At Least We'll Both Be Numb

[Brackie]

It was late enough in the afternoon that everyone had gone home for the day, but there was still a baseball being pitched and hit on the mostly empty field. Practice was over, but a machine sat upon the pitchers plate. And Jason Andrews was on home plate.

*plunk*
*clang*

Every so often, the pitching machine launched a baseball in Jason's direction, and he would hit it. It was his weak point as a player, hitting. He could catch a thrown ball to first base among the best of them but hitting? That he needed some practice on.

His eyes scanned the stadium. A large congregation of balls sat in the left outfield. No, that wouldn't do. He always hit out there. Sooner or later, people were going to notice, and adjust themselves accordingly. So it was only right he do the same thing. He needed to make himself unpredictable.

But-

*plunk*
*clang*

But while there sat a considerable distance between himself at the balls in left outfield, the further to the right one looked, the closer the balls seemed to lay. By the time one's eyes got to first base, Jason's usual home turf, the balls were practically milling around buying timeshare. In fact, that's exactly where the ball Jason just hit landed, knocking into another ball as it rolled across the ground like it was a mere game of bowls.

Jason squinted, tightening his grip. He shifted his feet slightly. If there were any other people around, they would have noticed his change in stance, but as it stood right now, and as he stood right now, it was a secret all to himself. He moved his bat even slighter. There was going to be another ball coming any moment now, but Jason had no idea when. He wasn't very good at timing. Probably a leftover from his child-

*plunk*
*clang*

That one went a little further, a little closer to the middle. It landed infield, but was still going fast enough that it skid along the ground until it was rolling towards right outfield. It wasn't as high Jason wanted it to be, or as far, but it was a start. Or it could have been a fluke, who the fuck knew.

This was going to be the things he'd have to learn before he finally went to Princeton. He'd just found out recently, the wheels had been greased cleanly enough to let him in. His dad being a regular contributor alongside being general alumni helped a lot, but Jason liked to think he made a good impression in the interviews. Or at least, his family name did. Never mind the fact that most of the more successful applicants with names as prestigious as his own probably went to schools with "Hall" or "Saint" in their names, not generic run-of-the-mill public schools in the middle of the city. But whatever, money talked. His parent's money did, at least.

Jason pulled his elbows down slightly. At the angle they sat now, they looked like wings. It wasn't anything particularly important, but it reminded him of that awful nickname the kids he played with used to give him - "Hawk". Jason hated birds. He hated-

*plunk*
*clang*

He hated them so much he'd often joined his father on game hunts just to see them fall out of the sky. He wasn't sure if the facts were related, but it was always particularly rough being a child and being told that you look like a creepy animal and not like a kid.

The latest ball headed in the same direction, and picked up much more air, but not enough. It was eye level. That meant hand level. That meant catching level, and that meant out. He needed to do better, he needed to do higher, and he needed-

*plunk*
*clang*

and he needed to actually find a pitcher, and not rely on this fucking machine. It gave the exact same hit every time, but in real baseball you never got the same pitch twice. Sure, they all got categorized into similar categories but some were going to be right at your head instead of the bat, some were going to be lower than normal, and some were going to be trickshots, curveballs, anything to screw the batter up. This machine couldn't do those kind of shots, just fastballs right at home base. But it was just like playing a videogame, just like Overwatch. If you wanted to be a master, you needed to practice against nothing more than moving targets. Get in headshots, practice with those before aiming for the big league pros. That was how he could down six Ana-bots in five seconds as McCree, which helped with every other hero in terms of actually aiming. All he had to do was adjust for distance.

Just like here. But it wasn't just the machine practice he hated, it was the fact he was standing on an empty field in the middle of the afternoon and nobody was around. He hated being alone. Sure, he'd gotten used to it over the years, but he was going to an Ivy League School in a couple of months and he only had a few friends to show for it. Dad always told him that the friends he made in high school were going to be his friends for the rest of his life, but was that even true? It might have been true for Dad, but it certainly didn't look that way for Jason. Amanda was baller, sure, he liked the idea of staying in touch with her as they grew up; he liked the whole team well enough, some of them might even have gone pro, but who else? Maxwell never talked to him anymore. Paris hadn't invited him to a party in months and he was beginning to realize that last one might have actually been the last one. All his ex girlfriends wanted him gone from their lives as well as this school. And he was no closer to actually making it into the popular crowd than he was when he first arrived here.

*plunk*
*clang*

The latest ball reached considerable air this time. It flew far enough that it reached the outskirts of outfield, almost going out of the park (which in this case was the linked fence). Unfortunately, he'd zoned back into his left zone. The ball went far, but in the wrong direction.

He counted the balls lingering around. There were 30 balls settled on the baseball field, and that was how many he remembered loading into the machine. He relaxed his stance, the bat swinging at his side.

If he was going to continue practicing like this, he needed to find a pitcher. Anything else and he was trapped with nothing but his thoughts. He couldn't listen to music, taking any electronics onto the field would pretty much have been like dropping the hammer himself. He couldn't drag Amanda along, she was too busy. There were just so many upsides to finding someone to actually pitch to him outside of practice.

*plunk*
*smack*

One of them being that a rogue ball wouldn't be launched at him unprepared.

The baseball slammed into his arm at 55 miles an hour, catching him by surprise and giving his arm the sensation of being hit by a tiny truck.

"FUCK!" Jason screamed as he dropped the bat and clutched where the baseball hit him. It caught him on the side, between the elbow and his shoulder, and it still felt tender to the touch. The pain remained but Jason could feel the pain and its kind, which was good. There was no sensation of glass digging into the insides of his skin, which is what he knew the feeling of broken and dislocated bones to feel like. It didn't sting with every moment, either, which was another bad sign. He did, however, feel pain as he clutched his opposite hand to the area of impact. It was tender, yes, but it was only a bruise. A bruise that would be stuck on him for a week, maybe more, but just a bruise.

Jason walked to the machine, arm continuously twinging, and switched it off.

He wandered around the field, collecting the numerous baseballs in order to return them.

As he collected them, however, he couldn't help but have one recurring thought enter his mind.

To be fair, there's not much guarantee someone on your team wouldn't have done that to you either.

((Jason Andrews continues elsewhere))