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[image description: A digital drawing of Conrad Twelve from the game Blaseball. Conrad is a fat black person with a short afro. Conrad is wearing thick black square framed glasses, as well as a lilac button down shirt and a dark grey-teal pullover. There is a thick black bracelet on Conrad’s left wrist, which is crossed on top of the other arm. /end image description]
why does want that clutch wooden rock ring
Cast:
-Wanda Schenn
-Conrad Twelve
-Kennedy Rodgers
-Gabriel Griffith
[The following is my contribution for the Firefighters LMLC Exchange. This one's for @korethekiller! Enjoy!]
Conrad looked at the scrap of paper, then at the door the small group stood before. The door itself was just about as nondescript as possible, no signage to indicate anything of note behind, but they’d been following extremely detailed directions that had led them right here. Behind them, Gabe was tapping his foot impatiently while K-Rod quietly adjusted one of the bolts on his left arm. Conrad knew Chicago best of all of them, even if Chicago had changed a lot over their lifetimes.
“We’re pretty sure this is the place,” they said softly, hesitating to open the door. “But if we’re wrong, please don’t hold it against us.”
“It’s been almost an hour,” muttered Gabriel. “At this point I’ll take anything.” He pushed ahead and reached for the handle, but Kennedy stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.
“We agreed to let Conrad take the lead,” he said in the same calm tone he usually affected. “Let them be sure.”
Gabe scowled but relented, shrugging as he stepped aside. Conrad took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. They weren’t wrong often, and ages on the road had made them fairly confident about following directions, but the writing had been a bit tricky to decipher. Regardless, after a moment, they gripped the handle and pushed open the door.
The trio were immediately greeted by a completely different space than the dockside warehouse they’d just gone through. Wood paneling adorned wide walls and gentle yellow light spilled from chandeliers hung from low ceilings. Booths cushioned with plushly stuffed maroon leather lined one wall, with round tables spread out just far enough to give ample space dotted the main floor. An enormous bar took up the wall opposite the booths, and a small stage with thick velvet curtains stood proud but empty opposite the door.
“We guess we found the right spot,” Conrad said with a smile.
There weren’t a great many people inside yet, but it was early enough in the day that none of them had expected a crowd. One or two, they recognized from the stands. Diehard Chicagoans who’d found their way here by luck or accident, one of whom was bold enough to have brought along a jersey from the gift shop. Conrad couldn’t see whose name adorned the back of it, but it was unmistakable even having been slung over the back of a chair. A slight woman in a white shirt approached them with a smile, pushing a strand of straight, dark hair out of her face.
“We’ve been expecting you,” she said to the trio. “The boss reserved her favorite booth for you. I’ll let her know you’re here, if you’ll just follow me.” She turned and led them back to one of the booths closest to the stage, letting them ease their way in. The seats were luxuriantly comfortable.
“Drinks to start you off?” she asked.
“Hakushu whisky, one ice cube,” Gabe said immediately. It was a typical flex from the star pitcher, going for something esoteric and expensive, but the young woman just nodded and looked around the table.
“Do you have a carajillo?” K-Rod seemed almost hesitant to ask for the coffee cocktail, but the gal responded in the affirmative. “Delightful.” He relaxed visibly. Rodgers didn’t really drink, and it was entirely possible that he couldn’t and just pretended to, but the beverage would at least smell very nice.
Conrad considered their order for a long moment. A dozen lives’ worth of history had left them with complicated feelings on alcohol, and while they didn’t abstain they were fairly certain they’d end up having to haul Gabriel home.
“Just a club soda for us,” they said after a moment. It seemed the safest choice, and the woman gave that same pleasant nod as before.
“I’ll get those to you right after I let the boss know you’re here. Enjoy your stay!”
As she walked away, Conrad let themself relax into the seat. When the three of them had been invited out, it had been a bit of a surprise. Only Kennedy had even known the place existed before, but had never been here personally.
“Did Wanda tell either of you why we’re here?” they asked.
