Work Text:
Waking up to his alarm at five thirty the day after the Yakushi game, Satoru finds he isn’t as eager to run as he usually is. Determined to improve he may be, but – his body is sore and heavy in a way very different from how he usually feels post-game – a dull, weighty heaviness in his calves and knees and back and neck that drags at him, anchors him to the depression in his mattress.
The alarm continues beeping mutedly, muffled by his pillow. He can feel the hard round edge of its plastic casing against the side of his head. His roommate continues to snore, sprawled out on the top bunk. Satoru can see the long ungainly shadow of his wrist and hand, dangling across the side of the bedframe.
Five more minutes, Satoru’s body groans, as he slides his arm under his pillow, fingers reaching for the alarm clock, and, for a moment, Satoru is tempted to give in. To set the alarm to go off in another hour, and skip the run. He hasn’t taken a day off, yet, anyway, and besides, he’ll go to practice, later. Considering how the previous day’s practice had gone – after the game – he’ll be running enough, then, won’t he?
As soon as the thought crosses his mind, a wave of self-loathing washes over him. The picture – as vivid as it had been immediately after the finals match – of Kawakami-senpai collapsed on the mound flashes in front of his eyes
– the look of disbelief on Miyuki-senpai’s face, the barely concealed misery on Tetsu-san’s – the naked anguish on Jun-san’s – and worst of all – the sinking, sinking hopelessness-despair-futility curling in his throat, the clenching tightness around his chest, the leaden hollow ache in his stomach, mirrored in the look on Sawamura’s face:
Tight lines around
A mouth dropped open in shock
A pair of eyes impossibly wide, impossibly blank
(And across the field, the sound of Inajitsu’s cheering echoing in the open ballpark.)
Satoru sits up, swallows back the bile that rises in his throat, tears the bedsheets from his legs, shoves them against the wall, swings his feet over the side of the bed.
Barely keeps his head from colliding with the bed frame as he stands.
***
Satoru is not sure when knocking on Sawamura’s door on his way out of the dorms had become a habit. He isn’t even sure when he’d begun – knocking on Sawamura’s door, that is. All Satoru knows for sure is that sometime between the beginning of the school year and now – twenty-nine days after losing their bid for the Koshien Stadium – he’d gotten used to running with Sawamura – to keeping pace with Sawamura’s footsteps along the slopes and inclines between Seidou’s ballfields, to listening to the sound Sawamura’s breathing – in, out, in, out – in time with the thud-thud of their footfalls and the thrumming of their hearts under sweatsticky skin –
(Sometimes Haruichi joins them, sometimes not. More times it is just Satoru and Sawamura, gasps coalescing in cold morning air, too out-of-breath for words. Sawamura is quiet in the morning, no matter how loud and energetic he might be later on in the day.)
– watching the sun rise slowly over cut grass brightening to a yellow green, the smell of dew and damp earth, the spread of blue across dark skies like light along the high ceiling of a cathedral –
Satoru loves watching the sky lighten – loves watching cornflower blue emerge from navy, loves how it seems to open, like doors thrown open wide to let the outside in –
Lately, it’s been hard to be alone with Sawamura, because – and maybe, this is just Satoru’s imagination – he’s felt as though there is a sort of animosity emanating from – him – Sawamura, that is – not quite hatred but more bitterness, as if he has a bone to pick with Satoru but he is not sure how. The feeling – that Sawamura somehow hated him – sparked sometime during the previous month’s practice matches, but –
It had reached a peak, yesterday, Satoru thinks, bracing himself against the wall outside his room and pulling his shoes on. It had reached a peak at the bottom of the fifth inning when the Coach had sent Satoru to relieve Sawamura during their game against Yakushi –
Sawamura had cried, walking off the mound, Satoru knows. Satoru had tried – he’d said, “it must be frustrating,” because he knows that it was – knew that it was – but Sawamura hadn’t listened, hadn’t given Satoru a chance to apologize –
The idea that Sawamura hates him lodges like a fist under the curve of Satoru’s ribcage, steady crushing pressure heavy in his chest.
