Chapter Text
Kotallo’s bat is solidly in hand before he hears it in the dugout — “You’re up, tiebreaker.”
It’s this last pitcher, a mountain of a man with an arm more than powerful enough for captain Aloy’s bloodlust while barely toeing the line for Coach Sylen’s standards for control. Erend, he recalls, the graphite of the name smeared across the tryout signup sheet. The pitchers before him had all been perfectly fine; good, even; but the only thing Aloy and Sylens can ever agree on is good never being good enough.
Sweat threatens to roll down Kotallo’s back, the dirt in the air making him itch in that comforting way. Varl whistles sharply as he passes. Kotallo flips him the bird around the handle of his bat without looking, and Varl hoots. They’ve talked about this: Varl would stop if Kotallo would stop wearing shirts as cropped as his Daisy Dukes, and Kotallo insists he is decidedly past the age of acclimatizing to the Vegas heat (yes, Varl, even in February).
Still — “Go get him, vice-cap,” Varl calls out.
Kotallo tucks his gum into his cheek when he reaches home. “Coach. Captain.”
“Well?” Sylens asks.
He shrugs one shoulder. “He’s a little wild.”
Aloy scowls, loath to ever admit Sylens has a point. “But?” she prompts.
“But,” Kotallo concedes, unable to resist a twitch of his mouth to match Aloy’s blooming smirk, “no one else has pitched like him today.” He glances over to Erend and his corn-fed bulk, his shoulders bare from cut-off sleeves and glowing with sunburn, not bothering to flinch when Erend catches him looking. “He has potential.”
“Potential,” Aloy parrots to Sylens.
Sylens waves Kotallo forward to the plate, looking physically pained from swallowing down his commentary. “Let’s get this over with.”
Erend’s gaze is sticky as Kotallo fits his prosthetic’s rig around the grip on his bat; his bat, and only his. Taking his place over the plate, Kotallo finds his grip and swings twice. Behind him, Alva draws down her catcher’s mask. Kotallo nods his readiness to the mound.
The first pitch Erend throws him strolls over the plate like a sunny Sunday constitutional. It’s not worth a swing.
Alva trades a look with Kotallo as she returns the ball in a high arc. He frowns, but repositions.
The second is worse.
“Yeesh,” Alva mutters. “Might as well be tee-ball.”
Kotallo narrows his eyes and snaps his gum in irritation.
Third time’s the straw that broke the camel’s back. Kotallo peels his prosthetic free, handing his bat over to Alva, and stalks toward the hill until he’s inches from Erend.
“What are you doing?” Kotallo demands.
“Uh.” Erend fidgets with his ballcap, a quick up-down to adjust its fit. Arguably he’s larger than Kotallo, broad all the way down, but he struggles visibly not to cringe back from him. “Pitching?”
Kotallo fights down a spike of hot indignation. He forces his mouth flat. “I watched you pitch all day, until I took the plate.”
A good sign, actually, to see shame claw its way up the back of Erend’s neck. He tugs down the bill of his hat and is not subtle in his avoidance of Kotallo’s arm. “Yeah.”
Kotallo holds up a finger. “You get one more. Pitch it like you hate me.”
Truthfully, Erend’s face is so open and boyish that Kotallo has a hard time picturing him hating anyone in earnest. He studies Kotallo, just for a moment. “You got it, boss.”
Kotallo seals their agreement with a sharp nod. When he returns to home, Alva hands over his bat with a question nocked between her brows. He shrugs, rolls his eyes, and readies.
This time, Erend takes a second to himself. He cracks his neck to one side, then the other. He jumps a couple times. He stares Kotallo down from the pitcher’s mound in a way that has Kotallo believing, just for a second, that maybe Erend does hate him. Makes him ice-hot all over.
Kotallo is fixated on Erend’s wind-up while the air between them churns like a storm warning. Before the ball even leaves the hill Kotallo can tell it’s a real bastard, the effort behind it tugging Erend’s shirt across his chest—
—but Kotallo has precisely what he wanted, something curved and tricky with hellfire behind it—
—the trajectory Kotallo maps will bring it too close inside for most, assuming they’re clever enough to notice—
—but Kotallo is not most—
—metal-glint flashes chest-high on Erend—
—so Kotallo chokes up his grip and angles just-so to knock that son of a bitch clear out into the parking lot. His right arm jolts with livewire sting, joints and muscle buzzing harshly against his trying to shake the sensation off. There is no pain; only a deep instinctive ache for more.