Gabriel shrugged. “I assumed she finally figured out that we’re amazing and wanted to socialize away from the Firehouse. I knew they had a side hustle or two, but this place is very nice.”
Kennedy said more with the words he didn’t use, as he often did. “We don’t get that many days off.”
Conrad frowned. It wasn’t as if they didn’t trust Wanda, or anything like that. It simply seemed sudden that this particular group would be let in on what had previously been something of a secret. They looked around the bar -- speakeasy? -- as Gabe and Kennedy continued the conversation. Gabriel, true to form, lamented that he wasn’t pitching every game, while K-Rod stated with no reservation that that sounded very tiring. It made sense, then, that they were the only one to notice when Wanda approached the table at that inhuman speed of which only she was capable.
Wanda was seated at the booth before Griffith or Rodgers noticed anything was amiss. Even Conrad had missed her actually sliding past them to sit nearest the wall. Wanda Schenn wasn’t exactly aloof, but she was fairly private. That made it all the stranger when she threw one arm around Conrad’s shoulders. The other extended over the table waving someone closer.
“Drinks are on me tonight, pals,” she said in a husky alto. “I do own the place, after all. Except yours, Griff, I only stock that crap for blowhards like you. You’ll enjoy it and you’ll pay for it.”
Gabe was more visibly surprised than Kennedy, but then, he was more visibly most things than Kennedy. With the metal face and the one eye, K-Rod wasn’t exactly an open book. Gabriel, despite his avian features, was almost comically expressive.
“Wanda!” he said, the feathers around his neck rising. “When did you-”
“Literally about a second before she started talking,” Conrad interrupted. There was some kind of competitive and undefinable thing between the two of them, and if not headed off properly it could devolve into a bravado-fueled contest of one-upsmanship. That was not what Conrad wanted tonight.
To his credit, K-Rod seemed entirely normal.
“Good evening Ms. Schenn. Thank you for inviting us to your lovely establishment. Might I ask, while we-”
“Hold that thought, K,” Wanda said. “Drinks are here.”
The skinny woman in white was indeed returning with a small tray holding four glasses. A coffee-cocktail which smelled wonderful for K-Rod, a bubbling glass of soda water for themself, three fingers of wildly expensive imported whisky for Gabe, and-
“Your usual, boss,” the woman said, handing over a martini glass with a smoky-white sphere of ice resting in a small amount of clear liquid. A skewer pierced a pair of blackberries and rested on the rim. “One Full-Moon Martini.”
Wanda grinned as she raised the glass to her lips and took a long sip. The icy moon lolled gently as the liquid beneath it diminished. Once the glass was resting back on the table, Wanda put her chin in her hands and looked over the little group.
“Underhanded,” she said, apropos of nothing. Gabe immediately rankled, feathers down the back of his neck rising, but the other two gave no indication of any response yet. “Cool your jets, GG, it’s not gonna be all of us. But I’ve got a line on a special item. Just one, for one of us. Called you all in here to figure out who’s getting it.”
Conrad blinked back a wave of confusion.
“If you found it,” they said, “shouldn’t you be the one to use it?”
It was K-Rod who filled the moment of silence. “I believe,” he said, “Wanda is proposing we figure out what would best benefit the team. According to League rules, an Underhanded pitch only scores Un-Runs on a home run. Thus we should calculate which of us allows more home runs than hits and act accordingly.”
“I don’t want it,” Gabe said in an instant. “I’ll win my games on my own.”
Wanda chuckled but said nothing, which seemed to rankle Griffith even more. He stared at her for a long moment, eyebrows furrowing until K-Rod broke the tension.
“I believe, statistically speaking, Conrad should be the one to take it. They have given up the most home runs, and-”
Conrad was biting their lip. The glass in their hand cracked and shattered, dropping a pall of silence over the table. Wanda waved over the girl and indicated for towels.
“Don’t give it to us,” they said slowly, looking over their hand to make sure no shards were in the skin.
Wanda leaned back, expression quizzical.
“Why not?”
“We… Honestly, we don’t know. There’s something inside of us that really doesn’t want it. If you gave it to us, that would be… bad.”
