Archive of Our Own ^beta

First Innings

Miyuki Kazuya. The name sticks like taffy to Chris' tongue, sweet and tacky and infused with air. He knows all the other keepers in the minor league well, having spent months outsmarting the older ones and destroying the younger ones through his reputation alone. But this Miyuki Kazuya (like syrup, dissolving into a tangy paste) is new. Too young, some bitter pitchers scowl. Too brash. Too good for someone so short and mouthy and smeared in bruises and cuts and who plays this hard when they are only 11?

Chris has broken records this past year, headlined magazines and has been scouted by multiple schools. He is only 12, but when players speak of the most feared player in the league it is always Chris who tops the list.

Nobody speaks of Miyuki Kazuya in anything above a whisper, as though uttering his name aloud is enough to bring their world crashing down in a storm of causticity and smirks.

Miyuki Kazuya. Nothing now but a hint of sugar water on his tongue, an after-taste that promises Chris a lick of competition but is unlikely to be anything more than a diluted treat.

But it turns out that Chris is wrong about Miyuki Kazuya. There is nothing sweet and light about the kid, nothing superficial. Instead, Miyuki is an alchemist, turning ordinary players into golden plays through wit and dare alone. It's Miyuki's ridiculous calls that takes their match into the bottom of the last innings, offering Chris his first tantalising thought of defeat since the season began. It stirs something rich and spiced in his blood, and Chris feels his heartbeat roar through his ears as he lowers himself into a crouch.

The opposition is down by one run with two outs. It is their necromancer who steps up to bat.

That roar that tumbles – rumbles – through Chris turns animalistic. He has been offered up a prey, one who dances and darts in front of Chris' eyes, claiming all of Chris' attention for himself.

A smirk pulls Chris' mouth into a wide greeting as Miyuki steps up to the plate. The kid is swallowed whole by clothes that are too large and a helmet that slips over his eyes when he ducks down to check the spikes on his boots. Even his bat swings too heavily when Miyuki practises a brief, warm up hit, a good couple of inches too long for someone who is barely half the size of everyone else in his team.

They're at the bottom of the twelfth. Back in the fourth innings this odd looking, glasses wearing, misfit-masquerading-as-a-baseball-player sent the player on second base home with an unexpectedly powerful shot.

At the top of the seventh, Miyuki struck Chris out. Chris holds that memory of Miyuki's delighted, deliberate grin in his thoughts as he signals the first ball. Tension creeps into Miyuki's back, pulling him taller, older. His shoulder blades draw backwards and he take an anticipatory step back. Miyuki has predicted the shape of the pitch perfectly.

But not the speed.

The first ball is fast. Too fast.

Strike.

The next ball swings late, beautiful and crisp. It thunders into Chris' glove, but instead of lightening it is a tiny, petulant growl that indicates the coming storm. Good. The first ball has unnerved Miyuki a touch, and his little rumblings aren't the only sign that this isn't going quite to plan. Miyuki's face remains impassive as he readies himself for the next ball, but his breaths come out shorter than before.

Strike.

Chris doesn't glance up at Miyuki as he makes his last call, fingers dancing in a silent language that only his pitcher can truly comprehend.

Slow curve ball.

Miyuki spins beneath it, losing sight of a pitch that no sane catcher would ever call at this stage of the game.

Chris wins of course, he always does. But this is the closest he has ever been to defeat, and that thrill stays with him long after the bus ride home.

Second Innings

It quickly becomes less of a game and more of a funeral procession. The kill itself had been quick, with four runs bludgeoned in the first innings and Seidou murdering any chance of this being a competitive game by the top of the third. Chris has been playing for Seidou now for six months, and he approves of the school's tactile ability to aim straight for the jugular. Their opposition plays on, dragging their defeat out as long as humanly (but certainly not humanely) possible.

Pools of sunlight soup in the dugout in patches. Tanba has reserved one such spot, the warmth of the sun buffing his upturned face so that it shimmers beneath a thin layer of sweat. Chris acknowledges his greeting belatedly, a beat too late. He smiles out of the corner of his mouth, his eyes dipping in the right direction even as they remained focussed on the field of play in front of him. Tanba and his shimmering face are a blur that sit in a sun soaked spot of Chris’ mind.

The pain that has been a constant, crippling companion for months is gone. Chris feels none of the white hot heat shunting down his veins, cramping the muscles in his forearm into lead, twisting his fingers into grotesque caricatures that he has to hide away desperately in his mitt.

He doesn't feel his fingers at all.

The lights go out, and it is all over.

Third innings

“I don’t like him.” Tanba rarely snarls, and he doesn’t snarl now. But if a snarl could be captured in a sound, wrapped up in innocuous words and dressed up in a rich baritone, Chris thinks this is what a snarl would feel like. Curt. Matter of fact. Sharp. There are snarls that slide across a mouth like the slick shedding of a snake’s skin. Tanba’s not-snarl is not one of those. Tanba is too honest for snakes, and he shed his own, too small exterior long ago.

There is venom there, however, and Chris finds he can taste it on his own tongue even though it’s Tanba who is speaking in snarls.

Miyuki isn't just Chris' replacement, but a dream catcher twined from the silkiest threads.

The months pass in colours, because Chris loses the ability to truly comprehend words. Anger and red and frustration. Blue and depressed and strangled. Summer yellow and burnt orange. Emerald and envy and want. There are strands of something more woven in, people that dare contradict the palette that has consumed Chris' world. Tanba is always there, silent. His father is always there, loud and pushy and overflowing. And, each evening when Chris returns from physiotherapy-

Colours.

Dozens of colours, hundreds of colours.

“Would you like a drink, Chris-senpai?”

All of them black.

And then the final of the Tokyo Tournament comes, and Seidou loses.

They all scatter afterwards; escaping from each other's hurt into private little hells of their own. Chris hasn't seen the third years since the match ended – since they lost and Koshien became someone else's dream. The second years are different, less refined at handling the end of the world. Tanba has locked himself down in physics and psychology, while Tetsuya …

Tetsuya never stops, even when the rest of them have been struck down by defeat. Chris knows without thinking that he will be at the batting cage, swinging wildly at the moon while Jun seethes quietly in the stands, too tightly wound to hold a bat.

