Archive of Our Own

i. i want to be cool. 

Charlie plays in the dirt and doesn’t have to wear dresses, and Carson thinks that’s pretty unfair. 

She’s tired of seeing him out in the field, rough housing with his cousins and their dog between the tall stalks of Lake Valley grass while she has to stay inside and learn about the different ways to hem and sew. She’s not good at it anyway – her fingers are clumsy, and her stitches come out too large – but her father insists. 

If Carson were older, she’d have known the look in her mother’s eyes: sympathy. But she’s eight, and her father tells her that girls don’t play like boys, and it’s the first time, really, that she realizes she is one. A girl. 

Charlie isn’t a girl. He is strong and handsome, that’s why he gets to play baseball with the boys. He’s not a girl, and he gets to do all of the things that Carson doesn’t. All of the things Carson wishes she could. He is all of the things Carson knows she is but doesn’t get to call herself. 

The fourth time Carson complains, people start telling her that she must like Charlie, and that’s why she feels this way. That’s why she tries to follow him after school, why she waits for him at the bus stop. He’s her best friend, but one day, he’ll be more – what a little heartthrob already, that Shaw boy.

Carson wrinkles her nose at them. She never knows what to say, how to tell them it leaves a bad taste in her mouth. Her father would say it’s disrespectful anyway, so she bites her tongue until they can mistake it for a smile. But when they see her smile, they just keep talking, until Carson is stuck in the short grass, trimmed every week before Sunday mass, getting her cheeks pinched. 

They tell her that she’s a girl and Charlie’s a boy, and it just makes sense. One day, she’ll see. They tell her she would be pretty if she just grew out her hair a little more. 

Carson believes them about all of it. There’s nobody to tell her differently. 

ii. pretending the road goes on.

Carson’s mother leaves when she’s ten, but her father acts like she didn’t. Carson catches him reading the letter that was left behind sometimes, but she never tells Meg. Meg still can’t understand. There’s so much that Meg will never understand. 

And because her father pretends like he never read the letter, it’s easy for Carson to pretend too, to believe her father when he says his wife will come back, when he acts like she’s still his wife. Carson learns that sometimes, being a man means lying to yourself, and she thinks about how she used to wish she was a boy. She’s not sure she wants to be a boy either, if this is what she will become.

And still, the more her father lies, the easier it is for Carson to believe. She lets herself. 

Until she can’t anymore. 

Until Meg needs a new dress hemmed, and Carson’s fingers are still too shaky to get the line perfectly straight. Until Carson has to start making pies for church. Until Carson has to be the woman of the house because there’s nobody else. Because her father still waits by the phone for her mother to call, and she never does. Because he starts drinking, and he doesn’t stop, but he keeps going to church. He smells like whiskey, his suit collar stained with sweat. He works, but Carson isn’t sure where the money goes. 

Months pass, and then a year. She finds an afterschool job at the library, shelving books off the cart until she knows the aisles like the back of her hand.

Somebody has to put food on the table. 

She’s a kid, and it’s not fair. But Carson has learned that’s part of being a girl – nothing being fair. She doesn’t like it very much, and she takes it out on the baseballs that get thrown her way, bat in hand. She swings hard, throws her weight behind her hips instead of screaming. She wants to scream, but she doesn’t. 

Already, she’s a girl who plays baseball. She knows better than to give the boys she plays with more reasons to think of her as a girl. She wishes she could just play. That she wasn’t a girl that just happened to be good behind the plate, at catching the pitches. 

Her father never comes to a single game. Carson doesn’t even bother to look for her mom. She wishes he could do the same. In the early days, Meg shows up and cheers her on. But time passes – it always does; it’s one of Carson’s least favorite things – and Meg becomes a young lady and she stops showing up. Eventually, Carson realizes most people stop showing up.

And all the while, Carson is still stuck wishing she wasn’t a girl, wishing that it all were a bit more fair. 

iii. poured my heart out to the walls. 

Carson goes from wishing she wasn’t a girl to wishing she wasn’t a woman. 

Her father knows so little, so Charlie’s mother takes over, offering Carson new brassieres and slips and undergarments. Nothing seems to fit her just right. Every new piece accentuates the parts of her that she’d rather hide or covers the parts of herself that she actually likes. It’s all so wrong. She feels wrong. 

It’s difficult to even recognize the woman in the mirror. All Carson knows is that she isn’t her. 

Locked in the Shaws’ upstairs bathroom, Carson’s whole body tightens, curls and cinches. Carson feels so increasingly small. 