Satoru is awkward and stilted and doesn’t know how to apologize – would I’m sorry have sounded too condescending? Would better luck next time have been any better?
Satoru knows better than anyone – except perhaps Miyuki-senpai or Chris-san – how good a pitcher Sawamura is. Sawamura is unique. Sawamura is loud and exuberant, a moodmaker, a gamechanger, an acepersonality in a way Satoru will never be.
The best Satoru can hope for is to never let the team down.
Sawamura lifts the team up.
If – Satoru thinks, pausing outside Sawamura’s dorm room – there was some way I could tell him.
He’d looked so broken afterwards, in the dugout. Sat with his head hung down, tail between his legs. Didn’t bother to cool down. Didn’t even bother to ice his shoulder. He’d looked – wrong, like the world had dealt him a wicked hand, like whatever course of events had brought him to this point should never have happened.
Satoru’s knock on the dorm door goes unanswered. He waits several moments more, then tries the door-handle, which is, as expected, unlocked. Neither Sawamura nor Kuramochi-senpai have any self-preservation instinct. Masuko-san was the one used to lock up, but Masuko-san has moved into another room. Not that anyone would know by the nameplate on the wall – his name is still on it, at number one.
At a quarter to six, the room is still dark, curtains pulled over shadowed windows. Satoru steps over crumpled clothing and Kuramochi-senpai’s dumbbells, crosses over to where Sawamura is curled up on his mattress unlike the way he usually sleeps, sprawled out, uninhibited. Too many things about Sawamura have been inhibited lately – his voice and smile and the sparkle in his eye.
He looks like Chris-san used to.
Sawamura shifts when Satoru approaches, curls a little tighter, and that is how Satoru knows he is awake – awake and ignoring Satoru as best as he can. Satoru is the expert on ignoring people he doesn’t want to listen to, though, and Sawamura doesn’t have it in him to withhold reactions, so when Satoru grips Sawamura’s shoulder through the blanket Sawamura has cocooned himself in and shakes him, Sawamura twitches and two verysullen, verybrown eyes appear over the edge of the cocoon.
“What,” he snaps, and the lump in Satoru’s ribcage grows a little heavier.
“Going to run,” Satoru says, the words oddly thick in his throat. “You – coming?”
Sawamura goes slack, neck extending limply, head flopping into his pillow. “No,” he says. He doesn’t sound angry anymore, just tired. Mouth curled down, verybrown eyes blank. Defeated.
Persuasion, like apologies, has never come easy to Satoru. He lacks the conversational finesse to change minds, sway wills, lead armies – or highschool baseball teams. Things like that are better left to Tetsu-san, and Miyuki-senpai, who is doing a much better job than he thinks he is doing.
Satoru can see how the team looks to Miyuki-senpai for guidance the way he and Sawamura look to him for plays, even if Miyuki-senpai can’t see it. Miyuki-senpai has presence. He has charisma.
“It’s good for you,” Satoru says, slowly, and winces at how stiff the words sound. He takes a deep breath. “You’ll – lose a day. Get left behind.”
Sawamura’s eyes spark, narrow. Satoru sees his sunbrowned pitchcalloused fingertips close around his blanket.
“The hell I will,” he growls –
– and even though he is angry, at least he sounds –
– alive –
– “I’m going to leave you in the dust.”
***
(It is a good run. A hard run. An exhilarating run. The knot in Satoru’s chest feels looser, afterwards, when Sawamura manages a smile.)
***
Nearly a month later, in their match against Seishou, Kataoka-kantoku pulls Satoru off the mound in the first inning – right after Satoru gives up three runs and dashes his dream of beating his own record into smithereens.
