Chapter Text
****
[day 1]
Miyuki barely catches the high fastball that Furuya pitches, and he has to blink a couple of times to collect himself. He must’ve blanked out for a bit there, which worries him because he never loses focus when he plays baseball; practice or not.
It must’ve been Sawamura’s dumb face - the first year was grinning at something Chris was telling him and Miyuki must have glanced over in their direction right before Furuya was going to pitch…
“Furuya!” Miyuki calls out. “Why don’t you go take a water break?”
The pitcher doesn’t move an inch and Miyuki mutters, “Oy, oy, don’t ignore me.” In a louder voice he says, “A quick drink, that’s all! Then you can pitch as much as you want!”
Furuya wipes his foreheard before he nods curtly, slowly exiting the bullpen as Miyuki rises from his position.
Well, it was true that Furuya needed a water break, but there was an ulterior motive behind the suggestion… If he were to be completely honest with himself, Miyuki wanted to watch Sawamura pitch. It’s actually very interesting to watch Sawamura pitch from an angle other than from a crouch in front of him.
From where he stands, Miyuki can properly see Sawamura in action - the way he winds up, glove overhead as he lifts his leg high, bringing his left arm behind him before fluidly snapping it forward; bringing his leg down and delivering a four seamer from that odd release point.
Incredible.
“Nice ball!” Chris says after he catches the pitch. He sees Sawamura beam, and he shifts his gaze to Miyuki. Chris chuckles to himself - the second year is wearing an expression that screamed adoration.
“How about you get some water too, Sawamura,” Chris suggests.
“I’m fine, Chris-senpai!” Sawamura insists with an exaggerated shake of his head. “I brought a water bottle!”
The catcher looks around. “Where is it?”
“Huh?” Sawamura’s eyes dart all around the bullpen, but there’s no water bottle in sight. Suddenly he remembers. “Ugh! I must’ve left it in the equipment room when I went to get the baseballs at the beginning of practice!”
“Okay, then go get it.”
“I will!”
Miyuki watches the energetic pitcher dash off, the bullpen door slamming behind him. He notices that Chris is looking at him as he rises from the crouch, an eyebrow clearly raised from behind the facemask.
“I think I’ll take a water break too,” Miyuki tells Chris. Miyuki doesn’t want to infer what Chris is thinking right now, and he hurries off.
Chris just shakes his head slightly. ‘He does realize it himself, doesn’t he?’ He sighs. ‘No… he's burying his feelings.’
*
Miyuki really shouldn’t be all that surprised that Sawamura has almost reached the equipment room, even though he left less than a minute after him.
There’s a moment, as Miyuki’s walking, that he wonders, ‘What am I doing…? Following Sawamura like this…’ But he quickly reminds himself that, no, he’s not following Sawamura, he’s just getting a drink of water. Just taking the scenic route, that’s all.
As he approaches, he hears a loud shout.
“Furuya! What are you doing here?!”
Miyuki leans against the outerwall beside the doorway, out of sight. He strains to hear Furuya’s response.
“I’m taking a water break.”
“No! You’re taking a nap!!”
“…You’re mistaken.”
Miyuki snickers at the exchange. He hears Sawamura mutter a retort and then there’s the sound of clunky footsteps, cleats clacking against the hard floor, as he moves around the room, probably looking for where he had left his water bottle. Miyuki can even hear the noisy way Sawamura chugs his water - shit, like take some time to breathe.
There’s an ‘ahh!’ once Sawamura’s thirst is quenched, then, “Why are you looking at me like that, Furuya?”
‘Looking at him like what?’ Miyuki wonders, and he peeks into the room. He sees Furuya sitting with his feet outstretched on an exercise bench, leaning back on the palms of his hands with his cap in his lap. He’s looking up at Sawamura with half-lidded eyes and parted lips…
That expression… it kind of makes Miyuki agitated? Like, why are you looking at Sawamura like that?
Miyuki sees Sawamura hold out his half-full water bottle to Furuya, the lefty looking off to the side as he offers it to him. “Yeah, okay, you can have some of my water.”
When Furuya takes the bottle from Sawamura, their fingers brush, and Miyuki feels his body move of its own accord as Furuya raises the bottle to his lips.
“Oy!”
The sudden noise startles the pitchers, both snapping their attention to the doorway.
“Miyuki-senpai?”
“Miyuki?!”
The catcher places his hands on his hips. “You idiots are taking too long! And Furuya, it’s unsanitary to drink from someone else’s bottle. Especially Sawamura’s.”