Gabe swallowed his slug of whiskey in one go, setting the glass back on the table with a resolute thump.
“Wanda, as much as I hate to say it, you’re good. If you were throwing underhanded, you’d be extremely difficult to defeat. Why don’t you keep it and we’ll see how it goes.”
With that, he excused himself from the booth. “I’m going to refresh my drink.” He was looking vaguely toward the bar, but his eyes were unfocused. “Rodgers, seeing as I’m just back from my Hawai’ian sojourn, come with me. You can catch me up on what I missed last season.”
“I really feel I should-” Kennedy started before Gabe wrapped a wing around his upper arm and tugged. “Oh! Well alright, ah, hm. Where to begin?”
The pair walked off toward the bar, K-Rod starting to unload a season’s worth of shenanigans.
Wanda took the towels and sent the young woman off, cleaning up the mess herself. Conrad tried to protest, but a hand and a stern look from Wanda set them to silence again. A moment later the spilled drink was sopped up and the broken glass was gathered in a neat little pile.
“Do you want to talk about that?” Wanda asked softly. Conrad let their eyes rest on the detritus of an outburst they didn’t fully understand.
“We’re not sure we can,” they answered. “We just… There’s something about this. About everything that’s been happening lately. We can’t explain it, but we think one of us, or maybe more, has dealt with something similar before.”
“Well sure,” Wanda said with a shrug. “We’ve all been through a lot. Hell, I’m still grappling with everything before the Descension. That’s plenty of baggage on its own.”
“We know.” Conrad cringed. “We didn’t mean to imply…”
“You didn’t. I’m just letting you know that, maybe more than the others, I can sympathize. You can talk to me, if you want. I’m here for you.”
Wanda rested a hand atop Conrad’s. That hand was hot, steady, strong. Conrad glanced at it and looked away again, but they let a small smile find its way to their lips.
“We appreciate it. You’re a good friend, Schenn.”
Wanda looked back over to the boys at the bar. Gabe had his next drink, which he was nursing as Kennedy animatedly told some story or another. If Wanda had to guess, the topic was some Socks antic or another.
“We have to have each other’s back out here,” she said. “It might look like we have it all, to the people who don’t bear this burden, but I know damn well that everything can be ripped away from you. That you’ll have to rebuild everything in a new place, maybe even a new time. If we can’t count on each other, we have nothing.” She pulled her hand back and sipped at her drink. “If, or when, you want to talk about anything, you know where to find me. How about for tonight, we just have a nice time?”
Conrad nodded. “While it lasts,” they said softly. Some part of them knew that the world would shake around them soon enough, that everything would change and maybe never be the same again, but for now? For now it was enough to be here, and now, and let the past stay quiet within them.
For now, it was enough to be with friends.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
The hebrew month of Av is categorized by the need for pause. That is the moon that Clare was born under; one that’s meant for both mourning and rebirth, and she finds herself straddling that line more often than not.
-
1.3 k about the firefighters newest pitcher. i hope you love her as much as i do
[image description: A digital drawing of Conrad Twelve and Geepa Beanpot from the game Blaseball. Both Conrad and Geepa are sitting at table smiling and talking to each other. Geepa is bringing a cup to his face as though he is about to drink from it while Conrad holds a cup with both hands. Conrad is a fat black person with a short afro while Geepa is an older man with brown skin and white hair pulled into a bun at the back of his head. The drawing is colored in warm brown tones. /end image description]
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
There’s no major city around for miles. Just those tiny towns that operate based on the concept that cars can only travel so far without needing a gas station, and people can only travel so far without coffee or snacks.
The billboards are friendly. They spell out Conrad’s name in bright neon letters and promise hir a nice bed to sleep in and a place to seek shelter from the storm clouds brewing on the distant horizon. Stop and stay a while, Conrad. We’ve been waiting for you.
(Conrad Twelve, Clare McCall, highways, and the Dispatch. Many thanks to Hen @fourteenfifteen for your Conrad thoughts, which inspired this.)