She’s perched on the edge of the counter, willfully not looking at herself, but even just the new, itchy brassiere that Mrs. Shaw had picked up for her a few towns over constricts her every move. Energy thrums under her skin with nowhere to go, and the gleam out of the corner of her eye from the lightbulb just over the mirror and sink taunts and teases, tells her that if she were a bit more normal she could just like this stuff like everyone else. 

Her skin crawls at the thought, at knowing she’ll never be normal. Her mouth is dry but her throat is wet and everything is wrong, wrong, wrong–

She can’t breathe. Fuck. She can’t breathe. 

The fabric almost burns her skin where it sits, and before she knows it, Carson is hopping off the counter, scrambling to take it off, almost slipping on the bathroom floor. Her fingers fumble with the hooks – God, she’s still so fucking clumsy; she never grew out of it – but finally, she drops the whole garment to the ground, sinking to the floor. Trembling. 

The cool air fills the emptiness where the fabric held her chest, and Carson inhales. Finally. 

It’s not as if her breasts are particularly full, but Carson knows that this new style is what’s fashionable, what gives her the right figure – that’s what Meg said, anyway – and it’s not a choice, whether she can wear it or not. She has to. 

That doesn’t make it any better. 

Carson hates the idea that she has a figure. She hates the idea that this is her body. She hates the idea of having one at all. 

Somehow, wearing nothing feels better than the support the garment provides, and standing, Carson doesn’t mind the sight of herself: shirtless, her hair tied back so it wouldn’t get caught up in the straps of the brassiere. 

She doesn’t get it, why it feels better this way. She never has. But it does. It always feels better. Carson takes another deep breath, hand reaching to press over her own heart, against the flatness of her sternum. 

She wishes the rest of her was this flat. That her fingers didn’t have to cup the upward slope of her left breast. That she didn’t have to start to notice how new parts of her move when she runs. That her back didn’t ache after nine innings behind the plate. 

It never used to ache like this. 

Carson raises onto her toes, eyes moving over the smooth plane of her stomach, and she feels her thighs flex. She wishes she was that muscled everywhere. That her body knew how to be that strong. She wishes she looked strong.

But most of her life is wishes that don’t come true. 

“Car?” Charlie asks, knocking on the door gently. “Are you okay in there?” 

Carson flinches just barely, but she hates herself for it immediately. Charlie is strong and handsome. Everything she should want. He’s kind. She likes how kind he is. 

“I– I’m fine!” she calls, snatching the bra up from the floor and pulling it back on, forcing herself to stare back at her reflection. “Tell your mom everything fits really well, would you?”

She hopes that he can’t tell that she’s lying. 

iv. i think that i’m wanted. 

When they turn sixteen, Charlie gets a car and drives Carson everywhere. They spend hours in the front seat together, the radio set to listen to the baseball game, laughing over miscues, and it’s a day like any other when he turns to her and tells her that he’s in love with her. 

I’m really in love with you, you know that, right? 

In the moment, Carson doesn’t know what to say, so she says it back. It’s nice to be loved, she thinks, and the only way she’ll keep that love is if she returns it. 

And really, she does love Charlie. That’s what everyone tells her, anyway, and Carson thinks that must mean that she’s in love with him too. She’s not sure what it’s supposed to feel like, but she thinks this must be it: having somebody to talk to, someone she wouldn’t mind sitting with. Somebody who likes baseball; who doesn't mind she likes it. It’s enough, and Carson likes having enough. She’s spent so long with nothing.

Still, it feels like she’s barely even blinked before Charlie is saying, marry me, Carson, before he’s looking at her and telling her that she could become a Shaw. Carson hasn’t had a family in so long. The idea is appealing – to belong to somebody else, to just know she’s somebody’s – but something holds her back. It’s been nagging at her for ages, telling her that she isn’t what everyone thinks, and she wants to entertain the voice. She wants to know if it’s right. 

“It would be awful,” she blurts out, looking up at him, and his face flashes with hurt. 

“What do you mean?” he asks, a storm brewing in his perfect blue eyes. “No it wouldn’t.” 

“It would,” Carson says, standing in this field of tall grass that he took her to, that they walked through, bumping shoulders every few steps. “We would become awful.” 

“We wouldn’t,” he answers, and Carson turns away. She can’t look at him. Her best friend. Her Charlie. “Why do you think that?”

“Because we would.” Carson knows it to be true, somewhere. She thinks of her father, how he still checks the mailbox for more letters that will never come. She thinks of her mother, leaving their house in Lake Valley and never coming back. She thinks about library books and meals and perfect hems and how she did all of it alone: the growing, the raising, the changing. “We would be awful, and you would hate me, and you would hate it. You would hate all of it.” 

“I wouldn’t!” He’s loud this time, boyish still, and Carson doesn’t even have it in herself to flinch. “We’re good together, Car. Everyone thinks so. Why would they think that if it weren’t true?” 