So close. So close that each time Chris closes his eyes he can see their victory etched onto the back of his eyelids. Just one more hit, the perfectly looped ball-

If only Chris had been playing, surely he would have done something different-

Chris is not the only one who has that thought.

Miyuki sits alone in the dining hall, the table in front of him stacked high with statistics and score cards. He's slouched low inside a large, worn jumper, bemused eyes skimming for answers that are hours too late and no longer worth the thought put into shaping them into something tangible.

Anger sparks through Chris, lighting the dark with a red, hot emotion that makes a mockery of his usual numbness. Tanba is Chris' responsibility, because Tanba somehow brings humour to a world that often seems devoid of it. Tetsuya and Jun are his responsibility, because they stepped into this whirlwind of sweat and aches and heartbreak together. They are more than just teammates, they are his friends.

Miyuki has never been either of those, and so the anger bites and burns and turns over in his gut.

Miyuki removes his glasses and scrubs the back of his hand tiredly over his eyes, and all of Chris' anger flares out. In the pale, artificial light of the dining hall Miyuki looks washed out, small.

“Start with the fourth innings,” Chris says from the doorway. Miyuki turns to him, startled eyes quickly masked behind a polite mask. “That’s when Kataoka-san’s plan first started to fall apart.”

He stays there with Miyuki for hours.

Fourth Innings

Chris steps forward into the new year, and into old shadows and new faces.

There is an odd warmth to Sawamura that penetrates like hot spikes through Chris’ skin, scorching deep. He must be an addict because Chris seeks it out, finding a twisted pleasure in the searing shots of pain. Each spike through his armour is quick, clean, leaving nothing but bits of Chris cresting outwards instead of churning septic inside. This breach of his defences in inexcusable, and he is losing parts of himself back into a world that he has locked down. But there is a part of him, a traitorous part, which says that heat – Sawamura – feels like baseball.

Any attempt at distance dies with each determined speech, every ridiculous attempt to follow through with all of Chris' (occasionally sadistic) plans.

He doesn’t work as much with Miyuki on his catching as he should. There are flaws in Miyuki’s game, sharpness where there should be softness, angles that get lost amongst the sarcasm. Miyuki is easy to talk with, awarding the seniors a particular care with his words that he takes out on his juniors. When Chris finds a safety inside statistics that the baseball pitch cannot always provide, Miyuki's insight adds colours and depth to mere numbers, adding flesh to brittle bones. In those moments spent pooling over resources in the dining hall they find an equality that is lost the moment they go back to being Miyuki, the exceptional catcher and Chris, the wounded statistic.

But one day Chris will be back on the team and he will need there to be something to exploit-

He shutters those thoughts away, shackles them in concrete and sinks them to the bottom of the ocean.

Miyuki penetrates deep, all jagged edges and burnt flesh.

Miyuki feels like baseball, so much like baseball.

Too much like baseball.

And Chris doesn’t work as much with Miyuki on his catching as he should.

Fifth Innings

Adrenalin rushes through him; flooding his veins with such anticipation that Chris finds he can barely breathe. He settles down into a crouch, slides his grill downwards. The tension rocks up through his knees, sloshing up his thighs and settles heavily in his hips. Chris displaces it upwards into his forearms, away from where it might alter his center of gravity and throw him off balance.

It feels like a lifetime has passed since Chris has been here, taking part in a game instead of watching from the dugout.

He calls for Sawamura's first pitch, and the batter shoots a brief, cocky smirk down to where Chris waits. Chris allows a smudge of a smile in return, knowing that games can be won as easily on silent looks as then can be on sharp, dipping balls.

He wants this moment – this game – to last until the last breath has been forced from his lungs and there is nothing left of him but a spent husk of what he once was.

Strike.

Chris wins, he always does. The ache in his shoulder barely matters, not here, not now. Not when he is for a moment himself, and not merely his own, discarded shadow.

He raises triumphant eyes up to the fence line, and gets caught there in Miyuki's quietly delighted gaze.

***

There is a shift, afterwards. The world tilts a little on its axis, allowing an inch longer in the sun each day.

He lets baseball back in, only to find it never really left.

Everything stops hurting quite as much as it did.

Sixth innings

Most of his teammates have retreated to their rooms by the time Chris returns from physiotherapy, cramming in as much school work as possible now that practice has eaten through most of their evening. The soft glow of the school spills out into the courtyard, pooling in green-grey blotches that fade into black around the edges. There is never any evenness to the scattered light, no consistency. It means that Chris moves through patches of darkness and light, his vision never quite adjusting to either.

It's been a long day. A long afternoon. And still, the evening stretches thin in front of him, laden with tests to study for and a stack of ridiculously impossible maths problems.

“Chris-senpai!”

Miyuki doesn't practise in the light. His eyes are too sensitive to the flickers, especially after hours of watching for the exact spin of a baseball as it hurtles towards him. Instead, Miyuki calls out to him from one of the in-between places, where the greens and blacks mingle indiscriminately. It means that both shadows and light catch in contradictions, splashing shades of light up his legs and slashing darkness across his cheeks. Ribbons of yellow catch first on some spark of coloured glass before criss-crossing across the bat in Miyuki's hand.

He's tired, but there is something about Miyuki's welcoming smile tonight that burns the top layer of that tiredness away, caramelising it sweeter.

He always waits for you.

His maths problems have never been quite so faithful. They wait a little longer.

Seventh Innings

There is no great divide between their two worlds, no cleansing ritual that, once completed, locks away all the tensions from the baseball pitch until the next day. Instead, those tensions follow them back into their student lives, skulking in corners and stalking them each down in turn. The tension builds, pulsating through crowded corridors in waves of thick, unrepentant animosity.

Tanba says nothing when they run into Miyuki on the way to the lunch room. Instead, his friend resorts to silence, his gaze sharp and narrow. Tanba has never needed words, not when he curdles silences toxic with just a look. Here, far from the baseball diamond, Miyuki loses his shine, his glamor. Away from Tetsuya’s ominous glares, Tanba has no tolerance for the false prince who sits on Chris’ throne.

The damage that Miyuki takes from Tanba's silent attack is Chris' own. It is Chris’ heartache and denial, his months of pain and fear that Tanba crucifies Miyuki on, even though Chris himself is moving on into something brighter, more fragile. Chris forgets sometimes that he did not live in that darkness alone, and that Tanba braved those same shadows to remain at Chris' side.