“Hah? What do you mean ‘especially’ mine?! Are you calling me unsanitary??”
Furuya hands the bottle back to Sawamura who’s glaring at Miyuki.
“Sorry,” Furuya says simply. “I just didn’t want to get up to go to the fountain…”
“…One day you’ll die of dehydration.”
*
[meanwhile]
“Hey, Ryou-san - look.”
Ryousuke and Kuramochi had graciously volunteered to fetch some equipment for situational drills since the first years were busy running laps around the field, and they happened to spot a certain catcher right outside the equipment room.
“Suspicious,” Ryou says, arching a brow as they keep their distance from Miyuki, the two observing his odd behaviour.
Sawamura’s voice rings out: “Furuya! What are you doing here?!” Then there’s something about a water bottle and suddenly Miyuki ducks into the room.
The infielders exchange looks.
“Any inferences?” Ryou grins.
“Hyaha, yours is the same as mine,” Kuramochi laughs knowingly. “Miyuki definitely intervened to stop an indirect kiss between Furuya and Sawamura.”
Ryou nods as he chuckles. “He really does have it bad, huh.”
*
[day 2]
Today’s practice is coming to a close and now it’s time for cooldown.
“Sawamura, I’ll help you with your cooldown stretches,” Chris says as he pulls off his catcher’s mask. An eager Sawamura resembles a dog wagging its tail as he accepts the offer.
“Chris-san!” Miyuki calls out. “Aren’t you going to be late for physio? Don’t worry about that idiot, I’ll help him stretch.”
“It’s okay, Miyuki,” the third year replies with a tiny smile. “My appointment had to be cancelled, so it’s been rescheduled as a double session on the weekend.”
“Oh, alright.” Miyuki tries to hide his dismay.
He ends up helping Furuya who’s basically a rag doll, what with the way he lets Miyuki move his long limbs. Miyuki leans into Furuya’s back as the pitcher tries to touch his toes with both hands, and Miyuki looks off to his left, watching Chris-san help Sawamura stretch.
Sawamura’s got a dopey grin on his face and Miyuki can’t help but feel irritated for some reason.
‘Why are you so stupidly happy?’ Miyuki thinks begrudgingly. He grows increasingly cranky as he watches Chris push down on Sawamura’s knees in butterfly; Chris holding Sawamura’s shoulder as he pulls his arm behind him; Sawamura laughing when Chris holds his waist to help him balance while he does one-legged static torso twists…
“Miyuki-senpai… you’re hurting me.”
Miyuki registers Furuya’s strained voice and realizes he’s pressing down on Furuya’s back with way too much strength - the poor first year is almost completely folded over, nose to knees.
“That means you need to stretch more if you can’t handle this much,” Miyuki tells him, but he backs off because, yeah, he probably was hurting him, and it’s only cooldown stretching after all.
His eyes dart back to Chris and Sawamura, and Furuya sighs as he subjects himself to an excessive round of shoulder stretches.
*
[day 3]
Kuramochi snickers to himself as he makes his way back to his dorm from the bath. Today, Miyuki had ‘scolded’ Sawamura for acting too familiar with Tetsu-san; the first stringers had to hold themselves back from groaning at the sight and Jun-san had let out an especially loud sigh of exasperation. Kuramochi has to bite down on his tongue to hold his laughter in when he remembers Ryou-san muttering, “Just confess already.”
‘Miyuki’s getting worse and worse,’ Kuramochi thinks as he reaches his dorm.
He enters his room and sees Sawamura laying on his stomach, right smack in the middle of the room. His smiling face is illuminated by his cellphone and Kuramochi slants his eyes.
“TEXTING WAKANA HUH?!”
Sawamura looks up from his phone right when Kuramochi jumps on his back, knocking all the wind out of him.
“I’m not! I’m not!!” the first year wheezes as Kuramochi sits on him, arm wrapped around his neck. Kuramochi leans forward, pressing his cheek against Sawamura’s to get a good look at the cellphone screen.
“LIAR!” Kuramochi screeches.
“What?!” Sawamura blinks at the screen - he can’t believe this! “She must’ve just sent me that text right now! I wasn’t talking to her before, I swear!!”
The shortstop hesitates as he considers this possibility and Sawamura sees his chance. He swiftly ducks his chin under Kuramochi’s arm and tries to wiggle out from under him, but Kuramochi recovers, grabbing Sawamura by the shoulders and roughly pushing him back down, and this time they’re face to face.
At that instant, the door swings open and there’s a light-hearted, “Yo I was-” followed by silence; the roommates look up to see a stunned Miyuki.
