Archive of Our Own

It was an evening home game: a solid, uncomplicated win over the Rockies that kept them nice and easy on top of the division. It wasn't his start-- it was Merck that night-- so he just relaxed on the bench, idly dissected Merck's delivery with Smoltz for the hundredth time, teasing Javy about his pitch calling every half inning. It was a hot night, mid 80s, but that wasn't anything remarkable in Atlanta in June.

He walked in the door and smiled at Carri, who had waited up for him, which she sometimes did if the game didn't run too late. She kissed him, just hard enough to drive him crazy, and pulled back a little to say, "Don called."

"OK," Tom agreed. "Don called." He kissed the side of her neck, already thinking about where he could kiss her next.

Laughing, she leaned back and got her hands around either side of his face, holding him in place. "Don called. He sounded upset. He wanted you to call back right away."

"It's late. It can wait until tomorrow."

"Tom, he said as soon as you got home." She kissed him on the tip of the nose and executed the little wriggle and twist that somehow always got her out of his hands no matter how tightly he was hugging her. She was still been smiling playfully at him, which was just plain old unfair.

But Fehr must have sounded really upset to make her that insistent, so Tom sighed and went into the kitchen, sat down next to the phone. There were phone numbers taped up on an oversized index card next to it: his parents, hers, the ballpark family emergency line, the kids' school office, the pediatrician's office, and Donald Fehr.

Fehr picked up on the first ring. "The bastards are doing it," he said, before Tom could even get out a 'hello'. "The bastards are actually gonna do it."

And Tom knew why Carri had insisted he call right away, because Don sounded furious, but happy-furious, predatory, the kind of furious that was gearing up for a huge fight. The kind of furious that enjoyed a huge fight. God help them all, but Fehr did love a good fight, and they'd been angling towards this one ever since the words 'salary cap' had first been uttered way back in January.

"What's the damage?" Tom asked.

"No salary arbitration. Six-year free agency knocked down to four, and the bastards can keep a player on if he's a four or five-year guy and they match his best offer. Can you even fuckin' believe that? And the revenue-sharing, of course, and the fucking salary cap."

That was when Tom started to realize the kind of trouble they were in, because that was-- god, it was so much more than he'd been expecting, that was everything, that was such a violation of player rights that he was stunned to hear it, right there in his kitchen, sitting there with his mouth hanging open in amazement.

"I know," Fehr said, more softly, apparently in response to the silence. "Trust me when I say I know."

"We can't..." Tom started, then stopped. We can't let them do this was what he had meant to say, but he didn't finish the thought, because what could they do?

----

There are meetings, of course there are meetings, there are always meetings. It's the middle of June, middle of the season, not everyone can get away on the same days. There's no way to get all the team representatives together in the same room to talk it over, so Fehr does it in bits and pieces and informs each group of what the others said as best he can. It's not easy, Tom knows, and he does appreciate it, remembering all over again why they have Fehr in charge of this massive organization.

In July Fehr calls him and tells him that he's going to have to spend his next off-day in New York, because it's union business and it's too important to do over the phone. Tom assumes that he'll be with whatever number of player reps share the off-day, but when he gets to the cheap offices the MLBPA rents in the middle of a bland New York skyscraper, he finds himself ushered into a room with only one other guy in it.

It takes him a minute, because the other guy has aged fast, his face a lot narrower than it was the last time Tom had seen him, the marks digging in under his eyes more pronounced. Eventually he realizes that it's David Cone, no longer a Met and showing that American League wear more than Tom had expected. The last time he saw Cone, the Blue Jays were jumping all over each other, celebrating a World Series while the Braves slunk off the field.

"Hey," he says, but he's already hesitated long enough to make it obvious that he didn't recognize Cone right off. Just long enough to make it obvious he'd thought of the '92 Series once he did recognize the guy. Just long enough to make it awkward.

Cone cements it by inclining his head towards Tom with a sardonic smile. Tom doesn't do sardonic himself, not really, but he's never had a problem recognizing it on other people, seeing it for the wordless rebuke it often really is. He also notices, way too slow, that Cone is wearing a collared shirt and suit pants, his jacket stretched across the back of his chair. Tom is wearing a t-shirt and jeans, and his hair is longer than Cone's, curling against the back of his neck. He sits down across from Cone, keeping his eyes on the table, feeling guilty although, really, it's not like anyone told him this was a formal kind of thing.

They sit in dense silence like that for another few minutes until Fehr bursts through the door. He's wearing a rumpled t-shirt in an offensively loud print, and his hair is flopping down over his forehead like usual. Next to him, Cone looks practically military, and Tom immediately feels better.

Fehr dumps an armful of folders onto the table between the two of them and rubs his hands together briskly. "OK, so, you guys have been real active in the union and you've shown a lot of dedication to the cause and yadda yadda. You're the new league reps. It doesn't really mean anything except that you're the new league reps."

Tom's already nodding, smiling at Fehr, he's very thankful for the recognition, but Cone pokes a finger at the mass of files. "What's all this?"

"These are the details of the new owner proposals." Fehr flips a few open until he finds the one he wants, pulling papers out with medical precision, eviscerating the pile and laying them out in order. "Elimination of the arbitration process. Adjustments to the free agency system. Alleged impact to salary." He taps each one as he mentions it. "Salary cap." This one he grabs and scans with a look of disgust before tossing it back down on the table. Cone reaches over the discarded files and picks it up, reading it more carefully.

"What do we have to do?" Tom asks. The union isn't going to agree to the proposal. He doesn't have to read the details on the papers to know that. "I mean us, me and Mr. Cone." Cone looks up from the paper in disbelief, silently mouthing, Mr. Cone?, but Tom ignores him, because Fehr is not exactly meeting his eyes.

"Why designate new league reps right now?" Tom asks, leaning forward, trying to catch Fehr's eye, but even as he asks he realizes the answer. He sits back slowly. "Ah."

Cone is still holding the paper, half of his attention on the information it contains, but he glances up at Tom again. "Ah, what?" He follows Tom's gaze to Fehr, then looks back.

"Media," Tom says softly.

"The union has to have a face for the people, the fans." Fehr sounds a little defensive, a little defiant. "Someone they can look to for, whatever, quotes on this. Someone to tell them what's going on. Someone they can trust. It's no good having different guys talking to them all the time, it just confuses things and makes it hard to connect. Public opinion, boys."

Cone finally puts the paper down. "And, what, we were the most trustworthy-looking faces out there?" Fehr shrugs. "What about, what about someone like Molitor? Hershiser?"

"Hershiser's on the executive committee, you'll be working plenty with him. Molitor..." Fehr rubs the back of his neck and shrugs again. "He's a good guy, and I'm glad he's a rep, and I'm glad he's on the negotiating committee, but he just doesn't do media so hot all the time." He makes a face. "Hitter thing."

Which, well, sure. Pitchers are traditionally better at this kind of thing; it's one of those baseball constants that has no real reason to persist, but does anyways.

Cone's not a dumb guy, and he gets it fast enough. "So we're, what? The sacrificial lambs? Throw us to the fucking wolves?"

"Someone has to do it," Fehr says. "Someone always does."

----

They reject the salary cap. They reject the proposal. They know they won't get help from the Senate Judiciary committee, not that anyone put much stock in that to begin with. They put a date on it.

Fehr stands at a podium, looking flabby-cheeked and pale in the harsh video camera lights. "If the owners are not willing to back down on these issues and to address our concerns, it is my unfortunate duty to announce that the players will be going on strike, effective August 12." The noise in the room swells as every reporter there starts trying to ask questions all at once.

Tom, sitting at home and watching on TV, can't stop himself from wincing in sympathy. Carri rubs his arm until the phone rings and she gets up to answer it. After a moment she waves Tom into the kitchen and hands him the receiver.

It's Cone, sounding tense. "We're really in for it now," he says.

"I guess so." Tom leans against the kitchen wall, watching the TV across the living room, where Fehr is patiently answering questions. He idly wonders why Cone would call him, some guy he barely knows, some Brave he used to pitch against, and not one of his own teammates.

"We're really in for it," Cone repeats. "You and me, Glav."

"We're all of us in for it. Everyone in the league," Tom gently corrects, although he knows what Cone means. They're all in for it, for the duration, but he and Cone are really in for it, because they're about to become the faces that the fans see whenever they think about the strike.

"You think we'll actually do it?"

Tom looks down. It's just his kitchen floor down there, the same floor that he's seen for eight years now. Linoleum, yellow and white, stubborn dust and crumbs along the seam where it meets the wall, even though Carri is pretty obsessive about vacuuming and mopping. The only way they could ever get those crumbs would be to rip up the whole floor and clean it all out. And no sane person would ever do that, not unless the crumbs were becoming so poisonous that they had to be taken out, or the kitchen would become completely uninhabitable.

People will say it's about the money, but it's not, at least not so far as Tom is concerned. It wasn't all that long ago that baseball players were hardly better than slaves under the owners. Things have changed since they unionized, since free agency began, but baseball contracts still restrict what a player can do with his own body, because in some ways it's still the team's body. Even the smallest step backwards could be the start of that dreaded slippery slope. Tom would be going into this exact same fight regardless of what the league average salary was, because it's the principle. More than that: it's the owners screwing over the players, putting the bottom line first, company over team. It's about fighting back for baseball itself, the game against the corporation.

Of course Tom likes money, but he believes in baseball.

Which is a big part of why Fehr named him the NL representative. He's spent some time, in the past few days, wondering what made Cone the man for the AL position.

"We'll do it. If they don't compromise, we'll do it."

"I keep hoping I'll hear something different." Cone sighs, just a little. "But it sure doesn't look like they're gonna back down, huh? Not so easy."

"Not so easy. No."

"I picked a bad year to have a good year," Cone says, and finally Tom has to smile to himself. A little reluctantly, because he's not so sure he even likes Cone as a person much, but they are going to be working together, and Cone is audibly making an effort. Meeting him halfway is the least Tom can do.

"It'll probably only be a few days. Maybe a couple weeks. Once they see we're serious, it should straighten out pretty fast." He means to say it to reassure Cone, who really is having kind of an amazing season, but as soon as the words are out of his mouth he wonders who he's actually trying to convince. He believes it, he does; he doesn't see how it could be otherwise. It's the only outcome that makes any sense. They'll lose a few weeks from the season at most.

He looks back out into the living room, where Fehr is still fending off questions from reporters, the word strike on his lips seemingly every time he opens his mouth, almost obscene, and it wouldn't make sense for the cold feeling stealing over his body to be fear, but maybe it wouldn't make sense for it to be anything else.

----

It's not as though they announce the strike and suddenly they're striking; they announce the strike in advance. Well, they have to. The delay between the announcement and the actual beginning of the strike is supposed to give them time to negotiate and, if all goes well, avoid the strike entirely. The date of the strike is really just a deadline for talks with the owners. Fehr is still talking about the rest of the season like he's fairly certain it's going to happen, and regardless of whether or not the strike actually goes off, they still have a number of games to play before the announced date.

