Chapter Text
Kazuya doesn't like mornings. He's always preferred afternoon and evening practices. Lucky for him, college baseball calls for more of the later, with morning practices only three times a week: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
Unlucky for him, it doesn't matter because he has an 8:00 AM class on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
No, Kazuya is not one of the overachievers who deliberately schedules all of their classes as early as possible to devote the rest of their day to studying. If he could sleep until noon, he absolutely, unequivocally would. But he also can't start skipping; he has to maintain a certain GPA to stay on the team and keep his sports scholarship. He can't claim to love all of his classes--especially the basic Japanese history course that he put off taking last year and is only offered in the fall and that filled up so quickly that Kazuya only snagged one of the last seats in the 8:00 AM section--but he's only a sophomore and he can't succumb to apathy this soon. He needs this class to finish off his gen ed requirements, and then he can move on to more major-specific classes.
There are only two comforts to be had:
- He had felt no compunctions over registering for his economic statistics class at 10:00 AM on Tuesdays and Thursdays, since he'd already be up and running around.
- Kuramochi is in the same shitty excuse for a boat.
Kuramochi Youichi is a friend and former Seidou teammate. He is also a current teammate on Waseda’s first string and probably the only reason Kazuya makes it to half of his history classes, given that they live four doors apart and that Kuramochi is a very noisy and therefore very good alarm clock. Kazuya returns the favor by elbowing him awake during the most tedious parts of lecture. After class ends at 9:20 AM, it has become customary for the two of them to grab coffee and/or pastries at the shop sandwiched between the history building and an administrative office.
At 9:34 AM on a Thursday in mid-September, that's exactly where they are. Kuramochi has spread his astronomy homework across the table, but he's presently absorbed in licking raspberry jam off of his fingers and covering the papers with a layer of crumbs. Kazuya has his nose buried in milk-sweetened coffee, breathing carefully in-and-out as if the smell alone will give him energy. They don't talk much; talking is for more reasonable times of the day. When they do, it's usually to bitch.
"How's your roommate?” Kazuya finally asks. “Uh, what’s his name--Akaashi. Still weird?"
" He’s not weird , it’s his boyfriend." Kuramochi grimaces. "He's so goddamn loud and energetic. And he has these crazy mood swings at the drop of a fucking hat. Akaashi's pretty good at calming him down, but he still ends up going along with most of his weird shitty plans. That somehow I get roped into, because I'm apparently the only one with any good fucking sense between me, my roommate, and my roommate's weird fucking boyfriend."
"Oh?" Kazuya raises an eyebrow. "Keeps life interesting, I guess." He takes a sip of his drink, which is really damn good today. It both smells and tastes like the barista added something new. Cinnamon, maybe.
"It's not interesting to get dragged out of bed at two in the morning to buy a waffle iron," Kuramochi grumbles. "I have things to do other than babysitting idiots."
Kazuya snickers. "Like what? Playing video games and sleeping through practice?”
His teammate rolls his eyes. “I don’t need to hear that from you, asshole.”
"Uh huh."
"What the fuck, uh huh, you’d never get to class on time without me. And you were always late to morning practice in high school, especially when we were third years.”
"Practice doesn’t start until the captain arrives, so I was never really late,” Kazuya chirps, waving a hand over the table in a gesture of nonchalance.
Kuramochi smacks it out of the air. " That’s not how it works --ugh, being your vice-captain was hell. I should’ve gotten financial compensation.”
“So dramatic,” Kazuya says, laughing. “Don’t lie to yourself. Your roommate and his weird boyfriend are the most excitement you’ve had since we retired from high school baseball.”
“It’s true that college is more boring than I thought it’d be,” Kuramochi concedes.
“Yeah, where are the parties? Where are the scandals? Are we not getting the right memos?”
A snort. “That’s not the issue. We could definitely do all that stuff if we wanted to. We’re just baseball-obsessed freaks, is all.”
“Maybe you’re a baseball-obsessed freak, but I for one love embracing a healthy balance between sports and the rest of life.”
Kuramochi levels him with a glare until Kazuya breaks into another fit of laughter. Finally his friend cracks a small, begrudging smile and rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “Yeah, right. You’re the worst of us in literally every way.”