Kuramochi quickly assesses the situation within the 0.8 seconds that Miyuki is frozen: Kuramochi shirtless + on top of Sawamura = … Well it’s obviously the typical physical quarrel between the two, but Kuramochi takes Miyuki’s skewed perspective into account and… shit.
Kuramochi practically jumps off the pitcher but Sawamura’s unfazed by the situation - rather, Sawamura’s surprised that Kuramochi had given him mercy so quickly.
“What are you two doing?” Miyuki finally says.
‘That tone of voice… he’s mad… and definitely not thinking logically,’ Kuramochi thinks. He tries to dissolve the tension with a little laugh.
“What do you mean? I was just teaching this idiot a lesson.”
“Naked?”
“What?” Kuramochi knows he’s shirtless - not completely nude for goodness sake. He realizes that he’d wrapped a towel around his waist after his bath and he immediately rips it off to reveal that he’s wearing shorts underneath.
“You’re crazy,” Kuramochi tells Miyuki with a shake of his head. The shortstop’s certain that his shorts were peeking out from under the towel as well. He flippantly adds, “And who in their right mind would want to be naked on top of Sawamura?”
Kuramochi can’t help but smirk when Miyuki falls silent and Sawamura’s face turns red. The pitcher splutters incoherent nonsense as he picks himself off the floor.
Miyuki does not like the way Kuramochi’s looking at him at all, and he scratches the back of his neck, letting out a little nervous chuckle, no retort springing to his tongue for once.
“Why are you here anyway?” Kuramochi asks, folding his arms across his chest. As hilarious as it is to actually embarrass Miyuki, it's very odd to see the latter like that. How pitiful it must be for such a witty guy to be so oblivious of his own feelings, having to subconsciously act out like a jealous boyfriend.
The catcher can’t quite remember why he’d decided to come to their dorm - Kuramochi reads the expression on his face and almost rolls his eyes.
“Obviously came to see Sawamura,” Kuramochi says under his breath. Miyuki shoots him a puzzled look, then tells him to speak up, and Kuramochi kicks him lightly.
“Just get out then!”
Miyuki actually complies and the shortstop lets out a deep breath, feeling a slight headache coming on.
Sawamura taps him on the shoulder. “Are you OK?”
Kuramochi whips around, lifting Sawamura up by his collar. “YOU’RE ACTUALLY AN IDIOT, DID YOU KNOW THAT?!”
“WHAAA?!”
*
[day 4]
“Ugh! I can’t take it anymore!” Kuramochi tries to twist his bat into the ground in a futile attempt at ridding his annoyance. He had just finished telling Ryou and Haruichi about what had happened last night - Miyuki getting the wrong idea about him and Sawamura. “Like come on! Miyuki’s seriously losing it if he thought that I was putting the moves on that idiot!”
Ryou’s lips curve upward. “Pun intended?”
Kuramochi glares at the third year and Haruichi has to stifle a giggle.
“Relax,” Ryou says but he sees that Kuramochi’s still irritable. He tosses a ball to Haruichi who swings his bat, hitting the ball into the net.
It’s after hours’ practice and the three were taking turns with hitting into the net. The Kominatos were practicing first on their own and Kuramochi happened upon them and joined their session.
Their conversation ended up moving from batting techniques to the pressing issue of Miyuki Kazuya’s possessiveness.
“I mean, Miyuki’s always kind of been inclined to Sawamura, you know?” Kuramochi says. “But this past week, he’s been completely removed from reality! Fucking delusional!”
“Mhm,” Ryou agrees, tossing another ball to his brother. “I think it’s even starting to affect his baseball performance… remember what happened earlier today? He got distracted during situational drills and caused a broken play.”
The second year groans, remembering. “Shit, it’s even gotten to the point where it interferes with baseball, huh.” Kuramochi knows how important baseball is to Miyuki… the bastard is utterly obsessed. So if he’s getting muddled up because of some stupid crush, it might be a bigger deal that he’d originally thought.
“It’s time we got involved,” Ryou says. Kuramochi nods vigorously as Haruichi hits another toss.
“But how..?”
“Okay, my thirty hits are up.”
Ryou and Kuramochi grin at each other before turning to Haruichi.
“W-Why are you guys looking at me like that..?”
*
[day 5]
“No matter what, stick to the plan,” Kuramochi tells the pink-haired first year. Almost the whole first string team is gathered outside Kuramochi’s dorm, save for, of course, Sawamura (currently inside the room, alone) and Miyuki (having a bath, alone).
