly.
Steve pulls his glove off, shoving the ball inside and tucking it under his left arm. His fingers curl around the holes in the fence. You take a step forward, one more and you’d hit the fence too. His smile softens around the edges this close up.
“Hey,” he exhales. His gaze makes you feel warmer than the sun. Your smile is the slightest bit reserved, tucked away just slightly towards your chest.
“Hi,” you say, crossing your arms across your chest. You wonder if you hold yourself tight enough if it’ll suffocate the butterflies swarming your heart.
Things with Steve are new and covered in the sweetness of the early days. Everything is fresh and new, like a springtime blossom. The shock that sparks both your nerves when you’re around each other is not.
You’d been partnered for a project together in sociology in the fall and when the semester ended, you didn’t think you’d see him again aside from passing occasionally on your commutes to class.
And then you walked into your history course this spring and thought you were hallucinating when you spotted him. You thought you’d collapse when he waved you over to sit in the empty seat next to him. You nearly did when he asked you out a week later.
It’d been a couple months of dating exclusively, not even a week since he asked you to be his. And yet, he still hadn’t kissed you. It’s not that he hasn’t tried, it’s that every time his lips brush against yours something has to interrupt the moment. Steve’s determined to change that today.
“Thought you didn’t have practice today,” you muse, blinking at Steve through the fence.
“Coach wants to try me out as pitcher this season. Thought I’d start practicing now,” he shrugs and lets go of the fence, dropping his shoulder to lean against it. The fence bulges towards you. The sunlight catches on a curl of hair sneaking out of his hat. You have to grip your arm to resist reaching out to tuck it behind his ear.
“Look at you, all star,” you tease. Steve’s cheeks flush a soft shade of pink, hardly discernible in the shade that covers his face from the brim of his hat. You shuffle forward until the toes of your converse bump the fence separating you. “You ever pitched before?”
“Little league,” he laughs. The way it bubbles out of him makes you giggle along, the shoulder opposite to his leaning against the fence. He shakes his head. “Once or twice in high school, too.”
You hum, smile still present but eyes rounding into something more serious. “You’ll do great.”
It’s a reassuring hug around Steve’s heart, one that constricts itself around the muscle until it skips a beat. He softens like butter in the sun and he lifts a hand to clutch the fence near your head.
There’s a tenderness in the way he looks at you, in the way his fingers try their best to wrap around yours when you lift your own hand to clutch the fence. You don’t think about all the logistics behind kissing between a hole in a chain link fence, the only things running through your head being finally and a mantra of SteveSteveSteve.
Your chin juts out, tilted up for him to reach and Steve wishes he were on the other side of the fence so he could hold your face in the palm of his hand. He gets a hair's width away from your lips when the sprinkler system kicks on making you jolt back. He really wishes he were on the other side of the fence now.
You try not to look too disappointed as you step back from the fence, though you’re sure you’re not alone in your emotions. Steve looks almost apologetic, his smile sheepish.
“I’ll catch you later?” he offers, stepping back from the fence himself. You nod, reaching up to pull your headphones back over your ears.
“You better, Harrington,” you say, clicking play again on your walkman as you turn on your heel and leave back to your dorm. Steve’s eyes follow you until you disappear from view.
APRIL 1987 - HOME.
The glimpse of warmth you’d felt in March seems to have vanished into a haze. The weather had backpedaled to an early spring cold. If you focused hard enough, you could see wisps of your breath in front of your face when you’d exhale. First home game. Steve’s first game this season as a pitcher.
The cold metal of the bleachers seeps through the denim of your jeans, your knee bouncing anxiously. It’d been a little over a week since your last almost kiss with Steve. With the flurry of late midterms and the opening of baseball season, you hadn’t seen much of Steve outside of your shared morning history class.
He made sure he caught you yesterday. He waited outside the door of your Thursday literature class, already dressed for practice and cutting it close to being late, all just to ask you if you wanted to wear his jersey to the first game of the season. It was worth it when he saw your eyes light up, hands clutching the old jersey to your chest. He’d kissed your cheek before running off.
