Chapter Text
The first thing Izuku learns about Maple Street is that the wind never stops. It comes off the low, brown hills and rattles the chain-link fence around the diamond like a pocketful of coins. It lifts grit into your eyes, dries sweat on your neck, and makes fly balls hang a half second longer than you think. Everyone in town plays with their cap pulled low. Everyone knows, without looking, where the dirt lips into a bad hop at short.
The second thing he learns is that the Dodgers are a religion here. Their blue bleeds out of bumper stickers and porch flags, out of faded T-shirts on dads at the grocery store. There’s a sun-cracked poster of a lefty from a decade ago taped in the window of the barber. There’s a kid on a cul-de-sac bike whipping plastic bags into the air and yelling, “Walk-off! Walk-off!” at nobody.
Izuku moves here on a Saturday in early April, the same weekend the middle school baseball team is posting tryout times on a piece of paper thumb-tacked to the gym door. His mother parks their dented hatchback in front of a rental duplex with peeling paint and a lemon tree whose branches droop over the walk. She hefts a box without making a face about how heavy it is. He pretends his heart isn’t beating like a bird.
“Go check out the field,” she says, breathless, setting the box on the cracked porch. “I’ll do the kitchen, you do the dreaming.”
He grins and runs.
Maple Street Diamond is behind the old feed store, three blocks down and one left, as if it’s been hiding there since the town learned how to draw streets. The backstop leans. The outfield fence is patchwork—chicken wire where slats broke, a hand-painted sign to the right for MIKE’S BRAKES that looks like it predates the interstate. Bleachers: two rows of splintering wood. Dugouts: cinder block with names carved in the mortar, summer after summer fossilized in initials.
There’s a boy already there. Blond hair like the sun caught fire in it. A red hoodie tied around his waist, cleats unlaced, a scuffed bucket of baseballs set at his feet like a throne.
He doesn’t look up right away. He’s standing on the mound—no, not standing. Owning it. He’s rehearsing something he’s done a thousand times alone: breath, set, lift, stride, snap. The ball hisses into the pocket of an empty glove he’s hung on the backstop. Another. Another. The wind takes the loose laces and flicks them like streamers.
Izuku stops at the edge of the infield and watches without meaning to.
The boy finally notices him and scowls like noticing is an inconvenience. “Tryouts aren’t ‘til Monday.”
“I know.” Izuku lifts a hand in a little wave that feels too small. “I’m new.”
The boy eyes his shoes (not cleats), his glove (old, soft, re-laced with green yard twine), the Dodgers cap that’s more wish than team issue. “You any good, new?”
Izuku’s throat goes dry. He’s hit in parks and on streets and the margins of big fields where other boys pretend not to see him. He knows the weight of a bat like he knows the weight of homework. He knows how to read the bump in a mound and the way a fastball rides when a guy’s adrenaline outpaces his arm. But saying any of that feels like asking to be punched.
“I like the game,” he says, and it comes out smaller than he wants. “I… pitch. And hit.”
The boy snorts. “Everybody pitches and hits when they’re twelve.”
“I’m thirteen,” Izuku says.
“Same.” The boy toes a scar in the dirt. “Katsuki.”
“Izuku.”
Katsuki tosses a ball, catches it, tosses it again like he can’t stand for his hands to be empty. “You play travel?”
Izuku shakes his head. “Just school ball. We… didn’t have the money where I lived.”
Something sharp flashes across Katsuki’s face and is gone. “Club team’s where the real reps are.” He says it like a fact, like gravity, not to be cruel but because he believes things so hard it scrapes him raw. He flicks a glance at Izuku’s glove. “You throw with that?”
“It was my granddad’s.” Izuku slots his hand into leather that’s learned his palm. “I broke it in again. It’s good.”
Katsuki looks like he wants to argue and then doesn’t. He jerks his chin toward the plate. “Show me something, then.”
Izuku takes the mound. The clay is sun-hard, pitted where little heels dig in the same spot year after year. The wind toys with the Dodgers cap. He breathes until he can hear his mother’s laugh in the lemon-tree shade and feel the shape of a strike living in his wrist. He throws—not hard, not yet—but it comes out clean, spinning true, a line that ends exactly where he pictured.
The ball pops the backstop glove and falls into the dust.
Katsuki doesn’t move. His mouth curls. “Again.”