There's a lull in conversation wherein Kuramochi inhales the last of his pastry and Kazuya idly scrolls through emails on his phone.
"What about your roommate? Uh...Izuki?"
"Iwaizumi. He's better than Shiozaki, doesn't leave his goddamn socks all over the floor. Seems like the reliable type."
"Sounds nice."
"Yeah." It's Kazuya's turn to grimace. "He does have this childhood best friend that’s annoying as hell, though. Some smartass hotshot volleyball player at Todai. He’s professionally obnoxious.”
“Wow, that’s not familiar at all.”
Kazuya grins. “It can’t be helped if some people don’t wear ‘handsome-genius-athelete’ as well as I do, Youichi-kun.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
Kazuya shrugs. “I guess it's not that bad. He's not around much.”
The conversation turns, as it always does, to baseball: the ins and outs of weekly practices and weekend games, their predictions of the upcoming fall tournament, and their assessments of the new club members. The freshmen include a few Seidou graduates: Kaneda Tadahiro, Nakano Kuseki, and most prominently, Kominato Haruichi, Kuramochi's last high school partner in double plays.
“Seidou’s Keystone Combo of Koshien fame, back together. You excited?”
“Hell yeah. Me and Haruichi kicked some major ass at the last summer tournament. The team's gonna have such a strong defense this year if he makes it to first string.”
“We both only just made first string, so I wouldn’t count on it.”
“Haruichi’s a goddamn menace of a pinch hitter. Besides, Kitahara-san just quit. I wouldn’t be surprised if Haruichi is his replacement.”
Kazuya's eyebrows raise. “So he is quitting?”
“I mean, with the way he fucked up his shoulder, he’d be out for the fall anyway."
Kazuya doesn't really know what to say to that. "Oh."
"And as a senior, he’s really getting into his research, so it’s not like he’s not busy. And he's applying to grad school, too.”
"What's he studying again?"
"Neuroscience or some shit."
It's a recurrent and unpleasant realization for Kazuya that not all roads end in baseball. His discomfort is hard to describe; he objectively knows that the teammates that retire from baseball due to injuries or career plans or whatever go on to live fulfilling lives. Subjectively, baseball is the only thing that kept Kazuya from going crazy when his mom left. The idea of quitting due to an injury, or not being recruited to a professional team, or--god forbid-- boredom, is quite frankly terrifying. Kazuya really doesn't have any idea of what he would do if he wasn't playing baseball.
Some days this uncertainty doesn't matter. Some days his thighs begin to cramp after hours of crouching in pitching practice and his hair is sweat-soaked and clumping under his helmet and his hands are rough and bumpy with calluses and Kazuya feels immortal, breathing hard under a bright blue sky. This uncertainty doesn't matter because it doesn't exist. Kazuya has always played baseball, and he always will .
It doesn't exist until it does , when Kazuya pulls a muscle. When Kazuya sprained his ankle last winter. When Kazuya likes his classes and reads articles on international economic policy for fun . When Kazuya wishes he had more than two friends after a year in university, one of whom he knew from Seidou and both of whom are teammates. When Kazuya, despite a general dislike of parties and crowds and such things, begins to wonder if he's missing out on anything. When baseball doesn't feel like the total refuge it used to be when Kazuya was small and his dad wasn't home from work for hours and hours and his mom wasn't home at all. When baseball isn't...well, isn't enough.
But he doesn’t say any of this. These things don’t need to be said. Knowing Kuramochi, he’s likely noticed Kazuya’s unease and half-surmised the cause. All that’s left to do is smirk like it can’t bother him.
It's 9:51 AM when Kazuya stands to leave. Kuramochi's next class isn't until 11:30 AM, so he usually lingers to make some headway on his homework while Kazuya goes to his economic statistics class. They say their goodbyes, Kazuya pops his earbuds in, and off he goes.