“Because sometimes people lie, Charlie,” she groans, balling her hands into fists and striking them down into thin air, frustrated, turning her back on him. 

She won’t have this conversation. She knew it was coming, but she wishes it wouldn’t have. Carson and her fucking wishes. She wants to tell him that he’s far too good and kind, far too much of a sweet boy to put up with Carson’s wayward hopes and dreams, at least in the end. He thinks he could, but he won’t. Nobody ever has. 

“They wouldn’t lie about this,” Charlie insists. “Everybody expects us to get married, Carson! What did you think was going to happen?” 

“I don’t know,” she admits, stopping. She still won’t look at him. If she does, then it’s real. “I don’t know what I thought, Charlie. I just know–” 

“Marry me,” he says again, softer. He comes up behind her, touching her shoulder. He wouldn’t hurt her, and she knows that. She lets herself be touched because of it, leans into him, even. Charlie. Her best friend. “Marry me, and we can talk about baseball for the rest of our lives! Hell, we can talk about it when we’re dead. Please, Carson.” 

“And what if we fuck up?” she asks quietly. 

“Then we fuck up,” he tells her. “We fuck up, and we keep going. We’re fuck ups already.” He laughs a little. “Charlie and Carson. The nerds. The weirdos. The freaks, remember? His dad leaves town for months on end. Her mom is probably gone for good. Wonder what’s the matter with them.” 

“You forgot the geeks,” Carson says, laughing back a little despite herself. She takes a breath. The grass tickles at her legs, and the hurricane in Charlie’s eyes leaves as quickly as it came. He has such pretty eyes. “So, when should we have the wedding?”

“Really?” he asks. 

“Really,” Carson says, turning around, finally. Giving in. Over the years, Carson has learned that being a woman demands a certain level of surrender. It’s not who she is, but she is a woman. She thinks it is what she must become. It’s her destiny. 

She thinks about her favorite novels, about how the characters always have somebody to live and die for. Carson thinks she should be able to convince herself that it’s quite good enough to live and die for Charlie, because it means she has someone to live and die for.

Charlie’s right, anyway. Everyone thinks they’re going to get married. This is the way things ought to be. If she thinks hard enough, Carson can convince herself that this is the way things should be, too. 

They get married when the days are at their longest, entering the church as two people and leaving as one – that’s what the officiant said, anyway. 

Carson’s father walks her down the aisle, giving her away in her mother’s dress. It was one of the few things her mom didn’t take when she ran. 

Charlie stands at the altar wearing a suit. The way he stands, broad shoulders, short hair, tears in his perfect, soft eyes – it all makes Carson ache with want. She tells herself it means that she wants him. That must be it. 

v. you're tearing at my body every time you want me.

Carson doesn’t think that being wanted and being touched should feel as awful as it does. She doesn’t know what’s wrong. Every woman she’s talked to is jealous – telling her that she’s lucky, that the way Charlie looks at her, the way he holds her when they have backyard parties is something special, and she knows it is. It’s nice having somebody wrapped around her. The softness of it is sweet, how he kisses the side of her head. Charlie is always so warm. He keeps her warm. 

But when they’re alone, she’s not so sure. Sometimes, everything just burns. 

Sometimes, when they’re skin on skin, Carson feels like she’d rather crawl out of her own body, has that terrifying feeling, again, that she doesn’t want one at all. 

Sometimes, Charlie touches her and it’s nice enough, and sometimes, it’s too much. It’s too much. It’s too much. 

It’s not necessarily Charlie, she thinks. She’s really honestly pretty sure that it isn’t. Because she likes sleeping next to him. She likes his hands on her thighs, against her back, sliding up her stomach to tickle her. 

Carson is really ticklish. Charlie is only privy to this because they’re married. 

Yeah. It’s definitely not just Charlie, that his hands are too rough, that his body is too much on top of her. He’s one of the only people she’ll let touch her. 

It’s the fact that she has a body at all. It’s the fact that she has breasts and that her hips have only curved more. That she’s soft in places she wishes she wasn’t, places she’s wished into muscularity and strength since she was fifteen. Since forever. 

It’s that it’s possible to touch her in places she wishes didn’t even exist. 

“Not there,” Carson says sometimes, whispers it, because the rest feels good enough, because Charlie’s breathless in her ear, and she wants him to feel good, and he always pulls his hands away, fists them in the sheets instead. He never touches her where she asks he not.

But those places still exist. They always exist. And no amount of not there will make it untrue. Her body will always be with her. Part of her. 

vi. i could have your children.

Carson isn’t her mother. 

She’s quite adamant, insistent, really, on this particular fact, but part of her is still terrified that if she should have her own children, daughters or sons, she may turn into her. The idea of becoming her mom is too scary to even begin to get close to. 

