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“Try it.”
An open tupperware intrudes into his personal space—Shouji has to balk in order to dodge it as though it’s a brushback pitch, gripping his handlebars tighter, and yet his bike nearly hits the racks with how sudden it is. His gaze trails the arm crushing its fingers against the tupperware’s plastic sides to its origin and he almost balks again.
His catcher’s looking at him expectantly, as though Abe’s just signed him for a fastball painting the bottom right corner. With a furrowed brow, deep scowl, and dead set gaze, Abe’s expression is a perfect match for the one worn during the prefecturals, the setting Sun doing nothing to hide Abe’s glare. Abe’s brow twitches and, shoot, it has been a while since he’s said anything, hasn’t it. Must be how Mihashi feels most of the time.
“Sure,” he says, and the feeling that he’s been tricked into some sort of Faustian bargain creeps into his mind. Whatever Abe wants him to try must be some new protein Coach or Shino’oka are testing—Abe’s world revolves around baseball and winning just as much as Mihashi’s, no doubt about that. Nothing else could explain this scenario: his socially awkward catcher jumping him behind the near-empty bike racks after practice with some mysterious substance to try. Surely.
Lumpy, malformed yellow blobs lie in ambush inside the container. On instinct the corners of his mouth dip down, but he pulls them back up, hopefully before Abe’s noticed. Chunks of some…unmixed material dot each one like…no, no, he can’t think like that before eating anything. It must be mounds of protein powder, his brain whispers, massaging the jumble of nerves that have congested his cortex. The blobs are thick, but uneven, and sadly bleed out at their sides, as though they’d given up on holding themselves together. Shouji gulps. He reaches in, takes one. Tries so hard not to wince at the chalky residue that sticks to his fingers.
He digs in.
Every single drop of moisture evaporates from his mouth, fleeing like their lives depended on it. What remains is what he imagines eating sand would feel like—tens of hundreds of grains scratch at his teeth, his gums, his tongue, until they all gum together into one indomitable mass. He chews, or at least, tries to with how over-encumbered his mouth feels, until he manages to break off piece after piece to swallow individually, each one taking a part of himself with it. He reaches madly for his water bottle, fumbling with the lid, before drowning the awful thing with water. Coughs fight their way out of his body as though he’s a sputtering engine trying to keep afloat.
Abe is staring at him. Abe hasn’t stopped staring at him since he took his first, and only, bite. Somehow his catcher’s severe expression has become even more severe, and he’s not sure how that’s possible. “Well?” says Abe, either ignoring or choosing not to comment on his reaction.
“They’re—” More coughs emerge despite him covering his mouth. He can’t stop them. “Wherever you got them from, you should ask for a refund.”
Abe blinks once. Twice. His catcher traces a path from the half-eaten thing in his hand to the rest in the tupperware, jaw hardening. He’s not sure what that means. “I see,” Abe states, hurriedly pulling the container close and screwing the lid back on, before abruptly turning around, grip tight against the handlebars, and walking away. Water bottle nearly empty, he watches as Abe stops at the exit and turns around.
“This never happened.” The voice is harsh and clipped, yet ultimately hollow in the way Abe is when he throws his weight around to anyone except Mihashi. Shouji simply waves back, stores today’s fever dream in the corner of his mind as another quirk of his strange catcher, and starts his bike ride home.
***
True to Abe’s word, his catcher acts as though he wasn’t forced to eat one of the more vile…things he’d ever put into his mouth yesterday (seriously, it was almost as disgusting as The Bad Protein and near the top of his list of things he’d never ingest again if he could help it). At practice, he helps measure Abe’s pop time, coordinates his 6-4-3 double plays with Sakaeguchi and Oki, studies Tajima’s batting practice as though he could glean the secrets of consistent hitting from it, and so on and so forth until they’re all drenched in sweat and gnats creep across his skin and the sky sinks down into bed, ending their fun without much fanfare as they all crowd into the dugout, chewing on Shino’oka’s rice balls and chatting about anything and everything. He sits there on the cold concrete steps, talking with Sakaeguchi about his latest baking project, stealing glances at the shapes the clouds formed up above, until one by one they all get up and leave, hopping onto their bikes and beginning their long treks home.
This happens for five days.
And then Abe shoves a new tupperware into his face.
