Here it is, my hiatus project… EVERY SINGLE player that’s ever been on the Breath Mints roster (plus one that could have been). Not counting short circuits or funko pops for sanity reasons, but otherwise everyone’s here baby
[Image description: Two digital drawings of Whit Steakknife and Justice Spoon from the game Blaseball. The first image depicts only Whit, as a person with a human head versus a knife object head. Whit's hair is cropped short and has a silver-colored scar tissue around the left eye and into the hairline, as well as down the neck.
The second image depicts White and Spoon. Spoon is not wearing the Justice blindfold and Whit has a knife for a head. Spoon is holding Whit around the middle from behind, leaning their head on his shoulder. /end image description]
I was messing around with an idea, so here’s some sketches
a story the woman will never tell - and one the statue, banished to another universe, will try to omit from memory - is this:
after the book opens, after jaylen burns on the west coast, whit shows up at the firehouse in her old truck. justice gets in the passenger seat without being asked. they drive miles and hours outside of chicago, flying down straight stretches of highway with the midwest laid flat and bare in front of them like a map on a child’s play mat.
it’s dark, sometime past midnight, when whit pulls onto the shoulder of the road. she gets out and hops onto the hood of the car, boots knocking hollowly against the metal. justice joins her - moving stiff and cautious, always careful of how her marble body intersects with the world around it - and lets whit curl into the hollow of her side, unasked.
the air is cool. there’s a field that runs right up to the edge of the road, either wheat or just plain, tall grass, and it rustles gently with the breeze. the sky is clear enough out here to see stars, and the moon is bright. deceptively so, justice thinks, after the way it blotted out the sun earlier.
a total eclipse. there’s projected to be another one tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that. everyone knows it’s a punishment, but no one will say it out loud.
“they killed jaylen because she was the best,” whit says, finally. her head is turned, her voice muffled by the crook of justice’s arm.
“neither of us is the best,” justice says. it’s placating, but it’s also a hard fact. “did you know jaylen?”
“no.” whit wrinkles her nose. “but do you really think she’ll be the end of it?”
justice looks up towards the sky again, recalls countless nights of watching the stars as an immobile statue. she tracks the steady, blinking motion of an airplane across the black without moving a muscle.
“i hope so,” she says, because she can still hope, even if she knows in her core that it will never be the truth. there’s a creeping dread in her that this is what the firefighters were called up to blaseball for - not for the sport, or to represent their city, but for whatever will come of jaylen turning into a living pyre on live television.
“i won’t let anything happen to you,” whit says - defiant, almost childishly so. she shifts and looks up at justice, her jaw set stubbornly. “okay?”
“i don’t think you get a say in it,” justice says, doomed to be pragmatic, to see the forest for all its dry, flammable trees.
“yeah, but, like - til death, right?” whit’s eyes bore into justice’s like hard chisels straight into the stone.
justice hums and looks away, down at the asphalt. she finds whit’s hand and laces her fingers with whit’s carefully, so mindful of what human flesh can take, and hopes that the gentleness in itself is enough of an answer.
Hey guys remember when the mints decided to have pirate week during season 24 with the pies and then died on day 3 and then the entire league turned into a nautical map with navigation to go kill a god and outrun a black hole?
whit hasn't slept right since tyreek's incineration. the newsreel footage of it is like a loop on the back of her eyelids - the umpire training its gaze on justice, tyreek jumping in front. it's the only thing whit's mind is able to wander its way back to when she lies down in the dark.
justice driving down on her off days from pitching hardly helps, either. it just means she's there to notice when whit tosses and turns all night with no recourse, that she's already wide awake (but patiently lying still) when whit sits up at three-something in the morning and says "this isn't working."
justice sits up, too. there's a puzzled look on her face - whit can see it in the way the moon gleams off the contours of her mouth, quirked sideways. "what's wrong?"
"i -" whit stops herself short. she has never liked to admit when she is scared, or worried. now, even with justice, is no exception. she swallows, and twists the ring on her finger. "can't sleep. that's all."