Tom's thankful that he doesn't have to pitch the first game after the strike announcement, because he's up the whole night before, fielding calls from reporters, then family and friends. He doesn't tell them anything that Fehr hasn't already said, but they keep calling, looking for something. Reassurance, he assumes, so that's what he gives them. The same stuff he told Cone; the same stuff he's telling himself.

When he gets to the clubhouse before the game, it's more of the same. Guys crowd around his locker and want to know what the hell is going on. As a player rep it's Tom's job to relay as much information to his team as he can, something he takes very seriously (these guys trusted him enough to nominate him, after all, they have faith in his abilities, and he knows it's an honor), but they want details, specifics, and he doesn't really have much to give them.

Most of the younger players wander off after Tom repeats the same story two or three times, but the older players are not so easily moved. Fred McGriff especially won't give up, leaving to get his glove and coming right back, pulling a stool over right in front of Tom's, untying and retying all his glove laces.

"You guys know this ain't gonna go on long, right?" he says, his voice twitching up at the end with a kind of hopefulness. "I mean, you cats got some information, right, the owners ain't as stubborn as they're makin' it out to be, right?"

Tom shrugs one shoulder, wishing he could reach into his locker and dig his glove out for maintenance, just something to do, but he's not getting into the game today.

McGriff leans forward, speaking in a low, urgent voice. "It really ain't gonna be more'n a few days, right? Once they see we're actually gonna strike an' it ain't just words, right?"

"Yeah. That's the thinking."

"Well, it can't be more'n that, right?"

"Sure," Tom says. "I mean, technically. Of course it can be, it can be as long as we make it, but I can't imagine..." he trails off, thinking of the pale determined clench of Fehr's jaw when he gets his mind set on something. He can't imagine, really, or maybe he just doesn't want to try.

McGriff sits back, probably realizing that that's as good an answer as he's going to get from Tom today. He tugs down the last of his glove's laces and punches the pocket a few times, making the leather pop.

"Dunno what I'd do," he says. He doesn't have to say anything else, because it's the same for Tom, the same for all of them. What I'd do without baseball, that's the rest of it, but nobody has to tell anyone else that some things are better left unsaid.

Tom falls asleep in the dugout in the 6th inning, but it's fine. Nobody even wakes him up until the top of the 9th, and then it's just Cox telling him that he may as well get into the clubhouse now if he's gonna bum around on the bench. Avery's on a roll, and they don't even have to go to the bullpen to finish the game.

----

He tries to catch up on sleep the next night, he really does, but the phone calls don't stop. Most of the reporters have found out that he's taking his new union role seriously, willing to answer the phone, and they're all looking for quotes. He doesn't want to give anyone a reason to write something bad about him, so he tries very hard to give a quote to every reporter who calls.

The owners are trying to take us back to the days when ballplayers were hardly better than cattle, and we won't go back to that,

and

Of course this isn't sudden, not at all, not to us. We knew it might come to this. We hoped it wouldn't, but we knew it might,

and

Everyone in the union voted, so it's not like this was something decided at the top without anyone having their fair say. This is what we all decided together was the best possible course of action,

and

Nobody wants a strike, none of us do, but we'd rather strike than let baseball go where the owners are trying to take it,

and on and on.

By 4 am he's shaking from exhaustion, hunched over a glass of bourbon. It's just something to keep him calm, and he's at his most alert when the warm burn down the back of his throat wakes him up a little. Carri's been in bed for hours. She tried to stay up with him, then tried begging him to come to bed, to ignore the phone, but he can't. He's the league rep. His eyes are closing of their own accord, but when the phone rings again, he picks it up and says hello.

"Thought so," says a rough voice. "Take your fucking phone off the hook and go to bed."

He blinks into the bourbon, his own reflection squiggled back at him. Everything sounds kind of fuzzy, cotton in his ears, but. "Cone?"

"I kept seeing stories. On the AP wire, there's new stuff coming out, new quotes, and I thought, that fucker better not still be up, and sure enough I call and you are."

"I. What are you doing up watching the presswire?"

Cone laughs, a short bark. "Same thing you are, fucker. Difference is, I'm not pitching tomorrow."

"Right." Tom puts his head down on the table, keeping the headset pressed to his ear with one hand. The tablecloth smells faintly of lemons and pine, whatever Carri uses to clean it, and the plasticky weave is cool under his cheek.

"Go to bed."

Tom starts to protest, he can't, he just can't, but Cone talks right over him. "There's two of us for a reason, if someone wants a soundbite they can call me as well's they can call you, and it's 3 in the fuckin' morning."

"Four."

"Really?" There's a pause while Cone presumably checks the time, then a low whistle that somehow sounds as tired as Tom feels. "Shit, it is. When did that happen? Never mind, that's not the point."

Tom smiles in spite of himself, eyes closed. "Was there a point?"

Another short chuckle, raspy with lack of sleep, and then Cone lowers his voice, talking quiet and close to the receiver, right in Tom's ear. "You don't help anyone by being too tired to pitch. OK? Go to bed, ace."

Tom can't remember the last time anyone sincerely called him 'ace', not on this staff with Maddux and Smoltz, but it doesn't sound insincere from Cone. He probably can't even lie at this level of exhaustion; Tom's pretty sure he couldn't. It's all he can do to make his mouth fit properly around the truth, and the truth is just what is, it's nothing he has to invent on his own.

He doesn't remember what he mumbles to Cone, but it probably amounted to something like 'thanks', or maybe just 'good night'.

It's only later that he stops to wonder why Cone, one hundred percent a member of the AL now, even knew he was pitching the next day.

----

It's 95, 100 degrees in the ballpark, what they call real Atlanta heat. It should be an advantage because they're used to it and the Phillies aren't, or at least that's what the radio guys say and what the team tries to believe.

The brim of his cap soaks up sweat for the first couple of innings, but then it gets saturated. It sits heavy on his forehead and sweat drips down into his eyes no matter how many times he steps off the mound to try and wipe it away. The hair at the back of his neck curls crazily in the heat, sticking close to his skin. Every pitch he throws makes the collar of his jersey drag in the sweat, driving him crazy in tiny pieces.

He comes out of the 4th shaky. Every time one of the Phillies gets on the basepaths Tom has to throw from the stretch, his rhythm all fucked up and everything blurry at the edges. Cox takes one look at him when he gets to the dugout and immediately turns to the trainer, who nods and trip-runs down the steps to the clubhouse, much faster in his sneakers than any of the guys could be in their spikes.

Javy sits down next to him, unbuckling his shin guards. It must be a bad day to be a catcher, this heat. All that extra gear. Tom sticks his pitching arm in the sleeve of a jacket when he's not on the field even in July, but today the very thought of it makes him breathe fast, fighting nausea.

"OK?" Javy asks, in the quiet directed voice he uses with his pitchers, his for-your-ears-only voice.

"Yeah, OK," Tom says. He sounds thready and unreliable even to himself. Fehr's announcement was only a couple of days ago, surely he shouldn't be this wrecked already, but Tom has never had much tolerance for sleep deprivation. In the minors he was almost always the guy first back at the motel, needing his 7 hours at least.

The trainer comes back with an old Gatorade bottle half full of water, the rest blocked up with ice. Tom takes it and presses it against his forehead, letting his eyes fall shut. The ice is so cold that he almost can't feel it, fresh from the freezer and not melted yet, although that won't take long.

He opens his eyes when Javy knocks his knee against Tom's. "Hand," Javy mutters, looking vaguely out at the field. Tom gives Javy his hand without thinking about it, and Javy slips something into his palm so fast he can't see it, registering the slick slide of another palm against his own only after it's already gone.

Pretending to yawn, bringing his palm to his mouth, it's the oldest trick in the book, except for maybe the spitball. It would be so easy for a catcher to kill his pitcher this way, he thinks, chasing the pills down with the water without looking at them, because what pitcher would stop to check out something his catcher had given him? No pitcher on a winning team, that's sure enough.

Of course Javy isn't trying to murder him, and neither is the trainer, who slipped the pills to Javy in the first place, probably when he brought Tom the water. The greenies will take a little while to kick in, but his team's got his back, fighting Schilling for every pitch of every at-bat, giving him extra time. Schilling has almost as much hair as Tom does, curling everywhere under his hat, but his is bright blonde instead of water-logged black. He knows he should watch, but the sun behind Schilling's head today is more than Tom can take.

He's just beginning to feel the effects of the greenies when he takes the mound for the 5th inning. He strikes out two Phillies, 1-2-3, 1-2-3. The greenies are really hitting his bloodstream now, and the heat feels like it's jittering at the back of his neck. Things look less blurry, which is definitely an improvement. He can actually see the signs Javy is putting down. He doesn't feel precisely like an ace, but at least he feels a lot more like himself.

There are 12 days left until the proposed strike date. He can do this.

----

The reporter from the New York Times wants to know if he's personally talked to the owners' representation. The reporter from the Wall Street Journal wants to know if he's considered the impact of a potential strike on the paychecks of the youngest, lowest-salaried ballplayers. The reporter from the Washington Post wants to know what percentage of ballplayers were in favor of the strike. The reporter from the Atlanta Journal Constitution wants to know if his pitching is being affected by union business.

Of course it is! Tom wants to scream. It's midnight and you're calling me asking this, what do you think?!

"It's not a problem at all," he says. "On the field is on the field, off the field is off the field. I never even think about it when I'm on the mound. I'm sure any other ballplayer would tell you the same."

----

The night of Cone's first start since they announced the strike is right in the middle of Tom's off-time-- another Merck start. They lose fast and nasty to the Mets, so fast that when Tom gets back to the hotel and turns on the TV, he finds the Royals game still going and Cone still pitching.

It's something else, watching Cone pitch. Tom has been around baseball long enough, he can usually tell what a pitcher is about to throw, but with Cone he sometimes has no idea. Tom himself has a lot of pitches: his bread-and-butter pitches, the four-seamer and the change; a curve when he needs it; a slider if he feels good about it; a two-seamer that trails off like a pretty little afterthought. Cone, though, he's no bread-and-butter kind of guy. He throws everything: two-seam, four-seam, splitter, curve. He throws change-ups and sliders and pitches that people call screwballs with a what-can-you-do shrug, because they aren't really screwballs, but who knows what they really are.

He's small on the hotel TV, a little fuzzy in RGB resolution, but Tom can still see the ball dancing in on the batters, sailing up, diving down at the last possible second. He keeps looking for a knuckleball, but it must be the only thing that Cone doesn't regularly throw.

It seems impossible that the A's have gotten four runs off of him, but that's what the network graphics say. Mark McGwire steps up to the plate, hulking and huge about the shoulders in a way most hitters in the NL just aren't, and upon reflection Tom decides that maybe it's not so crazy after all.