Panic is an ugly feeling, Satoru thinks, when his alarm goes off at five thirty the morning after. Panic is ugly and overwhelming. It makes brains go blank and eyes go blind and muscles freeze in place.
The alarm goes off, but Satoru doesn’t wake up, because Satoru was already awake. He’d lain awake all night, with the image of Kataoka-kantoku’s furious face – angrier than Satoru had ever seen him – interspersed with Coach Ochiai’s enigmatic
I never switch the Ace off the mound
As if his mind could not decide which had been worse –
I don’t want to run today, Satoru thinks. He turns onto his side, pulls his knees up to his chest, squeezes his eyes shut. If he doesn’t run now, he will run later. No baseballs, Kataoka-kantoku had said – so there’ll be nothing but running to do, come practice.
There is a knock on the door. Satoru ignores it. Smushes the side of his face into his pillow, facing the wall.
The door swings open, hinges creaking, and Satoru hears a set of very familiar footsteps cross the floor.
“Furuya!” Sawamura’s voice is too loud, in the enclosed space of the tiny room. It rings in Satoru’s ears, raises the hair at the nape of his neck. “Morning run – up, up, up!”
Satoru says nothing. He doesn’t move, either, just pretends Sawamura isn’t there. It isn’t hard to do. Satoru’s had lots of practice.
“Don’t ignore me, dammit,” Sawamura growls, clamping a hand - broadpalm, longfingers - on Satoru’s shoulder, and shaking him, hard, “I know you’re not asleep.”
Satoru concentrates on regulating his breathing. For a moment, there is silence, during which Satoru tries to fall asleep and Sawamura – probably – considers what to say next. Then Satoru feels the mattress dip and a weight settles against his back. Blatantly disregarding Satoru’s personal space, Sawamura leans back against Satoru’s scapulae, places an arm along his waist, as if Satoru is the back of a couch, or something.
More silence. Satoru contemplates his hands, brought close to his face: long slendercalloused fingers sunbrowned from being outside all summer.
I want to pitch more, he thinks. I want to be better. I want to do better. I want –
“Everyone to rely on me,” Sawamura finishes, and Satoru realizes, with a start, that he’d been speaking aloud.
Heat spreads across his cheekbones.
The bed creaks as Sawamura rearranges himself to look into Satoru’s face, half-draped over Satoru’s upper body, arms folded against Satoru’s arm-and-shoulder.
“Hey,” Sawamura says, “knew you weren’t asleep.”
Satoru twists, attempts to hide his burning face better. He isn’t sure why he is embarrassed – just that there is an uncomfortable flush creeping up to his hairline, and that he’d rather Sawamura didn’t see it, because Sawamura would laugh, and Satoru really, really hates being laughed at.
Several moments of futile struggle later – during which Satoru attempts to keep Sawamura from prying his hands off his face – it’s a miracle Satoru’s roommate remains asleep – Sawamura gives up and goes back to half-sitting, half-lying over Satoru’s side.
“You’ll miss a day and fall behind, remember?” Sawamura says, while Satoru is reveling in his victory. “You told me that after the Yakushi match. Everybody has bad days. Well. In my case it’s been a bad couple months.”
Satoru wonders why Sawamura is going out of his way to be so supportive. He’s been in the bullpen only – plus running, of course – for almost a month, now. Meanwhile Satoru has started all of Seidou’s matches and wears the ace number, never mind Kataoka-kantoku hasn’t really given it to him. This is a very different situation from the Yakushi match. Satoru had been at the top of his game, then, unlike Sawamura, who’s had the yips since August. There’s no need for Sawamura to be magnanimous.
Sawamura doesn’t even have to be nice. There are days Satoru thinks Sawamura still hates him, after all.
“It’s hard holding a conversation with you,” Sawamura complains, “can’t you reply, for once?”
He looks at Satoru expectantly, eyebrows furrowed.
A beat, then, “why are you doing this,” Satoru says.
