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Prompt from withyour: Joel Zumaya/Verlander's fiancee, Spring Training, Catholic guilt.
I don't think this is quite what she was expecting, but this is what it is. There's a little more on this one under the second cut at the bottom, 'cause I don't want to spoil the story.
Joel Zumaya, Justin Verlander, Justin Verlander's fiancee Emily. PG.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. It is in no way a reflection on the actual life, behavior, or character of any of the people featured, and there is no connection or affiliation between this fictional story and the people or organizations it mentions. It was not written with any intent to slander or defame any of the people featured. No profit has been or ever will be made as a result of this story: it is solely for entertainment. And again, it is entirely fictional, i.e. not true.
spin cycle
It's not like they have to stay in the local motel, converted by the team to something like a dorm during Spring Training. Lots of guys have houses or apartments in the area, especially the veterans, but Joel doesn't, and he doesn't see any particular reason to spend more money than he has to. Anyways, it's kind of fun hanging out with all the young guys, bumping into everyone in the halls, walking back together from the ballpark after practice.
The motel has a little coin-operated laundromat, and Joel figures Saturday night is as good a time as any to do his laundry. Usually he has trouble getting a machine, since they all have pretty much the same downtime, but most of the guys should be out and about right now. He grabs the latest copy of Sports Illustrated (which he hasn't had time to read yet), scrounges up as many quarters as he can find, and heads off.
He manages to make his laundry fit into three machines, which is pretty good, considering the amount of uniform stuff he has on top of his regular clothing. It's nice and quiet and he's just settling into a chair and opening up his magazine when Verlander's girlfriend comes in, surprising the hell out of him. Emily, he thinks; it takes him a minute to remember, though. Well, that's not so surprising. It's not like he's best friends with Verlander or anything. They're more team buddies-- they hang out on the field, in the clubhouse, but not much outside the ballpark. They just don't have that much in common, outside of baseball.
"Oh. Hi," Emily says, soft and startled. She's got a huge white plastic basket thing, piled high with a jumble of clothes. Joel's glad that he left a couple of machines free. "Sorry, I wasn't expecting to see anyone else in here."
"Hey, no problem. Me neither." They aren't technically supposed to have any girls staying over, but it's one of those rules that nobody really enforces, mostly because it'd be impossible.
She sets the basket down on one of his machines, twisting the cap off a big bottle of Tide. "Why aren't you out with the guys?"
Joel looks back down at his magazine. He tries and fails to think of a really cool reason for doing laundry on a Saturday night during Spring Training. "They're goin' to a bar tonight. No fun if you ain't drinkin'." He glances up, and Emily is frowning at him, looking confused. He sighs. "My shoulder. They still got me on pain meds, I can't drink on that shit."
"Oh. Oh! I'm sorry, Joel, I forgot." And, yeah, he gets that a lot, now that the sling is off. He looks fine, especially with a shirt on, where no one can see the still-ugly bruising extending from his collarbone in the front to almost the middle of his shoulderblade in the back. He had tried not taking the medication for a day, right when Spring Training started, but he had been almost out of his mind with agony by dinner, so, no. Not all better just yet.
"It's OK," he says, although it really, really isn't.
Emily starts picking apart the tangle of laundry and feeding it into the machine. Joel watches over the top of the magazine. He's not trying to be creepy, but if there're going be panties waving around, he wants to see it. He's surprised instead to see a couple of shirts that look vaguely familiar, and then... boxers?
"He's got you doin' his laundry?" he asks incredulously, which is maybe kind of rude, but it's out before he can stop himself.
Emily flushes a deep pink and concentrates on the clothes. "No! I mean, this is his laundry," she extracts a pair of long grass-stained uniform pants from the pile, like, no shit, "but he's not making me do it for him or anything. He. I just, it was sitting out there, and I thought, you know, I'm here, I may as well..." She trails off, still blushing hard.
That's some girlfriend, Joel thinks, and No, it's fiancee now, ain't it?, and Shit, I'd never leave so many clothes around that my girl felt like she hadda wash 'em for me, and then, again before he can stop himself, "Wait, he's out with everyone else tonight, how come you're stayin' in?"
The blush is receding from Emily's face, and it doesn't come back at this. She compresses her lips briefly, making them pale. She doesn't even have makeup on, but she's still very, very pretty. Joel's never wondered why Verlander was with her.
She jams quarters into the washing machine. "He doesn't really like me around when he goes out with the guys," she says, momentarily pressing her palms flat on the lid of the machine, back to Joel, her words almost whited out by the rumbling and low gurgle of water.