After the game he waits a decent amount of time before calling. The Royals are at home, so it's perfectly possible that Cone has plans of some sort-- a bar out with the guys, a night in with a groupie or two, whatever it is that he usually does after pitching 8 innings and getting a win. And it's not like Tom has anything in particular to talk about-- they probably discussed everything that it was possible to discuss about the latest strike-related developments during Fehr's last union-wide conference call.

So when Cone picks up right away and says hi, Tom is temporarily at a loss. He expected... he's not quite sure what he expected. For Cone to not pick up, apparently.

Cone waits for a moment, then inhales sharply. "Hey, is everything OK? The owners didn't..."

"No! God, no, nothing happened." Tom winces, glad that he's alone in his hotel room. "I just... wait, how did you even know it was me?"

"Caller ID, ace. Who else is gonna be calling me from the ballplayer hotel in New York?"

"Right." Of course. Perhaps he could just sputter pointlessly down the line for a few minutes.

There's another pause, Cone probably politely waiting to see if he actually has anything to say. When it evidently becomes clear that he doesn't, Cone just starts talking about the A's. About what it's like to face McGwire, and did you ever? (Tom hasn't, of course, and shudders a little to think of it.) About Steinbach, the catcher, a union guy and member of the negotiating committee, what a wry sense of humor he has. Cone tells him about hunkering down on a single bed in a Kansas City hotel room with Steinbach and the other A's rep, Mike Bordick, all three of them trying to stay close to the speakerphone so that they can be in on the union conference call, way too much ballplayer on one bed, Cone at one point shifting too quickly and falling right off the side, straight down to the floor, thankfully landing on his left shoulder.

Tom ends up telling him about the Atlanta hotel where the Phillies were staying, going up to meet Schilling so they could help cut down the number of phones involved in the conference call, Schilling's unbelievable excitement at getting to sit in on the executive league rep meeting, even though Tom told him at least three times that it wasn't really any different from the regular meetings. Of course Cone was there-- in Kansas City, but there in telephonic spirit-- but nobody else gets excited about a thing like that the same way Schilling does.

"How much've you talked to that kid?" Cone asks. "I swear to God it's his life's goal to put as many people as he possibly can in a position where they have to sit and listen to him flap his jaw. Can you imagine him as Commish?" He pauses while Tom laughs in a horrified kind of way. "Executive rep meeting, to you and me and sane people, it's just a boring thing to get our shit straight before we talk to the rest of the union. To a crazy fucker like Schilling, it's probably like getting admitted to a top secret government society."

Tom laughs helplessly, almost bent double over the phone, even though it's not that funny. He's still not sure why he called Cone in the first place-- he certainly wasn't expecting this, or anything at all-- but it's OK now that Cone's got them going. It's good. He feels better, more grounded, somehow, without even having realized that he was feeling adrift.

----

Cincinnati is a lot cooler than Atlanta, but Tom's head still fuzzes on the field with lack of sleep, too much to think about, too much information or not maybe not enough, something. Javy comes trotting out to the mound after Tom shakes him off for the fourth time in a single at-bat.

"What's up, 'migo?" Javy asks, curving an arm around Tom's waist.

"Nothing. I." Tom closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, concentrating on Javy's arm, trying to block out everything except for the warm weight across the small of his back, the gentle press of Javy's catcher's mitt against his side. It helps, a little.

When he opens his eyes again he finds Javy peering closely at him. "You need...?"

He thinks about it. A couple of greenies would sharpen him up, for sure, and he should be sharp out here. That's what they pay him for; it's his responsibility to the team, just like it's his responsibility to his fellow players to be as sharp and alert as he can during union negotiations. The problem is that he already took a couple of greenies, two hours before the game started, and he never takes more than two at a time.

He opens his mouth to tell Javy that he already took some, that he'll make do as best he can out here, and finds himself saying, "Yeah, maybe I should."

Javy clenches his hand inside the glove momentarily, loosely closing around Tom's hip in a reassuring squeeze before letting go. "OK. We strike this pendejo out, get back to dugout, we get you some before next inning, vale?"

Tom nods. Javy gives him a bracing smack on the ass with his glove and lopes back towards the plate, where Bret Boone is tapping his bat against his cleats impatiently. Terry Pendleton comes over from third and picks up the rosin bag, squishing it to make the white dust curl up between his fingers.

Tom waits for him to throw the bag down and go back to third, but instead Pendleton edges up the side of the mound. He cocks his head at Tom and closes one eye, which, Tom knows from several years' experience, is what he always does when he's carefully examining something.

"Look like shit, man," Pendleton says, still squeezing the rosin bag.

"Thanks, Terry. That's very helpful."

Pendleton shrugs. "Just sayin'." He lets the bag roll off his fingers, and it lands with a dead thump on the backside of the mound.

Tom strikes Boone out, although he has to concentrate so hard on Javy to get it done that the base of his skull is throbbing, afterimages of the pocket of Javy's mitt burned into the backs of his retinas. He stumbles over the place where the infield grass gives way to dirt on his way back to the dugout and it's only Pendleton's quick infielder hands, grabbing him by the back of the belt, that keep him from falling. Pendleton doesn't let go of him until he's safely deposited on the bench.

Javy comes over with his hand cupped in a careful loose fist. Tom is so, so happy to see him, to see the two or three of him that waver into and out of each other as they approach. "You sure he should be takin' that shit?" Pendleton asks. "He really don't look so good."

"He say he want to." Javy looks down at Tom dubiously. Tom looks back up at him as steadily as he can. He's fine, he's really fine, he's just a little tired. He just needs a little boost to keep him in the game.

Pendleton shrugs again and wanders off to the other end of the dugout, where the rest of the infielders are. Under better circumstances Tom would appreciate his concern, probably, but right now he just needs to get through this game. He just needs to do his job.

Javy sits on the bench next to him. "Hand," he mutters, looking in the opposite direction, and Tom offers up his palm.

----

Cone loses his last start, five days before the strike date. Tom loses his last start, two days before the strike date.

"No big deal," Cone says. It's the night before the strike, August 11. Cone is in Kansas City, and Tom is in the team hotel in Denver, just a little bit drunk off their last win, 13 to 0, Maddux going the full nine innings, the way that the post-game alcohol (all of it on the bullpen's dollar, which is what a complete game from the starter will get them) hits him harder than usual this high above sea-level. Tomorrow they'll both be in New York City, along with Fehr and most of the other player reps. "No big deal. We'll be back before we know it."

"What if we aren't?"

Cone snorts. "Oh, c'mon. Nobody's gonna let it get too bad. It's all just a bunch of beatin' our chests like gorillas at each other 'til we all understand that everyone's serious."

"What if that was the last game of baseball you ever got to play?" Tom is, maybe, more drunk than he should be. "What if this, this strike, it killed the league. I know it won't, I know, but what if. Just, what if."

There's silence on the other end of the phone for a long while, so long that Tom starts to wonder if Cone has hung up, but of course not, there's no dial tone, and if he listens really carefully he can hear breathing that isn't his. Eventually Cone sighs. "I don't know. Woulda liked to win my last one, I guess. I'd have to... we'd all have to just. Do something else."

"I used to think I could, I don't know. My dad does construction, I could have done that. I'd be at home every night for Carri and the kids. Work for my dad, bring the kids up Red Sox fans. I've traded everything," Tom says. "It's like. Sometimes I think. Everything that I love, for this one thing."

"Yeah," Cone says, quietly. "Yeah, but it's a pretty big thing."

"The biggest," Tom agrees.

There isn't really much else to say, after that. They sit for another minute in silence, the hotel room lurching around Tom in fits and starts, everything slowed down with the air too thin. He'd really like a greenie, just to counteract the depressive edge of the alcohol, but the trainer has them all. He has to remind himself to get some before he goes to New York.

"I'll see you tomorrow, right?" Cone eventually asks.

"Yeah. 'Course. Wouldn't miss it, wouldn't miss it for the world."

"The big day." He can't see Cone's sardonic grin over the phone, but he can picture it. "The start of the early end. Fehr's gonna be shitting himself all night."

"If the season ended today, you'd probably win the Cy Young," Tom says, fast and almost all in one breath. He has no idea where that came from-- it's not what he was planning to say, not at all-- but it's true. He's been checking the AL numbers in the paper, and there's nobody like Cone in that league, not this season.

"Yeah, well. The season ain't ending today, ace, so don't go slackin'. We'll be back on the field before you can say, 'sucks to be an Expo.'" There's a shuffling sound on Cone's end. "Look, I gotta go pack. I'll see you. Tomorrow, OK? I'll come find you when I check in."

"Sounds good," Tom says. And it does. It's all finally happening, the strike and the season stopping and it's only August, and he'll be in New York with guys who aren't his teammates, eating dinner at night with people who aren't his wife. Maybe it won't be quite so bad if there's someone looking to find him when he gets there.

----

They send Mike Mussina, the youngest player rep, out to meet him at the airport. He seems a little grumpy, which is odd, because the last few times Tom had met with him he'd seemed pleasant enough, if a bit distracted. Mussina shoulders Tom's bags in the luggage claim without even giving Tom a chance to pick them up. When he asks Mussina how many union guys he's picked up since he got here, Mussina mumbles, "Twelve," and looks even more surly.

Tom follows him out of the airport, smiling just a bit. It's somehow comforting to know that rookie hazing goes on even without the ballgames.

----

He wakes up the next morning to a knocking at his door that turns out, when he drags himself out of bed and squints blearily through the peephole, to be Cone. He opens the door and runs a hand backwards through his hair, knowing that this makes it stick up even more crazily, but he's somewhere far beyond caring right now. Cone is wearing a bright blue button-down shortsleeve shirt with his hair already post-shower damp and neatly combed.

"Please tell me," Tom says, "that this isn't official union business."

Cone laughs. "This early? With the place full of lazy-ass ballplayers? Not likely. No, the hotel restaurant stops serving breakfast at 10, and it's already 9:15. Just thought I'd come drag you down."

"Coffee. Yes."

"Thought so." Cone makes a shooing motion with his hands. "Go stick your head under the shower for a minute or something, I ain't carrying you if you fall asleep in the elevator."

Tom cleans up fast and Cone leads the way to the elevator and then through the lobby. He snags a local newspaper and waves Tom up to the buffet while he sits and pages through it.

When Tom sits back down, Cone casually flips a fat section over to him. Tom manages to grab it half a second before it would have ended up in his cereal. It's the New York Daily News, just the sports section.

The headline is, simply, the word WHINERS? in huge block letters over an equally huge photo of Orel Hershiser looking vaguely perplexed.

"Oh my god," Tom mutters. He stares at the page in horror for a minute before he can bring himself to open the section and read the article.

Cone reaches across the table and steals a banana slice from his cereal bowl. "Yeah," he says, "welcome to New York."