Tanba excuses himself to Chris when Miyuki politely stands his ground, moving past Miyuki with the cold touch of a glacier that is slowly forced backwards in bitter retreat. Tanba is quickly whisked away by the press of students, leaving Chris at a loss.

Tanba is his closest, most loyal friend, and Chris is not quite the white knight that Sawamura thinks him to be. He knows that Tanba and Miyuki are not the battery they could be because too much of Chris still strains through them both. There is a conversation that he has to have with Tanba, Chris knows. One about shackles and light and Miyuki-

Speaking of...

Chris turns away from the ghosts of unspoken conversations and back to Miyuki. His apologetic smile folds down into a frown when Miyuki’s brow knits together in response, a weary confusion momentarily drawing shadows to his eyes.

“Tanba,” Chris says by way of explanation, his head dipping up the corridor even though his friend is long gone. Miyuki’s eyes widen slightly in realisation before he shrugs, clearly unconcerned. Chris wonders if Miyuki thinks that such an action will somehow rid him of the heavy weight of Tanba's disdain.

“It's not a problem,” Miyuki says lightly, readjusting the straps on his bag. Miyuki defines sparse movements in practice, coiled tight and only ever unleashing when the moment is right. Here in the school corridors he is more fidgety, his gaze slipping uneasily to the other third years before finding comfort in something far more reliable. “It’s not important for the pitchers to want to play besties, as long as they trust me.” Miyuki relaxes back against the corridor wall and smirks, his head tilting upwards with an elegant confidence that beckons Chris inwards. It is easy to forget that they are surrounded by students making their way to lunch when Miyuki is like this, consumed by a strange, inner light that burns first and offers warmth only as an afterthought. “In fact, it usually works best when they don't like me at all.”

And Chris remembers the first time he ever saw Miyuki play, all eyes and mouth and blue and purple bruises.

It's doesn't have to be that way, Chris doesn't say, but Miyuki reads something in the way Chris' eyes soften. Miyuki turns away, the muscles in his jaw hardening as Miyuki’s smirk pulls tight into a bland, emotionless smile.

Chris grinds down on his back teeth, biting down an unexpected surge of anger.

“Miyu-”

“Chris-senpai, I've done all the repetitions you assigned me!” Sawamura barrels through the seniors around them as though they are mere props encroaching on Sawamura's personal set. He knocks Miyuki aside, ignoring his annoyed ‘omph’ in favour of settling himself in beside Chris. Bright eyes seek to wrestle Chris’ back from distraction, desperate to pull Chris into a space that exists of just the two of them. Sawamura doesn't register that they are now surrounded by a dozen bemused third years and one not-at-all-bemused-but-now-quietly-deadly second year. “I've also taken the opportunity to wash and dry your laundry.” Sawamura’s eyes widen further in anticipation of praise, but Chris isn't the one who responds.

“Aw, how nice of you.” Miyuki loops a heavy arm around Sawamura's shoulders, dragging him down into a conspiring huddle that Sawamura tries unsuccessfully to shrug out of. “But tell me, Stalker-chan, how did you manage to get a hold of Chris-senpai's laundry without his room key?” Miyuki's eyes enlarge comically as a flush of heat rushes to Sawamura's cheeks. “Or have you been hiding out in his bedroom, waiting for an opportunity to strike while he's at class? Is that why you've been so slow at practise lately?”

Sawamura splutters out a response that is more half-finished insults than actual words, and Miyuki's answering laughter cackles like electricity through the corridor. It rumbles down through Chris' bones before grounding out through his toes, where that laughter finally losing some of its potent, jagged touch.

The bell rings and Miyuki drags Sawamura off to class.

Chris never has a chance to finish his sentence.

Eighth innings

Everything about Miyuki is measured, Chris finds, right down to how he practises his batting. Each swing is swung at a particular field, with a particular plan in mind. Miyuki doesn’t swing for strength but for strategy, playing a thousand games before he steps up to the batting plate.

Chris has started returning from physiotherapy 10 minutes early to watch Miyuki play out his silent, imaginary games from the shadows. He hasn't been invited into Miyuki's private, closed off world, and so Chris focuses instead on the small adjustments in Miyuki's grip, each premeditated step forward. Miyuki gives away his opposition through tiny little hints, subtle shifts in his eye line to accommodate for the height of the pitchers, the placement of the outfield.

Bases full. No runs on the board.

Swing.

Runner on third. Top of the second.

Swing.

No runners on base. Ha. Probably Sanada to pitch.

Swing.

Chris' eyes narrow as Miyuki strikes out, an imperfect shot shown to a perfectly shaped ball. Even when Miyuki is competing against himself, he still falls.

Curious.

“He’s never asked for help with his batting,” Tetsuya replies the next day as their classmates filter past, leaving the two alone in their classroom. Chris has never liked empty rooms, finding that people leave behind a stain that doesn’t so much as shift as settle when they leave. Tanba will be along soon and Jun surely minutes after that, but for the moment it is just the two of them: the insurmountable captain and the once-upon-a-timer.

Tetsuya’s eyes glaze black, and his fingers drum against the edge of his desk. Rat-a-rat. Rat-a-tat-a-tat. Tat-tat. Taaat. Chris waits out the beat, allowing it to play out to its last, elongated note. “Or catching.” Tetsuya cannot comment on whether Miyuki has ever asked for help with anything else, because there is nothing else of Miyuki that has ever been put forward.

And that, Tetsuya clearly finds troubling. So troubling that he plays out his tune in reverse.

Taat. Tat-tat. Tata-a-tat-a-rat.

Ninth Innings

It's rare for Chris to step into one of the second year bathrooms, but he is running late for practise and that supersedes any of the unwritten rules that underlay the school hierarchy.

It’s rarer still for Miyuki not to notice Chris enter.

Miyuki is prideful, Chris knows, masking away all those little things he hasn’t quite mastered because flaws are exploited once exposed. And Miyuki is private, Chris knows, rarely sharing pieces of himself when he can explore aspects of others instead.

Not everyone gets to see the side of Miyuki that the baseball team does, where his snark is tempered by care and his claws sharpened on good intent.

“Miyuki.”

The muscles in Miyuki's back tighten at Chris' quiet greeting, and for a moment Chris thinks that Miyuki will refuse to turn around. When Miyuki does turn his movements are slow and deliberate, one hand remaining braced against the sink while the other holds a makeshift ice pack to his forehead.

