Chapter Text
Honestly, Mei doesn’t want to be here at all. It’s all Tadano’s fault, really. The catcher had insisted he come today, and though Mei would rather be back on campus training, he is secretly looking forward to watching today’s game.
It’s a rare chance for him to see how much Seido has improved, how much Kazuya has improved, without the high stakes of an actual game between them. And, he can’t deny that he’s looking forward to seeing how they perform against Yakushi.
Mei doesn't remember the last time he entered a high school baseball stadium as a spectator rather than as a player. It’s an unsettling feeling, as though he had woken up one day to find that, during the night, all the furniture in his room had been moved a single inch from their usual positions.
He’s a pitcher. His place is out there on the diamond, surveying his kingdom from his lofty height atop the mound. Not here, in the stands, where he can do nothing but watch as Todoroki, who isn’t even a pitcher by trade, desecrates the packed dirt and gravel of his beloved mound.
As Mei crests the top of the stairs, he sees out on the field that it’s Kazuya’s turn at bat.
Of course.
“Batting fourth, catcher, Miyuki-kun,” the announcer booms, and the crowd cheers loudly.
It’s unsurprising that Kazuya, who has yet to make it to Koshien, has already made a name for himself in the high school baseball world.
A name which he should have made with us. With me.
“The best catcher in Tokyo,” the papers call him, and Mei wholeheartedly agrees. There is a reason that he invited Kazuya, and not any of the other catchers he’s played against, to go to Inashiro with him.
There’s no shortage of talented catchers in West Tokyo, but none of them are Kazuya.
Mei sweeps his gaze across Kazuya’s form, and he frowns. There’s something a little different about the way the other boy is carrying himself today. He stands firmly in the batter’s box, bat raised at an angle above his left shoulder in its usual position. But the lines of his body are tense, as if he’s bracing himself for a fight.
And Mei certainly knows what that looks like. Kazuya never said anything about it to him when they were in junior high, but Mei hears things, and he knows that the catcher is no stranger to physical confrontation.
He huffs, lips twisting wryly before he schools his expression.
Just another of the ways that Mei knows Kazuya, better than most.
Todoroki throws the first pitch, and it hurtles towards home plate at impressive speed. For someone who isn’t a real pitcher.
But Kazuya rears back instead of stepping forward to meet it. The Yakushi catcher’s glove darts out to grab the ball just inches from his face as he hits the deck.
That brushback pitch shouldn’t have knocked a batter like Kazuya flat on the ground.
He narrows his eyes. Kazuya is the cleanup. Sure, the pitch was closer than it needed to be, but there was no reason for him to react the way he did.
The second pitch comes in low and away, and Kazuya swings much too late.
Now, Mei is certain that there is something wrong. Hitting difficult pitches is par for the course for the cleanup batter, and Kazuya has not even been able to touch the last two pitches from a mere position player.
On the third pitch, Kazuya finally makes contact. But right before he swings all the way through, he freezes, for just a split second. Mei sucks in a sharp breath as realization crackles through his mind, a ghost of the sound that Kazuya’s bat made as it connected with the ball.
Kazuya’s injured.
To someone like Mei, who’s known him for years, the signs are obvious, and Mei mentally kicks himself for not recognizing it sooner.
“Strike! Batter out!” The crowd is restless with speculation. Having the cleanup batter strike out, with a runner on second, is a huge mishandled opportunity.
“It’s hard to hit off pitchers like that,” Carlos concedes, and Mei hums noncommittally, too distracted trying to figure out when, how exactly Kazuya was injured, but he frowns at the next words from Shirakawa.
“A cleanup should at least hit to the outfield,” the shortstop sniffs disparagingly, and Mei can’t help the words that rise to his tongue in Kazuya’s defense. He’s said worse before, to Kazuya’s face even, but something about Shirakawa’s flippant attitude grates on him.
It’s because he knows the other boy is a better player than this. He’s seen it firsthand, they all have, and he will not stand to hear this slander on Kazuya’s good name because of some strange fluke.