----

They fall into a routine quickly enough. Cone comes by and knocks on Tom's door every morning, which wakes him up. In a normal season he would wake up early on his own, without even an alarm, but he's all screwed up, the weather still hot and no previous night's-worth of baseball wearing him out.

"Would you even bother getting up if I didn't come by?" Cone asks. "Or would you just sleep straight through 'til, like, 2 pm?"

Tom shrugs.

They eat breakfast together every day. Cone complains about the coffee but always drinks it anyways. Often Hershiser joins them. Sometimes Jay Bell does, or Joe Girardi. Sometimes Cecil Fielder shows up, carrying over as many plates as he can at one time. Once they all stop treating him like a September call-up, sometimes Mussina sits with them, stealing the crossword out of the paper and filling it out in pen.

After a few weeks Tom is the only one who reads the sports sections of the New York newspapers every morning. There is always, always something there about the strike, usually on the front page, usually (if it's the Post or the Daily News) with some sort of awful, inflammatory headline.

FEHR CALLS OWNERS CHEATERS

and

OWNERS CALL FEHR CHEATER

and

PLAYERS FOR PLAYERS: WHO'S FOR THE FANS?

It always gives him a kind of hot, sick, swooping feeling in the pit of his stomach when he opens the paper, and he knows he shouldn't bother, no one else does, but he can't help it. He has a duty to know what the people are saying. He has to know.

He goes back to his room to shower properly after breakfast, because he doesn't like to keep Cone waiting beforehand. Then he checks in with Fehr to see what he needs to do that day. Sometimes they have meetings set up with owner representatives, or meetings within the union, various groups of player reps getting together to discuss the latest offers and news. Sometimes they have press conferences set up, and if it's one of those days he knows he'll be seeing Cone again soon, because he and Cone are still the faces Fehr wants in front of the cameras and microphones and tape recorders.

If it's one of those days, Tom will sometimes dissolve a greenie in his morning cup of coffee. Just one, just to give him a little bit of a boost, just to keep him on the right side of alert. He's fairly discreet about it; one thing he learned from Javy was how to properly palm a pill. Sometimes he thinks Hershiser notices and frowns at him, but Tom has seen Hershiser put Tabasco sauce in his own coffee and actually enjoy it, so he can't really talk.

If Cone has noticed, he certainly hasn't said anything. Sometimes, in the back rooms and hallways they all haunt right before press conferences, Tom is pretty sure he sees Cone drinking something out of a flask he keeps in his coat pocket. It's none of his business, and it's not like Cone is staggering around, seriously drunk in public, so he doesn't see any reason to mention it.

Nights are the worst. They don't usually have anything planned for them at night, so the younger guys will go out and do whatever it is that young ballplayers do at night in New York City. Maybe the older guys go out too. Probably. But Tom wouldn't know. Tom usually sits in his room and looks over papers, contracts, legal documents five inches thick. He watches TV and misses the hell out of Carri, who's certainly not going to leave Atlanta while the kids are in the midst of their summer camp rotation.

Sometimes he goes down to the hotel bar and has a few drinks. Sometimes he's by himself. Sometimes Hershiser is there, and sometimes Cone is there too. Sometimes Schilling is there, and on those nights he leaves the bar as soon as he finishes his first drink, claiming exhaustion, because there aren't enough drinks in the world to make talking to Schilling for an entire night survivable.

He can never sleep properly at night. It's too loud in the city, no matter how well-sealed the hotel windows are, and it's always been tough for him to sleep without Carri in his bed, home series always preferable to playing on the road. Most of the problem, though, is that he just doesn't get tired out right during the day. He works out in the hotel gym as often as he can, but it's not the same as pitching 7, 8, 9 innings, it's not the same as sweating for 3 or 4 hours in a dugout with his team all around him. It's not the same at all.

So he wakes up tired in the mornings, and coffee doesn't quite cut it. He's still got a good-sized supply of greenies, though. He won't have to try to find more for quite a while yet.

----

Maybe it was naïve of him, but Tom thought they would be closer to a resolution by now. September's just beginning, and they have a meeting with some of the owner reps and their lawyers. It's a formal meeting, so Tom and Cone and Hershiser and Fielder are all in suits, even if their suits aren't as severe as the ones worn by the owner reps. Fehr's also dressed up for the occasion, although he manages to make even a basic suit look rumpled.

The owner rep lawyers start the meeting off with a long litany of legal jargon. Tom tried to pay close attention to this, in the first week, but he's long since given up (That's what we got Fehr for, ace, Cone had said) and these days just tries to not look too glassy-eyed. Hershiser and Fielder make similar efforts, but Cone doesn't even bother to pretend, blatantly staring out the nearest window.

They work around to the pith of the meeting eventually. The lawyers produce a bunch of precisely stapled packets and pass them out. Tom flips past the cover page and bends over his copy, the room silent except for the shuffling of papers and the small sounds Hershiser makes as he wipes the lenses of his glasses carefully with a tissue.

The new proposed agreement takes a softer stance on arbitration and has a much more reasonably-worded policy on players who've been with a team for five years. But the salary cap is still there, the wording exactly the same as it was the time before this, and the time before that.

Tom sits back in his seat. He doesn't have to read the rest of the document to know that they'll reject it. One his left, Fehr is making angry hmmming noises, his eyes darting side to side over the pages. On his right, Cone is ripping off the cover page of his document. As Tom watches he cleans up an edge by tearing it against the table and starts folding, while the owner rep opposite him looks on in something like disdainful horror. Hershiser makes a quiet disapproving throat-clearing noise, but whether this is directed at Cone or at the owners, Tom can't tell.

"Look, you guys know we aren't going to accept this," Fehr says, pushing at his hair with his fingers, trying to get it flop somewhere other than in his eyes.

Cone bends the nose of his paper airplane, carefully curving it up. He throws it in the air, straight across towards the nearest owner rep, but it soars up on a big arc and inscribes a vertical circle over the conference table, ending up right back in Cone's hand. Fielder snorts, loudly and unconvincingly suppressing a laugh. Hershiser looks over at Tom in mute appeal, but Tom looks up at the ceiling. This is a serious meeting, a serious matter, and it shouldn't be funny, but he's having an awfully hard time keeping the smile off his face.

The head lawyer for the owners waits for this little drama to be over, then shuffles the papers in front of him loudly. "I think," he says, "that we should really talk about this. The commissioner is talking about..."

"We're already on strike," Hershiser says. He lays a hand on the front cover of his packet. "Do you really think we care about what the commissioner is saying when we're already on strike?"

The lawyer stiffens up in his suit, like he's being starched from the inside out. "You should think about what you're saying. This is your livelihood you're talking about here. This is the livelihood of all professional ballplayers that you're talking about here."

"You think we don't know that, huh?" Cone asks, idly twisting the nose of the airplane back and forth between his fingers. Tom glances at him and has to drag his eyes away; the sight of Cone's fingers playing across paper as they do across stitches on a baseball is disturbingly compelling.

The lawyers and owner reps all glare across the table. Tom opens the packet again. It's going to be a long meeting.

----

They're in Cone's hotel room, everyone just a little bit tired and a little bit drunk. It's two in the morning, or maybe three, something in that vicinity. Tom's watch is back in his own hotel room, and Cone has for some reason turned the bedside clock so that its face is down on the tabletop. Late, anyways.

Cone is there, of course, sprawled proprietarily across the bed. Tom, having come up from the bar with Cone, has possession of the big armchair next to the bed. Hershiser is sitting in the desk chair, turned around so that he can rest his forearms across the top of the chairback. Girardi is perched on the edge of the desk, tapping his heel against one of the table legs. Mussina is sitting on the floor, back to the wall and pretending to ignore everyone with his nose buried in a travel book of crosswords, although everyone knows perfectly well that he's excited to get to hang out with the older players.

"You think they're really gonna do it?" Girardi asks. Nobody has to ask what he means.

Cone scoots up the bed to lean against the headboard, shoving pillows out of the way. "Not like we're giving them much of a choice."

"They're not giving us much of a choice," Tom corrects. They're not responsible for this, not really; it's the owners who have forced them into it with their greed and their hubris and their collusion.

"You know how many years it's been since I last spent a September not pitching?" Hershiser asks. Everyone looks around at him, Mussina even peeking over the edge of his book. Hershiser shrugs. "I don't even know. Years and years."

"You broke into the majors in '83," Tom says, then immediately turns bright red with embarrassment.

Hershiser smiles at him, but it's more kind than mocking. Cone is making gagging noises from the bed, but Tom is getting much better at ignoring him through sheer force of habit.

"So '83. But I was drafted in,"-- an infinitesimal pause-- " '79. And before that, I was pitching for Bowling Green, little bit. And before that, in high school..."

"Back before the dawn of time, when dinosaurs roamed the earth," Cone intones, doing a very passable imitation of a TV science show narrator. Mussina snickers and immediately drops his eyes back to his crossword.

"So at least since the mid-70s," Hershiser finishes, also ignoring Cone with practiced ease. "Figure 19, 20 years."

Everyone is silent for a moment, digesting that. Mussina is staring down at his book, but his eyes are bugging a little. Tom can't really blame him: Hershiser has been pitching in a serious way for almost as long as Mussina has been alive. "And here we are," Tom says quietly.

"Here we are," Hershiser agrees.

Cone thumps a hand against the headboard. "Dammit, I didn't play ball with Abner fucking Doubleday like four-eyes over here, but it's been a long fucking time for me too. I mean, when was the last time we even just tossed a ball around? In September, not playing ball, that's fucked up."

"We could," Tom says. Everyone looks at him, Mussina again peeking from behind the crossword pages. "Well. We're all here. We've got... I have my glove packed, anyways, I'm sure between the five of us we can find a couple of baseballs..." He trails off, but as soon as he's said it it seems perfect. They can't get a proper game going, not with four pitchers and one catcher, but they can certainly throw a ball around.

Everyone, as it turns out, has brought their glove and at least two balls with them, hopefully stashed at the bottoms of suitcases, balls wrapped in socks, gloves wiped in neatsfoot oil and stuffed in plastic bags so they don't make everything else all greasy. Tom supposes he should have figured on that: everyone knew they weren't going to be playing ball, not that kind of road trip, but what kind of ballplayer travels anywhere without his glove?

He briefly wonders if any of the position players brought along their bats, considers tracking down Molitor or Fielder or Jay Bell to ask, but it's fine like this, just them. They've got everyone and everything they need. It's good.

----

There are a bunch of empty conference rooms on the second floor, so they reconvene down there. Mussina moves the chairs and tables away to the sides of the room without being asked, which is good, because they were probably going the make him do it anyways.

"So, catcher, you gonna catch?" Cone asks, lazily flapping his glove at Girardi. Tom has never seen Cone wearing a glove off the field in person, and it's weirdly captivating. Cone's usual lazy grace looks almost dangerous with a glove, like that attitude has a new and deadly sense of purpose.

Girardi makes a face. "Uh uh. Don't think so. Four pitchers, one catcher? That's practically a baseball gangbang."