Kuramochi and Ryousuke had gone over the plan with Haruichi yesterday, and tonight they were going to implement it. They divulged the details to the rest of the first string, figuring that they should know that they were doing something about the Miyuki problem. Jun especially believed the plan would work for some reason. In any case, everyone agreed that something had to be done about Miyuki.
“But why do I have to do this?” Haruichi asks. “Sawamura actually-”
“You’re Sawamura’s closest friend,” Kuramochi answers with a shrug, cutting off Haruichi’s sentence.
“Also you’re probably the cutest,” Tetsu-san inputs. Haruichi flushes with colour as everyone laughs, agreeing.
“I-I don’t think I can do it after all,” Haruichi says, shoulders hunching. His brother pats him on the shoulder. “It would be better if instead-”
“Just remember the pointers I gave you yesterday,” Ryou tells him. “You’ll be fine.”
Haruichi sighs, giving up on trying to tell everyone his alternate plan. He figures he might as well go along with it; also, he feels a little reassured thanks to his brother’s words. “So embarrassing…”
“It’s for the good of the team,” Tetsu says gravely, his right hand balled up in a fist over his heart.
Jun snorts before nudging him. “Oy, Tetsu, it’s getting late - shouldn’t you be getting home?”
The captain shakes his head. “There’s no way I’m missing this. You’ll let me sleep over, won’t you?”
“Yeah sure,” Jun replies nonchalantly, but Kuramochi sees the tips of his ears turn red. The shortstop wrinkles his nose - thank goodness these two have their shit worked out.
“Okay, well Miyuki should be finishing up his bath around now,” Kuramochi says. “I’ll go get him - you guys get ready!”
The team nods as Kuramochi heads off to the bath to intercept Miyuki.
*
He’s toweling off his hair when he hears someone - oh it’s Kuramochi - call his name.
“What do you want?” Miyuki asks as he puts his glasses on. He’s already changed and was planning to go back to his room to sleep early for once - he’s had a rather exhausting day.
“I was looking for you!”
Miyuki narrows his eyes slightly. That’s not really an answer to his question but whatever. “Why..?”
Kuramochi smiles his kindest smile - Miyuki has every right to be suspicious of his behaviour. “Well, we’re having a team gaming tournament and we’ve got an odd number so I came to get you.”
Miyuki is about to decline but instead he asks, “who’s playing?”
Kuramochi keeps a poker face as he tries to be casual. “Oh, well Masuko, Nori, Miyauchi and Tanba-san are going to be there, but just as spectators though. Me, Ryou-san, Jun-san, Tetsu-san, Furuya, Haruichi, and Sawamura will be playing.”
“Hmm... Okay fine, I’ll help you out since you need another player.”
Miyuki’s acting nonchalant and calm, but Kuramochi sees right though the facade - after all, Kuramochi was the first person to notice Miyuki’s odd behaviour in the very beginning when Miyuki was actually trying to be careful, before he started making mistakes because he let his buried emotions overcome him.
‘He’s totally hoping to get paired with Sawamura,’ Kuramochi thinks as he looks at Miyuki with his peripheral vision as they make their way to the dorm. He wants to shake his head. ‘Unbelievable.’
They finally arrive and enter, instantly greeted by the lively environment - Kawakami is profusely apologizing to Masuko for bumping into him and causing him to drop his pudding; Jun-san and Tetsu-san are arguing over who gets to use the player one controller; Ryou-san gives a dozing Furuya a karate chop to the head to wake him up; Miyauchi is yelling at Jun-san to stop shouting so loudly before prodding Tanba with an elbow to get his attention because he’s looking off to the right with a subtle blush in his cheeks. Miyuki follows Tanba-san’s line of vision to see Sawamura sitting on his bunk (honestly, Miyuki thought he’d hear the pitcher before seeing him). Then he sees why Sawamura’s so quiet.
The younger Kominato brother has his head in Sawamura’s lap, the two talking softly about something. Sawamura’s got that dopey grin on his face again, his cheeks slightly pinkening when Haruichi lifts a hand to touch the pitcher’s chest.
Kuramochi sees Miyuki begin to move towards the first years with a dark look in his eye.
‘Not so fast, buddy...’ He links his arms with the catcher to stop him, grabbing his attention.
“Ah, it looks like everyone’s already partnered up,” Kuramochi says airily, carefully watching Miyuki’s expression. “Ryou-san and Furuya, Jun-san and Tetsu-san, Haruichi and Sawamura…”
“Yeah, I can see that.”
Touchy. Kuramochi surpresses a grin. The plan’s in motion.
**