Anyone who's picked up a baseball—anyone, with no exemptions granted those who revere the game as one of intricacies, of the splay of one's fingers among the 108 stitches that run the seam of every grass-stained ball, of a vocabulary homespun and sprawling and, for all that, precise, of that yawning half-inch of air as the pitcher's foot leaves the mound, space enough for a would-be thief to bolt from first–has experienced the urge to simply fling it with all their might. To just chuck it, feel that inward lurch and wake the next day with the memory of the throw aching in their arm. Forget form, forget where it'll land.

Alan, standing at the doorstep, is still. And yet he's taking a hop step, arm drawing back, eyes flinching shut in anticipation of the release. Intent on seeing how many neighbors' fences he can clear.

It's this momentum that causes him to falter, if only momentarily. His gaze skims over Mycroft—not incurious but impersonal. “I won't be a minute,” he says, mustering his voice as he enters the house.