Sawamura crosses his arms. “We’re friends, aren’t we?” he says, as if the answer is obvious and Satoru is a simpleton.
“But,” Satoru begins. We’re rivals, he wants to say. We’re rivals for the starting pitcher position and right now I have that position. You hate me –
“But what,” Sawamura says, “can’t people be rivals and friends?” The line of his back is pressed up against Satoru, heat pooling between them. Satoru can feel sweat gathering underneath the fabric of his shirt. It is not an unpleasant feeling – it’s rather comfortable, in fact, if Satoru is honest.
Sawamura looks into Satoru’s face again. “What,” he sighs, “what are you thinking?”
“I’m,” Satoru says. “I – don’t you hate me?”
Sawamura looks puzzled. “Hate you,” he repeats, “no, of course not. We aren’t enemies, you know. We’re on the same team. Hating you would be really stupid.” He raises his eyebrows. “Now, are you going to come run or not? I don’t mind leaving you behind, though, you know.” He adds this last statement with a flourish, as if he is egging Satoru on.
Laughter bubbles in Satoru’s chest. He stifles it with his fist, but the mattress – and Sawamura – shake with him, bedsprings groaning.
“C’mon,” Sawamura says, voice still full of laughter. He holds out a hand – his left hand – for Satoru to take, “let’s go, or we won’t have time for a proper run.”
Weak early morning sunlight filters into the room through the window pane, the sky bleeding blue along the horizon.
Ah, Satoru thinks, the sky is clear today.
He takes Sawamura’s hand, his fingers sliding into Sawamura’s, callouses catching.
Sawamura’s palm is warm.
His arm, when he pulls Satoru up, is strong.
***
(Afterwards, they walk back down towards the dorm buildings, breath coming in short, painful heaves. Satoru’s calves burn. His chest feels light.)
***
“You know,” Sawamura says, tossing a ball for Satoru to hit into the net. The indoor practice field is dimly lit, this late at night. He is sitting on an upturned crate by the frame, a full crate of baseballs at his feet. “Being a reliever isn’t such a bad job. You get to save the ace when he messes up.”
Satoru swings, hits. “I’m not going to mess up,” he mutters, under his breath.
“Who said anything about that,” Sawamura says, strangely innocent, “I was talking about me. Though I tell you, I’d pitch all nine innings without needing to be relieved at all.”
Satoru makes a little strangled noise in his throat.
“Don’t worry, Furuya-kun,” Sawamura says, grinning, alight with the success of pitching well against the upperclassmen. “You’ll make a great relief pitcher.”
The words don’t sting as much as they might have, otherwise, Satoru thinks. It feels – good – to see Sawamura grin, unabashed, hear him laugh, unrestrained. He can’t believe it – but he’d missed it. Missed Sawamura.
“Hope we get a good bracket in the drawing tomorrow,” Sawamura says, changing the subject, when Satoru doesn’t reply. He tosses another ball. Satoru swings, makes contact.
“Does it matter?” Satoru says, wipes his face with the corner of his sleeve, “we’re going to win, either way.”
***
(In the morning, Sawamura is waiting outside Satoru’s dorm room when Satoru walks out. He is sitting on the steps with Haruichi, half-turned towards the dormitory door. He grins when he sees Satoru, waves him over.
“Haruichi’s gonna run with us today!” he calls, even though Satoru is within normal-speaking-level distance.
Satoru nods. “Okay.”
Haruichi lifts a hand, gives Satoru an earnest little smile. “Sky’s really blue isn't it,” he says while Satoru is lacing up his running shoes.
There is an identical smile on Sawamura’s face when Satoru looks up. He feels a sudden rush of fondness for them both. His chest expands, feels almost uncomfortably tight –
In the way his legs hurt after a run.
In the way his shoulder aches after pitching six innings without giving up a hit.
In the way Sawamura’s arm feels slung about his waist.
In the way their hands fit together, fingers interlaced.
Satoru smiles back.)
end.