He's literally three or four meters away from the doors to the lecture hall when his phone beeps a notification. It's an email from his statistics professor, who apologizes for the brief notice but is cancelling her class for the day due to some last-minute emergency. Kazuya is annoyed for approximately two seconds, and then relieved. And then annoyed again, because his next class isn't until 1:00 PM and it's too early for lunch. He should probably find somewhere comfortable to build his usual nest of textbooks and papers and start writing the two-page essay on the reading assignment from the history class. Probably.
Or he could take a nap using a pile of notebooks as a pillow. Or he could read sports articles. If he gets distracted, that’s fine too.
The statistics class is in the chemistry building, which has a few larger lecture halls regularly loaned out for bigger non-chemistry courses. Kazuya wanders around the halls until he finds what he’s looking for: a door with a plaque denoting its room the 'Chemistry Library.’
There is an enormous undergraduate library only a few buildings away, but it's always crowded and not as suited for activities necessitating quiet like napping or studying. For this reason, Kazuya occasionally likes burrowing away in one of the smaller, subject-specific libraries, like mathematics or agricultural studies, which are generally less loud. The library for chemistry opens to a clearing of armchairs and lamps and tables, with a row of computers lining the back, the front desk to the back-right, and a forest of shelves to the far left. The room is flooded with a great deal of natural light and Kazuya can feel the thread of a breeze from a window cracked open somewhere. It's decently hushed--only one or two voices speaking in undertones at any given time--and clean, if a little musty-smelling.
It's perfect. Kazuya sighs and sinks into one of the cushy armchairs, pulling out his laptop to write his essay. Probably.
This plan is immediately derailed by the abrupt, heartsinking realization that his laptop will not turn on, even after he jabs the power button several times in increasing distress. He just charged it this morning. What the hell?
Oh, that’s bad. That is very bad. He has time-critical assignments that are due within the week and most definitely require a computer. Kazuya breathes out through his nose, hard, and carefully doesn’t slam the laptop closed before he slips it back into his backpack. He’ll have to take it to the student center and pray that the underpaid tech assistants will be able to fix whatever is wrong with it.
In the meantime, that essay won’t write itself. He throws a quick glance at the computer bank, which is completely devoid of students. The computers are nothing fancy, but he could do his assignments on them just fine. It’s an annoyance, but it’s a solution that’ll work--at least temporarily.
Kazuya shoulders his bookbag, walks over to one of the computers, and attempts to login with his student ID and password. As per his luck, the computer rejects him via three different error messages. He moves to the next one after failing to login again.
It gives him three more error messages, all different from the previous three. He grits his teeth and tries to login again. As if to spit on him, another error message pops up, its window blank. It’s like the computer couldn’t think of another excuse to bar him access, but decided to do it anyway.
Kazuya pulls out his laptop once more and presses the power button again, silently vowing his ardent dedication to actually finishing his essay if it turns on. It doesn’t, because why would it? That was a futile act of desperation. Stupid, and pointless. Okay, okay, time to refocus.
--but it’s just not his goddamn day, is it?
There’s nothing for it. Time to ask for some help.
The brown-haired boy at the front desk is familiar-looking, like Kazuya’s seen him in the dining hall or across a lecture hall. His blue-sleeved baseball shirt exposes tan, thickly freckled arms. He's reading a book with the intensity demanded of someone facing a convoluted calculation, seemingly unable to tear his eyes away from the slightly yellowed pages. In the space of the ten-odd seconds it takes Kazuya to approach the front desk, he’s progressed through three vastly different facial expressions: wide-eyed shock morphing into sharp, pinched-lip anger morphing into some tear-inspiring terrific sadness. Kazuya clears his throat and Desk Boy practically jumps to attention.
“Hi! How can I assist you?” he says, blinking guilelessly up at Kazuya. His eyes are big and very, very brown. Kazuya’s stomach springs into his throat.
“Hi,” he says. “The computers are giving me some trouble. I can’t seem to login.”
“Oh, that happens all the time,” Desk Boy says. “They’ve been updating some of the university databases and it’s causing a bit of a mess. But I can help you!”
“Great,” Kazuya says, mouth dry. “You seem...helpful.” He means to say it in a confidently smirking drawl, but it sounds just a little too strangled.