Ignoring Erend’s curious watch, Kotallo finds Aloy and Sylens again to tell them: “Him.”
/~/
“Hey! It’s Kotallo, right?”
Kotallo straightens from stuffing his kit into the trunk of his car. “Yes.”
Their new pitcher stops his jog a pace or two away, shirt bunched in his hand. He cracks a hesitant grin. “I’m Erend.”
“I know.”
Erend takes him in stride. He sweeps an apprising gaze over Kotallo. “You a quarterback?” When it’s clear Kotallo doesn’t understand him, Erend draws his thumb across his bare chest just under his pecs, a tidy line from one industrial ring piercing to the other that mimics the hem of Kotallo’s shirt. “I know a shoulder pad crop job when I see one.”
“Offensive tackle,” Kotallo admits. He’s reluctant to acknowledge the pride of recognition knocking at his ribcage. Quarterback; flatterer. “Until college, anyway.”
“Lucky for me you made the switch.”
“Mm.” Kotallo’s nape prickles. “What do you want?”
Erend stands his ground, un-fucking-flappable. “I wanted to apologize. Y’know, for earlier. I got a mouth so big I don’t even need to open it to stick my foot in, my sister always said.” He chuckles, but it’s tinged blue. “I was really surprised when Varl told me you’d vouched for me.”
Wrist ringing with the echo of that decisive hit, Kotallo clenches a tight fist. He holds it until the feeling fades. “You’ve got a hell of a throw. Nothing personal.”
Erend grins like he doesn’t buy it. “Buy you a beer? Sorry-thank you, two-for-one special.”
“I’m busy.”
Now, Erend winces. “Sure, yeah. Thanks again, anyway. And sorry.” He turns to leave, but spots Kotallo’s prosthetic in the open trunk. He bounces on his heels; he’s clearly fighting with himself. Kotallo’s not sure who won that fight when Erend asks, “...Can I see it?”
Kotallo hesitates — but as teammates, Erend will see it sooner or later. He sighs. “Sure.”
He follows Erend’s lean into the trunk, and admittedly appreciates that Erend doesn’t immediately put his hands all over it. Erend eyes the arm closely; he cranes his neck to inspect the narrow length of open-faced clamp that serves as half of Kotallo’s grip, taking only a thumbnail to the edge of it to check its materials. He runs that thumb down the thin coupling wrapped in rubber between clamp and limb.
“What even is this?” he asks, like it’s a puzzle to solve.
“Braided steel cable.”
“Huh!”
“What.”
Erend shakes his head, half-smile in place as he rises. “Nothing, I just would’ve figured something so flexible to have more gears and doo-dads or something. We like our machinery in The Claim.”
The Claim. Kotallo’s brows scrunch in thought. “Wisconsin?”
“You betcha,” Erend laughs. “Oseram, Wisconsin. Born and raised.”
Second only to Detroit for automotive manufacturing. His curiosity makes a certain amount of sense.
“Thanks for letting me look,” Erend says. “It’s pretty elegant.”
Slowly, Kotallo stands to push his trunk closed. His hand lingers on hot metal. “That’s... not one I hear often.”
Erend shrugs, halfway to tugging his shirt back on. “Still true.”
The sting of sun-heated steel gives way to a sweeter pulse of warmth under Kotallo's palm. “I’m not— that busy,” he offers.
That smile of Erend’s is back, full-bore stadium flood lights.
Shouldn’t feel like a home run, but it does.
/~/
“Wait, wait, wait.” Erend sets his beer can down next to its empty brother on the folded open tailgate. “You played for the Denver Marshals? When?”
It took shamefully little convincing for a beer to turn into a six-pack of “the good shit” and a sack of cheeseburgers in Erend’s truckbed. The sunset breeze is fresh and cooling under a jammy pink sky. Kotallo worries at a rusting patch of paint, catching it under a fingernail slow and steady enough to feel its insistent press against the quick without cutting.
“Couple years ago,” he mutters. “Pitcher.”
“Pitcher…” Eyes unfocused until he hits on Kotallo’s left shoulder, Erend puts the pieces together. “Holy shit. Kotallo, that was you?” His awe is boy scout honest. “You’re a hero.”
Kotallo trades his paint peeling for a deep, deep drink. “That’s what the headlines said.”
And they did— every single one of them. Sports columnists couldn’t get enough of the hero Marshal who valiantly saved his teammate from getting crushed between a parked car at the bottom of a hill and a truck with improperly set parking brakes at the cost of his own arm; never mind his career in the majors.
