No spoilers for any aired episodes, I don't think.

"Just take the ball and throw it where you want to. Throw strikes. Home plate don't move."
— Satchel Paige

Lawson drops down four fingers, wiggles them, then cycles through a series of signs that don't mean anything. Then four fingers again.

Change-up.

Ginny shakes him off.

Lawson grits his teeth—she can't see his mouth behind the leather padding in his mask but she sees his jaw clench—and then he runs through the signs again. Again, four fingers for the changeup. He wiggles his fingers, then holds his glove low over the dirt. He wants her to bury it. There's a man on second; if Lawson can't handle the pitch in the dirt, the baserunner will all but walk to third. And there's no way on hell she's throwing a screwball with a guy on second.

Ginny rolls the ball in her hand, callused fingertips running along the seams. She wants to throw the fastball—it's the only pitch in her repertoire she feels comfortable throwing right now—and she knows he knows she wants to throw the fastball.

Hell, Upton probably knows too.

Finally, Lawson throws up his hands and gets out of his crouch. He starts the long slow trudge from home plate to the mound, shiny plastic shinguards clacking against his shins.

"Stop shaking me off," he's saying before he even reaches the mound.

"I don't have a feel for the change," Ginny says, clapping her glove over her mouth.

She's thrown a few change-ups already. One of them went about four hundred and fifty-six feet to dead center. The voice in the back of her mind—that sounds alarmingly like her dad—told her she was lucky it was just a solo shot. So, at least there's that.

"You'll never get a feel for it if you just shelve it," Lawson points out reasonably.

"Or I'll just keep giving up five hundred foot bombs to Justin fucking Upton," Ginny mutters through her mitt.

"It wasn't five hundred. Four hundred sixty, maybe?" Lawson says, tilting his head and lifting his eyebrows at her. "Four hundred seventy five?"

"Fuck off, Lawson," Ginny says, without much heat.

"They're gonna start sitting on your slower-than-slow fastball if you don't throw anything else," Lawson says. "And that trick pitch of yours's useless too if you don't put anything else in the back of their minds."

Ginny huffs an unhappy sigh. Lawson taps her in the chest with his glove and starts back for home plate. They both know he's won this round.

Lawson settles back in his familiar crouch at home plate. Flashes four fingers, wiggles them between his thighs. Glove held low, over the dirt.

Ginny stares in. Lawson holds the glove in place, over the dirt, as if imploring her to just trust him. Imploring her to trust that if it's in the dirt he'll smother it. If it gets away he'll chase it down.

She just needs to trust him.

Upton digs in, waggles his bat over his shoulder. Waiting.

Ginny shakes her head once. Lawson goes through the signs again, repeats the call for a change-up.

She nods and rocks back. Glances for a moment at the runner on second who dances off the base, almost daring her into making a mistake.

Ginny lunges forward, arm slinging through the air, aiming for the center of Lawson's dusty brown mitt.