What the fuck? Is he suddenly allergic to any sense of wit in the presence of a pretty face? Kazuya has never considered himself flirtatious to any serious degree, but he’s never before felt so actively flustered in front of someone he finds attractive. Seriously, what the fuck.
The boy puts his book down and leaps out of his chair to head toward the computers. Kazuya follows at a slightly slower pace, which is still a fast shuffle. Desk Boy slides into the rolling chair previously occupied by Kazuya with such gusto that it skids into its neighboring chairs. Although Kazuya has trouble concealing his laughter, he only corrects his chair’s course and begins messing with the computer. There’s a lot of fast typing and complicated menus that Kazuya doesn’t bother paying attention to--there’s no way he could replicate that if he tried. Instead he studies the intricacies of Desk Boy’s profile: a nicely shaped jaw, the blue-white sheen of the monitor’s glow captured in brown hair and brown eyes, one lip bitten in concentration.
“And...there. You should be able to login normally, now,” the boy says, standing up and backing away. And Kazuya tries, feeling half-doomed to fail, but Desk Boy’s wizardry has worked a miracle and the computer chimes happily with his success.
“Was that helpful enough for you?” Kazuya turns to face the boy, who is looking surprisingly cheeky for displaying such an innocent mien earlier.
“Very.” Kazuya finally catches sight of a little nametag, attached crookedly to the boy’s shirt in an apparent attempt at haste. “Sawamura-kun.”
Sawamura gapes at him. “How did you--?”
Kazuya snickers and leans in, tapping on the nametag with a bold finger. “Don’t they teach you how to read these things here?”
“Why, you--! I just--!” Sawamura turns away with a sniff. “The nerve of some kids these days…”
“Hey now, I bet I’m older than you.”
“You’d know if you allowed me to properly introduce myself.” Sawamura bares his teeth in a wildly joyous grin. It feels like a little too much for a casual introduction, but Kazuya has a feeling that this is a little more than a casual introduction. “Hi! I’m Sawamura Eijun, freshman and literature major. See?”
“Freshman?” Kazuya squints at him, then removes his glasses with an absentminded hand to polish the lenses on his shirt. “I was thinking middle schooler…”
The chorus of squawking this gets him is nothing short of a delight. Oh, this kid is nothing but laughs and laughs. Sawamura is exuding annoyance like it’s his second job and grousing loudly about the ungratefulness of four-eyed bastards who don’t even know how computers work. He ends his tirade with a snotty “Next time, I’ll leave you to fend for yourself.”
“What, you think there’ll be a next time?”
“This is the best library on campus.” Sawamura crosses his arms over his chest, eyes clenched shut as he huffs out of his nose like an irritated dragon. “So why wouldn’t there be a next time?”
“Are you only saying it’s the best because you work here?”
“What? No!” He seems to take offense at such an idea. “Shimada-senpai keeps this place in excellent shape. We’re always working hard!”
Kazuya hums. “Is that so.”
“It is!”
“Miyuki Kazuya.”
“Wha--?”
“That’s my introduction. Miyuki Kazuya, sophomore and economics major.”
Sawamura blinks a few times, startled, and then half-smiles. “Sophomore? You seem too short to be older than me. Are you sure?”
“Did you really just ask me that?”
Sawamura chuckles. It’s unfairly adorable. “I definitely did.”
“I’m only, what, two centimeters shorter than you?” Kazuya eyes the top of Sawamura’s fluffy head.
“And how significant those two centimeters are.”
Kazuya--albeit reluctantly--turns back to the computer. This stupid essay does need to be written, after all. "Don’t think I won’t remember that,” he says. “ Sawamura.” The name rolls off his tongue with a sibilant flick.
Sawamura is laughing all the way back to the front desk.
oOo
His laptop, as Kazuya discovers after taking it to the student center for a diagnosis, will be repaired in a week. The sweaty-faced kid at the tech desk tells him there's something wrong with the wiring in the battery port, but assures him that it's an easy enough fix. In the meantime, he'll have to keep using the library computers to do his work.
And that's fine. Kazuya spends his Thursday night in the undergraduate library, finishing his assignment for history. As soon as he finishes that, however, he gets a longer, six-page essay assigned in his Friday morning macroeconomic policy class.
