Home Team Clubhouse, Zephyr Field, New Orleans (Sunday)
His locker echoed more hollowly with each long-forgotten sock and empty can of athlete's foot spray that he dumped into the trash can at his feet, and the louder the echoes got, the more Sam felt his resentment grow.
The allegations were 110% bogus, he knew -- he'd never touched so much as an energy supplement in his entire sports career. Hell, he wouldn't even bone his bat on the porcelain sinks of the clubhouse bathroom to get a little more pop into his hits the way other guys would, and yet here he was cleaning out his gear and walking away just so the front office could cover its ass.
"Anders." It was Terry, just called up from AA Binghamton before the playoffs started. "Hey, Anders."
He'd readily answered to his last name for years; what had begun as a teenage conceit had grown into old habit. But some time a few years back -- he couldn't pinpoint the date but suspected it was just after he'd started getting wrong-number messages -- he'd grown weary of the habit and gravitated toward just being Sam. Maybe it was a need to feel less of a stranger in this world he'd adopted; maybe it was just to balance out the fact that his last name on the back of his jersey was all most people really knew about him. But on road trips of the sort that usually saw him straggling, bleary-eyed, off the team bus at 4:30 AM to crash for a few hours before an afternoon game, he occasionally had to admit to himself that the memories of being called "Anders" by his friends on that island were . . . well, idyllic compared to those of the more cynical, less personal intervening years. Mixing the two kinds seemed wrong somehow.
But he pushed aside the instinctive urge to grimace at the name and forced a slightly bitter, twisted smile to his face as he turned. "Yeah?"
"Christ, it's fucking true," said Terry, eyes wide as he took in the sight of the nearly empty locker, the duffel bag crammed full, and the debris-strewn floor at Sam's feet. "They really fucking axed you."
"Yeah, they really frakking axed me," spat Sam, throwing a nearly spent roll of athletic tape at the trash can; it missed and bounced off the side with a dull thud. How disgustingly symbolic. It figured.
Terry laughed, the sound forced and brittle. "When are you ever going to learn to swear the right way, Anders?"
The ribbing, good-natured as it might have been intended to be, was enough to push him past the bounds of civility when combined with the irrational flash of irritation at the persistent sound of his last name. "Means the same gods-damned thing, doesn't it?" he snarled, rounding abruptly on the younger athlete with a viciousness that scared him.
"Dude." Terry backed away quickly, both hands held up in an attempt at a calming gesture. "Chill, man, okay? I had nothing to do with this."
Sam sagged and dropped down onto the bench, covering his face with both hands. "Yeah," came the muffled, dull reply. "I know. It just frakking sucks."
"What are you going to do now?"
Question for the ages, wasn't it? What was left for him now? All the moving from city to city, being bounced around from team to team, and he'd lost contact with all his friends long ago. The two people he'd stayed here for . . . he hadn't been able to make contact with them in years.
Sam raised his head, curiously dry-eyed despite the echoing hollowness inside his chest. "I guess . . . I'm going home."
[OOC: Still NFI, natch, but OOC is love.]
The allegations were 110% bogus, he knew -- he'd never touched so much as an energy supplement in his entire sports career. Hell, he wouldn't even bone his bat on the porcelain sinks of the clubhouse bathroom to get a little more pop into his hits the way other guys would, and yet here he was cleaning out his gear and walking away just so the front office could cover its ass.
"Anders." It was Terry, just called up from AA Binghamton before the playoffs started. "Hey, Anders."
He'd readily answered to his last name for years; what had begun as a teenage conceit had grown into old habit. But some time a few years back -- he couldn't pinpoint the date but suspected it was just after he'd started getting wrong-number messages -- he'd grown weary of the habit and gravitated toward just being Sam. Maybe it was a need to feel less of a stranger in this world he'd adopted; maybe it was just to balance out the fact that his last name on the back of his jersey was all most people really knew about him. But on road trips of the sort that usually saw him straggling, bleary-eyed, off the team bus at 4:30 AM to crash for a few hours before an afternoon game, he occasionally had to admit to himself that the memories of being called "Anders" by his friends on that island were . . . well, idyllic compared to those of the more cynical, less personal intervening years. Mixing the two kinds seemed wrong somehow.
But he pushed aside the instinctive urge to grimace at the name and forced a slightly bitter, twisted smile to his face as he turned. "Yeah?"
"Christ, it's fucking true," said Terry, eyes wide as he took in the sight of the nearly empty locker, the duffel bag crammed full, and the debris-strewn floor at Sam's feet. "They really fucking axed you."
"Yeah, they really frakking axed me," spat Sam, throwing a nearly spent roll of athletic tape at the trash can; it missed and bounced off the side with a dull thud. How disgustingly symbolic. It figured.
Terry laughed, the sound forced and brittle. "When are you ever going to learn to swear the right way, Anders?"
The ribbing, good-natured as it might have been intended to be, was enough to push him past the bounds of civility when combined with the irrational flash of irritation at the persistent sound of his last name. "Means the same gods-damned thing, doesn't it?" he snarled, rounding abruptly on the younger athlete with a viciousness that scared him.
"Dude." Terry backed away quickly, both hands held up in an attempt at a calming gesture. "Chill, man, okay? I had nothing to do with this."
Sam sagged and dropped down onto the bench, covering his face with both hands. "Yeah," came the muffled, dull reply. "I know. It just frakking sucks."
"What are you going to do now?"
Question for the ages, wasn't it? What was left for him now? All the moving from city to city, being bounced around from team to team, and he'd lost contact with all his friends long ago. The two people he'd stayed here for . . . he hadn't been able to make contact with them in years.
Sam raised his head, curiously dry-eyed despite the echoing hollowness inside his chest. "I guess . . . I'm going home."
[OOC: Still NFI, natch, but OOC is love.]