"come here," justice says, and rolls onto her side.
whit does. she curls herself into justice, wrapping an arm around justice's waist and splaying her palm against the lean, sculpted muscles of justice's back. she tucks her head under justice's chin, first wincing at the coolness of the marble, then leaning into it.
"i'm not going anywhere," justice says. she rubs a soothing circle into the space between whit's shoulderblades as she says it, her fingers massaging deep and steady.
"not what i'm worried about," whit mutters, which is a lie.
"yes, it is." justice's voice is patient. whit will never understand that about her; that endless, stony patience. it feels cold, sometimes, but whit knows that justice never means for it to be.
"okay," whit says. "so what?"
"so, i'm not going anywhere," justice repeats.
she shifts, leans her head down to press her forehead to whit's. her blindfold is off - she takes it off to sleep, and in private, and looking her in the eye without it as a barrier between them feels almost too intimate for whit to bear. she almost looks away. but she doesn't.
up close, she can see the details of justice's pupils, how someone a long time ago chipped those careful holes in the marble. how someone carefully carved a border between iris and sclera, sculpted the curve of an eyelid. it's beautiful. justice is beautiful.
"neither am i," whit says, like a dare to the universe.
once upon a time, after the book opens, after jaylen burns on the west coast, whit shows up at the firehouse in her old truck.
(or: the woman and the statue talk about death.)
this is an extended version of one of my femslash feb fics from this year, which i touched up and made a little longer for to the hall and back, a zine about marriage in blaseball! it’s about whit steakknife and justice spoon and lesbian romance in the time of incineration
[image description: A pencil sketch colored digitally, depicting Justice Spoon and Whit Steakknife from the game Blaseball. The drawing is colored in pale watercolors. Spoon is leaning over Whit in an embrace against his back. They are holding each other's hands. Spoon is lifting one of Whit's hands to kiss. Neither of their faces can be seen well. /end image description]
in another spaceship, in another quadrant of the map:
“stop me if you’ve heard this one before -”
“we’ve heard it.”
“i didn’t even start it yet!”
“we’ve heard all your jokes.”
“oh, spare me, steakknife, i’ve got a full jokebook up here. and i only joke when i’m nervous, anyway.”
“you joke all the time.”
“there’s a lot to be nervous about! atlas, back me up here.”
“geez, uh - whit, i kinda want to hear the joke.”
“of fucking course you do. pushover.”
“that’s two against one, whit my love.”
“i am not your love.”
“hey, what’s love if not hurtling through space with someone in a tiny hunk of junk going millions of light years per minute?”
“is that the joke?”
“your sense of humor’s broken, steakknife.”
“i am well aware.”
“i thought maybe it would’ve gotten resurrected with the rest of the mints.”
“yeah. pull the other one.”
“oh, very tempting.”
“uh - trevino?”
“atlas?”
“the, um, joke.”
“right! the joke.”
“you had to fucking remind him.”
“sorry.”
“you should be.”
“so! there’s three blaseball players in a spaceship, with four cigarettes between them, but no lighter.”
“uh, i don’t smoke.”
“neither do i, atlas. we’re being hypothetical here.”
“i’ve got more than four cigarettes.”
“good for you, steakknife.”
“and a lighter.”
“again! hypothetical situation!”
“if you’d told the joke the right way, you wouldn’t be having this problem.”
“the, uh, right way?”
“if you think you can tell it better, be my guest, whit.”
“fine. there’s three men on a boat, with four cigarettes between them, but no way to light them. they throw one cigarette overboard, and the whole boat becomes one cigarette lighter.”
“...”
“what.”
“i don’t get it?”
“it’s a pun.”
“your delivery’s not exactly on point, steakknife. one cigarette lighter, atlas.”
“oh. oh. okay.”
“see, i liked mine better. i’ve got another, though.”
“spare me.”
“never. what do you call it when you’re sick of being at the airport?”
“i don’t know and i don’t want to know.”
“terminal illness!”
“i hope we crash land in the desert and you die for real.”
“oh, geez, whit.”
“aw, whit, you do love me.”
“whatever.”
“...”
“...”
“trevino.”
“yeah, steakknife?”
“it’s too quiet. tell another one.”
“alright, now, stop me if you’ve heard this one before -”