Mussina has a violent and embarrassed coughing fit at this. "Oh for god's sake..." Hershiser mutters, going over to pound him on the back.

"The room's big enough," Tom says. "Five-man around-the-horn? Unless someone has a better idea."

Nobody has any better ideas, so five-man around-the-horn it is. They arrange themselves in a loose pentagon about the room and snap the ball around to each other like they're between innings in a game they're all starting.

Tom fumbles the ball a few times early on, a deeply mortifying thing, but a couple cycles later Girardi drops it, and a few throws after that Cone throws the ball low, forcing Hershiser to field it like a shortstop. It's been too long for Tom. It's been too long for all of them.

There's some chatter, especially from Mussina and Hershiser, who both manage to field the ball perfectly every time it comes around to them, but as they keep throwing and everyone gets into the rhythm of it, they quiet down. Soon enough the only sounds in the room are the solid thock of a baseball into the pocket of a well-cared-for glove, the shifting of sneakers over hotel carpeting, easy breathing, the tiny but distinct noise a baseball makes when its leather hide is pushed off of callused fingertips.

As they warm up to it, the mistakes get fewer and farther between. They start snapping the ball harder, more quickly, grinning at each other like idiots. Tom's arm loosens up so beautifully that he can't believe he hadn't really noticed it was tight before.

The carpeting has a truly hideous swirly pattern in brick red and dirty yellow on it. The wallpaper is one of those subtle stripes that was probably designed to be soothing but actually isn't. The chairs and long tables are pushed up against the walls in a messy jumble. It's maybe the least baseball-like environment imaginable, but Hershiser's mixing in pitches that slide now, Mussina is beaming nonstop, Girardi is firing the ball around like it's the bottom of the 9th, Cone keeps trying to fake them out with screwballs, and for just a little while, the hole in Tom's heart where baseball goes is perfectly filled.

----

They get a couple more weeks of negotiation, September wearing inexorably on. When they fail to reach an agreement with the owners, Bud Selig, acting commissioner of Major League Baseball, regretfully informs the public that the World Series is canceled.

"Regretfully!" Cone snorts. "Shit, I'm glad he's not doing it gleefully."

Tom nudges him sharply in the ribs. They're at the press conference; sitting in the back, true, but still, people can probably hear them.

Cone snorts again, not much more quietly. Tom catches a whiff of something sharp and boozey on Cone's breath. It's not even lunchtime yet, and normally Cone wouldn't... but this is it, this is the official cancellation of the season. Normally doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot, right now.

"So much for back on the field in a couple of weeks," Tom mutters, trying to direct his voice out the corner of his mouth.

"Yeah. God." Cone slouches down in his seat a little. Everyone's looking at the podium, at Selig, but all they'd have to do is turn around to see Cone, one of the faces of the players union, for God's sake, squinting angrily up through the rows of heads bent over notebooks, listing a tiny bit in his seat. He doesn't look drunk, but he also doesn't look particularly sober. Tom wants to cover him with a jacket, hide him from the reporters and the world.

"Nineteen-oh-four," Mussina says, very softly, sitting on Tom's other side. Tom puts a hand on Cone's arm to keep him from leaning any further and glances over at Mussina. Mussina shrugs one shoulder, eyes on the podium. "That's the last time they had to cancel a World Series. Not since 1904."

"Christ," Cone mutters thickly. "Go Team Us."

No World Series. No rest of the season. Not now, maybe not ever. Tom tries to imagine it, to wrap his mind around the idea of it, but he can't. Every time he tries to really think, that was it, the last season of Major League Baseball, his brain skitters away, circles around, refuses to look at it head-on. It's monstrous; it's impossible.

It's our fault, and no, no, he can't even begin to go there, not now, probably not ever.

He sneaks his hand around Cone's arm until he's got a solid grip, right around his bicep. He tugs lightly. "C'mon, we better get you back to the hotel before the presser ends and you have to talk to the media."

"Oh, but I want to talk to the media. Right now, right now I really want to talk to the media."

"That's what I'm afraid of," Tom says, tugging harder and rolling his eyes for Mussina's benefit. "We'll see you back there."

Mussina nods. He doesn't shift his eyes away from the podium. It's probably just the harsh TV lights, patchy this far back and partly blocked by the crowd, that make his face look older than Tom's ever seen it look before.

Outside, Cone doesn't stumble, but he weaves around the sidewalk enough to make Tom grab for his arm again. He's never seen someone wander around like that while walking like he's sober, but then again he's never seen Cone this drunk before.

"Never seen you this drunk before," he mutters, because he can't think of anything to do, aside from stating the obvious.

"Special occasion, ace," Cone says, slipping his arm out of Tom's grip and walking, perfectly upright, into the side door of a parked car.

----

It's a week after the end of the season-- the cancellation of the season. Cone has one of the New York papers tucked under his arm, and he flips through every section before anyone else can get their hands on it, even though Mussina will make impatient huffing noises until he gets the crossword, and Hershiser will make stiffly pointed comments until he gets the business section. Same as every morning.

When Tom reaches for the sports section, though, Cone jerks the paper away from him instead of handing it over like he usually does. Tom, who hadn't even been looking up, just holding his hand out, glances up in surprise.

"Nothin' good today," Cone says, slipping the section out of the paper, still folded, and dropping it into his own lap.

"Uh. So?" Tom picks his cereal spoon up, puts it back down in the bowl. "Most days there's nothing good, I always read it anyways. You, uh, you know that?"

Cone, weirdly enough, looks over at Hershiser, almost pleadingly. Hershiser shrugs in an uncomfortable way, refusing to look at anyone.

Tom looks around the table again. Even Mussina is avoiding his eyes, something he usually does only out of extreme embarrassment. "Guys?"

"Paper sucks today, ace," Cone says. Tom starts a little; Cone rarely calls him 'ace' around the other ballplayers, probably because he knows how stupid it sounds, Tom not even the ace on his own team. "Forget it even showed up, yeah?"

"What? No, let me see it."

"You don't wanna."

"Yes I do." Tom leans forward across the table, insistent. "What the hell is this? Just give me the goddamn paper."

Cone looks at Hershiser again, but Hershiser still won't look at him, so Cone looks back at Tom, who tightens his jaw in annoyance, because seriously, what the hell? Cone looks away. "You really don't..." but at the same time he's reaching for the section.

He holds it out, still folded over. Tom grabs it, but Cone doesn't let go. Tom glances up, and Cone meets his eyes over the paper, each of them holding an end.

"I know you're gonna worry about it, ace," Cone says. "It doesn't mean anything, though, OK, just. Keep that in your head, OK."

He finally relinquishes the paper. Tom gives him one last dirty look before opening it up and looking at the front page.

It's the Post. The entire front page of the sports section is taken up with a photo of Tom from the previous day's press conference. He's in the middle of talking, explaining a point to the reporters, both hands in the air and his mouth open, suit jacket hanging open from his shoulders. The headline reads:

STOOGE FOR GREED!

Tom stares at it. After a few minutes it stops making sense. He can see the words on the page, but he can't understand what they mean, like they're written in some other language.

He opens the section numbly, scanning the article on autopilot. Words jump out at him randomly; money, greedy, union, unfair, greedy, salary, greedy, greedy. Last night's press conference had been about the union's official response to Selig's cancellation of the World Series. It hadn't had anything to do with player salary.

"It was the suits," Hershiser says, quietly. Tom looks up at him blankly: suits? Hershiser looks away like he's embarrassed. "The suits, Glav, the stuff you wear when you talk to the press, it's always so... you look like a million bucks in those suits."

Tom stares some more, still just as blank. Of course he looks put-together for press conferences. Of course he wears a suit. It would be disrespectful to do otherwise. It would be... he's the NL player rep, he can't look like a slob up there; he's taken extra pains to look as polished as he can, ever since that first embarrassing moment with Cone in the union offices.

Hershiser makes some vague gesture that could mean anything at all. "It's, it's not your fault, Glav, it's just... they can't, I don't know, they can't relate to you, they think you're all..." He pauses, evident embarrassment ramping up. "It's like, you dress up that much, they think you think you're better'n them. Something like that."

Tom nods, although he's not sure why, because he doesn't understand. He can't understand, he can't make his brain grasp this image, halftoned in newsprint.

"Doesn't mean anything," Cone says, oddly gruff, and Tom wants to agree, wants to agree so very much.

They have a press conference later in the day and now that he knows what to look for, Tom can see what Hershiser means. When Cone makes a joke, the reporters laugh. When Tom tries to do the same, a few of the reporters make polite tittering noises, but it's obvious their hearts aren't in it. Tom's wearing a button-down shirt without a tie, no jacket for once, but it doesn't seem to make a difference.

Maybe the damage has already been done. Maybe he's been a failure of a player rep all this time and he hadn't even noticed. The maybes are ricocheting around his head well into the night, and he just... he needs them to stop. He needs to get over them, around them, something, because he keeps going over the same things, what he thought he was doing right, what he was really doing wrong.

He's pacing around his room. He sits but he's uncomfortable, failure oppressive around his shoulders and gathering in tension at the back of his neck, so he has to get up again, pace some more. If he could just concentrate, if he could just see everything clearly, if he could just... he just needs... he needs a couple greenies, is all. To clear his mind, to calm him down and help everything make sense.

His hands are only shaking a little bit as he opens the desk drawer where he keeps the plastic bag he got from the Atlanta trainer.

Even later that night, after he assumes everyone else has gone out for the evening, there's a knock at his door. This is unusual, he generally has his nights to himself, but when he opens the door, Cone is standing there. He ought to be surprised, he supposes, but he's not. Cone has become a constant in his life these days, in this weird limbo space of permanent living without home, baseball players without baseball.

Cone brushes past him, stalks right up to the bed and snatches up the Post sports section from the spot where Tom had dropped it and been unable to move it (like the stupid thing was too heavy to shift). He gives it a disgusted glance before crumpling it up and hurling it with a sudden, vindictive snap of his arm into the little trash can under the desk. The trash can falls over with a loud clatter-- Cone's fastball might not be all that fast, but it's still a big league fastball-- and Tom winces just a little too hard.

It gives him away, because Cone says, "Hey, woah, are you..." all concern and worry, and then his eyes fall on the bag sitting on top of the desk, next to the half-empty glass of water, on the small green pills scattered over the desk blotter. Cone knows what greenies are perfectly well; he's probably taken plenty himself, baseball being what it is.

"Christ, Glav, how many of these did you take tonight?"

"A. A few. I, it's. Sometimes they, you know." Tom swallows hard. Everything is kind of... kind of loud right now, which sometimes happens when he's hyped up on too many greenies. It's like all his senses go into hyperdrive, but the plus side is that when the sensations get to a certain level, the greenies also make it so that he doesn't give a shit about them anymore. And that's what he wanted, tonight. What he needed.