Being her mother would mean understanding her, and Carson doesn’t want to understand her. It’s easier to be angry. Being her mother would mean knowing too much, feeling too much – the loneliness, the freedom, the resentment. And the joy, too. 

Carson is afraid to know joy. It’s never really been hers, and she doesn’t know how it might change her. How she may become somebody new. How she may be compelled to stay so much that she will understand why her mother ran, why the restraints were the reason she left. Carson’s afraid to be tied down. There are already too many reasons why she doesn’t chase her dreams. 

Charlie wants kids, but the war happens. 

The war happens, and he gets called away right as he’s about to kick up the conversation again. Carson has been flattening the idea for the better part of seven years. She doesn’t know if she would have had it in her again. Carson can’t tell if she wishes she got called away too, or if she’s glad that she can finally breathe in their house in Lake Valley. 

vii. maybe we could change it up.

The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League calls, and Carson doesn’t know whether to tell them that she’s not a girl baseball player or whether to seize the opportunity. She sits with it for weeks, deciding, before she finally looks at what she might pack. 

The only things that scream Carson are her books, the ones with the lovers who will live and die for each other, and more than anything, she feels guilty at the idea of leaving this life, her house, her town, behind. But Carson thinks that maybe she was always going to understand her mother, and by running, she’ll at least know more of that fear. Maybe she can even put it to bed. 

So, Carson packs her books and she packs her dresses – the ones that are most comfortable, the least revealing, the most kind to her figure. Her figure. It still feels weird on the tongue, even though Meg taught her its meaning so many years ago, now. 

Even after packing, though, Carson isn’t sure. She doesn’t leave, not right away. She lets the suitcase sit in the doorway, a tease and a promise all at once. She walks by it every day where it sits in the patch of sun that comes through the front window. 

Each night, Carson checks the mailbox for letters that do come – she’s different from her father in this regard, and as the days pass, Carson wonders if it would have been worse to grow to fill his shoes; he still waits, but now, he’s lonelier, with only himself to fill his otherwise empty nest – and when she reads that Charlie will be back stateside, Carson doesn’t recognize herself once more as she closes her fingers around the handle of her suitcase and sprints to the train station, forcing herself not to look back. 

Sometimes people lie, Carson remembers herself saying it, and now, she knows that she was – lying. Lying to herself. Because staring at herself in the train bathroom mirror, Carson feels better than she has in years. 

viii. i could be important. 

Carson arrives in Chicago, searching for Baker Field, and she comes face to face with two women who know what they are. 

Carson wishes she knew like them. 

Jo De Luca is bright and bold and ready to impress. Jo De Luca knows who she is: brazen and joyful. Beautiful. Strong. Both. Carson’s never met a woman like that, a woman who let herself be both. 

Greta Gill is… she just is. Carson can’t help but watch her. The way she moves and laughs. Something moves in Carson at the sight of her, something she didn’t know existed – it’s her heart. It cries out, and Carson feels, feels too much, leans on sturdy walls and swallows hard, and Greta is gorgeous the whole time. 

Carson feels too much for her. Greta is a woman. Carson knows this for sure, and she can’t feel this much for a woman. She can’t. But then, Greta smiles at her, takes her hand, pulls and says, here’s your destiny, and Carson thinks that maybe she is the kind of person who has a destiny after all. Destiny looks like red hair and dark eyes. 

Salvation. 

ix. you told me if i wanted to – that i could hold your hand.

Greta is good, under all of the anger, under all of the fear. She’s good and true, and Carson is falling in love with her. 

Carson is learning to love herself, too. 

Greta holds her at a distance when the world is loud, links their pinkies when everything goes quiet. Squeezes. 

Carson is falling in love with her, and Greta is falling for her, too, and Carson thinks that maybe this is the first time that she’s ever been seen for exactly what she is. Nothing more. Nothing less. What she is. What she is. 

For so long, Carson believed that love came from wanting everything somebody else had that you didn’t. That love came from the fact that somebody might fill in those parts of you. 

She used to believe that’s what Charlie was for. That it was enough to see all of the places she wishes she were strong in him. That it was enough that he was called good and handsome and smart. 

It’s different with Greta – it was always going to be different. Greta doesn’t see what’s missing. She only sees what’s there. What Carson has. What she holds in her hands. 

She asks for Carson to hold her. She believes in Carson – this time, not for what she has, though. Instead, she believes in her for what she could be. 

x. i could be your captain.

Greta picks her. Carson still can’t really understand it. 

Greta picks her to be coach, over all the noise, over all the voices–

“You picked me,” Carson says, feeling so gloriously seen that she attains something close to confidence. 