“Try these,” Abe says, voice hushed, which is…still kind of loud, honestly, “What do you think about these?”
He looks around. The bike racks are suspiciously empty…now that he thinks about it, they were empty the last time Abe cornered him here. He wonders, for a second, if God’s abandoned him.
This time the things inside are actually recognizable as cookies. They’re still…not great, looking too flat and thin in ways they’re not supposed to be. Oven temperature might have been too high, an easy enough fix, and way easier to diagnose than any of the other myriad issues the last batch had. Tentatively, he dips his hand in and picks one up. He thinks he sees Abe lean in a couple of millimeters, but he’s not too sure.
Biting into them makes him feel like he’s breaking a pane of glass—not a great feeling, but they are, at least, edible.
“They’re fine. Huge step up from the last ones, but they definitely feel too thin, not much body to them.” Watching Abe’s face, he tries to decipher his catcher’s mood from the way his brows twitch messages in Morse code. “What kinda cookies are they supposed to be?”
A pause. Abe steals a glance at the asphalt below for a split second before meeting his gaze, as intense as ever. “Butter cookies,” is his confident, final answer, one with all the assurance of a two million yen winning response on a game show.
Butter cookies. Those soft, thick, square cookies that come in tins his mom can’t get enough of. Those cookies that break apart into endless crumbs in his fingers whenever he takes a bite. Those butter cookies.
He looks at the spindly thing in his hand.
Huh.
“It’s whatever,” Abe says, the pop of a plastic lid breaking their silence. Perhaps he wasn’t being as poker-faced as he’d thought, and a hint of guilt settles in his stomach as he watches Abe leave, shoulders hunched, a little storm brewing in his catcher’s wake, and as he holds the cookie in his hand he thinks that these two events aren’t as disjointed as he once believed.
“Hey!”
Abe turns his head.
“I’ll still try these, but if you let me know before you get your next batch,” he says, raising his hand with the half-eaten cookie, “I can help more! Okay?”
Abe blinks once. Twice. Gives an awkward half nod before riding off. He exhales, finishing the rest of the butter cookie, licking his fingers for any excess crumbs.
***
Buzzing greets him on a sunny Sunday morning. It takes him three tries to reach his flip phone, and the first thing he sees upon waking up is a short text from Abe.
Baking. Be here in 30.
Abe’s full address follows shortly after.
He sits up in bed, a slight smile creeping onto his face. Leave it to Abe to be so forward in all other aspects of his life like he is in baseball. It’s become a bit endearing now that he has less of a stick up his ass, he has to admit. He quickly changes, eats, and says a quick goodbye to his parents before grabbing his bike and heading to Abe’s place.
The ride’s smooth, and he arrives earlier than he expected. Soon after ringing the doorbell, a smaller, rounder, happier version of Abe greets him, and before he can explain, the kid turns around and shouts towards the house’s interior.
“Takaya! Your friend’s here!” Surprise colors Happy Abe’s words, and the implication isn’t lost on him as the younger boy runs off, presumably to go get Abe. He steps through the door, takes off his shoes, and waits.
It isn’t long before Abe appears, grumbling along the way.
“That’s Shun. Ignore him.” Abe says in lieu of any greeting. Bits of flour already stain Abe’s shirt and fingertips, despite the attempts of the towel in his catcher’s hands to hide any evidence of starting early.
“Good morning to you too.” He’s not sure where to go from here, awkwardly standing in the entryway, mostly because he never expected to be Abe’s sous chef. “Is it alright if I—”
“Spare slippers are over here, kitchen is over there,” and, feeling that this is enough information, Abe heads further inside as he’s processing all this. He quickly puts on the slippers and follows.
The kitchen is neat, all things considered: butter, sugar, eggs, and flour all wait by different bowls across the counter, alongside bottles of salt and vanilla. Measuring cups are arranged in a line for easy access, with an electric scale and hand mixer, both unplugged, next to them. Red numbers signal that the oven’s already preheating, sharpening to 205 degrees Celsius as he makes his way to where Abe’s standing stiffly in front of an open cookbook.
“I’ve been following this recipe to the letter, but, well, you and I both know how that turned out. Clearly these instructions aren’t detailed enough for the average person—if this is how hard they make the simple stuff then I don’t have much confidence in any of its other recipes.” Abe ends with a harrumph, his chest puffing out ever so slightly.