"What? Why? He said that? I woulda thought he'd like havin' you out with him, then he could show you off to everyone," which, OK, is again probably not the right thing to say, three for three on the night, good job Joel.
Emily laughs briefly, that way people do when they don't actually think something's very funny. She starts putting clothes into the remaining free washer. "He didn't say it in so many words, no. But I'm not stupid. He gets uncomfortable, like he can't loosen up if I'm there. He didn't always. Before we got engaged it wasn't a problem." She shrugs one shoulder and snaps out a pair of long socks, shaking off the loose dirt.
Joel keeps his mouth shut, trying to distract himself with a feature-length article about steroid use in the NFL. To his surprise it's actually well-written, and pretty damn interesting, and he gets caught up in it, concentrating hard to keep all the long chemical names straight. Before he knows it the laundry room quiets down as his three washers spin to a halt.
He puts down the magazine and gets up to transfer his stuff to the dryers. He glances at Emily. She's reading a thin, worn-looking book, her feet curled up under her in one of the laundry room chairs, something Joel couldn't do in a million years, but she's tiny enough to make it work. The height difference between her and Verlander is incredible, gotta be over a foot, and he can't prevent himself from wondering for a minute if it's weird when they're fucking.
The flushing this brings out on his face makes him very glad that the dryer loading takes a while.
Emily smiles at him when he sits back down, real warm and sweet, and Joel feels inexplicably guilty as all hell.
----
Verlander is hungover at practice Sunday morning. Normally Joel would at least pretend to be sympathetic, but he's more disgruntled than he'd thought about not getting to go out with the guys, and--
"Saw your girl doin' all your laundry the other night. Didn't realize you were the type."
Verlander looks at him, bleary and slightly suspicious. "Type?"
Joel stretches his legs out on the bench. Half the guys in the dugout can hear him right now, and he finds that he kind of doesn't mind. Kind of wants them to hear. "Ain't even married to her yet and already you got her goin' like a maid."
"I don't make her do anything. If she wants to do my laundry, well, maybe she just likes me that much." Verlander sounds smug, like he has extra guy cred for having a girlfriend like that.
"Sure can't imagine leavin' so many of my clothes and shit lyin' around dirty that my girl felt like she hadda haul off and clean 'em for me."
Verlander huffs out a breath. "Can't help if she's crazy OCD or whatever."
"Yeah, 'cause OCD makes a sweet girl feel like she's gotta stay in and do her boy's laundry to keep him happy." Joel's actually getting angry about this. He doesn't even know why, but he has to focus to keep his hands from balling up into fists. Huh.
"I don't make her do anything," Verlander insists. Joel snorts skeptically, but doesn't reply. He doesn't have to; by now, everyone in the dugout has heard enough to know what's going on, and they'll tell everyone else, and that, for whatever reason, is what he wanted.
Later in the day, when they're out on the grass practicing fielding groundballs (he's doing leg stretches, since he can't do arm work yet), he overhears Robertson taunting Verlander about french maids and how they'll move on to new masters if their old masters are too cruel. It sounds joking on the surface, but there's something a little mean in it too. Verlander must hear it as well as Joel does, because he hangs his head in something very like shame.
Joel feels unaccountably proud.
----
A couple of weekends go by before he sees Emily in the laundry room again. She's already curled up with a magazine when he gets there, two washers thumping away. She's wearing tiny denim shorts and a tiny orange tank top and looks like amateur fake-underage porn. She does not look like someone who would be with a lanky, slightly dorky-looking guy like Verlander. Sometimes the caliber of girls his teammates can get still stuns Joel, although he's not brand spanking new to the majors anymore, he should be used to it.
It takes him longer than usual to get his clothes into the washer. He had an appointment with the doctor earlier in the day, and the painkillers aren't quite cutting it after the prodding and the slight rearrangement of his collarbone. Loading washing machines single-handedly is harder than he would have expected.
After a minute of, apparently, silently watching him struggle, Emily gets up and wordlessly nudges him aside, loading up his washers quickly and efficiently. She slots in the quarters he gives her and pushes the coinslides in with satisfying thunks.
"Thanks," Joel says, meaning it.
"No problem." They both sit down in the laundry room chairs. Joel has The Sporting News this time, but Emily puts a hand on his arm, and he turns to look at her instead. "Joel. I heard that you were... talking to Justin. About me."
Joel puffs up a little. "Well. He was bein' a dick to you."