“Well, the team comes first, right?” Greta asks, but she’s smiling. God, she’s beautiful. She’s the most beautiful woman Carson has ever known. 

“Mhm,” she manages to hum, biting her lip when Greta stutters, her body suddenly going soft, her head tipping back. 

She bends for Carson in a way that Carson would never ask her to. She likes it. She likes it so much, feeling Greta melt, the little uncertainty caught in the back of her throat until she’s moaning and letting Carson kiss her. Letting Carson have control. Fuck. 

Later, when night has really fallen, Greta clutches to her, whimpering, a hand in her hair while Carson’s fingers slide inside, and God, God, God, it feels so fucking good. 

Greta picked her. She chose her. Her hands move over the smooth expanse of Carson’s back, like it never even occurred to her that she should touch Carson anywhere else, like some part of her knows every inch of her already, and that she already knows what places Carson wishes didn’t exist. Like they don’t exist to Greta because of it. 

“Yeah, yeah, there,” Greta murmurs, hands against the line of Carson’s jaw, holding her like she thinks Carson is perfect, like the only thing that matters is the way she curls her fingers and kisses her. “God, yeah.” 

It all feels so right, and this time, Carson knows that this is it: want. This perfect ache. This new truth. 

For the first time, Carson knows herself in it: her want. And she thinks, for the first time, too, that it’s possible she’s being wanted for what she is. All that she is. Only what she is.

xi. i’ve been waiting for the answer so long.

Now we can see you better. 

Carson can’t stop touching her hair, can’t stop hearing Greta’s voice when she does. The newness hasn’t subsided since Greta cut it. Every time she looks in the mirror, it’s like she’s seeing herself for the very first time. In the grand scheme of things, of all things, of everything new, it’s the smallest change. But truly, it changes everything. It changes the way she walks. The way she breathes. The way her heart pounds, even, like it didn’t really know how to beat before. 

She thinks about giving haircuts to Charlie, watching his hair fall into the sink. She thinks about all the times her hair got in the way, how she wished she could just make it disappear from where it hung loosely around her shoulders. 

Now, she notices everyone’s hair a little bit more. Lately, Carson hasn’t been able to tear her eyes away from Jess, who braids her hair before every day, staring at her reflection in the mirror before throwing her cap over it. 

It’s a miracle Jess doesn’t catch her earlier, but finally, she does, cocking her head to the side one day when Carson is hanging out in her and Greta’s room. “Yes?” 

Carson looks away as quickly as she can. “Nothing,” she mumbles, staring at the floor, but then Jess stands, surveying her with an expression that tells Carson this is not the first time this has happened, and it likely won’t be the last. 

“Try this,” Jess tells her suddenly, reaching, and because she’s taller than her, it’s easy for her to pull Carson’s cap off her head and tuck it back down, except now, it’s backwards. “Stay here,” she adds before she slips out of the room, dragging Lupe back in as quickly as she left. 

“Classic,” Lupe laughs, giving her the same look that Jess did before, bending down to fold the cuffs of the one pair of trousers Carson owns until her socks are showing just enough. Carson’s body feels freer already. 

Jess positions her in front of the mirror. “How’s that?” she asks. 

Carefully, Carson manages a look at herself in the mirror, and her heart stops. Her pants seem to fit her so much better, and she lifts her leg and turns it outward to see how the fabric moves. Her hair is held back slightly by the shape of her hat. It’s the first time in a while that Carson has told herself she looks good and really meant it. 

“It’s perfect,” she breathes, shifting a little more to view her profile. 

She doesn’t think she wants to dress like this every day – she still has a new dress that she really wants to try and she thinks it might become her favorite – but looking in the mirror, she feels better about herself than she has in months. She never even knew this was an option. She never even knew she had a choice. 

“Over-shirts,” Jess says wisely, pulling a plain blue button up from her closet and offering it to her. 

Carson takes it, fingers reaching to do the buttons, but Lupe scoffs. 

“For all those books you read, you’re not very swift, Shaw,” she says, batting her hands away. “No buttons. Wear it open.” 

“But–” 

“Wear it open,” Lupe insists.

“It hides the things that feel good to hide,” Jess adds, knowing, understanding. It’s terrifying – to be understood this way, to be known, but Carson doesn’t recoil from it any longer. She takes the knowledge by the hand instead. 

There’s a knock at the door that makes Carson’s spine straighten and her arms cross her chest, self conscious, before she realizes it’s Greta. 

Greta who smiles, her jaw set forward a little, eyes bright. Her gaze betrays her attraction, moving slowly over Carson. She bites her lip. 

“Hey Coach… and roomie… and Lu,” she says, blinking slowly. 