Sitting in the stands, wearing his last name on your back, you think you can still feel the lingering warmth of his lips against your cheek while you watch him warm up. The slight wind is icy, biting at your nose and leaving it with a burning numbness. You tug the sleeves of your thick long sleeve you’d layered beneath the jersey over your fists.
It’s easy to forget about the near frigid cold when you watch Steve play. It doesn’t hurt that his uniform pants hug him in the best way as he winds up his pitches and runs the bases. You’re not sure how much prouder you can get of Steve, watching him throw strike after strike.
Your team sits at a tie with the visiting team as the ninth inning rolls around. With two outs and bases loaded, the nerves start to eat at you and you can’t begin to imagine the pressure on Steve. You clasp your hands in front of you, thumbs pressed to your lips.
Steve closes his eyes and takes a breath before starting his wind up. He hauls a pitch down the line, exhales when it sinks into the catcher’s mitt and the umpire calls it a strike. He steps forward, glove extended to catch the ball when the catcher tosses it back.
You squeeze your hands together, whispering encouragement under your breath as though he can hear it from your spot in the stands. He winds up and throws, sinking another strike in the catcher’s mitt. You exhale, watching Steve shake out his shoulders as he walks back towards the mound.
“One more, baby, one more,” you mutter under your breath, not caring if the people sitting around you can hear you. Steve pauses at the top and looks towards the stands to find you. When your eyes meet you nod, releasing your clasped hands momentarily to give him a thumbs up. He bites back a smile, dipping his head down towards the ground as he gets ready to pitch.
You feel like everything moves in slow motion the moment he starts his wind up. The ball leaves his fingertips and seems to float down the line. This time, the batter swings and you watch with bated breath as it swings just above the ball and misses it completely. Everything syncs back to normal with the final smack of the ball meeting the glove and the umpire calling the final strike.
Steve’s shoulders visibly droop in relief, his teammates clapping him on the back and cheering as they head towards the dugout to prep for their final turn at bat. His eyes find you, standing in the stands with a grin on your face before he’s ushered into the dugout.
It’s Steve who bats first at the bottom of the ninth, blowing a kiss to you before stepping up to bat. He swings at the first pitch, a satisfying crack sounding when his bat makes contact with the ball, sending it out into far left field. He slides safe into second, bouncing up onto his feet with a smile.
Steve steals third after the first out, daring a glance at you in the stands to send a smile your way and crosses home plate with a grin, securing the first home game win of the season. He can’t even seem to care about the rest of the inning, his main thought being you standing in the crowd wearing his jersey and the proudest smile he’d ever seen.
You wait outside the dugout when the game ends, a giddiness coursing through you. As the team starts to file off the field, you stretch on your toes to find Steve. He comes out last and his eyes immediately find you. He barely has time to drop his bag to the ground before you’re hurling yourself at him.
His arms catch you around your waist while yours wrap around his neck. You press your nose against his neck, only minutely aware of how sweaty he is despite the chill in the air.
“You were amazing out there, all star,” you grin as you settle onto your feet. Your hands rest against the front of his jersey but his hold around your waist stays tight. Steve’s smile is blinding.
“You think so?” his voice is teasing and you roll your eyes but the smile hasn’t left your face. You push against his chest playfully and a laugh bubbles out of Steve.
“I’m proud of you,” you say, sincerity dripping off each word. Something inside Steve’s chest melts down into a thick honey, warming him from the inside out. He doesn’t even think twice before he’s cupping your face in his hands and slotting his lips against yours.
Your eyes close with a muffled sigh, hands sliding up to rest against the sides of Steve’s neck. Your mind is racing with thoughts of finally and SteveSteveSteve. He kisses you soft and tender, like he has all the time in the world. For once there’s no sprinklers, no pesky roommates or annoying teammates. There’s nothing else except the small bubble surrounding the two of you in the frigid cold of early spring.