Emily rolls her eyes. "Yes, he was. But you didn't have to say anything."
"But he was..."
"Yes, very. And it's not that I don't appreciate it, because it was really sweet of you and I'm sure you meant well." She gives him a look that he can't even begin to decipher. "But Joel, I don't need you to swoop in and protect me from Justin. Or from myself. I don't need anyone to do that."
"Uh."
"We're both responsible adults." She tucks a few strands of dark hair behind her ear, distracting Joel a little with the tender curve of her wrist. "After I talked to you, I realized how much his getting all... stiff and formal and whatever around me when we went out was bothering me, so we sat down and talked it over like two adults. Or, well, I talked it over like an adult and he listened like an 8-year-old trying really hard to be an adult." She rolls her eyes again. "Because, like most men, he sometimes has the emotional maturity of a toddler, he was having problems with commitment and marriage and everything related to all that. We talked it over, I reminded him that I'm the same person I was when he was just my boyfriend and we would hang out, he promised to try to relax." She sounds exasperated, a little annoyed, but mostly fond.
"Oh." He's starting to feel stupid. Also, guilty. "I'm... I just thought, I mean, he was bein' a dick, and someone hadda tell him."
"It didn't have to be you."
"I just thought you needed someone to kick his ass back into line," he says, 'though he realizes as he says it that this is exactly what she doesn't need. She's so slender and delicate and pretty and... well, and ornamental that it's hard for him to think of her as a. Well. A responsible adult.
Emily gives him a gentle smile. "If I needed help, Joel, I'd go get it."
She's not even mad at him. Hell, she's a more mature and responsible adult than he is; certainly more mature than Verlander. Joel feels about eight kinds of stupid and five kinds of guilty. Guilty for acting like she's a kid, guilty for butting his stupid nose into other people's business, guilty for taking something a nice girl said in frustrated confidence and blowing it all out of proportion.
"Now, if he freaks out and tries to run off at the wedding, you can feel free to punch him in the head and drag him back."
"Yes ma'am," Joel says, relieved.
Emily squeals indignantly and smacks his good arm with her small hand. "Ma'am?? Just because I'm almost a Mrs. doesn't mean I'm a Ma'am yet!"
Joel laughs and ducks his head and lets her beat the top of his head with her rolled-up magazine. He still feels pretty stupid, but he's also feeling inexplicably absolved.
further thoughts on this one
Originally this was going to be porn. Duh! But almost every way I wrote it, it ended up being Joel either kind of taking advantage of Emily, or Emily needing saving from something (physical, emotional, whatever), and y'know what?
There are almost ZERO opportunities to write positive female characters in the baseball fandom. There aren't any female players, of course, and there aren't even any female managers or GMs. There are groupies (and there's an argument to be made for female sexual empowerment here, but it's not necessarily one I agree with) and there are baseball girlfriends/fiancees/wives. Our perception of the latter group is not so great, in part because the cheating culture is so deeply rooted in almost all professional sports, and so we know that these women stay with these men despite the fact that probably around half of them (and that's probably a conservative estimate) are cheating on a regular basis.
It's hard to write a good female character under those circumstances. Why on earth would she stay with a guy who's not home half the year, and is cheating on her most of the time... unless she's in it for the money/prestige*, or she really loves him and just has incredibly low self-esteem?
But, you know, they can't all be cheaters, and some of those women have to be pretty fucking strong women to put up with all the bullshit that comes with being married to a professional baseball player. Especially the ones who've been doing it for a long time, and raising kids partially on their own, maybe having to move the whole family all the time, and the whole bit.
I wasn't interested in writing another female victim. And, obviously, this story isn't like rah rah womyn r strong power 2 tha vagina! or whatever. It's not a power anthem. It's Joel Zumaya feeling like an idiot because he underestimated someone, and Justin Verlander being an idiot for treating his girlfriend kind of shitty, and Emily saying fuck this noise to both of them and taking matters into her own hands, because it's her fucking life, she'll be the one to handle it.
It's probably not a story I would have written on my own, so I'm really glad I got this prompt. Thanks, withyour!
*Although someone could probably do something interesting with this-- a baseball wife who knows exactly what she's getting herself into, and doesn't give a shit because what she really cares about are the other perks. Given the slashy nature of the fandom, you could probably work a friendly-love-and-mutual-beards thing in here. In fact, back in the old RPS, this is sort of the situation we had going with Bonderman's wife; they were basically best friends who both had relationships 'on the side', and she was married to him in order to get the benefits that allowed her to afford schooling, while he got the benefit of not having his presumed heterosexuality in question.