“We’ll make ourselves scarce. Jesus, Gill, you sure know how to make us hermanos feel welcome,” Jess grumbles, and she drags her best friend up by the collar of her shirt and out of the room, mumbling shut up, leave ‘em be, when Lupe tries to say something smart. 

Jess closes the door behind them without even being asked. 

Greta stands in the silence for a moment, still looking at Carson. 

“You look nice,” she finally says into the quiet. “Are you meeting somebody?” Her usual line. 

Carson clears her throat, feeling confident again. Feeling like herself. “Yeah,” she answers softly, a little shy but also so adoring. “You.” 

Greta laughs at that gently, impressed, equally adoring. Always equal. Then, she bends down to kiss her, and Carson tilts her head back, and before she knows it, she’s against the vanity. Before she knows it, Greta has her hands on either side of her against the desk, says, you look so good, and Carson believes her, knows it to be true, knows she looks exactly how she always wished she could. 

Carson’s life has been made up of wishes, and for the first time, they’re coming true. 

xii. we’re just the best. 

They try not to talk about Charlie, but sometimes, Carson thinks about that first night in the hotel, Greta saying he’s handsome, her fingers moving over Charlie’s photo. 

Carson thinks about it more than she should. Every part of her knows there’s no reason to be jealous. Greta wants her, never wants to keep a man, has said so herself. 

Even when she thinks too hard about it, Carson knows she doesn’t care that Greta said a thing about Charlie and is just disappointed Greta didn’t say anything about her. But still, she presses Greta into desks and trees and driver’s seats, and Greta whispers, oh, Carson, Carson, the whole time. She nips at Carson’s lip, her smile obvious, like she knows Carson likes knowing they’re each other’s, like Carson likes knowing nobody else can touch her like this. 

And Carson does. She likes being the only one. 

“God, you’re so strong, baby. So good,” Greta praises almost constantly, when Carson pins an arm over her hips, when she fucks her with two fingers, when her head is between her thighs, and tonight is no different when Carson finds herself with Greta in her lap. Carson is so excited about getting her topless that she accidentally pops the bottom button off. 

Greta laughs. “Eager, hm?” she murmurs, and Carson doesn’t refute the statement, ghosts her fingers up against her stomach instead until Greta is breathless, her eyelids fluttering. 

It’s all gentle between them, how Greta arches into Carson’s touch, how Greta guides her hand down until Carson’s fingertips slide against her clit. Fuck. She’s so wet already, hot and slick, and Carson slips inside easily. 

“Oh,” Greta breathes, rocking her hips, spreading her legs, and soon, she’s riding Carson’s hand, whimpering, mouth falling open, a flush rising up her chest as the windows start to fog. 

Carson thinks about what she heard when she was a girl, growing up, and she thinks she must not be a girl, now. She’s something else. Something new. She doesn’t know what, but now, she’s not so afraid to find out. Greta has made her no longer afraid – Greta has made her brave. 

“I’m gonna come,” Greta whines, pressing her face into Carson’s neck, dropping kisses to her pulse. “Fuck, baby, can I come?” 

“Mhm,” Carson hums, overwhelmed in every way that feels good, with Greta’s curls loose and soft from the humidity of the car, tickling her cheek. “I want you to.” 

“God, I can feel it,” Greta breathes, her rhythm broken and unsteady as she seeks out more pressure. Carson presses her thumb against her clit harder, and she cries out, trembling. She tosses her hips forward more roughly, dripping down Carson’s knuckles, and oh, oh– “Fuck, I’m coming, I’m coming,” she gasps, high and needy, before her body tightens against Carson’s, before she’s falling apart, moaning against her neck, saying Carson’s name like it’s more than just a name. 

Carson always feels like more when she’s with Greta.

“God, baby, you’re so pretty under me,” Greta says as she comes down, flirty and breathless, leaning down to kiss her. Carson seizes suddenly, barely, but with her knees bracketing Carson’s thighs, Greta knows immediately something wasn’t right. “Hmm,” she breathes, fingers threading through Carson’s hair, her mouth finding Carson’s ear. “Maybe handsome instead?” 

Carson’s lips part, suddenly breathless, a little sound breaking in the back of her throat. “Greta–” 

She blushes, uncertain, but Greta’s teeth scrape down her jaw and her head falls back. She groans when Greta guides Carson’s wrist until her fingers are at her slit again, until Greta is gasping against her neck, murmuring baby, baby, you’re so handsome, whimpering out you feel so good inside me. 

“Oh fuck.” Carson groans lowly, and Greta laughs like she knew how that would make her feel, like she knew that would make her wet. “Say it again?” she breathes. 