Steve pulls back for a breath and his lips part to say something. You don’t let him get the chance.
“Shh, one more, I’ve been waiting to do this for weeks,” you pull him back into you, lips molding with his like they were carved from the same stone, missing puzzle pieces fitting back into place. His hands fall to your waist and pull you closer against him. You kiss him with a fervor until it’s more smile than kiss and you have to pull back.
Your cheeks hurt from smiling. A slight gust of wind pushes past but you can’t feel the cold, not after the searing heat that’s covered your skin from the minute his lips touched yours. Steve kisses you once more, sweet and chaste before squeezing your waist and stepping away to grab his bag.
“Celebratory dinner?” he offers, slinging his baseball bag over his shoulder and wrapping his free arm around your shoulders. He pulls his hat off his head and runs a hand through his hair as you walk.
“Maybe after you shower, you’re all gross,” you scrunch your nose at him, mirth twinkles in your eyes. Steve shakes his head and shoves his hat onto yours. You grin, leaning into him as he squeezes your shoulders.
He wonders if it’s too early to be thinking he might be in love with you.
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Okay, so. I'm ALL for not spreading, you know, deadly fucking disease to your fellow human beings, but WHAT is it with people, like, pretending to not understand the mere concept of a common cold anymore??
I keep being made an unwilling participant in a discussion that goes as follows:
"Hm, I have a cough and a sore throat."
"Oh dear."
"But I keep testing for Covid every day before coming into work."
"That's the responsible thing to do."
"The tests keep coming back negative."
"That's good to hear. Let's hope it stays that way."
Now normally, this would be the end of this extremely awkward sickness-smalltalk that I don't actually wanna know anything about. But no. Then they suddenly double down.
"I don't trust the tests."
"Well, I trust you to have done the tests in the correct manner, so if they keep coming back negative I would assume you don't have Covid."
"But I have a cough and a sore throat."
"Yes, I mean, it could just be a common cold. Those still exist."
"But I've been like this for a week now."
"Colds are like that."
"But also my head hurts a bit."
"Colds do that, too."
"But also I feel kind of tired and ill."
"Yes, that's... Look, I'm sure that before Covid you've had a cold at some point, too?"
"But I don't trust the tests."
AND THEN IT JUST GOES ON LIKE THIS.
WHAT IS BEING EXPECTED OF ME HERE.
;_;
I don't want to invalidate people feeling worried and then I usually say, look, if the ONE blob of nose slime that contains like three little particles for the test to come back positive on, is hidden SO deep within your nasal cavities you can't get it on your swab no matter how hard you poke around there, then even if you HAD Covid - which you don't - I think it's unlikely there'd be enough of the virus in that other little blob of nose slime over there you could possibly fling into the air IF you coughed wetly on the next person without covering your mouth.
Like?? Is this a new kind of social ritual I don't understand??? Are we signaling our place in the "We are mindful of the pandemic" hierarchy by??? Insisting our runny nose must be from Covid and we just cannot detect it AND ALSO IF YOU'RE SO WORRIED THAN WHY ARE YOU AT WORK WHY ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT WHY DO I HAVE TO PARTICIPATE IN THAT
???
I don't wanna have this discussion anymore, I don't know what to say other than "In this case the evidence points to: common cold."
What is the purpose of this discussion, what answer do they want, what am I supposed to provide them. ;_; Please. You probably have a cold. If you feel so shitty that you have to constantly let me know, than maybe you should go get sick leave from your doctor, why are you telling ME, why do you believe that there's no other respiratory infections besides Covid anymore, WHAT DO YOU WANT, and also WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO GIVE *ME* YOUR DISGUSTING-ASS COLD SOB
I'm sorry for ranting, but this keeps happening and I'm TIRED. If you're really, truly worried you are infectious with a nasty disease, then stay the fuck home. And if you're not. Then WHY. Are we having this stupid discussion.
;_;
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