I don't think this is quite what she was expecting, but this is what it is. There's a little more on this one under the second cut at the bottom, 'cause I don't want to spoil the story.
Joel Zumaya, Justin Verlander, Justin Verlander's fiancee Emily. PG.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. It is in no way a reflection on the actual life, behavior, or character of any of the people featured, and there is no connection or affiliation between this fictional story and the people or organizations it mentions. It was not written with any intent to slander or defame any of the people featured. No profit has been or ever will be made as a result of this story: it is solely for entertainment. And again, it is entirely fictional, i.e. not true.
spin cycle
It's not like they have to stay in the local motel, converted by the team to something like a dorm during Spring Training. Lots of guys have houses or apartments in the area, especially the veterans, but Joel doesn't, and he doesn't see any particular reason to spend more money than he has to. Anyways, it's kind of fun hanging out with all the young guys, bumping into everyone in the halls, walking back together from the ballpark after practice.
The motel has a little coin-operated laundromat, and Joel figures Saturday night is as good a time as any to do his laundry. Usually he has trouble getting a machine, since they all have pretty much the same downtime, but most of the guys should be out and about right now. He grabs the latest copy of Sports Illustrated (which he hasn't had time to read yet), scrounges up as many quarters as he can find, and heads off.
He manages to make his laundry fit into three machines, which is pretty good, considering the amount of uniform stuff he has on top of his regular clothing. It's nice and quiet and he's just settling into a chair and opening up his magazine when Verlander's girlfriend comes in, surprising the hell out of him. Emily, he thinks; it takes him a minute to remember, though. Well, that's not so surprising. It's not like he's best friends with Verlander or anything. They're more team buddies-- they hang out on the field, in the clubhouse, but not much outside the ballpark. They just don't have that much in common, outside of baseball.
"Oh. Hi," Emily says, soft and startled. She's got a huge white plastic basket thing, piled high with a jumble of clothes. Joel's glad that he left a couple of machines free. "Sorry, I wasn't expecting to see anyone else in here."
"Hey, no problem. Me neither." They aren't technically supposed to have any girls staying over, but it's one of those rules that nobody really enforces, mostly because it'd be impossible.
She sets the basket down on one of his machines, twisting the cap off a big bottle of Tide. "Why aren't you out with the guys?"
Joel looks back down at his magazine. He tries and fails to think of a really cool reason for doing laundry on a Saturday night during Spring Training. "They're goin' to a bar tonight. No fun if you ain't drinkin'." He glances up, and Emily is frowning at him, looking confused. He sighs. "My shoulder. They still got me on pain meds, I can't drink on that shit."
"Oh. Oh! I'm sorry, Joel, I forgot." And, yeah, he gets that a lot, now that the sling is off. He looks fine, especially with a shirt on, where no one can see the still-ugly bruising extending from his collarbone in the front to almost the middle of his shoulderblade in the back. He had tried not taking the medication for a day, right when Spring Training started, but he had been almost out of his mind with agony by dinner, so, no. Not all better just yet.
"It's OK," he says, although it really, really isn't.
Emily starts picking apart the tangle of laundry and feeding it into the machine. Joel watches over the top of the magazine. He's not trying to be creepy, but if there're going be panties waving around, he wants to see it. He's surprised instead to see a couple of shirts that look vaguely familiar, and then... boxers?
"He's got you doin' his laundry?" he asks incredulously, which is maybe kind of rude, but it's out before he can stop himself.
Emily flushes a deep pink and concentrates on the clothes. "No! I mean, this is his laundry," she extracts a pair of long grass-stained uniform pants from the pile, like, no shit, "but he's not making me do it for him or anything. He. I just, it was sitting out there, and I thought, you know, I'm here, I may as well..." She trails off, still blushing hard.
That's some girlfriend, Joel thinks, and No, it's fiancee now, ain't it?, and Shit, I'd never leave so many clothes around that my girl felt like she hadda wash 'em for me, and then, again before he can stop himself, "Wait, he's out with everyone else tonight, how come you're stayin' in?"
The blush is receding from Emily's face, and it doesn't come back at this. She compresses her lips briefly, making them pale. She doesn't even have makeup on, but she's still very, very pretty. Joel's never wondered why Verlander was with her.
She jams quarters into the washing machine. "He doesn't really like me around when he goes out with the guys," she says, momentarily pressing her palms flat on the lid of the machine, back to Joel, her words almost whited out by the rumbling and low gurgle of water.
