Mr. Baseball
Title: Mr. Baseball
Author: 1breath
Pairing: Mulder/Scully
Fandom: X-files
Theme: Country #2 Live Like You Were Dying-Tim McGraw, Country #2 on 30_ballads
Disclaimer: I don’t own X-files, Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, or any other characters. They are the property of Fox, Ten-Thirteen Productions, and Chris Carter.
There was a blister forming on her right thumb. It was the spot where Mulder’s bat had rubbed loosely in her clumsy grip, Scully’s small hands struggling to hold on properly while Mulder’s larger ones pinned them in place. She rubbed at it absently while she watched the boy Mulder had hired to run the pitching machine run across the emerald green grass of the outfield, collecting baseballs.
“What inspired you to take me on impromptu batting practice?” Scully nudged her partner companionably, her shoulder touching his arm as he crunched through one of his endless packets of sunflower seeds, spitting the shells out in a wide arc over the empty bleachers. Scully wrinkled her nose in disgust but ignored it for the sake of Mulder’s little league nostalgia.
“Was talking to a guy today?” A seed cracked between his teeth. “You remember Arthur Dales?”
“The guy who started the X-files?”
“Did you know he had a brother?”
“Really?” Scully didn’t, but then she hadn’t really cared enough to consider it. “Is he sober?”
“Nope,” Mulder shrugged, spitting his spent shell, nearly hitting the bottom bleacher below. “Interestingly enough, he’s named Arthur Dales too.”
“Their parents named them both Arthur Dales?”
“Yep, and a sister too.”
“Mulder, I’ve stopped wondering about the strange and unique people you happen to befriend.”
He laughed, popping in another salted seed into his mouth. “That article I found wasn’t just about baseball, Scully, it was about a man named Exley….Josh Exley, greatest black baseball player of all time.”
“Never heard of him.”
“You probably wouldn’t, considering he died without ever making it to the majors. But he was a man, no different than any other human who ever loved playing the game, who took simple joy in just hitting an old piece of horse leather around with a stick.”
Scully grinned as he turned her own words on her. “And so this is what it’s all about, the simple pleasures?”
“Don’t you wish you could have some simple pleasures, Scully?” It was the sort of reflective thinking Scully rarely ever heard out of her often single-minded partner.
“Sure. Good books, hot coffee, dark chocolate, nice, long, hot soaks in lavender bubble bath….”
“How often do you take those sorts of soaks, and on what nights exactly?” He waggled an eyebrow suggestively earning a snort out of her.
“Not often enough as you are usually dragging me off to perform an autopsy on Dracula, or ET, or some other strange thing you’ve dug up.”
“If I do less of that in the future, will you tell me when these mysterious bubble baths occur?”
She didn’t dignify his impish leer with an answer, despite the rose flush over her pale cheeks. “I suppose we all need those little things to remind ourselves who we really are, to bring us back to our center. Life gets so complicated as we grow older.” She watched the boy trot back to the pitching machine, upturned t-shirt loaded with baseballs. “When we were kids it was so much easier. Endless days of playing, no worries, life seemed so…”
“Simple.” Mulder replied with longing sadness. “The simple joy of just loving something so easy. Baseball for me, you forget about everything. I just remember the simple joy of long, hot summer days, of hitting a pop fly way out to left field, and occasionally hitting that magical homer that would get lost in the grass and we would give up trying to find it.”
Men became so romantic over baseball, it was a phenomenon that Scully hardly understood, but recognized growing up with the men in her family. Men loved other sports with a fierce passion, but no other sport brought out the tender side like baseball did for them. It was like a long lost love, an old high school romance, they cherished it and nurtured the memory of those long lost days playing sandlot ball, or pitching the big game in high school.
“You know we spend our lives chasing things,” Mulder sighed with a philosophical sort of air. “I’ve spent my life looking for my sister, looking for the truth about aliens. And I don’t think I will top that. But one day we look up, we are old. We have spent all this time chasing after what we’ve thought was important instead of doing what we love. And I think Josh Exley taught me something important today. Don’t give up on what you love because of what people expect out of you. Because in the end what defines you as a man isn’t that you lived to expectations, but that you lived.”
Highly introspective words from the rarely introspective Mulder, Scully mused. “This Josh Exley sounds like a very interesting man.”
“In more ways than one,” Mulder nodded, crunching on another sunflower seed. “In more ways than one.”