"The fun never ends," Kuramochi says, shrugging and only mildly sympathetic, when he complains about it.
"Yeah," Kazuya sighs. "Wanna go to the library with me?”
"Um, hell no. I have a new game I've been wanting to play for forever , and tonight's the first chance I've gotten in weeks.” He offers his signature earache of a laugh. “You can suffer alone."
Kazuya swats him with a notebook, but Kuramochi only cackles again and leaves him to his misery. They head to afternoon practice, after which Kazuya returns to the dorm, showers, steals food from the dining hall, and heads to the undergraduate library for the second night in a row. And on a Friday night, no less. But Kuramochi’s busy gaming and Hino’s on a date with some girl from his calc class. There’s enough hours in the night to work on his paper and bother his friends.
But first, a detour. Instinctually Kazuya goes to his and Kuramochi’s preferred Tuesday-Thursday coffee shop, because even though they’re shit at baking--he doesn’t know how Kuramochi stands those raspberry danishes, they’re as hard as rocks--they make his coffee perfectly .
It’s only when he's leaving the shop with coffee in hand that Kazuya spares a minute to think of the cute librarian he met yesterday. Is he working at the chemistry library this very minute? Probably not. He probably has better things to do with his Friday nights.
But fuck it. It's not like Kazuya really cares which library he works at. The chemistry library is a little farther away than the undergraduate library, but the chill of early fall isn’t so bad to brave, especially with a warm drink.
Insanely enough, the librarian is there. Even though he’s the entire reason he ventured this far onto campus, Kazuya still does a double take at the sight of Sawamura at the front desk. This time he's reading a much thicker book, and--much to the giddiness of Kazuya's heart--wearing little brown-framed glasses.
Kazuya flounders for a few seconds before marching past Sawamura, who tragically doesn't look up, and sitting down in one of the armchairs. Then he remembers why he came to the library in the first place and jumps up to head over to the computers.
There are, fortunately or not-so-fortunately, no login issues. Kazuya is trying not to peer over his shoulder like an eager child, but is largely unsuccessful. Not that it matters, because Sawamura is completely oblivious.
Then he feels like an idiot. He doesn’t have to wait for Sawamura to notice him like some shy high school romance bullshit. Kazuya strides up to the front desk with singular purpose.
"So...hi again," he says. Leaning in, casual-like. Sawamura doesn't look up. Doesn't even seem to be breathing, in fact.
"Hi," Kazuya says again, louder. Significantly louder, to the point where he cringes at his own volume and Sawamura startles into awareness with an aborted shriek. He slams the book closed and blinks up at Kazuya at a high frequency over the rim of his reading glasses. It’s a familiar look for him, and Kazuya is maybe a little fond of it.
"Clueless as ever, I see," Kazuya says.
“Hey!” Sawamura yelps. “Give a guy some warning! You can’t sneak up on me like that!”
Kazuya laughs. “But it’s so much fun! And not hard to do at all.”
There’s an awkward moment where neither of them say anything. Sawamura runs a finger along the spine of his book while Kazuya drums his fingers on the counter and desperately tries to think of something witty to say.
Eventually Sawamura starts fidgeting in his chair. "...so did you need something?"
He clearly did not think this through. At all. "Not really?"
Sawamura is now examining him with the air of someone tired. "Okay, well. I'll be over here, reading. If you do."
Kazuya manages a short nod before he turns away and stiffly walks back to the computers. He sits down and desperately tries to do anything productive. After five minutes of nothing, he gives up and ambles back to the front desk in a manner he hopes can be classified as 'suave.'
"I do need something," he says, rather abruptly. Sawamura doesn't flinch quite as hard this time.
"Oh?"
"I need..." and here Kazuya pauses for dramatic effect, "...your phone number."
Sawamura's eyes widen. Then: "AHA. AHAHA. AHAHAHA! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
"Hey--"
"AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! AHA! AHAHAHA!"