Izuku throws. Again. Again. He feels something settle in the way it sometimes does when the world narrows to the ball and the air and the little white square. He doesn’t even notice he’s smiling.
When he finally lowers his arm, his shoulder hums with a good ache. Katsuki comes up close, close enough Izuku can see a faint freckle on his jaw. He picks up the ball from the dust and rolls it across his knuckles like a coin trick.
“Okay,” Katsuki says with the kind of fairness that costs him. “You’re not trash.”
“Thanks,” Izuku says, warmth bursting through his chest like he’s been stamped with approval. “You’re—”
“Yeah, I know,” Katsuki cuts in fast, too fast, like words might chase him somewhere he can’t follow. He throws the ball up and snatches it, hungry. “Monday. Three-thirty. Don’t be late.”
He stalks off, bucket banging against his knee, and the wind lifts the dust he kicks up into little storms that glitter in the sun.
Izuku stands there with the field breathing around him and his heart doing something it hasn’t done since he was little and watched a night game on TV with the volume low so his mom could sleep. It’s not a crush. He doesn’t have language for it yet. It’s a shape he will spend years learning: a rival you can’t stop looking at, a boy who makes your bones feel electric.
Monday, the whole town shows up for tryouts like it’s a county fair. Moms with fold-out chairs. Little brothers with sunflower seeds and mouths stained red from concession popsicles. A man with a radio tuned to AM that crackles the Dodgers pregame because opening week is sacred and multi-tasking is an art.
Coach Aizawa is the type of teacher who forgets to shave and remembers every batting average. He pushes his sunglasses up and squints at a clipboard like it owes him money. “Jog in. Warm up. If you pull a hamstring, it’s not my problem.”
Katsuki is early. Of course he is. He’s in black sleeves under the practice jersey, jaw set, eyes hot. He moves like he’s been dared to be less than perfect. His windup is a promise and a threat.
Izuku is exactly on time. That’s what the clock says. The shoe he’s re-glued squeaks when he jogs. He keeps his glove tucked tight, like he’s afraid the wind will try to take it. He pretends he doesn’t notice the cluster of boys with travel bags and matching club caps glance at him and then away the way people do when they’ve learned, early, how to assign rank by gear.
Katsuki sees it and something mean and mirror-bright flickers in his ribs. It’s not about Izuku. It’s about the thing he’s been shoving into a corner since he was eight and liked how a pretty shortstop moved his hands. He wants to burn the feeling out with velocity. He wants to be so good the soft parts of him have to be quiet.
Coach Aizawa splits them into stations. Grounders at short. Pop-ups in center. Pitchers to the pen. Katsuki cuts a line straight to the mound. Izuku hesitates, then goes to the end of that line and feels like he’s stepped into his own name.
Travel-team kids talk loud about tournaments in Phoenix and how their dads know a scout. Katsuki doesn’t talk. He throws like he’s telling the air who’s boss. The catcher grunts and shakes his hand out after the third. Coach Aizawa scribbles something. Nobody says wow because wow is for people who haven’t been here on Saturdays watching him turn anger into accuracy until the sun set.
Then it’s Izuku’s turn. The catcher shifts his stance. The travel boys go quiet without meaning to. Izuku feels the wind push at his shirt, feels the scuffed ridge of rubber under his back foot, feels—for an instant—the shape of a stadium he hasn’t seen yet, noise pouring over him like rain.
He throws.
The ball doesn’t leap. It arrives. It goes where it’s told with something patient and ruthless in the seam-spin. Coach Aizawa stops chewing his gum. The catcher doesn’t shake his hand afterward. He nods once. He wants another one.
Katsuki’s stomach drops in a way he won’t name. There’s a part of him that wants to hiss, mine. There’s a part that wants to drag Izuku by the sleeve to a bucket of balls and say, do it again until it’s perfect. There’s a part that wants to shove him, hard, because the wanting scares him and boys like him are not supposed to want anything that isn’t a stat line.
They run base paths. Izuku’s legs are a little too long for his body; he stumbles rounding second and laughs at himself and still beats half the line to home. Katsuki cuts corners like geometry is a weapon and hits the plate with a sound like punctuation.
