Title: Improvised Linchpin
Fandom: Blaseball
Characters: Megan Ito, Wilkerson Ramos.
Rating: General audiences
Length: 704 words.
Content notes: None.
Author notes: Takes place sometime after season C and before season E.
Summary: It was just Wilkerson’s luck that the one time she got paired up with Megan their truck would break down.


It was just Wilkerson’s luck that the one time she got paired up with Megan their truck would break down.
She’s handy enough when it comes to vehicles, Wilkerson has changed her fair share of tires and oil, but anything more complex than that was left to the mechanics. Especially after her not-so-brief stint on the artists, she still feels a bit rusty. Megan, on the other hand, seems to be a jack of all trades. Or, at the very least, attempting very hard to be such.
This leads to her standing out in the sun, watching as Megan works under the car in a way that suspiciously looks akin to hotwiring a vehicle. Not that Wilkerson would know. She’s never hotwired a car before.
They don’t even have any of the proper tools on them, since, again, Wilkerson doesn’t know enough for them to have a use. Megan’s been making use of whatever they had on hand, which apparently includes an entire lock-picking kit.
Just as Wilkerson’s considering how far the nearest convenience store is, Megan wiggles out from under the car. They’re covered in oil and black gunk from the waist up.
“Do you have a metal spoon?” They ask, not even bothering to sit up all the way.
Wilkerson does. She also knows that Megan knows she does, as she used it to eat the pudding she brought with her as a snack a handful of hours ago. She sighs and climbs back into the hot car to fetch her lunchbox.
Her radio, which was left next to the lunch box, starts up with a hiss that slowly forms into The Dispatcher’s disjointed voice.
“Can I. I Tell some. One. To pick you. You up?”
“No!” Megan hollers from outside.
Wilkerson sighs and pats the radio with her sticky, sweaty hand. “It’s alright Dispatcher, maybe in a bit.”
The radio hums into silence once again. Wilkerson closes her lunchbox, spoon secure in hand, and clambers out of the heat death trap her vehicle has become.
Megan holds out their hand and she pauses.
“Will I get this back?”
Megan grins up at them and Wilkerson can feel the slow dip of sweat on her neck.
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“On if I need new silverware or not!”
They bark out a laugh as they take the spoon and start sliding under the truck again. Wilkerson can’t tell if they’re joking. She can imagine it clearly, Megan’s silverware drawer filled with miscellaneous cutlery that looks nothing like each other. All stolen from different sets. Do they even have a silverware drawer? They mostly live in hotels as far as Wilkerson can tell. Maybe. The hazy way her brain gets from standing out in the sun for so long is making it a bit hard for her to think.
Curse her terrible affinity for getting overheated. She wants to take a nap.
Megan crawls out from under the truck a while later, spoon mysteriously missing from sight and hands ten times dirtier. Wilkerson doesn’t get the chance to ask them what they’re doing before they’re clambering into the front seat and turning on the vehicle with the keys that Wilkerson could have sworn was in her back pocket just a second ago.
The truck rumbles, which, while better than the spluttering that happened before, is still somewhat concerning. It smooths out to the typical hum of machinery before there's a thunk, followed by a clattering noise that sounds suspiciously like a spoon dropping onto the asphalt, and the truck falls silent.
Megan throws their hands up and wails wordlessly.
The Dispatcher asks again if they can tell someone to pick them up, and Wilkerson is able to say yes before Megan, too absorbed in their distraught, can argue about it.
“It’s the principle of it!” Megan argues anyways, their face held in their oil-covered hands. “I was so close!”
Wilkerson pats them on the back since they do seem to be somewhat upset by their failure. “Yeah, well, I rather not stay out in the sun any longer. You can ask the mechanic to wait until after the game to fix it if you really want to have another go at it.”
Megan groans.