“I ran into a door,” Miyuki says unapologetically when Chris stays silent, spinning a lie that even Rumpelstiltskin couldn’t turn into gold. Miyuki loses some of his shine as a result, sagging inwards against the sink, his supporting elbow jutting outwards as it tries to soak up the extra weight. Miyuki is a better liar than this, but there is an exhaustion to him now that makes even Chris feel weary. Chris cocks an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth flickering upwards. He waits. It is unusually cruel of him. “Maybe, more accurately, I was run into a door,” Miyuki corrects with the dryness of a hot summer but casting far deeper shadows. Miyuki’s lack of resistance – how quickly he relents to honesty of all things – is … it’s almost painful. Chris wonders if, just like Miyuki’s exhaustion, Chris is absorbing more and more of Miyuki’s emotions as his own.

Miyuki is smiling, a pretty little smile that flirts around his mouth without ever solidifying into anything real. But he can’t hold Chris’ gaze, rimmed eyes sliding up and across to the bag of ice he has pressed against his forehead instead. Right now pain is the easier option compared to Chris.

That just won’t do. Deep, somewhere in his gut, Chris knows instinctively that this just will not do.

If Chris is siphoning off some of Miyuki’s emotions, then the space between them evaporates through osmosis. He threads his fingers through Miyuki’s (cold and rigid, thick with pale white scars), pulling the makeshift icepack away from the collection of bruises. The parade of blues and purples and greens march up into Miyuki’s hairline, and there is a minor abrasion where Miyuki connected with something sharp.

Chris’ mouth thins.

“It’s-“

“Let me,” Chris interjects, detangling the icepack from Miyuki’s hand before bringing it back up against the bruises. Chris is the nurturer, the fixer, but Miyuki winces as the soggy pack pricks against his skin. “Focus on your breathing.”

He doesn’t give Miyuki advice as often as he should. Miyuki’s eyes widen in acknowledgement, before drifting closed. Miyuki is as good at following orders as he is giving them, and slowly the shallow, inconsistent breaths that had stabbed out into the air sooth out.

“You need to be at practise,” Miyuki says, his eyes still closed and drifting more and more into Chris’ touch. “I need to be at practise.”

“We’ll go in a couple of minutes,” Chris replies, and they do – but not a second before Miyuki's breathing settles down and some of that hurt drains from his gaze.

Miyuki blames the bruises on Sawamura, guilting him into late night drink dashes and breakfast in bed the next morning. It takes two days for Sawamura to realise that he has no memory of the beamer that supposedly knocked his senpai for six. By then it is too late, and Sawamura has already earned a reputation as a Miyuki-killer amongst the surrounding teams.

Miyuki cackles in delight when Chris tells him, the bruises and the pain (the exhaustion and the hurt) forgotten. Miyuki is back to spinning everything into gold.

***

Kuramochi on second. Two outs.

The bat slices thin through the air, almost parallel to the ground. Miyuki sends Kuramochi to third.

No-one on base. No outs.

Breathes o-

Out.

Tenth Innings

The corner of Miyuki’s mouth scrunches down into a grimace.

Hmm. Displeasure. It’s not an entirely unexpected emotion, but Chris had been expecting some higher form of defence mechanism. They have spent the last hour secluded away from the rest of their teammates in the dining hall, pouring over the statistics and plays of today’s game. Miyuki loses his sharpness when away from a crowd, turning clever quips in for thoughtful comments that lack their usual edge.

But now Miyuki is grimacing, and Chris wonders why Miyuki looks like Chris has stabbed him through the gut with a rusty pencil. His whole face concaves downwards around the grimace, eyes drooping behind lowered eyelids and strong, calloused fingers coming up to wrap under his jaw. They are strong fingers, Chris knows. But even he is not sure if they are powerful enough on their own to hold up Miyuki’s grimace.

Chris is fixated on the grimace because it has come and gone before he has had the time to properly shape his thoughts around it. In its wake is a rare, ghost of true emotion that is almost immediately consumed whole by one of Miyuki’s smiles.

It’s not his brilliant, snarky smile that he rewards his juniors with when they’ve displeased him, nor is it the polite, thoughtful smile that Miyuki reserves for the seniors alone.

In the past four games, Miyuki has not been able to get away a single hit when there hasn’t been a runner on base.

This smile is tiny, sharp. Curious.

A challenge.

“So, how are you planning on fixing me, Chris-senpai?”

There is a light shining in Miyuki’s eyes, but for once Chris is more focussed on his words.

11th Innings

There is a secret science to baseball bats, one that only baseball players truly understand. The longer you swing a bat, the deeper into the evening you practice, the heavier it gets. It's almost 10pm and Miyuki has been practising his swings for at least an hour. His arms don't have quite the same elasticity they did earlier as he swings his bat up into position, but the muscles in his shoulders pull tight across his back to compensate. It's better than Chris would have expected, especially as Miyuki uses different muscles to catch than he does to bat. Form has never been an issue, although Chris surveys it all the same. He moves around Miyuki slowly, eyes trailing absently up firm legs and down the strong sweep of Miyuki’s back.

Chris plans to try something a little bit different tonight. There is a hypothesis he’s been toying with, shaped from the remnants of Miyuki’s phantom, late-night games and lingering memories of those last few games against each other.

“Do you remember batting practise when we first started out?” Chris asks, rattling his knuckles experimentally where Miyuki's back muscles knot together. Miyuki has been working hard on his stamina, and there is a firmness in his stance that would have been lacking a few months ago. Not bad.

Miyuki snorts, clearly not amused by Chris’ line of questioning. Chris doubts that Miyuki ever enjoyed batting practice much as a kid. Too repetitive, too dull. “How can I forget? Hours of standing with the bat held out in front of you, and the moment your posture slipped-”

Chris slips forward in that opening left between words, his arms wrapping around Miyuki from behind. His hands skim over Miyuki’s hips before sliding down to thin, powerful wrists that are frozen still beneath Chris’ touch. It is easy then to thread his fingers through Miyuki's, forcing Miyuki to tighten his grip on the bat.

It’s strange the things you discover when you are this close to someone, pressed into their space and taking their warmth as your own. Chris’ fingers are longer, leaner, stronger than Miyuki’s. It’s odd how much that pleases Chris, reminding him that there are still some things (even ridiculously stupid, never to be admitted out loud ones) that he has over Miyuki.