"Fuck," Cone says, "I knew you'd take that shit too serious." He strides forward, grabbing Tom's shoulders with both his hands, squeezing hard, and Tom knows he's imagining it, knows it can't be real, but with the greenies humming just under his skin it's like he can feel every last ridge of Cone's fingerprints, even through the fabric of his shirt.

"It's not a big deal. It's not, it's... dammit, ace, look at me."

Tom's eyes snap up to Cone's face. He's breathing fast, he knows his eyes are wide, he can feel the skin at the corners of his eyelids stretching. He tries to calm down, to slow his pulse, but his body isn't listening to him now, as if it ever does.

"Christ," Cone says again, more softly. He brings his hands up to Tom's cheeks, holding his head in place. "Are you tweaking out on me?"

"No. No, I. This is what they do, sometimes, it's, it's fine. I just. Today, everything..."

"I know. Special occasion, huh?" Cone smiles a little. He understands, of course he understands, Cone of all people should understand. "Still freaking me out a little, though. Looks like you almost bit through your own damn lip, man."

Cone touches a finger to the spot, tender because Tom had been chewing on it almost compulsively earlier, something else that the greenies sometimes do, when he has too many at once, he kind of has to clench his teeth, his jaw. Cone's finger, it's like a lightning bolt to his lip, like that one small touch has lit up a hundred thousand nerve endings, and oh, it's the greenies, it is, because this isn't... he doesn't normally... The sensation is so intense that Tom can't stop the ragged moan that wrenches out of his throat.

Cone snatches his hand away fast, his own eyes widening. "Shit," he mutters. "You are tweaking out."

"No no nonono, it's fine, it's fine, I'm fine." Tom grabs his hand and puts it back up to his mouth, he means to show Cone that it's OK, really, but when he presses four of Cone's fingers to his lips his knees almost give out. He remembers, suddenly, something he'd read once about sensory nerves, how there are more nerve endings in the lips than almost anywhere else on the human body. He can believe it right now, he can very much believe it. He can feel every millimeter of Cone's fingers against his lips as separate and alive and burning.

"Breathe, ace," Cone says, quietly.

Tom takes a deep breath. Cone moves his hand away, slow, like he's trying to avoid startling a shy wild animal. He drops both hands back down to Tom's shoulders, fingers digging in, ten points of grounding reality in a world of whirring and spinning and wind where there shouldn't be any wind, and

Tom takes another breath.

"OK, good. That's good." Cone grabs one of Tom's hands and puts it up against his own chest. Tom can feel Cone's heartbeat, seeming impossibly slow. "When I breathe in, you breathe in. When I breathe out, you breathe out. OK? You got that, ace?"

Tom nods. Cone inhales deeply, eyes locked on Tom's face, making sure that he's doing the same. Tom does, although it's hard, he wants to take five breaths for every single one that Cone takes, he wants to, he has to, he has to, but he has to do what Cone is saying, he has to breathe with Cone, so he does.

He inhales, slow. He holds his breath for a beat. He exhales, slow, Cone's chest sinking under his palm.

Tomorrow Cone will laugh about this over breakfast with him. He'll tell the story of how he learned to do this, about the time Bret Saberhagen took most of a handful of greenies right before a start, but it rained, so he didn't have any way to burn off the energy and started hyperventilating right there in the dugout, and the trainer did this thing to get his breathing back under control. One of those things that happens sometimes, ace, Cone will say, and yes, they'll laugh about this tomorrow, for sure.

Right now, though, Tom just breathes in, breathes out. He breathes with Cone's fingers wrapped around his wrist, holding his hand in place, his palm flat on Cone's chest, trying to slow the racing of his heart to match.

----

He still dissolves a couple of greenies in his coffee on the days when he knows they have to deal with a lot of media. Cone still doesn't say anything, but on those days he sticks a little closer to Tom than he used to do.

Tom doesn't know if Cone is making sure that Tom doesn't take any more later, or if he's making sure that he'll be there if Tom does take more.

He's not sure that it matters.

----

Late October, Fehr sends him home. He just walks right up to Tom after a press conference and slaps him on the back (way too hearty for Tom, who stumbles and has to catch himself against a wall) and says, "Hey, get outta here for the holiday, Glavine."

"Holiday?"

Fehr rolls his eyes. "Halloween? Costumes, candy, little shits running around with shaving cream, you know it?"

"It's not exactly a major holiday," Tom says, somewhat guarded.

"Yeah, well, you look like you could use a break." Fehr pauses to wave an approaching reporter away with a series of short, jerky, extremely annoyed gestures. The reporter backs off down the hall much faster than he had approached, and Fehr turns back to Tom with a sigh. "You're trying too hard. Don't even, I know you are and you know you are. Go home, put your kids in a sugar coma, come back with your head screwed on right."

"Uh," Tom says, because he had no idea it was that obvious. He thought he was keeping up a good front. Good enough, anyways. But it's Fehr telling him to go home, and if Fehr thinks it's a good idea, it probably is.

He flies into Atlanta the day before Halloween. The kids are excited to see him, wanting to show him all the stuff they made in summer camp and at the start of the school year. What must surely be millions of macaroni pictures and egg-carton-caterpillars are shoved at him all at once. He admires them all at length, because it's pretty obvious that no one in the entire world can put glitter on a piece of construction paper better than his kids can.

Carri stares at him all through dinner-- at least, it feels like she does. Maybe this is how it always is, he's just been away for so long that he's no longer used to it. He honestly can't remember, and he gets a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach when he realizes that.

"Are you OK out there?" Carri asks, after the kids have gone to bed and it's just the two of them, sitting on the couch in front of the TV like this is the end of a normal day, everyday, like Tom hasn't been in New York for two months.

"OK? Sure." It's not really a lie. Tom can't remember what OK is supposed to even mean anymore.

The hand on his face startles him more than it should. The concern in Carri's eyes terrifies him, and it shouldn't. It never did before. He's pretty sure it never did before.

"You look like you've lost 20 pounds," Carri murmurs. She leans up and in, resting her forehead against his. "You look like you're not even eating out there. Or sleeping."

"Hey, I eat. I sleep."

Carri strokes a hand down the front of his shirt. "I worry, Tom. On the TV, in the papers, they say things about you, the union. Such awful things..."

"Don't worry about me, OK? I'm fine out there." She looks up at him with concern etched in every line on her face, and Tom forces himself to speak more steadily. More strongly. "I'm fine out there. It's not like I'm by myself, I'm not the only one. We stick together, all the union guys. It's not... I miss the kids, I miss you, but it's OK. Really."

Carri nods, kisses the edge of his jaw. He doesn't even realize until he says it, but it's the truth: they do stick together out there in New York, the union guys, the ballplayers. Even with everyone breathing down their necks, disagreeing with them or fighting them or simply hating them, they still have something. Cheesy, maybe, but it's turned out to be true: they still have each other.

----

New York turns cold fast. It seems like one day there's a slight autumnal chill in the air, and the next day it's impossible to go outside without gloves and coats and hats-- things that Tom, who usually spends this time of year in Atlanta, doesn't have. Cone rolls his eyes and elbows Fielder, both of them snickering at the poor soft warm-weatherites. Tom feels legitimately stupid until Hershiser also comes in one day blowing frantically on his bright red hands.

"You boys are puh-thetic!" Fielder crows. Cone, standing behind him, mouths pathetic silently, holding two thumbs up.

Hershiser sniffs, a little bit indignant and probably a lot more runny-nose. "Well excuse me, Cecil, but we don't all have the considerable insulating layer of fat that you do."

"Nice try, but skinny whiteboy over here," Fielder jerks a thumb over his shoulder at Cone, "ain't complaining 'bout the weather none. Nope, I'm afraid you and the Glav-dog are just reeeeeal poor specimens o' humanity."

Hershiser opens his mouth, but Tom grabs his arm. "Uh uh. We are gonna go buy coats. And gloves. And... and whatever else it is you need to survive this stupid city in November."

"Layers," Hershiser mutters. "Sweaters. Ear muffs."

"Hey, bring us back some real muff, and maybe we'll forgive you for being such delicate flowers!" Cone shouts. Fielder howls with laughter. Tom turns around with as much dignity as he can muster, gives them both the finger over his shoulder.

Schilling somehow appears as they're crossing the lobby (Hey, I heard you guys were going shopping, I could use some new gloves, do you know where you're going, should we ask the concierge, the only winter hat I have is a Phillies hat, do you think that's OK?) and they venture out, all three of them jamming their hands into their pockets at the same time. Tom smiles a little to himself, picture-perfect image in his mind of how Cone would laugh at them for that.

Hershiser walks fast, shoulders hunched against the wind, squinting behind his glasses, scanning the stores on either side of the street. Tom's content to let him forge ahead, but he's a little surprised when Schilling hangs back to keep pace with him instead of Hershiser. Schilling usually can't stand being at the back of any group.

"You know, I really would've liked to start in Yankee Stadium," Schilling says, apropos of absolutely nothing.

Tom looks over in surprise, but Schilling is looking up as they walk, scanning the crazy dip and rise of the New York skyline. "You never pitched there?"

"Pitched there, sure. As a reliever, though. When I came up with Baltimore. I just." Schilling sighs, risks taking a hand out of his pocket to gesture vaguely at the crowded sidewalk, dotted with Yankee hats even now. "Would've been cool to start there, you know?"

"I guess." Tom looks around, but of course they're not in the Bronx, they can't see Yankee Stadium from here. "If we're talking dream AL parks, hell, I'd like to pitch in Fenway some day. Used to go there all the time as a kid." He pokes Schilling in the shoulder. "But I don't know what you're complaining about, you're plenty young, you've got lots of time left in that arm."

Schilling looks down. He stuffs his hand back into his free pocket. "You. You really think we're gonna come back?"

Tom nods. Schilling's head jogs back up, searching Tom's face. Tom wants to grab him by the shoulders, shove him into a wall, shake him hard, any number of things he can't do in the middle of New York City. He wants people wearing Yankee and Mets hats to stop giving them dirty looks on the street. He wants the newspapers to stop printing headlines that twist their words into new, warped meanings they never meant. He wants to be able to wear a goddamn suit without worrying about how approachable it makes him look. He wants people to stop asking him that biggest, most final question. He wants to stop asking himself that question.

"Yeah," he says, putting as much conviction in his voice as he can. "Yes."

Schilling smiles, something very like relief in his eyes, but just for a moment. He jogs ahead to catch up with Hershiser, already shouting something obnoxious and know-it-all-esque about buying scarves.

Tom hangs back, looking up like maybe he can see whatever Schilling was looking at before. The buildings lining the street taper up into the sky, gray-white with clouds. Wind whistles in sharply every time he passes an alley, making the tips of his ears hurt. He wonders what Cone would say if he did bring him back a pair of ear muffs.

----

The nights are getting longer, and somehow Tom is sleeping less. He tries turning the bedside clock over on its face, the way Cone keeps his, but not knowing the exact number of hours he spends staring at his ceiling only helps a little, and he put the clock upright again after a week.