And Greta smiles, blushing a little, and she keeps going, talking softly in her ear, telling Carson how wet she makes her, whining fuck, Carson, it’s so much when she slips a third finger inside, until she’s coming and Carson is coming with her without even being touched, a shock rushing all the way through her. Shivers begin at the top of her head and move through her quickly like an avalanche. It’s an inexplicable feeling: Greta telling her how fucking good she is, that she fucks her so well, mumbling handsome, so fucking handsome, God, I could come again, I could come again, Carson– and then she does, arching into Carson’s waiting hands, her slick dripping onto her palm and down her wrist. 

Carson kisses her neck, rubbing a hand against the small of her back until Greta really settles against her and she can slip her hand out from between her thighs. 

“Holy shit,” Greta laughs against her shoulder. “Thank you for that.”

“Well– um– thank you too,” Carson stutters out, flushing. “For– for–”

“Of course,” she answers, kissing her collarbone. “I had a feeling.” 

“You did?” Carson asks, pulling back to look at her. 

“Mhm.” Greta nods and hums. “It’s my job to know that stuff,” she flirts easily.

“Yeah? Your job?” Carson teases, smiling at her. 

“My job,” Greta agrees, and Carson knows she’s a little orgasm-drunk otherwise Greta would never say what she does next, but it doesn’t matter because it still feels true. “Because you’re mine.” 

Carson shivers, her breath heavy in her chest. She likes it. Being Greta’s. 

It’s uniquely euphoric - belonging to someone who knows her, who sees her for exactly who she is. 

xiii. i’d burn it all to ashes, can’t you see? 

They give people like us a pretty raw deal, so they can kick rocks, Greta says, and Carson holds her hand. They speak of what they believe in, hushed, soft, their hearts beating in perfect time. Finding comfort in the silence and the antidote of at least knowing each other in totality, even if the rest of the world doesn’t. 

Carson hasn’t been comfortable in quiet in so many years. Not since she became a girl. Not since she became a woman. 

Greta makes it comfortable again, makes silence something full of simplicity and sweetness once more. She once thought love was less than this – only somebody who didn’t make you cry, not somebody who made you laugh, only somebody who let you be, but asked for nothing more. A life empty of sadness was enough. 

She lets her mind drift to Charlie, to how he said that he never read her letter. She thinks about her father, pretending he never read his wife’s, either. You love what you know, that’s what Carson was taught, that she and Charlie just made sense, but it doesn’t feel right anymore. It doesn’t feel right to love someone just because he was all she knew. It hasn’t felt right in a long time. 

Recently, Carson has learned to fill her life with other things, to pull her nose from her books and realize that she doesn’t want somebody to die for at all. She doesn’t want to die. She wants to live. To life for herself. A lover only to live for. A lover who would never ask her to fall on her sword. 

The sitting, the blinking, the not blinking, the breathing – they’re only small facts of a life built with another. There’s so much more. So much more she didn’t even know existed. 

Like the way Greta kisses her: delicate and devoted and searching. How Greta kisses her, and Carson sinks into her body. How for the first time, it doesn’t feel wrong. She doesn’t feel wrong – she never feels wrong with Greta. 

Greta holds her tight, a hand against her neck, and Carson’s eyes close easily every time, gripping at Greta’s hips, sliding up against her curves, and God, Greta is a woman. She’s a woman, and Carson loves that about her, how she’s soft everywhere that Carson loves her being soft, how her voice goes high and breathy when Carson slips her tongue into the kiss. 

Greta is a woman, and for the thousandth time, Carson thinks she isn’t, at least not the way people tell her she ought to be, and Greta seems okay with that. More than okay. 

This is what she is. She is nothing more. She is nothing less. 

Sometimes, Carson wishes she could be a woman like Greta, but then she remembers that she is loved because she isn’t. She’s here to catch the pitches, a professional baseball player, and she’s Greta’s. Not much else matters. Or at least, Carson tries not to let anything else matter so much. 

It’s the only way to get through. The only way to go on. And Carson has to go on. She has so much to live for. 

There is a world where things are different. But this is not that world. There is a world where Carson’s body could always feel right. She knows it. A world where she could learn how to sharpen her body’s softest lines into perfect edges, a world where she might belong. Carson hopes to find a way there when it’s quiet out, when Greta lays beside her, adorable and sleepy and so easy to love. Loving Greta is the easiest thing that Carson has ever done. She wishes more people could know. 

So Carson waits on the world to change – being Carson is so often about waiting – and she grows braver with each day that passes, holding her breath for the moment where she and Greta can kiss on a street corner and the city may just keep moving around them. Carson spends so much time holding her breath. It’s easy to forget to breathe when there’s so much else to do for the first time, when there are so many adventures to be had. 