“This is definitely different,” Miyuki chokes out, and Chris wonders what sort of smile Miyuki’s words are shaped around. “Although, I don't think I’ll be able to take you up to bat with me.”

Ah. Humour. How quickly Miyuki defaults to it the moment something threatens to get just a little uncomfortable.

“I'll have to check the official rule book,” Chris chuckles as he pulls the bat down an inch, drawing Miyuki half a step backwards, inwards. The last sentiment to space is smothered away, and they no longer quite exist as separate entities. Flush against his chest, with his arms now folded around Miyuki, the contact seems almost symbiotic. Chris’ pulse quickens, and his grip around Miyuki’s fingers – on the handle of the bat – tighten further on reflex.

Perfect.

Miyuki laughs, each note of uncertainty amplified through the closeness of their bodies. Chris is stealing away the illusion of equality between them, leaving Miyuki flat-footed and unsure. That uncertainty stirs something dark in the pit of Chris’ stomach, but he banishes it away in favour of how easily Miyuki fits into the curve of Chris’ chest.

Miyuki feels warm, like baseball.

“Breathe with me,” Chris instructs smoothly, because there is a point to this that both begins and ends in baseball, and not the type that Miyuki simply masquerades as. Chris brings his own breathing down into a calm, relaxed rhythm, letting each exhale pass through his chest and into Miyuki’s before drawing in his next breath.

Miyuki's shoulders arch back in surprise, and his head snaps upwards, drawing his gaze away from its focus on his – their – bat.

“Seriously?”

Chris chuckles again, a deep, silent chuckle that catches in Miyuki's chest before it is breathed back out on hopeless laughter. Is it the request that Miyuki finds so amusing, or the ridiculousness of the situation? It can be hard to tell with Miyuki, who finds humour often in the darkest places.

“Why not?”

Miyuki breathes out an impatient sigh, one that signals surrender far more than it does defiance. There are battles that Miyuki will fight to the death, but there are some he concedes the moment he realises who his opponent is.

Chris wins, he usually does. And yet, it’s not as easy as he expects for them to get this right, not when Miyuki’s breaths are generally shallower, less well formed than Chris’ own. Miyuki’s struggles to match Chris’ breathing reverberate up through Chris’ own chest, threatening to disrupt the very breathing pattern that Chris is trying to model. The battle is unconscious, insensible, powered by a latent resistance that Chris thinks has no other avenue through which to exhale than this. What Miyuki is passively resisting, Chris doesn’t know. He doubts Miyuki does, either.

He holds Miyuki there, and breathes. Slowly, slowly Miyuki settles in to the same rhythm, but some of Miyuki’s annoyance over having to battle so hard over something so simple remains.

Good. They can make a start.

“No outs. Top of the third innings. Two runs on the board, Tetsuya on third base.”

Miyuki stills, his breathing briefly moving out of sync with Chris' before being bought back down.

In, out. In, out. In, out.

Miyuki swings, stepping through the shot with the fluidity of dawn cut on diamonds. Chris moves with him, his longer arms allowing Miyuki free range of movement.

Chris nods. It's a nice shot, piercing the field and sending Tetsuya home.

“One out. Shirasu to follow. 1 run on the board. Short stop is in a step closer than the last play due to an attempted steal. Sanada on the mound. Jun on first.”

In, out. In out.

It's a low inswinger and Miyuki gets beneath it, tipping it over the infielders. Jun scuttles to second.

Miyuki relaxes back against Chris, clearly pleased with the result. He feels warm there against Chris' chest, more open in his stance than Chris can ever recall him being. Chris’ throat is unnaturally thick when he swallows then, but that’s surely because Miyuki’s hair is now tickling against his chin, catching on his cheeks, brushing against the corner of his mouth -

“Bottom of the seventh. 1 run up, no one on base-” Chris feels the tension climb Miyuki's shoulders upwards, before they relax back down again. Good. “- Tanba to bowl.”

In, out. In, out. In, ou-

Strike.

“Damn.” Miyuki leans forward and down onto his grounded bat, pulling himself out from Chris' hold. The loss of Miyuki's heat leaves Chris restless, and it’s a feeling he finds difficult to dissipate even when he rests one hand possessively on Miyuki's hunched shoulder. There is little of Miyuki on offer, his eyes shielded away from Chris by that thick, dark hair. Still, some of Miyuki’s tension seeps up through his skin, fuming the air with frustration and impatience. It stills the world for a moment, bringing down something as transient as time with nothing more potent than the power of Miyuki's annoyance. Even Chris finds himself stuck, trapped briefly in Miyuki's own gilded cage.

In a breath that moment is gone, and Miyuki snaps upwards. He shots Chris an irritated smile over his shoulder, one that is harsh and sharpens his entire face older. Good. Miyuki is easier to work with when he is like this, straddling the line between honesty and hostility.

“How long have I been doing that?”

“Probably for years,” Chris says easily, a smile tugging at his mouth as Miyuki's irritation swells. It irks the hell out of Miyuki that he hasn’t picked up on this before. “Your breathing has always been your biggest tell.” Surprise flashes through Miyuki’s eyes, before being smothered deliberately away. That the surprise exists at all is intriguing. Surely Miyuki does not think that Chris has only ever been a passive bystander in their relationship? “The how long isn't the important part, but the why,” Chris continues, putting aside his previous thoughts for later, when there is not quite so much baseball and much more time for Miyuki. ”What is making you so nervous? You've never been concerned with failure before.” Miyuki is the most audacious keeper Chris has played against, blending together a cocktail of curiosity, insight, instinct, and why-the-hell-notness that proves as daring as it does unpredictable.

Miyuki is none of those now. Instead, he is cast in stone, a rigid smile in place and his eyes locked away.

“Let's try it again, Chris-senpai.” Miyuki’s politeness unnerves Chris, because it matches none of the superficial defences on display. “I'll try and match your breathing better this time.”

“That was unusually cruel of you,” Tanba says quietly, only emerging from the shadows once Miyuki has retreated to his dorm. Chris nods. It's been happening more and more lately, and almost always Miyuki is the cause. That it is Tanba who dares broach the subject says much of the shift in their relationship. Away from Chris’ demons, Tanba has come to know Miyuki a little better for the person he is rather than the man he wasn’t. “He's not a bad kid, Chris. Don't-”

Tanba breaks off, leaving what is always left unsaid unspoken.