"What? Why? He said that? I woulda thought he'd like havin' you out with him, then he could show you off to everyone," which, OK, is again probably not the right thing to say, three for three on the night, good job Joel.
Emily laughs briefly, that way people do when they don't actually think something's very funny. She starts putting clothes into the remaining free washer. "He didn't say it in so many words, no. But I'm not stupid. He gets uncomfortable, like he can't loosen up if I'm there. He didn't always. Before we got engaged it wasn't a problem." She shrugs one shoulder and snaps out a pair of long socks, shaking off the loose dirt.
Joel keeps his mouth shut, trying to distract himself with a feature-length article about steroid use in the NFL. To his surprise it's actually well-written, and pretty damn interesting, and he gets caught up in it, concentrating hard to keep all the long chemical names straight. Before he knows it the laundry room quiets down as his three washers spin to a halt.
He puts down the magazine and gets up to transfer his stuff to the dryers. He glances at Emily. She's reading a thin, worn-looking book, her feet curled up under her in one of the laundry room chairs, something Joel couldn't do in a million years, but she's tiny enough to make it work. The height difference between her and Verlander is incredible, gotta be over a foot, and he can't prevent himself from wondering for a minute if it's weird when they're fucking.
The flushing this brings out on his face makes him very glad that the dryer loading takes a while.
Emily smiles at him when he sits back down, real warm and sweet, and Joel feels inexplicably guilty as all hell.
----
Verlander is hungover at practice Sunday morning. Normally Joel would at least pretend to be sympathetic, but he's more disgruntled than he'd thought about not getting to go out with the guys, and--
"Saw your girl doin' all your laundry the other night. Didn't realize you were the type."
Verlander looks at him, bleary and slightly suspicious. "Type?"
Joel stretches his legs out on the bench. Half the guys in the dugout can hear him right now, and he finds that he kind of doesn't mind. Kind of wants them to hear. "Ain't even married to her yet and already you got her goin' like a maid."
"I don't make her do anything. If she wants to do my laundry, well, maybe she just likes me that much." Verlander sounds smug, like he has extra guy cred for having a girlfriend like that.
"Sure can't imagine leavin' so many of my clothes and shit lyin' around dirty that my girl felt like she hadda haul off and clean 'em for me."
Verlander huffs out a breath. "Can't help if she's crazy OCD or whatever."
"Yeah, 'cause OCD makes a sweet girl feel like she's gotta stay in and do her boy's laundry to keep him happy." Joel's actually getting angry about this. He doesn't even know why, but he has to focus to keep his hands from balling up into fists. Huh.
"I don't make her do anything," Verlander insists. Joel snorts skeptically, but doesn't reply. He doesn't have to; by now, everyone in the dugout has heard enough to know what's going on, and they'll tell everyone else, and that, for whatever reason, is what he wanted.
Later in the day, when they're out on the grass practicing fielding groundballs (he's doing leg stretches, since he can't do arm work yet), he overhears Robertson taunting Verlander about french maids and how they'll move on to new masters if their old masters are too cruel. It sounds joking on the surface, but there's something a little mean in it too. Verlander must hear it as well as Joel does, because he hangs his head in something very like shame.
Joel feels unaccountably proud.
----
A couple of weekends go by before he sees Emily in the laundry room again. She's already curled up with a magazine when he gets there, two washers thumping away. She's wearing tiny denim shorts and a tiny orange tank top and looks like amateur fake-underage porn. She does not look like someone who would be with a lanky, slightly dorky-looking guy like Verlander. Sometimes the caliber of girls his teammates can get still stuns Joel, although he's not brand spanking new to the majors anymore, he should be used to it.
It takes him longer than usual to get his clothes into the washer. He had an appointment with the doctor earlier in the day, and the painkillers aren't quite cutting it after the prodding and the slight rearrangement of his collarbone. Loading washing machines single-handedly is harder than he would have expected.
After a minute of, apparently, silently watching him struggle, Emily gets up and wordlessly nudges him aside, loading up his washers quickly and efficiently. She slots in the quarters he gives her and pushes the coinslides in with satisfying thunks.
"Thanks," Joel says, meaning it.
"No problem." They both sit down in the laundry room chairs. Joel has The Sporting News this time, but Emily puts a hand on his arm, and he turns to look at her instead. "Joel. I heard that you were... talking to Justin. About me."
Joel puffs up a little. "Well. He was bein' a dick to you."
Emily rolls her eyes. "Yes, he was. But you didn't have to say anything."