Still, he's alert enough for meetings, and he doesn't stumble over his words in press conferences. He gives crisp, concisely-worded reports on executive committee meeting decisions to the union at large, and he fields questions from his fellow MLBPA members smoothly. He harangues Cone into helping him cover the meetings Fielder was supposed to run when Fielder goes home to watch his son star in his 4th grade play. He calls home to Carri three times a week, and tells the kids stories about crazy people he sees walking around the city. He tells them all he loves them before he hangs up and grows fairly adept at ignoring the tightness somewhere deep inside his chest each time.

He wakes up one night with a start, coming out of sleep much more quickly than he usually does. His neck is killing him and his mouth feels gummy and stale, like he hadn't brushed his teeth. He automatically looks to his left to check the clock, but it's lying on its face. Tom blinks. He can't remember turning the clock over again.

"Ace," Cone says. Tom's head snaps around so fast on his sore neck that he's pretty sure he's strained something. He thinks, Shit, my next start, automatic, before his brain catches up and he remembers that there isn't any next start right now, maybe ever.

"You fell asleep in my bed," Cone says. He's kneeling on Tom's right, his hand gripping Tom's shoulder; probably, now that Tom thinks about it, what woke him up in the first place.

"I fell asleep in your bed." Tom has to say it himself, just to try on the reality of it. As he blinks more of the sleep away from his eyes, though, he can see that this is clearly Cone's room: there's the clock, for one thing, and then there's Cone's black overcoat draped over the desk chair, and there's a haphazard heap of papers on the desk, much messier than Tom's own union stuff, and the TV is silver (the one in Tom's room is matte gray, they've decided it's an older model, which is why they usually end up in Cone's room to sit around and watch TV, picture's always better on the newer TVs). "Oh. Um. Sorry, I guess I was pretty tired."

"Pretty tired? It's barely 9 pm, ace."

Tom reaches up to try to rub the kinks out of his neck. "Is it?"

"Yeah." Cone sits back on his heels, but he doesn't remove his hand from Tom's shoulder. "What the fuck is up with you anyway?"

Tom briefly toys with the idea of saying, Me? Nothing, but he doesn't have any illusions about Cone's willingness to let him get away with that. "Haven't been sleeping too well," he admits. "It's this... all this time without baseball, it's screwing me up a little." An understatement is not the same as a lie.

Cone gives him the smallest and tightest of his sardonic, crooked grins. "Oh? You sure it ain't the uppers you're dumping into your system all the damn time?"

Tom closes his eyes. Inhales. Exhales wearily. "It's the same. Whether I take them or not, it doesn't matter. It was going on before."

"Christ. Coulda said something."

"Because you have sedatives on tap, right?"

"Oh, please. I don't have fucking morphine in here, but I sure as fuck have enough booze to knock you out every so often. You know that, ace."

Tom would open his eyes to see if Cone's actually offended or just playing at it, but he's too tired for even that right now. Instead he reaches up, blind, to rub his neck again. "Why do you call me that? Ace."

There's silence for a minute. Eventually Cone's hand tightens on his shoulder, almost a painful squeeze, letting up as quickly as it started. "You are, is all," Cone says, and if his voice sounds a little rough, well, it could easily just be Tom's imagination.

"I'm on the Braves." Debatably true, at this point, but still. "We have three aces if anything, and you can't have three, that. It goes against the definition. And me and Smoltzy, we don't compare to Maddux. Not at all."

"Wasn't how I meant it."

"D'you even know how many Cy Youngs that guy has? Three already, he's only 28 and he's probably getting another one this year, if they give out the Cys this year."

"Ace... Glavine, hey..."

"His ERA was under two when the strike happened, did you know that?"

"Tom." Tom's eyes open of their own volition. He's not sure he's ever heard Cone call him by his first name before. Cone's face is hovering in front of his own, anchored by the hand still on Tom's shoulder, his mouth twisted up in something amused, something annoyed. "Fuck Greg Maddux. Who was talking about Greg Maddux? I was talking about you. And you're an ace out here, that's more'n enough."

"I'm really, really not." Tom turns his face away, but Cone grabs his chin, turns him right back.

"Are you fucking stupid? How can you even say that?"

"How can I even say that?" Tom can feel his temper flaring up, irrational, he knows it's irrational, he's not mad at Cone, he's not even really mad, he's just... it's just... "How can I say that? You mean you haven't noticed how much I've, I've fucked up with the media out here? You haven't noticed Fehr so worried I'm becoming a... a... a headcase, or whatever, that he thinks he has to send me home for a breather? Some ace," he spits, with a lot more bitterness than he had thought he was capable of voicing.

"You're the stupidest fucking smart guy I know," Cone growls. He shifts, finally moving his hand from Tom's shoulder, but it's to hold Tom's face with both hands, preventing him from looking away. "You telling me you don't see how the guys out here look up to you? You telling me you don't see how Mussina practically blushes right outta his diaper every time you talk to him direct? You sayin' you don't see how Schilling always waits to see where you're gonna sit in a room before settin' his own ass down?"

"They're kids, Dave, it's not like..."

"You can't see how Girardi waits to see what you're gonna say before saying anything to the media? You can't see how even Orel fucking Hershiser takes his cue from you half the time?"

"I… that's not…"

"Fuck, Glav." Cone's fingers tighten around his face, pressing in behind the points of his jaw. "When the rest of us wanna just run up there and brain a lawyer with a fucking Louisville Slugger, we turn around and see you being all calm and civil and shit, no matter how infuriating they get, and you think you're not important to the union? You think you ain't important to... to us?"

Tom blinks.

"To us," Cone says. "To us as ballplayers, which we still are, all'a us. And to me, as... whatever. A friend. You see that?"

Tom looks.

Carri had looked at him with worry. Concern. Tom has never been very good with other people's concern on his behalf. Cone, though, Cone is looking at him almost angrily. Challengingly.

And Cone is right. Baseball or not, they are still ballplayers. Tom is a ballplayer, and as a ballplayer, he's never been one to back down from a challenge, not from Cone, Cone who's always there, at his side or at his back, first thing in the morning and late at night.

"I see," he says, quiet and firm, because he thinks he does, maybe, finally see. It's enough to make Cone slacken his grip slightly, confusion or surprise at that. Enough for Tom to completely lose his mind, to lean forward within the grasp of Cone's hands, press his mouth up against Cone's. He stays there, tense and poised, one beat, two, before shifting back again, already thinking, what the fuck what the fuck what was that oh god.

Cone licks his lips. "That's." He licks his lips again, and Tom finds himself unwillingly captivated by the flash of pink tongue. "That wasn't quite what I was goin' for, but. That's. That's, yeah, shit, ace, you." He stops and grins, big and crooked, staring at Tom like he's seeing something new. One of his hands slides up past Tom's jaw, into the curls of hair at the base of his skull. "You got the best ideas sometimes, you know that? That's why. That's why we gotta have you out here."

"I have no idea what I'm doing," Tom says, because it's the truth and, god, it feels good to say it. It's freeing, admitting it, it's freefall, swooping empty air past his stomach like plummeting out of an airplane until Cone tugs his hair gently, making his neck twinge and bringing him sharply back.

"Sure do the right thing a lot for someone who doesn't know what they're doing," Cone says. He leans down and licks a stripe up the side of Tom's neck, catching him by surprise and sending shivers down the length of his entire body.

"I. I don't."

"Uh huh." One of Cone's hands, the one not clenched up in his hair, sneaks under the hem of Tom's shirt. Cone's palm is startlingly hot, low on Tom's waist. He licks his way up the underside of Tom's jaw, and Tom realizes he can feel the late-night stubble of Cone's beard on his neck, which, oh god, this is happening, this is really happening. And he's the one who started it, which doesn't make any sense, because he's not... but nothing makes sense these days.

"Hey. Hey, ace."

Tom swallows as best he can, not all that well at this point, his tongue unwieldy and his throat dry. "Yeah?"

"Fuck Maddux. My ERA was under three when we went on strike and I wasn't facing down no weak-ass NL batters."

Tom laughs out loud. Cone crooks his fingers under Tom's shirt, tickling his side, keeping him laughing just a little bit longer. Tom laughs until his throat hurts, and when he can't laugh anymore Cone just pets his side with long, firm strokes. It's warm and comfortable and eventually Tom slides back into sleep without even noticing.

----

"Go! Go, go home!" Fehr shouts, flapping his hands, scattering the ballplayers in his immediate vicinity. "Fucking Christmas, nothing's gonna happen 'til after the holiday anyway, even owners have families."

"What about the lawyers?" Girardi asks. "Ain't so sure 'bout lawyers."

Everyone snickers (Fielder elbows Tom in the ribs; Tom silently mouths ow up at him) and Fehr makes a disgusted noise, smiling a little in spite of himself. He waves a hand around over his head, somehow managing to convey amusement and exasperation and go on, get outta here, ya bums, all at once. Nobody ever said the man wasn't eloquent.

Tom's packing, thinking about how weird it is to have to pack to go home, in the middle of sorting out which socks he wants to take with him (none of the thick, winter socks he wears here, he won't need them in Atlanta) when there's a knock at his door. He goes to open it with one hand, his other arm crooked up and supporting a pile of balled-up pairs of socks. He doesn't have to strain himself to guess who it is.

Cone still manages to surprise him, bursting in, slamming the door shut behind him. He gets an arm low around Tom's waist and drives him backwards and onto the bed, like some kind of deranged tackle move in football. Socks fly everywhere.

"Hey!"

"Leaving soon, huh?" Cone asks, light and conversational, but at the same time he's mostly on top of Tom and both hands are busy with Tom's belt.

"I, fuck, yeah. Yeah, you know I am, so are you, what are you..."

"Just wanna give you something to remember me by. When you're having your Christmas dinner down there in good ol' Georgia." Cone pulls Tom's belt out of his belt loops, opens the fly of his pants with single-minded purpose.

"I, Dave, I haven't ever..."

Cone grins up at him, bright and happy in a way that Tom suddenly realizes he hasn't seen since he'd glimpsed the pure joy there in '92, Cone jumping into the arms of his teammates, World Series champs. Tom hadn't appreciated it back then, he hadn't known Cone as anything other than a dangerous opposing pitcher, hadn't seen that moment as anything other than his own World Series loss.

"I gotcha, ace."

"I don't know what the hell I'm doing," Tom says, his usual flair for stating the obvious.

"OK, OK, yeah. But I do. Not exactly new to this." Cone's fingers work their way into Tom's open fly, pressing up against him. Not exactly new to this, and Tom is arching up into that touch, unable to shake that, the image of Cone on his knees in front of some other guy, maybe another ballplayer, a teammate, his eyes closed and his cheeks hollowed.