Chris nods again. He knows.

12th Innings

Some people are born into the bodies that will carry them through their lives from a very young age. Tanba has always stretched tall, even when he has slouched into his pockets and shrugged down his shoulders. And Jun, Chris thinks that Jun was born with a scratch of a goatee and flyaway hair.

Miyuki is one of those people who has grown into himself more slowly. Back in the junior league Miyuki had been all mouth and eyes, the rest of him swallowed up in a cap that was too big for him and a keeper’s uniform meant for someone three sizes larger. It’s no wonder then that Miyuki’s personality has always had a habit of filling a room instead, because there has never really been enough of Miyuki to accommodate it.

Sometimes, however, Miyuki slips into a room so silently, his personality muted, that Chris only ever discovers that Miyuki is there when he lifts his gaze and finds it met by a quiet, contemplative one.

As kids, Chris spent more hours plotting how to master Miyuki’s mind than he did on the rest of Miyuki’s team altogether, and still Miyuki occupies his thoughts.

It feels different now.

Delighted smirks, quiet eyes, bruises and shadows and depth.

This is different.

13th Innings

Miyuki slices the ball high, almost making it to first base before a quick fire pitch scuttles any chance of an unexpected 1-game run of form. Kuramochi groans dramatically at Chris' side, hunched forward over his knees and narrowed eyes locked in on the field of play. It's the closest that Miyuki has come to getting away a proper hit with no one on base in months, but it is still not enough.

Miyuki returns to the dugout, a veneer of humour sliced thin over his agitation. His response to Kuramochi's ribbing is acidic and his smile flush with annoyance. Chris barely registers either, drawn instead to the hollow tune Miyuki drills into the top of the bat with his fingers as he watches Shirasu step up to the plate.

Rat-a-rat. Rat-a-tat-a-tat. Tat-tat. Taaat.

Interesting.

Unexpected.

Chris has to admit he's even a little bit jealous. It’s rare for him to have to share Miyuki’s attention with anyone else.

Still. This is perhaps something that Chris can use.

14th Innings

Miyuki is shorter than Chris, settling more easily down into the catcher’s crouch than Chris ever did. Chris has always been comprised of too many angles and elbows and knees to approach anything close to the kind of grace on display now. He thinks instead that he had a power that Miyuki sometimes lacks, possessing strength in his thighs and calves that burn like molten liquid but cast Chris in iron. Miyuki’s joints probably ache less than Chris’ used to after a game, Chris thinks wryly as Miyuki darts forward, palming a ball that has bounced too soon in front of him as though it is the easiest thing in the world to predict a miscued pitch. Plastic has always had much more elasticity than iron. A small smile tugs at his mouth when something smart and surely scathing snaps from Miyuki’s lips. Sawamura looks appropriately chastised, but Miyuki is looking less and less amused.

It’s familiar – easy – to fall into this space where all that matters is the sharpening furrow of Miyuki’s brow and the aggressive flick he puts on the ball as he returns it to Sawamura. Some of it is deliberate, a silent message that even Sawamura cannot interpret as positive. But there are elements of Miyuki muddled in. His displeasure when things don’t go to plan, his unrelenting expectations.

Some things never change. For all his skill, Miyuki has always been a little bit difficult.

Sawamura nods firmly to himself on the mound, before throwing a perfect pitch that dives past the batsman. Chris’ smile softens. Sawamura has come a long way, and he carves a narrow lead with Miyuki as the game heads into the 6th innings, the 7th.

When Miyuki returns to the dugout at the bottom of the 8th, there is a quiet exhaustion that lingers across his shoulders and skirts around the corner of his eyes. He sidesteps the claustrophobic heat and noise of Sawamura and Furuya with a flick of a smile, tuning out Kuramochi's cackled comment about how it's Miyuki's turn at bat and maybe now would be a good time to actually get on base? Instead of their warmth (their taunts and teasing) Miyuki seeks out the cool of the shadows.

It is difficult to switch roles, especially this deep into a game when oxygen is being siphoned greedily from your muscles and flesh to feed that desperate need for one more lurch forward, one more sprint.

Tiny tremors ripple through the back of Miyuki's palms as he slips his helmet off, dark eyes drifting closed. It isn't just the noise that Miyuki is trying to shut out.

Chris moves in behind him, encroaching into Miyuki’s shadows, his silence. He knows more than anyone how stiff your fingers get – how clumsy and thick they become – by this point in the game. For that reason, Chris tells himself, and for that reason alone his fingers seek out the buckles of Miyuki’s chest guard, working slowly on the straps that meet in the hollow of Miyuki’s back. Miyuki stills beneath his touch, head dipped forward as Chris releases first one clasp, and then another. Chris can feel the cold touch of Tanba’s silence crawling up the back of his neck and stabbing into his skull.

Miyuki is hot, the muscles in his arms pulled tight with tiredness. He has worked through three different pitchers while navigating one of the strongest batting line-ups they’ve played against for months.

And Miyuki is breathing in time with Chris.

Chris dips in close, leaning in over Miyuki’s shoulder. He’s playing a game now, playing baseball with Miyuki like he’s never done before.

“Tetsuya is worried about your batting,” Chris murmurs quietly, the last of the bindings falling away. Miyuki doesn’t react, and uncertainty crowds Chris’ thoughts. Has he read this wrong? It would not be the first time he has assigned undue complexity to one of Miyuki’s little idiocracies. “He thinks he might be putting too much pressure on you.” He lifts the guard off of Miyuki's shoulders, up over raised arms. Miyuki awards him a vague little nod in response, stepping out towards the plate without offering Chris anything concrete in return.

Instead, Miyuki answers the way he always does. Through baseball.

Miyuki leaves the first ball but darts the second one past the short stop, sliding roughly into first base.

“Safe!”

“That was clever,” Miyuki acknowledges later, a towel around his neck and his hair still damp from his bath. There is a quiet humour lighting his eyes, and a genuine tug to his smile that Chris thinks he doesn't see often enough. “But it won't work again next time, not now that I know exactly what you are doing.”

Miyuki is right, and he is unable to replicate his success in their next game. Chris isn't surprised, nor overly concerned. It was not a fix-all he was testing, but a hypothesis.