Author: 1breath
Pairing: Mulder/Scully
Fandom: X-files
Theme: Country #2 Live Like You Were Dying-Tim McGraw, Country #2 on 30_ballads
Disclaimer: I don’t own X-files, Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, or any other characters. They are the property of Fox, Ten-Thirteen Productions, and Chris Carter.
There was a blister forming on her right thumb. It was the spot where Mulder’s bat had rubbed loosely in her clumsy grip, Scully’s small hands struggling to hold on properly while Mulder’s larger ones pinned them in place. She rubbed at it absently while she watched the boy Mulder had hired to run the pitching machine run across the emerald green grass of the outfield, collecting baseballs.
“What inspired you to take me on impromptu batting practice?” Scully nudged her partner companionably, her shoulder touching his arm as he crunched through one of his endless packets of sunflower seeds, spitting the shells out in a wide arc over the empty bleachers. Scully wrinkled her nose in disgust but ignored it for the sake of Mulder’s little league nostalgia.
“Was talking to a guy today?” A seed cracked between his teeth. “You remember Arthur Dales?”
“The guy who started the X-files?”
“Did you know he had a brother?”
“Really?” Scully didn’t, but then she hadn’t really cared enough to consider it. “Is he sober?”
“Nope,” Mulder shrugged, spitting his spent shell, nearly hitting the bottom bleacher below. “Interestingly enough, he’s named Arthur Dales too.”
“Their parents named them both Arthur Dales?”
“Yep, and a sister too.”
“Mulder, I’ve stopped wondering about the strange and unique people you happen to befriend.”
He laughed, popping in another salted seed into his mouth. “That article I found wasn’t just about baseball, Scully, it was about a man named Exley….Josh Exley, greatest black baseball player of all time.”
“Never heard of him.”
“You probably wouldn’t, considering he died without ever making it to the majors. But he was a man, no different than any other human who ever loved playing the game, who took simple joy in just hitting an old piece of horse leather around with a stick.”
Scully grinned as he turned her own words on her. “And so this is what it’s all about, the simple pleasures?”
“Don’t you wish you could have some simple pleasures, Scully?” It was the sort of reflective thinking Scully rarely ever heard out of her often single-minded partner.
“Sure. Good books, hot coffee, dark chocolate, nice, long, hot soaks in lavender bubble bath….”
“How often do you take those sorts of soaks, and on what nights exactly?” He waggled an eyebrow suggestively earning a snort out of her.
“Not often enough as you are usually dragging me off to perform an autopsy on Dracula, or ET, or some other strange thing you’ve dug up.”
“If I do less of that in the future, will you tell me when these mysterious bubble baths occur?”
She didn’t dignify his impish leer with an answer, despite the rose flush over her pale cheeks. “I suppose we all need those little things to remind ourselves who we really are, to bring us back to our center. Life gets so complicated as we grow older.” She watched the boy trot back to the pitching machine, upturned t-shirt loaded with baseballs. “When we were kids it was so much easier. Endless days of playing, no worries, life seemed so…”
“Simple.” Mulder replied with longing sadness. “The simple joy of just loving something so easy. Baseball for me, you forget about everything. I just remember the simple joy of long, hot summer days, of hitting a pop fly way out to left field, and occasionally hitting that magical homer that would get lost in the grass and we would give up trying to find it.”
Men became so romantic over baseball, it was a phenomenon that Scully hardly understood, but recognized growing up with the men in her family. Men loved other sports with a fierce passion, but no other sport brought out the tender side like baseball did for them. It was like a long lost love, an old high school romance, they cherished it and nurtured the memory of those long lost days playing sandlot ball, or pitching the big game in high school.
“You know we spend our lives chasing things,” Mulder sighed with a philosophical sort of air. “I’ve spent my life looking for my sister, looking for the truth about aliens. And I don’t think I will top that. But one day we look up, we are old. We have spent all this time chasing after what we’ve thought was important instead of doing what we love. And I think Josh Exley taught me something important today. Don’t give up on what you love because of what people expect out of you. Because in the end what defines you as a man isn’t that you lived to expectations, but that you lived.”
Highly introspective words from the rarely introspective Mulder, Scully mused. “This Josh Exley sounds like a very interesting man.”
“In more ways than one,” Mulder nodded, crunching on another sunflower seed. “In more ways than one.”