They hit. Izuku’s bat is old and too heavy. He chokes up and turns pitches into bright ropes down the right-field line. When Coach calls for situational—runner on third, less than two—he gets under a fastball on purpose, lifts it to medium-deep center, and the boy “tagging” at third scorches home in his imagination. Coach Aizawa doesn’t smile, exactly, but the gum moves and something approving hums in his posture.
Katsuki hits like a thunderstorm. The ball leaves his bat pissed off at being told what to do. He’s thinking about his hands the whole time because thinking about his hands is easier than thinking about the curve of the new kid’s mouth when he concentrates. He yanks one foul, too eager, and swears under his breath. He waits the next one out, lets it get deep, and lashes it on a line that would eat a real outfielder alive.
At the end, Coach reads names for the roster. Travel caps nod like coronations. A little brother wails when his hero gets cut. A mom claps too loud and nobody makes fun of her.
“Katsuki Bakugou,” Coach says, and nobody is surprised. “Starting rotation.”
Katsuki doesn’t look at anyone when he walks up for his jersey. He doesn’t need to. He already knows where they all stand. He already knows he can’t relax or he’ll dissolve.
“Izuku Midoriya,” Coach says next, and you can feel the tick in the air, the collective—oh. The travel boys’ faces do something complicated. The catcher smirks outright. “Starting rotation,” Coach adds, like it’s not a decision so much as an admission.
Izuku’s heartbeat is a drum. He takes the jersey like it’s fragile. On impulse, he glances at Katsuki.
Katsuki’s gaze hits him like a thrown thing. There’s pride in it, despite everything. There’s also a dare. Earn it.
They run a last lap together because Coach believes in finishing tired. Izuku’s breath fogs in the cooling air even though the sun’s still up. Katsuki doesn’t look at him but shortens his stride a fraction when Izuku’s shoe squeaks on the outfield edge. Neither of them mentions it. They don’t have a language for mercy yet.
At the lemon tree that night, Izuku tells his mother he made the team. She kisses his hair and says she never doubted him for a second. He doesn’t tell her about the club fees they don’t have to pay for school ball. He doesn’t tell her about the travel kids and the way their bags match. He says, “Coach thinks I can pitch,” and she says, “Coach is smart,” and they split a grilled cheese and watch the Dodgers on an antenna signal that ghosts every third frame and makes the crowd look like it’s shimmering.
Across town, Katsuki lies on his back on top of his covers with the window cracked to hear the far-off freight. He flips a ball in his right hand until the seam digs a crescent into his finger. On the TV in the other room, his mom’s boyfriend yells at the Dodgers like they can hear him across three states. Katsuki stares at the ceiling and tries not to think about green-twined leather and a kid who threw like he was born on the mound.
He tells himself it’s hate. He tries it on like a jersey. It fits in the dark.
The field always looked lonelier under the sodium lamps.
Daylight hid the cracks and weeds, but under yellow bulbs the whole diamond showed its age—patched fences, a scoreboard with a missing “S,” the faint ghost of old chalk lines. The wind still came from the west, carrying the smell of cut grass and someone grilling two blocks away.
Izuku was already there when Katsuki arrived, his glove tucked under one arm, a bucket of balls balanced on his hip. He’d been throwing into the backstop, the metal ring singing every time he hit his mark. The sound echoed in the empty park like applause that never got tired.
“You’re early,” Katsuki called, dropping his own bag by the bench.
Izuku turned, smiling, cheeks pink from the spring chill. “I couldn’t sit still. First game’s Monday.”
“Yeah, well, it’ll suck if you blow your arm out before then.” Katsuki’s words came out sharper than he meant, so he followed it with a crooked grin to blunt the edge. “Not that you will. Just… pace it.”
Izuku’s grin widened. “Coach says we’ll both start. You pitch first, then me.”
“Damn right.” Katsuki grabbed his glove. “Let’s make sure we don’t embarrass ourselves.”
They had been meeting like this every Friday since tryouts ended—after his travel-team practices, after Izuku’s homework shifts at the grocery store. Sometimes they threw until the bugs found them. Sometimes they just talked, leaning against the fence, shoes half-buried in dust.
Tonight the rest of the boys started trickling in: Sero with his lopsided cap; Kaminari with a bag of gas-station peanuts; Kirishima lugging an extra bat for whoever forgot theirs. They weren’t travel-team kids. They were good enough if you squinted, and Katsuki had decided that was something worth shaping.