He hums, looking back at the oven. “Stupid question, but is that convection?”
“Yeah.”
“That might be a problem. Most recipes are written for conventional ovens, so generally you’ll need to lower the temperature any cookbook gives you by about fourteen to fifteen degrees.” At the dumbfounded look Abe gives him, he adds, “Not something they put in your book?”
Abe scowls, staring at the paper as though he could burn holes through it. “Who could have possibly approved this.”
Lowering the oven’s temperature to 190 degrees, he smirks. “You wanna start creaming the butter while I sift the flour?”
“Sift? If that’s another thing this book doesn’t mention,” The fast rustling of flipping pages fills the room, “my mom needs to seriously reconsider her standards for cookbooks.”
“It’s not always required, but it helps to get all the clumps out. I’m guessing you want these to come out well, so it won’t hurt.”
“Yeah, yeah. Thanks.”
Stand mixer humming in the background, he finds the sifter and gets to work. It’s simple enough, so he sets up next to Abe and dispenses advice when needed—don’t crack eggs in the bowl with the butter and sugar, you could get eggshells in there and we don’t want that, only add a little bit of flour into the mixture at a time, otherwise the dough’s texture will get messed up. They take turns mixing the ever thickening cream-colored dough until it’s stiff enough to be rolled up in plastic wrap. He sticks it into the fridge, sets a timer for an hour, and him and Abe start cleaning up.
“Is your mom gonna be needing the kitchen anytime soon?” he says, scrubbing excess flour and sugar off the counter.
“We’ll be fine. She’s gonna be out with her friends all day. My dad’s working on something in the back, so he shouldn’t bother us either.”
“Gotcha.” He stops cleaning for a second, looks back up at Abe. “Sooo, does one of them have, like, a birthday or anniversary or something coming up? That why you’ve decided to become a baker all of a sudden?”
Abe jerks up. “What? No, it’s—” Pinching his forehead, his catcher continues, “it’s something else.”
“Oh.” He’s sure he must be pretty red in the face right about now. “Forget I asked then.”
A sigh slips through Abe’s lips. “Look, I mean…it’s been pretty obvious Mihashi’s been struggling with his control after getting that bullheaded idea about pitching with a windup in his head.”
Ah. So it does come back to baseball. And to their pitcher, too, at that. Somehow, he can’t say he’s surprised at all.
“—and him pitching from the set was fine, but,” Abe closes his eyes. Breathes in and out. “I can’t change the fact that he wants to get better, but it helps no one when he’s in another one of his self-loathing funks. A pitcher has to be sturdy enough to support all of us while on the mound. He’s great at that already. But food’s a surefire way to cheer him up in the short-term, so, really, I’m just doing this for the good of the team.”
The tips of Abe’s ears are flushed red. His catcher is looking directly away from him, head low to hide the pink creeping across his cheeks.
“Well,” he begins, “if it’s for the good of the team, then we’ll have to watch these cookies like Coach watches our games.”
Blush no longer stains Abe’s cheeks, having quickly receded to where all his catcher’s feelings hide. He gets a nod in return, and the two of them continue to clean until the kitchen is spotless, only brought out of their focus by the timer’s shrill shriek.
***
“Try this.”
Abe’s presented Mihashi with a tupperware full of thick butter cookies at the far end of the bike racks. Shouji stares as, unsurprisingly, Mihashi starts sputtering at Abe’s sudden request, but to Abe’s credit, his catcher remains calm as Mihashi creaks an arm into the container, eyes flickering between the cookies and Abe’s face. His pitcher takes a bite. Chews. And chews. And chews some more. He strengthens his grip around his handlebars. Mihashi keeps chewing, and Abe’s jaw tightens.
“I-It’s…!”
He leans forward as much as he can without tipping his bike over. Stubby nails dig hard enough into Abe’s palm that he’s surprised his catcher hasn’t drawn blood, and his breath remains trapped in his throat.
“Good!”
The pressure in the air around them dissipates, chased away by Mihashi’s bright face. Abe’s own expression beams as they bask in the warmth of their shared comfort.
A small smile paints his face, and Shouji begins his ride home.