"But he was..."
"Yes, very. And it's not that I don't appreciate it, because it was really sweet of you and I'm sure you meant well." She gives him a look that he can't even begin to decipher. "But Joel, I don't need you to swoop in and protect me from Justin. Or from myself. I don't need anyone to do that."
"Uh."
"We're both responsible adults." She tucks a few strands of dark hair behind her ear, distracting Joel a little with the tender curve of her wrist. "After I talked to you, I realized how much his getting all... stiff and formal and whatever around me when we went out was bothering me, so we sat down and talked it over like two adults. Or, well, I talked it over like an adult and he listened like an 8-year-old trying really hard to be an adult." She rolls her eyes again. "Because, like most men, he sometimes has the emotional maturity of a toddler, he was having problems with commitment and marriage and everything related to all that. We talked it over, I reminded him that I'm the same person I was when he was just my boyfriend and we would hang out, he promised to try to relax." She sounds exasperated, a little annoyed, but mostly fond.
"Oh." He's starting to feel stupid. Also, guilty. "I'm... I just thought, I mean, he was bein' a dick, and someone hadda tell him."
"It didn't have to be you."
"I just thought you needed someone to kick his ass back into line," he says, 'though he realizes as he says it that this is exactly what she doesn't need. She's so slender and delicate and pretty and... well, and ornamental that it's hard for him to think of her as a. Well. A responsible adult.
Emily gives him a gentle smile. "If I needed help, Joel, I'd go get it."
She's not even mad at him. Hell, she's a more mature and responsible adult than he is; certainly more mature than Verlander. Joel feels about eight kinds of stupid and five kinds of guilty. Guilty for acting like she's a kid, guilty for butting his stupid nose into other people's business, guilty for taking something a nice girl said in frustrated confidence and blowing it all out of proportion.
"Now, if he freaks out and tries to run off at the wedding, you can feel free to punch him in the head and drag him back."
"Yes ma'am," Joel says, relieved.
Emily squeals indignantly and smacks his good arm with her small hand. "Ma'am?? Just because I'm almost a Mrs. doesn't mean I'm a Ma'am yet!"
Joel laughs and ducks his head and lets her beat the top of his head with her rolled-up magazine. He still feels pretty stupid, but he's also feeling inexplicably absolved.
further thoughts on this one
Originally this was going to be porn. Duh! But almost every way I wrote it, it ended up being Joel either kind of taking advantage of Emily, or Emily needing saving from something (physical, emotional, whatever), and y'know what?
There are almost ZERO opportunities to write positive female characters in the baseball fandom. There aren't any female players, of course, and there aren't even any female managers or GMs. There are groupies (and there's an argument to be made for female sexual empowerment here, but it's not necessarily one I agree with) and there are baseball girlfriends/fiancees/wives. Our perception of the latter group is not so great, in part because the cheating culture is so deeply rooted in almost all professional sports, and so we know that these women stay with these men despite the fact that probably around half of them (and that's probably a conservative estimate) are cheating on a regular basis.
It's hard to write a good female character under those circumstances. Why on earth would she stay with a guy who's not home half the year, and is cheating on her most of the time... unless she's in it for the money/prestige*, or she really loves him and just has incredibly low self-esteem?
But, you know, they can't all be cheaters, and some of those women have to be pretty fucking strong women to put up with all the bullshit that comes with being married to a professional baseball player. Especially the ones who've been doing it for a long time, and raising kids partially on their own, maybe having to move the whole family all the time, and the whole bit.
I wasn't interested in writing another female victim. And, obviously, this story isn't like rah rah womyn r strong power 2 tha vagina! or whatever. It's not a power anthem. It's Joel Zumaya feeling like an idiot because he underestimated someone, and Justin Verlander being an idiot for treating his girlfriend kind of shitty, and Emily saying fuck this noise to both of them and taking matters into her own hands, because it's her fucking life, she'll be the one to handle it.
It's probably not a story I would have written on my own, so I'm really glad I got this prompt. Thanks, withyour!
*Although someone could probably do something interesting with this-- a baseball wife who knows exactly what she's getting herself into, and doesn't give a shit because what she really cares about are the other perks. Given the slashy nature of the fandom, you could probably work a friendly-love-and-mutual-beards thing in here. In fact, back in the old RPS, this is sort of the situation we had going with Bonderman's wife; they were basically best friends who both had relationships 'on the side', and she was married to him in order to get the benefits that allowed her to afford schooling, while he got the benefit of not having his presumed heterosexuality in question.