Mentioning it to Erend was a mistake. He knew it, too, but. That’s what’s dangerous about the guy, Kotallo is quickly learning: nothing feels so dark, so complicated, around him. When everything’s light and airy it’s no problem at all for a tongue to slip. Beer gone suddenly too bitter, Kotallo dumps the last couple mouthfuls into the dirt.
“Well—” Incredulous, Erend scrubs a hand through his mutton chop mustache. “So what’re you doing out here?”
The phantom pains have perfect timing, likely thanks to the discussion topic. Kotallo grits his teeth against it and wraps a firm hand on his left bicep. “Not much room for guys like me in the show.”
“Christ,” Erend bites out, “fucking bullshit.”
Anger, swift and righteous; blood in the water to someone so saturated in grating pity like Kotallo. A thrill up his spine makes him sit up straighter.
Grumbling under his breath, Erend rubs his face with both hands hard enough to knock his cap off. “Sorry. Don’t need me telling you that.” After a moment he adds a soft, “I know it’s not worth much, coming from me, but Aloy’s lucky to have you.”
“I’m lucky to have Aloy,” Kotallo says, and smiles a little at Erend’s surprise. “She brought you out here, right?”
Erend sniffs, amused. “Yeah, she did.”
“And?”
“It’s not a story worth telling.”
Kotallo narrows his eyes at the protective downturn of Erend’s shoulders. Doesn’t look right. “That’s never true for Aloy’s strays,” he points out. “It’s your story to tell, but I’m done confessing for the night.” He reaches for a couple of cold, starchy fries to reinforce his point.
“Got me there, I guess.”
Erend picks his beer back up to finish it. Kotallo tosses a fry to a nearby crow (or maybe it’s a raven, he can never tell). It gives him the stink eye, so he throws it another one to choke down whole.
“Aloy happened to blow into town right when my sister got wrapped up in some trouble,” Erend says. His tone implies every letter of trouble is capitalized, voice flat as his hat-smushed hair. “We just kind of... tripped over each other, really. She didn’t have to, but Aloy helped us sort it all out the best she could. Didn’t end well.”
Kotallo’s throat hurts for how tight Erend’s voice is.
“Would’ve been a whole hell of a lot worse without her, that’s for sure.” Can empty, Erend pinches the middle to slowly collapse it. “I tried to make it work at home without Ersa, I really did. I’m no good on my own. But!” He gives the wide stripe of his hair a vigorous rake-through as if to shake his heartache out. “Aloy called me, so here I am.”
Pain floated to the top of him like this, Erend’s smile fails every test Kotallo can think of. He can’t help but be impressed with the happy-go-lucky illusion he met. The man before him now has suffered, greatly. What is a sibling, if not a limb? For all the years Kotallo has spent accused as unfeeling, he recognizes the gift of vulnerability when he sees it— and cannot, in good conscience, let it go unrepaid.
“Aloy was there,” he says, gesturing to his left arm. “She told me afterwards. The truck that pinned me, the driver tried to sneak off and she dragged him back by the throat.”
“No shit?” The revelation brightens Erend. “How long had you known her?”
Kotallo grins. “Didn’t.”
“Je-sus.” Erend snickers the word into two syllables, almost nervously.
“I don’t really want to know how, but she found me after I was discharged from the hospital. She said she knew a guy who knew a couple other guys, and within a few months I had that arm built. Coach Hekarro financed it. I stayed in Denver as long as I could, for him.”
“But it wasn’t the same.”
“And that’s when Aloy called.”
“Her timing’s always creeped me out, y’know.”
“She’s… skilled.”
“She’s crazy,” Erend mutters, loudly affectionate. “I know Aloy explained how this league of hers will work once we’ve proven her point or whatever the plan is, but I gotta tell you, it still doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Co-ed adult minor league softball, bankrolled entirely by the city?”
“That’s about my understanding. Varl said she’s got a couple city councilmen by the balls.”
“Ain’t that just the way,” Erend crows. He lifts the can he’d bent in half. “To Aloy, our warrior queen. Long may she— ah, shit, hang on.” He drops the empty and scrabbles around for a full one. Grabbing a second by the top in a claw grip, he cracks it open with only his middle finger as he holds it out for Kotallo. “Bad luck to cheers dry.”
Kotallo accepts with only a brief head shake. “Long may she reign,” he prompts.
“Long may she reign.” Erend taps their cans together as he says it, but it’s Kotallo he fixates on.