Archive of Our Own

It was like the world stopped moving.

That was the only analogy Eijun felt capable of making to encompass the way they’d all been moving forward, ever forward, and then suddenly...

Stopped. Before any of them were ready.

Where did they go from here? Where did he go from here? This had been the seniors’ last chance. It wasn’t fair that he didn’t get to go further with all of them.

The area under his eyes had long since chapped raw, so that he couldn’t even bear to touch it anymore. Still, his tears continued unabated.

The worst part was that no one had said anything to him. No one had even looked at him. Kuramochi had taken off as almost as soon as they arrived back to the room, and it was all Eijun could do to drag himself to the bath and then back to curl up into a miserable ball under his blankets.

It would have been better if they yelled, he thought. It couldn’t possibly have hurt worse than this.

After a while, his mind settled into a more bearable numbness, though he still couldn’t help going over every minute, examining his mistakes and thinking up things he could have done differently if he’d known.

There was a soft knock on the door. Eijun waited to see if they’d go away, but after a moment there was another knock, this time more insistent.

Eijun wondered if someone had finally remembered they were supposed to be angry with him.

He got up and opened the door, noting with some surprise that it was dark out. How long had he been there by himself? It hadn’t seemed like that long.

When Eijun finally managed to process who was actually standing at his door, he flinched backward involuntarily.

Miyuki was the last person he wanted to see.

"Hey," Miyuki said, not seeming to have noticed Eijun’s reaction. He brushed past, into the room without waiting for an invitation.

He looked...tired. More tired than Eijun had ever seen him, but also restless.

"As your catcher I should probably offer you some words of comfort, about you doing a good job despite the unbelievable pressure you were under, and how none of this was your fault, but..." Miyuki said.

Here it came. Eijun squeezed his eyes shut. Of all people, why did it have to be him? Eijun thought he’d be able to take this from just about anyone else, but this was going to be too much right now, he knew it. Miyuki knew how to make words into weapons better than anyone Eijun knew, and right now he was going to use them to lay him open.

"But I don’t want to be a catcher right now. As your boyfriend I want to apologize for not noticing how stressed you were and therefore not taking steps to relieve it."

Wait, what?

Eijun’s eyes popped open and he stared.

"Can you forgive me for that, Eijun?" Miyuki was looking at him like he was just as lost as Eijun felt.

"Didn’t you come here to yell at me?" he asked finally.

"What? No, I--Eijun, why would you think I’d yell at you? No one blames you, Eijun." He looked around, seeming to finally notice the dimness and the mussed bed. He scowled, and said sharply, "Is that what you’ve been doing here? Blaming yourself?"

Eijun looked away. "I screwed up. I didn’t--"

"Everyone screwed up," Miyuki interrupted. "Everyone made mistakes. Don’t you dare take all the responsibility on yourself, that’s not fair to you or the rest of us."

To Eijun’s horror he felt tears gathering in his eyes again. He hadn’t thought he had any left but apparently he’d been wrong.

"I let everyone down," he choked.

"Eijun," and suddenly there were hands on his shoulders, holding on tightly, almost painfully. "We failed. It’s disappointing, and it’s awful, but it happens. You can’t take every failure so personally or you’ll never be able to stand up under all that pressure. We need you to be strong enough to shake this off. Do you understand?"

Eijun nodded. "Not yet though, okay?" he said. He didn’t think he could just magically feel better.

Miyuki sighed. "Of course not. It’ll take some time." He shook lightly, and Eijun felt like he rattled. "But no more moping in the dark all by yourself okay? Everyone’s really disappointed and it’s better to be around people."

"But I’m tired," Eijun protested petulantly. He just didn't feel up to facing everyone right then.

Miyuki rubbed his face, displacing his glasses. "So am I, actually," he admitted. He seemed to hesitate before continuing. "I should probably go find out how the others are doing, but... Mind if I crash with you for a while?"

"You came to me first?" Eijun asked curiously.

"Of course. Coach wanted to talk for a while." Miyuki crawled into Eijun’s bunk throwing empty water bottles and magazines as they crunched under him--"Do you ever clean down here?"--and settled. He took off his glasses and tucked them up into one of the slats of the top bunk.

Silence.

"Are you coming or what?" Miyuki said, flapping the blanket impatiently.

"Uh, Miyuki, don’t take this the wrong way but--"

"I don’t want to do anything. I just want to sleep."

Oh.

Eijun sat on the edge of the bed and tried to lie down without any of their body parts touching. This was just too awkward. Why was it so different when they weren't doing something?

Miyuki huffed with annoyance, reached over and pulled Eijun back so they were spooned together. He arranged their limbs until they were, apparently, to his satisfaction. Then he sighed and rested his forehead against Eijun’s neck. "Just sleep, Sawamura."

To Eijun’s surprise, he did.

The picture Kuramochi took when he eventually came back to the room instantly became everyone’s mobile phone wallpaper for several weeks afterward. Really, if teasing them cheered everyone up a little, Miyuki didn't see anything wrong with it.

Eijun disagreed as loudly and as often as possible, but no one paid him any mind of course.