“Hey, lie down with me,” Greta tells her when she catches Carson thinking too loudly one evening, an evening where Jess promised to be out until early morning when she’d wake them and they can spend the whole night together. 

Carson finds it all rare and beautiful and terrible all at the same time – that it’s rare and beautiful to sleep beside the woman she loves. “I just need a minute,” she says, staring down at her choice of pajamas for the night.

For some reason, nothing looks quite right. They’re clothes she’s put on a thousand times, but her body is screaming that the last thing it wants is to be hidden and bound once more, not with Greta, and Carson feels herself trembling out of her skin before she can stop herself. It’s impossible to tell what’s more terrifying: all of the years she’s spent hiding away or the fact that all she wants now is to be seen – to be seen by Greta. And, truthfully, for the world to see her for what she is, for the world to love her too and knowing that it won’t. 

The tears come hot and fast before Carson even feels them prick behind her eyes. The tears come, and she’s shaking, and Greta is catching her up in her hands before Carson can even ask. She never has to ask, feels the way Greta’s hands find her shoulders and never move anywhere else, like Greta knows she feels too soft everywhere else. Greta knows just how to make her feel real. 

“Woah, baby,” Greta says gently. 

Carson is choking out an apology and pressing herself into Greta’s embrace in an instant. 

“Don’t be sorry. Don’t be sorry,” Greta murmurs, kissing the top of her head, and Carson sinks into the way Greta holds her, thinks about how you are only what you are as long as you stay the same. 

That she is something entirely new, now, because she’s not the same as she was. Because she hasn’t been in months. There are no words for it, for what she is, and even as she waits for the world to change, even as she hopes it will, part of her is afraid that there never will be. That people will never understand. 

They can kick rocks. Greta’s voice echoes in her head, as clear as that perfect evening in the kitchen, and Carson knows she’s right. Greta is right about a lot of things. 

“It’s okay,” Greta breathes, swaying them back and forth until Carson is moving with her, her hands fisted in the back of Greta’s robe like a lifeline. “It’s okay.”

And what Carson hears, what Carson knows is that nobody has ever cared for her like this. Nobody has ever seen her so simply, so truly. Nobody has ever even tried to. 

I love you, Carson thinks when she finally looks up at Greta, and Greta just smiles back at her. I love you, she thinks whenever Greta even speaks. Whenever she so much as breathes. I love you. 

And Greta thinks the same. Greta loves her. Loves her for what she is: Coach. Carson. Number 10. The catcher. 

What she is. And what she was before is gone, a figment, lost to the wind and time. 

That weekend, Carson and Greta sneak out for an early morning walk. 

They move hand in hand through the tall, untrimmed grass past the far wall of the practice field, and Carson feels more herself than she ever has. The sun rises over the dewy morning, and Carson knows it – the moment the light hits her just right, the moment where Greta looks at her, and all of the air leaves both of their lungs as they lock eyes. 

It is golden hour, and Carson feels exactly that: golden. Drenched in daylight, she shines, glowing all the way from the inside, warmth dancing under her skin. Euphoria condensed. Joy. 

It hits her so quickly that Carson can’t even breathe, but then Greta’s pushing her behind a tree, kissing her in the broad openness of a wide-awake world, and Carson thinks that this is all more than enough, more than she could have even wished for: a lifetime full of careful happiness, a promise of hope in spite of their loneliness and for the sake of their freedom. 

“I’ll race you home,” Greta whispers, teasing and already taking off, because Carson is still recovering from the kiss and she knows it, her eyes hooded and her legs wobbly beneath her. 

“That’s cheating!” Carson calls, shaking herself out of her reverie and trying to keep up, but Greta has longer legs by a mile, a fact they’re both intimately aware of. 

“You can’t catch me!” Greta taunts, and Carson knows she’s right. Greta has always been faster than her. She doesn’t actually care about winning anyway. 

She’s content to stay a few feet back, to watch the way Greta moves. Such grace. Such beauty. And such joy, too. There was never that set of joy in her shoulders before. Carson is glad to know she put it there. 

About halfway home, Carson’s left shoe comes undone, and she bends down to retie it quickly, knowing she’s never going to live down the fact that she’s already trailing by about half a block. Her fingers no longer fumble with the laces, quick and nimble as she slips the knot through tightly, and when she stands, she catches sight of her reflection faintly in the glass of the newsrack on the street corner where she needs to turn to follow Greta. 

Despite every ounce of effort, Carson can’t help but freeze, noticing the radiance in brown eyes, the quick rise and fall of breath, the cap pulled down tight over hair that’s been trimmed to fall just above shoulder-length. 

In total honesty, Carson doesn’t completely recognize the person staring back. All she knows is that they seem happy.