And it is a fluke. The thought of Kazuya, who lives and breathes baseball just as Mei does, never being able to play again because of an injury—Mei refuses to entertain that possibility.
Kazuya will heal. He has to, because he and Mei are locked in a three year long battle to determine whether Mei’s handpicked team of individually great players or Kazuya’s reborn powerhouse team will ultimately prevail, and they are going into the final year that will determine the victor.
“Is Kazuya hurt or something?” he asks, adding a lilt to the end of his words to make it seem that he cares less than he actually does, and takes no small amount of satisfaction in the way Carlos and Shirakawa immediately whip their heads around to face him.
Down on the field, Kazuya is clearly favoring his left side over his right, and he seems to stand at the plate only by sheer force of will.
The damage is done. The bright energy that had been emanating from the Seido dugout has been noticeably subdued by their cleanup’s lackluster performance.
What incontrovertible evidence of the role Kazuya holds within his team.
But that’s the thing about pillars. When they start to show cracks, the structure they uphold is soon to fold.
Mei watches, unable to do anything as Seido continues to put up a zero on the scoreboard.
***
They win. In the ninth inning, Kazuya finally, finally, gets on base, and with a swing of Maezono’s bat, he comes home.
Down on the field, the Seido team is cheering and crying as they punch their ticket to Koshien for the first time in nine years.
Even through the crush of bodies, Mei can easily pick out Kazuya, who wears one of the widest and most genuine grins that Mei has ever seen stretched across his sweaty face.
This is Kazuya in his element.
And Mei gets it, better than most. He understands what drives Kazuya, the dual burdens of privilege and responsibility that make up the mantle that only players like them carry on their teams. On a logical level, he knows why Kazuya chose to play with the injury, though he’s unsure if he would have done the same if the situation was flipped.
Still, it’s only when he double and triple checks the scoreboard that he is finally able to breathe out sharply through his nose, the stress and anxiety of the game leaving his lungs in a rush.
Congratulations, Kazuya, he thinks, and he means it.
***
The train ride back to campus is a quiet affair. The initial excitement at the prospect of Seido returning as an even stronger opponent after their run at Koshien has faded somewhat, leaving Mei plenty of time to reminisce about the past.
He sits a little ways apart from the rest of the Inashiro group. The repetitive sounds of the train squeaking over the tracks, the recorded announcer’s cheerful tone and the swishing of the doors provide a soothing backdrop for his racing thoughts. His left leg hasn’t stopped jiggling in place since he sat down, a nervous tic he picked up just this year that he hasn’t been quite able to break.
Normally, Mei is right in the middle of whatever group he finds himself in. It’s where he feels the most at home, the product of growing up as the baby brother to two doting older sisters. Especially for an hour-long train ride, he would typically be found holding court, commanding attention in the way he does best.
Right now, he enjoys the solitude. His emotions are all over the place, and he needs to sort out this mess in his brain before he can even think about the piles of homework left to be completed on his desk. It will be much easier without an audience.
A few seats down, Carlos and Shirakawa have their heads bent towards each other in quiet conversation. Mei’s eyes trace the shapes of their bodies, curled just the slightest bit towards each other in a pair of parentheses.
He flicks his gaze away, towards the window and the views of the Tokyo skyline as the train races back towards campus.
Why did seeing Kazuya injured like that cause such a visceral reaction? Mei is a little unsettled by this unexplained occurrence. He feels restless and he doesn’t know why, like a soda can that’s been shaken and then left out in the sun.
Contrary to popular belief, Mei is more self aware than most people give him credit for. He’s had to be, to have been entrusted with the Ace position since the fall of his first year.
On some level, he knows he cares for Kazuya. Mei has plenty of admirers, people who want to be close to him in the hopes that some of his shine will rub off on them. But Kazuya has never been like that with him.
Kazuya, who has his own fans, Kazuya the genius captain catcher cleanup of a rebuilt powerhouse team on the up and up, Kazuya who is one of his oldest friends.
Kazuya understands him in a way that few other people do, each of their jagged edges somehow fitting together to form what would no doubt be a golden battery, if only they played for the same team.