“Alright,” Katsuki barked, clapping once. “We’re running scrimmage. No whining about the lights.”
Kaminari saluted. “Aye, captain.”
Izuku hid a laugh behind his glove. Katsuki rolled his eyes. “Less talking, more throwing.”
They split into teams: Katsuki pitching, Izuku catching for the first round. The rhythm came easy—windup, snap, slap of leather, return throw. When Izuku called for a curve, Katsuki nodded without words. When the pitch hit exactly where it should, Izuku’s smile was quick and bright, and Katsuki felt something in his chest unclench.
He’d never say it, but these nights were the only ones that felt quiet inside his head.
After a few innings, they switched—Izuku on the mound, Katsuki squatting behind the plate. Izuku’s motion was looser, patient, the kind of delivery that looked like it shouldn’t be fast until it was. Every strike felt like a secret shared between them.
Kirishima whooped from shortstop. “Izzy’s on fire!”
Izuku flushed at the nickname. Katsuki muttered, “Don’t let it go to your head,” but his smirk gave him away.
They played until the lights hummed louder than the crickets. When the others drifted off—bike chains clicking, laughter fading—Katsuki and Izuku stayed, sitting on the top bleacher, legs dusty, arms draped over their knees.
“You think we’ll win Monday?” Izuku asked.
Katsuki shrugged. “We better. I hate losing.”
Izuku smiled into the breeze. “You hate everything.”
“That’s not true,” Katsuki said before he could stop himself. He watched a moth circle the light pole. “I like baseball.”
Izuku nudged him with his shoulder. “You love baseball.”
“Shut up.” But he was smiling.
Silence settled again, comfortable this time. Izuku thought about how his chest hurt in a way that wasn’t pain whenever Katsuki laughed. He thought about how he wanted to be good enough that Katsuki kept looking at him like this—competitive, alive, like he mattered.
Katsuki thought about how, when Izuku was next to him, the tight, restless part of him that always said not enough went quiet. He thought about the curve of Izuku’s hands on the ball and hated that his stomach flipped for reasons he couldn’t name. Maybe it was just admiration. Maybe.
They stayed until the lights buzzed out, leaving only moonlight and the echo of their breathing.
Saturday morning, the travel team played three towns over.
Mitsuki Bakugou yelled from the stands like she was calling plays for the Dodgers themselves. “Keep your shoulder in! Don’t waste pitches!” Every missed strike drew a sigh sharp enough to cut.
Katsuki threw six good innings. He still felt like it wasn’t enough. In the car, she talked about scholarships and scouts and all the kids who burned out before they were sixteen. “You’ve got talent,” she said. “Don’t waste it thinking this is fun.”
He didn’t answer. He just stared out the window at the blur of telephone poles, his arm already sore, wishing the car would take a wrong turn and drop him back at Maple Street instead.
Thursday afternoon, Izuku tied his cleats and called his mom during warmups.
She was still at work, apologetic and proud all at once. “Take a picture for me, okay? I’ll ask for Thursday off next week.”
He said, “It’s fine, Mom,” because she sounded tired.
He didn’t tell her that the stands looked empty without her.
Cars lined the street in a crooked parade; someone’s dad manned the grill near the bleachers; mothers in folding chairs traded gossip between sips of coffee. The air smelled like sunscreen, dirt, and something expectant.
Katsuki was already in uniform, sleeves pushed up, hair half-tamed under his cap. He was talking to Coach Aizawa near the dugout—mostly arguing, if the sharp gestures meant anything. The travel kids always thought they knew better, but Coach kept letting him lead anyway. He was too good not to.
When Katsuki spotted him jogging over, he cut the conversation short with a scowl that didn’t reach his eyes. “Took you long enough, nerd.”
Izuku smiled. “It’s 2:45. Game doesn’t start till 4”
“Exactly. You’re late for early.”
Izuku laughed softly. “You’re impossible.”
“And you’re slow,” Katsuki said, but the corners of his mouth twitched. “C’mon. You’re throwing first.”
Izuku froze. “I thought—Coach said you’d—”
Katsuki smirked. “Yeah, well, I told him to start you. Said you needed the reps.”
Izuku blinked, heart skipping. “You told him that?”
Katsuki shrugged, looking anywhere but at him. “Don’t make me regret it.”