His laughter is, quite frankly, obnoxious, and it goes on for way too long. But there's something unabashed about it, something brash and something grinning that Kazuya likes. A minute after Kazuya's declaration, Sawamura is wiping tears from his eyes, shoulders still helplessly shaking while the other patrons of the library give them intensely irritated looks.
"You could just say no," Kazuya mutters, a little annoyed.
"Well, I don't know," Sawamura says. "I think we have some chemistry."
"...I've made a mistake."
Another laugh. "No, no. You'll have to forgive me, I'm not used to being flirted with."
"You’re not used to being checked out? What kind of librarian are you?"
"Hmm, and now who's using the cheesiest puns? Well, work for it then, Miyuki Kazuya," Sawamura singsongs. "Convince me why you're deserving of my digits."
oOo
Over the next week, Kazuya tries to drop into the chemistry library whenever he thinks Sawamura might be there. For instance: Tuesday morning, after his statistics class. There he flirts with, teases, and learns what he can about Sawamura Eijun, freshman and literature major. He asks things, things like:
"Do you usually work Friday nights?"
"No," Sawamura says. "I traded with one of my coworkers because he wanted to go out for his friend's birthday. It's not like I had anything better to do, so." He shrugs.
An indication of a subdued social life, which is maybe not surprising for a freshman. However, Sawamura seems outgoing enough to make a lot of new friends in only a short time.
But he spent last Friday night reading a book and chatting up Kazuya.
Other things he’s learned: Sawamura is in a work-study program that funds part of his tuition and board and requires fifteen hours a week of working in the arbitrarily assigned chemistry library. He is a fan of shoujo manga and historical dramas. He often comes to work armed with a thermos of hot tea. Sawamura is from a tiny town in Nagano and his best friends, some girl named Wakana and some guy named Nobu, go to Keio. He likes running and catching beetles and fishing and calligraphy.
Kazuya has learned all of this, and yet he still doesn’t know the answer to the most important question.
oOo
“Do you play baseball?” Kazuya blurts out Thursday morning, when he's leaning against the front desk and making a pretense to leave for lunch.
Sawamura had been hunched over a drawer, sorting files. Now his head comes up so fast that he almost brains himself on the cabinet above him. “What?”
“Do you play baseball,” Kazuya says again, weirdly stressed. “You know, the sport with the bases."
"Ah, okay--"
"And the balls.”
Sawamura bristles a little. “ Yes, senpai, I know what baseball is. And no, I--uh, I don’t play.”
Well. Well--okay. Kazuya had known that the odds would be low. After all, Sawamura clearly wasn’t on the team. Kazuya doesn’t know what, exactly, he was hoping for. Sawamura’s usual exuberance and a cry of “ Yes! Yes, Miyuki Kazuya, of course I play baseball! The greatest sport upon this earth!”, maybe? Still, Sawamura could’ve been involved with some intramural league, could’ve organized last-minute scrimmages with his dormmates for some casual fun.
Kazuya is still justifying his own confused emotional response to Sawamura’s answer when the Sawamura himself speaks. His words are slow, almost hesitant. “Why, do you play baseball?”
“Ah, yeah. I do.”
“Well, what position do you play?”
“Catcher.”
Something flashes across Sawamura’s face too quickly for Kazuya to identify before he abruptly smiles. It swallows his whole face, and Kazuya feels his stomach drop.
“A catcher, huh,” Sawamura says. “I'm not surprised at all, somehow."
"Oh? Not surprised? Are you sure you're not a baseball expert, with an assessment like that?"
An eye roll, admittedly deserved. "I don't have to play baseball to know a thing or two about it. The catcher is the team's main defense strategist, right?"
"Well…" Kazuya is trying not to preen, but it's hard to resist. "That's the simplest way to put it."
"Oi, I can see your head swelling already," Sawamura complains. His tone is surly, but he's smiling again, just a little. "Pitching's where the real fun is, anyway, so don't think too much of it!"
Kazuya walks out of the library that day with a sticky note tucked carefully into his backpack. That night, with Iwaizumi gently snoring in the bed across the room, he types out a short and simple message.
hey its miyuki
Sawamura replies almost immediately. oh!!!! Yea it's me!! Sawamura Eijun in case you forgot!!
lol I didn't forget