If only, if only, if only.
But knowing and accepting are two different things. Mei’s traitorous, selfish pitcher’s heart wants with the same ferocity that he wants to stand on the mound at Koshien, again and again and again. He wants to form a battery with Kazuya, to see if they would be as good as he knows they would be in his heart of hearts.
He wants to form a battery with Kazuya, but more than that, he wants—
Mei’s gaze lands on Carlos and Shirakawa again. The two of them have fallen asleep, heads resting against each other as the train rolls onward.
He remembers how, right before the two of them had finally gotten together, they would each come to him to talk about the other. How he put up with the pining for all of three days before he all but locked them in the equipment shed together to sort out their feelings.
Outside of his two best friends, Mei is no stranger to confessions, to love. Or more aptly, the ephemeral crushes that form between his classmates. He’s popular amongst the students of Inashiro, and after his appearances at Koshien, across the country, and it’s a rare week that passes without someone stopping him in the halls to confess their love to him.
He turns them all down, of course. They’re all in love with a version of Narumiya Mei that doesn’t exist, the public face he wears when he plays his part for the media.
Sometimes he wonders how many of them would still want to be with him, if they knew what he was really like.
I don’t have time for a relationship, he says each time, softening the rejection with a kind smile because Narumiya Mei may be a tyrant on the mound, but outside the intensity and flair for the dramatic that would give a Hollywood starlet a run for her money, he’s still a person.
He’s not wholly uninterested in pursuing a relationship. It’s just that he hasn’t found the right person yet. His partner needs to be someone who appreciates baseball the way he does. Someone who understands him inside and out, who can keep up with his mercurial personality, and whose personality complements his own. Someone with whom he can share in his victories, and who will support him in his defeats.
Someone like—Kazuya.
The revelation, when it comes, arrives without fanfare. He’s more relieved than anything at finally being able to put a name to the feeling that’s been plaguing him for a while.
He wants more with Kazuya.
He might be in love with Miyuki Kazuya.
Mei feels his face heat up as he finally admits the truth to himself. He sits up, looking around the train car surreptitiously to see if anyone else has noticed his earth-shattering revelation. But the other Inashiro players are otherwise occupied. It’s only Mei’s world which has tilted a few degrees off its axis.
Now that he knows his feelings for what they are, he looks back on his childhood memories with the catcher in a new light. He misses how simple it was back in their senior league days, when it was just himself and Kazuya, two boys bound together by their all-consuming love of baseball.
As quickly as the revelation comes, though, doubt begins to settle in. Theirs is a relationship that’s always been defined by the game they love most, and Mei is left unsure as to how he can bridge the chasm between friendly rival and, maybe one day, lover.
It's so simple when he really thinks about it. He loves baseball. He loves Kazuya. But right now, it seems that he can only ever have one.
***
Back at his dorm, Mei checks to see that neither of his roommates are home before he throws himself onto his bed with a huff, fingers already punching in the numbers he’s long memorized by heart.
“Nee-san,” he says, uncaring if his voice is edging towards a whine when his oldest sister Emiko finally picks up on the fourth ring. It’s a Friday night, which knowing her means she’s getting ready to head out for a party. But Mei knows that she will always make time for him. One of the perks of being the youngest.
His sisters are both in college now, but the three of them remain close, sending texts in their sibling group chat every day. But Mei rarely calls; he knows that Emiko knows immediately that something's up.
“Is this about Miyuki-kun again,” Emiko asks in lieu of greeting, and Mei can’t help the squawk that escapes his lips at being immediately perceived so transparently. Sometimes, Mei hates how well his sister knows him.
“How did you...no it’s not about...what—,” Mei tries to recover gracefully, but it’s too late.
“Well it was either that, or your favorite ice cream place ran out of rum raisin flavor again,” Emiko says, “and if it was about the ice cream you would have started complaining as soon as I picked up.”
Even though his sister is all the way in Kyoto, Mei can picture the smirk on her face as if she was standing right in front of him. She knows she’s got him, hook line and sinker.