15th Innings

It’s an insignificant tumble right as practise begins. Kuramochi returns a flat, fast throw in to Miyuki that spins late in the air, dipping right when it should turn left. Miyuki dives forward and catches it, landing hard on his side instead of rolling with the momentum. It’s the sort of thing that has happened a thousand times in practise, and will happen a thousand more. Miyuki brushes it off with a breathless laugh, excusing himself from the field to get a drink of cold water, to have a moment to catch his breath.

He steps down into the dugout but doesn’t stop there, moving past Chris with a distracted smile as he heads out into the back room. His heavy, laboured breaths linger in the air even after Miyuki has retreated, crinkling Tanba’s nose in concern and hardening Kataoka’s gaze unreadable.

Chris waits for five minutes, ten. He waits until he gets the nod to follow after Miyuki from Kataoka, even though instinct tries to force his feet into action sooner. There is a silent test here that Miyuki has failed, leaving Kataoka displeased but unsurprised.

Chris finds Miyuki tucked away in the changing room, his back pressed flat against his locker and his head bowed down into his chest. He's too heavy for his legs to keep him quite upright and they sag beneath his weight, jutting outwards in protest. Miyuki looks strung out and on edge, but that is the least of his – of their – worries.

“Miyuki.” There is no point in prefacing his presence with anything more cordial.

Fading eyes dart up through strands of thick brown hair, and then Miyuki is back to focussing on each, desperate attempt at a breath.

“I'm fine.” The words are thin, forced out. “Just … just a little winded.” Miyuki twists his mouth into a grimace, and Chris' gut clenches as he realises that this is the closest Miyuki is able to get to a smile. He sucks in a deep breath of his own, and Miyuki's accusing glance upwards is almost comical. Does he think Chris is taking all the air for himself, deliberately depriving Miyuki of the very thing he desperately needs, what he desires more than anything?

For a beat Chris' heart stutters and then stops, strangled by a biting irony that blades his blood copper. It shocks the world white, leaving behind bitterness on his tongue and a horror clamping down on his chest.

The hoarse, jagged breaths penetrate deep into Chris' conscious, scouring through like molten. They tear him away from his thoughts, dragging him back into the room and infusing him with a flat heat that doesn't burn so much as it clarifies. Calms.

He’s feeling just a touch light headed, but that seems only fair.

Chris takes half a step back, his head dipped to the side and his eyes narrowing in thought. Miyuki, Miyuki is like some gnarled, twisted willow, folding in and around on himself as he tries to wrench out his next breath. It shouldn’t be this difficult, Chris knows. Breathing should never be this difficult. But when it has been knocked from you so suddenly, sometimes that simple, rhythmic beat is hard to recapture. You breathe in when you should breathe out, the air isn’t caught so much as it is snatched, and all the while the world thins around you into smears and streaks of colour.

Chris knows what it is like to live in a world crowded with nothing but smears of colour.

All of them black.

“Why can't you bat when there isn't someone on base?”

“Chris-senpai?” Miyuki wrestles with the words, twisting his incredulousness into a question rather than something stronger, less polite. Chris' gaze flicks downwards, noting methodically how Miyuki's hands are pressed so firmly back against the door of his locker that they are turning white. They might be the only thing keeping Miyuki up right, and there is something about that that churns the concern in Chris gut into possessiveness. That will not do. “If, if you think baseball talk is going to-” Miyuki's eyes shut as the next breath rattles out in short, futile puffs - “distract me, then-”

Chris moves forward silently, but Miyuki reads quietness as easily as he does noise. Dark eyes flicker open again wearily, tracking Chris’ movements. Miyuki's jagged breaths feel hot this close, caught in a sauna between their two bodies and diluting the thin air even further.

“Why won't you ask me to help you through this?” Chris asks, genuinely curious. Miyuki’s fingers curl into fists. “Why don't you ever ask anyone for help?” he adds, brushing away the hair that has fallen across Miyuki’s eyes and so easily threaten to steal Miyuki away from Chris' reality. His hand lingers there, threaded through the damp strands and bringing Chris in closer. Miyuki's heartbeat is erratic, losing all sense of musicality and instead thundering up through and into Chris' chest in a manic, unsettling beat.

“Don't,” Miyuki snaps out, anger pulling his mouth into a thin line and his eyes hardening briefly, before all his attempts at actual, honest emotion are swallowed in a strangled cough. His shoulder blades flatten as he presses back against his safe little door, the locker rattling as his head bangs backwards. Chris follows him in, gobbling up that last hint of space so that he feels the next of Miyuki's breaths in his bones.

“Why can you bat for Tetsuya, but not for yourself?” He murmurs, unrelenting. Miyuki stiffens at their captain's name, his breath hitching this time in a twisted knot of guilt, dark eyes sliding sideways. Interesting. “Why do you expect people to dislike you?”

Betrayal flares through what is left of Miyuki’s gaze with that last comment, as Chris is now pitting Miyuki against himself.

“Miyuki. Kazuya,” Chris shapes his words on Miyuki's last desperate attempt at a breath out, a tease and offer that draws a shudder from Miyuki. Miyuki has never liked it when people use his first name, and Chris has never thought to ask why. “Kazuya,” he says again, his heartbeat thudding suddenly when Miyuki glares up at him from under exhausted, laden eyelids. Miyuki doesn't have enough air left in his lungs to even attempt a more complex response. “What is there of you when there isn't someone else to play for?” Work for, strive for?

Breathe for?

If a tree falls in a forest and no-one hears it, does the forest exist at all?

“Take something for your own, Kazuya.”

Chris reaches forward and soothes his fingers along the curve of Miyuki's cheekbone, and Miyuki stops breathing at all. His thumb snags on Miyuki's mouth as he moves his hand downwards, tugging Miyuki’s bottom lip down, away. It exposes a cluster of tiny little scars that mar an otherwise silky, snarky stretch of skin, and Miyuki flinches. It is as if Chris has exposed some dark secret.

It is always the little things with Miyuki.

“You've been very patient,” Chris murmurs, his voice soft and devoid of anything complicit. Miyuki moves to clench his jaw in defence, because Miyuki thrives off of emotions and tone but cannot do anything with the emptiness that Chris is offering instead. Miyuki's reflexes betray him here in a way they rarely do during play, slurred slow by the carbon dioxide threading through his veins.