The other team came from two towns over—sharp, confident, loud. Their dugout looked cleaner. Their helmets didn’t have tape holding the ear guards.
When Izuku stepped onto the mound, the noise dulled for a heartbeat.
He felt everything: the give of the dirt under his spikes, the leather tight on his hand, the sun glancing off the metal bleachers where a dozen parents already held up phones. His mom wasn’t one of them, but he told himself she’d be proud anyway.
Katsuki crouched behind the plate, mask down, two fingers flashing between his knees. Curve, outside.
Izuku nodded, breath slow.
The first pitch left his hand like it had been waiting all winter. It cut through the air, dropped hard at the plate, and the batter froze. Strike one.
Katsuki smacked his glove, grinning under the mask. “That’s what I’m talking about!”
Izuku couldn’t help it—he smiled too.
They moved in sync, inning by inning, a rhythm born from all those Friday nights under the lights.
Katsuki called; Izuku trusted.
When Izuku’s arm started to hum by the fifth, Katsuki took over the mound without being told, the easy trade they’d practiced a hundred times.
By then, the score was tied 1–1, dust rising around their ankles like smoke.
Katsuki pitched like he was daring the other team to exist. His fastball hissed. His change-up made grown men whistle in the stands.
Izuku played short now, shouting plays, clapping, always watching him.
When Katsuki struck out their cleanup hitter on a pitch that curved so hard it looked like magic, the crowd roared. He didn’t even glance toward the bleachers. His eyes went straight to Izuku, who was already grinning, glove raised high.
Katsuki’s chest hurt in a good way. Like lightning cracking ribs.
He’d never tell him that.
They were up by one.
Two outs. Runners on first and third.
Katsuki threw the signal for a fastball.
Izuku shifted left, heart in his throat.
The batter swung—hard—and the crack of the bat sounded wrong. A blooper, high and ugly, arcing toward shallow center.
Izuku was running before anyone else moved. The wind caught his cap; it flew. He didn’t notice.
He dove.
Caught it.
The glove hit dirt, then came up with the ball secure.
The crowd erupted.
Game over.
Katsuki threw his cap in the air, sprinting toward him. Izuku rolled onto his back, laughing, the sun burning bright behind him.
When Katsuki reached him, he didn’t hesitate—he grabbed his wrist and yanked him up into a hug so hard it knocked the wind out of both of them.
“You idiot,” Katsuki muttered, voice rough. “Don’t scare me like that.”
Izuku, breathless, still grinning: “Worth it.”
“Yeah,” Katsuki said, quieter now, still holding on a beat too long. “Yeah, it was.”
The rest of the team was loud, dragging gear, shouting about burgers and sodas and how Coach Aizawa actually smiled once.
Izuku lingered at the dugout, unlacing his cleats, eyes searching the stands out of habit.
No one waved back.
Across the field, Katsuki’s mom was already at the fence, sunglasses pushed up, barking instructions even while she hugged him. “You left your elbow hanging again on that last inning. You wanna blow out your shoulder by fourteen?”
“I won, didn’t I?”
“You can’t win if you’re hurt.”
Izuku watched, not jealous exactly, but aware. The difference between noise and warmth.
Katsuki noticed him watching. His mom did too.
Mitsuki’s voice softened, just barely. “Good game, kid,” she called to Izuku.
Izuku smiled, shy. “Thank you, Mrs. Bakugou.”
“Call me Mitsuki. You threw well.”
Katsuki rolled his eyes. “Don’t encourage him.”
“Shut up,” she said, shoving a towel at him. “And share your damn Gatorade. He looks about to faint.”
Katsuki sighed but crossed the field anyway, two bottles in hand. He held one out. “Here.”
Izuku took it. “Thanks.”
They stood in the fading light, the smell of cut grass thick around them, the field emptying slowly.
“You did good today,” Katsuki said, quieter than usual.
Izuku blinked, surprised. “You too.”
“Yeah,” Katsuki murmured. “We make a good team.”
Izuku smiled, the kind that went all the way through him. “We really do.”
That night, Izuku fell asleep replaying the game in his head, the weightless moment when he’d leapt for the catch and heard Katsuki’s laugh through the noise.
Across town, Katsuki lay awake, thinking about the same thing—the flash of green in sunlight, the grin that burned hotter than winning.
Neither knew what to call it yet.
They just knew they couldn’t wait for the next game.