“Fine, fine” he sighs, running a hand down his face, “yes, it's about Kazuya.”
Emiko whoops in glee.
"Well," he amends, to buy himself some time to think about how to go about this, "it's mostly about him. But also sort of about me?" He really should have thought this through better.
At this, Emiko's voice turns serious.
“What is it, Mei?” she asks.
His sister knows who he’s calling about, so he might as well go ahead with the question he wanted to ask.
“When you and Satomi got together, how did you know it was the right time?”
It’s not like Mei doesn’t know how to confess to someone. He's familiar with the mechanics, even if he's done it himself. But Kazuya has already turned him down once before; Mei likes him, loves him even, but he’s not a masochist. He wants Kazuya to say yes the next time he asks.
Then there is the small matter of the gauntlet Kazuya threw down between them two years ago, the promise he made to take down Mei and the Inashiro team. Would adding another dimension to their relationship really be the best idea right now?
The line is silent for a few seconds. Then, softly. “Oh, Mei.” Emiko says, and Mei sort of hates the knowing tone in his sister’s voice.
She doesn’t call him out on it, doesn’t ask him to elaborate on why he’s asking her this. Despite their age difference, he’s always been closest with Emiko, and she has always been the best at giving him advice. It’s why he feels comfortable going to her with this most precious of knowledge.
“Well,” Emiko says, after a few moments of consideration. “There wasn’t really a right time for us. She was always so busy as class president and I was busy with my captain duties, so we never really had that much time to see each other. But we made it work.”
Mei makes a noise of assent to indicate that he is listening, and Emiko continues.
“She was actually the one who confessed to me first. I thought I would be stuck here pining until graduation, but we were arguing about something stupid one day and she just came out and said it right in the middle of our argument.” She laughs ruefully, and Mei can hear the love in his sister’s voice. He wonders if that’s how he sounds, sometimes, when he talks about Kazuya.
“But every relationship is different, Mei, so don’t take my word as the blueprint.”
“Thanks, nee-san,” Mei replies. His sister’s words have gone a long way to soothing the tangled knot of feelings in his chest.
The line is quiet for a few moments, before Emiko ventures forth.
“Soooo,” she says conversationally, when Mei doesn’t elaborate, “what are you gonna do about it?”
“I…I don’t really know,” Mei admits, and he hates how uncertain his voice sounds. It’s been a strange few hours, and the initial delight at finally putting a name to his feelings has been slowly eclipsed by the shadow of uncertainty.
There are so many unknowns when embarking on any new relationship. Mei knows he’s not the first person to feel this way, and he won’t be the last, but somehow he still feels like his particular situation is one that nobody has ever dealt with before.
“I mean,” Mei begins, when he has gathered his thoughts a bit, “now would be a terrible time to start something. We’re at rival schools, and only one of us is going to Koshien this year. Adding a relationship on top of that…” he trails off, shaking his head even though his sister can’t see him.
Emiko sighs. “Yeah, it’s not ideal. But then again, you don’t want your chance at this to pass you by while you sit there waiting for the ‘perfect’ opportunity.”
Mei makes a noise of understanding, and the two lapse into the sort of comfortable silence between two people who know each other well enough that they don’t need to fill the space with words.
There’s a murmur from the other end of the line of someone asking a question from across the room.
“Sorry, I’ve got to go,” Emiko says, and her voice is genuinely apologetic. Mei realizes with a start that they’ve been on the phone for much longer than he expected.
“No, it’s alright. Go and have fun at the party,” he says, and he means it.
“Bye now. And remember,” Emiko says, because she always has to get in the last word, “what they say about the best laid plans, and all that.” Then she hangs up, and Mei drops the phone on his bed to scrub a hand down his face.
In retrospect, he supposes he has been somewhat obvious. So much so that his sister, who lives in Kyoto, figured it out before he did. Or maybe she just knows him better than his friends here at Inashiro.
Only Kazuya, who is so perceptive on the field yet so unobservant off it, hasn’t picked up on any of the signs.