Chris is the carer, the fixer, the damaged goods and the opportunist. In that brief moment where Miyuki is merely human instead of super-powered, he covers Miyuki's sulky (desperate) mouth with his own. He seals Miyuki away, steals away Miyuki as his-

-and breathes out.

The air – his air – fills Miyuki's mouth, dancing out over his tongue before trickling down the back of his throat. Chris feels Miyuki's sharp intake of breath against his chest and hums his approval. Chris absorbs each of the tiny little tremors that follow, before slowly drawing his mouth away.

Miyuki's lips start to part instinctively, desperate to expel the thin air and drag in something stronger. Chris presses two fingers against them, sealing them closed. Dark eyes glare up at him in childish disbelief, demanding release.

“Not yet,” Chris commands mildly instead. Miyuki squeezes his eyes shut, fighting to regain some kind of control. Good. “You're doing well,” Chris compliments as Miyuki struggles with Chris' instruction, muscles twitching and his back rocking against the door. “Now. With me.” Chris lets out his next breath with exaggerated slowness, and Miyuki struggles to match it. It is the 5000 yen knockoff of a genuine Rolex, riddled with flaws and design errors. Miyuki's breath lacks the smoothness of Chris' own, stuttering outwards in breaks and starts. One of Miyuki's hands clenches into a fist while the other flails outwards, first brushing accidently against Chris' hip before coming to brace there more deliberately.

“You're doing well,” Chris repeats again, and Miyuki manages a hoarse, scattered bark of a laugh in response. Chris catches the last of that laughter on his tongue as he dips down and captures Miyuki's mouth once more. Breathes.

“With me.”

Three times, four times, five. He fills Miyuki up in pieces, asking for nothing in return. For too long, it has been the other way around. He tries to remember a time when someone hasn't expected something from Miyuki, and finds only the taste of Miyuki's mouth.

“With me.”

Chris breaths deep into Miyuki, curves his hands around Miyuki's cheeks and holds him there. Tastes the silver and the sweat, the heat and the thrill.

Miyuki tastes like baseball.

This time when Chris moves backwards, Miyuki follows. Trembling fingers knot up in Chris’ hair as Miyuki reaches upwards, inwards, tangling desperately into heat instead of seeking out the cold, empty promises of his locker door. Chris breathes in and consumes it all, his teeth snagging on Miyuki’s bottom lip and his tongue skirting over the top of Miyuki’s teeth.

He’s never done anything like this before. Adrenalin rushes through him as he realises that he doesn’t care. The need to taste, to claim, to take whitewashes his other senses, flooding them all with an anarchist need that flares red through his ribs and crushes his thoughts. He wants-

The heavy pound of footsteps rumble up through the floor, and then there is nothing but space and ice between them. Miyuki retreats back to what is safe and Chris is but the wreckage left behind, somehow now the one who has had his breath stolen away while Miyuki draws from a perfect well of, of...

Chris smirks. While there is nothing there behind Miyuki’s calm gaze, not anger or lust, not betrayal or denial, Miyuki bites down just once on the inside of his bottom lip, drawing it into his mouth and pulling that last, lingering taste of Chris inwards.

Sawamura swoops into the room on a flurry of insults and threats, blaming his lost bat on Furuya, on Miyuki, on the sneaky elves who hide in his locker, and lastly (and most likely) on Kuramochi. He's so caught up in his desperate fury that it hardly seems to matter that he has caught his senpai in a compromising position, even pausing briefly to praise Chris' form and glare at Miyuki before sweeping back out.

It is hard not to smile in the face of such utter hopelessness, and even Miyuki is unable to swallow back his snicker. Miyuki watches Sawamura leave, displaced warmth lingering in Miyuki's rich brown eyes as he drags his gaze reluctantly back to Chris. Weariness returns, but it battles now with Miyuki's innate curiosity. It takes only a second for horror to override both those emotions, as Miyuki then realises that Chris must have read all those little gazes and shared smiles for what they truly were.

“Why now?” Miyuki asks slowly, the last word tacked on almost as an afterthought, almost as though his voice doesn't shake just a touch as he says it. Miyuki believes more in the why than the now, because while the ‘why’ can somehow be explained away, the ‘now’ requires intent. Reciprocation.

Desire.

Why now? Chris thinks there are a hundred reasons, each one starting and ending with the heat that Miyuki unfurls in him, the weight of his gaze. He thinks it's because this is the most whole he has felt in years, and it's because there are pieces in him now that once belonged to Miyuki. It's how he wants to tempt Miyuki from his strange, self-imposed exile, ignite in him something that feels like baseball but which offers so much more in return.

“Because you always buy me a drink after physiotherapy,” Chris answers instead, because it captures all and everything Miyuki is.

“Chris-senpai,” Miyuki says quietly, so serious that it draws Chris close enough that he can taste each breath Miyuki exhales, finds himself getting drunk on it, desperate for more. “That is a really stupid answer.”

Chris barely has a chance to blink back his surprise (words are useless now, meant for those who are masters of them instead of merely a vessel through which they are expelled) before Miyuki is kissing him. Miyuki kisses with none of Chris’ inartistic force and direction. Instead, Miyuki is more hesitant and edgy, impatient. Chris takes in all his contradictions and suggests a few of his own in return, knowing that Miyuki is offering up everything and nothing in this clunky, perfect kiss.

It ends as it begins: in baseball. Kuramochi calls down from the dugout and Miyuki smears his mouth away from Chris’, pulling back with the same abruptness that brought them together. There is a look, a touch, a promise, all spun into the heat that has risen disastrously to Miyuki’s cheeks. But there is also a haunting hint of doubt that Chris tries to brush away with his fingertips, ghosts that Chris manages to displace but not quite disperse. He wonders if this is where the answers are to some of his earlier questions, lying just beyond Chris’ influence.

Baseball whisks Miyuki away before Chris can become the exorcist he suddenly needs to be, but there is no room there for Chris to object. Baseball is what always brings Miyuki back, as well.

***

Miyuki Kazuya. The name sticks like taffy to Chris' tongue, sweet and tacky and infused with air. There was a time when Chris had thought that Miyuki would taste like cotton candy, then snark, then bitterness last of all. But all of those tastes have always been Chris, cast in different shades.

“Would you like a drink, Chris-senpai?”

There, caught between the shadows and the light, Miyuki waits.

Always.