Tom waits for disgust to overwhelm him, the horror, something, but it doesn't happen. "I got this, OK?" Cone says, addressing Tom's stomach, taking his hand out of Tom's pants, a near-painful removal of warmth. He tugs at the waistband instead, easing the jeans off of Tom's hips like he's done it a thousand times before.

Any second now, Tom thinks. Any second now, and I'll jerk away,

Cone shoves Tom's jeans down to his knees and then seems to forget about them in his hurry to brace himself, forearms flat on the bed, bracketing Tom's hips, his face hovering just over Tom's groin. He exhales, warm and moist even through the thin cotton barrier of Tom's boxers. He licks his lips, something that absolutely should not be anything, but the bolt of fire that races up Tom's spine at the sight seems to indicate otherwise.

jerk away, because what the fuck, this isn't, fuck... I'm not...

Tom isn't sure what to expect, here, but whatever he had in mind, Cone mouthing him through his boxers definitely wasn't it. It can't be all that comfortable for Cone-- fabric on the tongue and all that-- but it feels amazing, beyond amazing, and Cone doesn't seem to mind. His breath is furnace-hot and he's wetting the front of Tom's boxers thoroughly, his lips doing ridiculous things up and down the length of Tom's cock with an occasional scrape of teeth.

"Oh god. Oh god, I, Dave..." He's getting embarrassingly high-pitched, but he can't help it, not with Cone's hands holding his hips to the bed, Cone's nose bumping up against the base of his cock.

there's Carri and the kids and this isn't me, this isn't what I want and it isn't me...

Cone edges up, licks along the waistband of Tom's boxers. "You gonna freak out if I take these off?"

And that is really just too much. Tom snorts, has to press a hand over his face to hold the hysterical laughter back. "I really don't think... I mean, I'm so far beyond freaking out by now, you have no idea."

"Got some ideas. Special occasion," Cone says, nodding seriously, although the little lines crinkling up at the corners of his eyes are giving him away.

"It's been a special occasion for the past four months, then, huh?" Tom teases, then freezes. Reviews what he's just said.

"Y'know..." Cone curls his fingers under the top of Tom's boxers. Tom shivers involuntarily at the minute scrape of fingernails. "Y'know, I think so."

Tom presses a hand up against Cone's, pushing his own boxers down a little, just enough for Cone to take the hint and tug them off the rest of the way. His cock's still damp from Cone's tongue, and the air hits him cold. Cone's looking at him with an expression on his face that Tom can't even begin to decipher.

"We're going to play ball again," he says. "You, we. We know that."

Cone nods like he means it. Maybe the only two people in the entire union right now who could nod at that statement and mean it, right here.

"Yeah. Picked a bad time--"

"--to have a good time," Tom finishes. Cone grins at him. Tom slides a hand into Cone's hair, cupping the side of his head; despite the fact that he's rock hard, Cone's mouth only a few inches away from his cock, despite the fact that he's a little bit breathless and extremely turned-on, flipping his hand to scrub his knuckles into Cone's head still feels comfortable, fond, more friendly than anything else.

"Can I suck your dick now?" Cone asks, sly tone belying his innocent expression. "Or do you have some more serious shit you have to work through?"

Tom flips his hand again, cards his fingers through Cone's hair. It's too short to play with properly, but he's getting something simple and easy and happy out of messing it up, smoothing it back into place again, so whatever, he's apparently not questioning these things right now.

"Good," Cone says, although Tom didn't say anything in reply. He's still trying to come up with some kind of response when Cone wraps a hand around the base of Tom's cock and slides it into his mouth, lips stretching, driving every possible form of speech clean out of Tom's mind.

----

At the airport, before they get on the planes to go their separate ways for the holiday, Cone slips a piece of paper into Tom's hand. "New home phone," he mutters, winking surreptitiously at Tom before giving him a hearty ballplayer slap on the back and walking off to his gate with the assured stride of someone who has absolutely no reason to look back.

Tom rips the piece of paper into tiny shreds and drops them into an airport trash can before he gets on the flight that will take him home to Carri and the kids.

He memorizes the number on it first, though.

Carri meets him in the Atlanta airport, jumping into his arms in front of the baggage claim carousel like something out of a movie. He laughs and swings her around and kisses her right there in front of everyone else from his flight.

"I'm so glad you made it home for the holiday," she says, beaming at him. "The kids are so happy."

"Me too," Tom says, and he means it with all his heart. There's nowhere he would rather be for Christmas than sitting on his own couch, in front of their fireplace, Carri leaning into his side and the kids messily demolishing gingerbread houses in the kitchen.

He'll call Cone after Carri goes to bed, he thinks. Cone will probably want to talk for a while, and there's no need to keep her up too late.

----

The best idea Schilling has ever had is for them all to go down to Times Square for New Years Eve. "We're in New York," Schilling says in that 'duh, you idiots' voice he's been perfecting for the past month and a half. "If we spend New Years somewhere other than Times Square, it's probably a crime."

"Well, fine upstandin' citizens like us, we wouldn't want to do nothin' illegal," Fielder rumbles, and that's that.

New York City is, impossibly, even more crowded and brilliantly-lit than usual. Some of the women stride through the streets in shiny dresses with their shoulders bare to the wind, but Tom has no idea how they're managing it-- most of the people out tonight are bundled up almost beyond recognition, because it's a cold night, the kind of cold that comes with a searing wind attached, the kind of cold that only a northern port city in December can really comprehend.

Most of the union guys came out with them, but people keep wandering off. Fielder and the two reps from the A's slip into a bar somewhere along the way. Girardi manages to disappear down a side street with half the NL reps. A pleasantly baffled Molitor gets dragged off by a couple of girls who seem to have no idea who he is.

In fact, no one seems to notice who they are. It could be the coats and hats and scarves; it could be the huge crowd. It could be fact that at least half the people out in the streets are already well on their way to completely drunk. Whatever the reason, it's a definite relief.

By the time they actually make it to Times Square, in time to get herded in past the barricades for the late-night festivities, their numbers have been whittled down to five: Tom, Cone, Hershiser, Mussina, and Schilling, although Tom keeps catching glimpses of other guys elsewhere in the crowd. Hershiser has his glasses on and is so bundled up that they're the only thing on his entire body without insulation. Schilling (wearing his bright red Phillies winter hat) keeps grabbing Mussina's arm in excitement. Mussina rolls his eyes up towards the sky every single time, but he also looks at every single thing Schilling points out, and he doesn't make any attempts to lose Schilling in the crowd.

"Having fun yet?" Cone asks, poking Hershiser in the chest.

Hershiser reaches up to tug his scarf away from his mouth. "I'm wearing two pairs of socks and I am still cold. I can't remember how long we've been drinking. I have been jostled by complete strangers about two thousand times in the past two minutes and I am pretty sure that at some point someone spilled champagne all over my back."

Cone raises an eyebrow.

Hershiser grins. "So, yes, having fun. Although god knows I shouldn't be."

Cone turns to Tom, slinging an arm over his shoulders casually. "How 'bout you, ace?"

Tom's feeling good; he's feeling fucking great with three greenies turning up the saturation on all the riotous colors of the city, the big mouthfuls he keeps taking from Cone's flask cutting the jittery edge off. Cone keeps grabbing onto the back of Tom's jacket to keep from losing him in the crowd, and the cold has turned the tip of Cone's nose bright red.

"Fun, yes, definitely," he says, nodding.

"Awesome," Cone says, directly in Tom's ear. Tom shivers, and he can't even fool himself into thinking it's because of the weather.

The ball glitters like nothing Tom's ever seen before. It's like the moon but gaudier; like the sun but more silvery. When the lights start pulsing in patterns across its surface, the crowd responds like they're wired into it too, swaying with the ball, shouting with the ball. Schilling is doing an excited little hopping dance in time to the lights on the ball, and he's not the only one.

"Gonna be a new year!" Cone yells. The crowd is so loud that he has to practically lick Tom's ear to make him hear it, but they're packed in so tightly that it doesn't matter anyways.

Tom nods, not trusting his voice to carry enough for a reply.

The roar of the crowd gets impossibly louder. Tom tries to check his watch, but the numbers fuzz out of his vision under the influence of bad lighting or greenies or alcohol or excitement or even, he supposes, happiness. Weirdly enough, it's a possibility.

"TEN!" the entire crowd shouts.

"Here we gooooo!" Schilling is practically beside himself, tugging on Mussina's arm hard enough to make him stumble.

"NINE!"

"Calm down, you crazed freak," Mussina says, but he's smiling.

"EIGHT!"

Fielder comes barreling out of the crowd, dragging Molitor by the collar behind him. Molitor has a big stupid smile on his face, lipstick on the side of his neck and all over the trailing edge of his scarf.

"Thought I wasn't gonna find you fuckers!" Fielder shouts.

"SEVEN!"

Hershiser heaves one of Molitor's arms up across his own shoulders, letting Fielder take the other side. Between the two of them they manage to get him into a fair approximation of uprightness.

"Bess' New Years everrrrr," Molitor slurs. His head lolls onto Hershiser's shoulder.

"SIX!"

Fielder snickers. Hershiser reaches across Molitor's back to punch Fielder in the general vicinity of his kidneys.

"Hey, ace!" Cone shouts, breath startlingly hot against Tom's ear.

"FIVE!

Tom turns to look at him in surprise.

"New Years," Cone says. He licks his lips.

Tom's eyes widen. Cone reaches up and gets a gloved hand on the side of Tom's face.

"Are you crazy?" Tom hisses, trusting that Cone can more or less read his lips. "We're in public! We're professional baseball players!"

"FOUR!"

"Nobody gives a shit," Cone says. "For serious, nobody even knows who we are except our guys, and you know what, right now there isn't even baseball, it's New Year's Eve--"

"There's gonna be baseball--"

"Yeah, but right now there ain't."

"THREE!"

"--outta your mind!"

Cone grins. The sardonic grin. The exact same grin he was grinning when Tom first walked into that union office all the way back in July, when Tom had been awkwardly slow to recognize him. Tom has absolutely no defenses against that grin.

"TWO!"

"ONE!"

"Happy New Years, ace," Cone says. He slides his hand up under Tom's hat, tangling his fingers in Tom's hair, clumsy because of his gloves. He tugs.

It's midnight, New Years Eve, Times Square, New York. Fuck it, Tom thinks, and leans into the tug.

Cone kisses him right there, in front of the whole fucking world, and the whole fucking world ignores them. Well, there's a loud whistle that might come from Hershiser, but right now all Tom knows is the pressure of Cone's lips on his own, the vodka sweet and sharp as Cone's tongue vies with his, their breath mingling hot between them as their cold noses bump.

It's a new year, a year starting without a Major League, and Tom doesn't know, can't know how it's going to go. Right now, though, with Cone's hand sliding up, knocking his hat to the ground, tilting his head slightly to get a better angle, keeping the kiss going right into the first minute of 1995--

Right now, Tom thinks he could be OK with a strike that went on forever.