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This was not how Eijun had expected his afternoon to go.
Really. He had shooed Kazuya and their two children out after lunch so that he would have the house for himself for a couple hours; he simply planned to tend to their jungle of a backyard, maybe get some packing done before their weekend getaway to Sacramento, but overall he’d meant to clean the house up the way he likes it, Miyuki Kazuya, why would you want to leave your house dirty before a trip?! All while his husband takes their littles out for a sorely needed romp in the park.
Everybody wins!
Yet, Eijun is currently doing none of those things. What he is doing is lounging on his bed, a tin box open between his crossed legs, not knowing on which of the astounding collection of photographs and postcards spread in front of him to put his eyes on first.
He’d found the box in a recess of their seldom-used storage room, which they’d informally dubbed “the baseball shrine” when, ever since they’d moved into their “forever house” after Kira’s birth, all their accolades, mementos and unused baseball paraphernalia had seemed to accumulate in that room.
At this point, Eijun can’t open the door without tearing up, and even Kazuya’s gaze softens when he approaches.
The room houses their baseball stuff from when they were all the way in elementary school, so Eijun supposes it’s not that weird that their stash of mixed junior-senior high-university memories was hidden there as well. What is weird, however, is how much of that stash Eijun had forgotten about.
The first thing that catches his eye is a drawing; specifically, one of Megumi-chan’s very first works, that Yōichi and Wakana had mailed him and Kazuya when they were still considering whether to have children of their own or not.
Eijun’s mouth goes soft just as it had the first time, eyes crinkling as he takes in the huge sun, sunglasses and all, at the center of a very pink sky; on its sides, two blobs, one yellow with a big grin, one purple with squiggles vaguely resembling glasses, and above it neat kanji spelling to Uncle Ei and Uncle ‘Zuzu, signed with a scribble clearly meant to say ‘Gumi-chan. When Kazuya had opened their mail back then, he’d all but shoved the drawing in his face, as if Eijun couldn’t tell that he was hiding misty eyes.
“Aw, we should put this together with the others!” Eijun muses aloud. Nowadays, between their families, fans, and their own children, they have enough drawings to fill an art gallery; they keep them in named binders (for recurring artists) on the shelves of their bedroom, and hang those of Aiden and Kira’s the kids are most proud of on their fridge. The thought puts a dopey smile on his face.
As he reaches out and picks the drawing up, Eijun catches sight of the back of a picture. It’s packed with lines of text in different handwriting, one short message on the top with what he recognizes as signatures scrawled all over. He flips the photo right-side-up and sighs.
It’s a selfie of his junior high friends, though in the picture in question they’re a bit older, all grainy from a hand (Nobu’s, he assumes) moving; they’re all squished together, big goofy grins on their faces, with Wakana in the middle giving the camera a fond eyeroll. He flips the photo again, and reads the message:
We’re not going anywhere, Ei-chan, so stop moping and start training! We want to see you and your new hotshot friends at Kōshien, so get there! We’re cheering for you!
They had sent that particular snapshot to him with his parents’ care package for his sixteenth birthday, his first at Seidō. Eijun had told Wakana just a couple weeks earlier, in a moment of weakness, how badly he missed all of them. Though by his birthday things had begun picking up for him, what with him being promoted to the second string and finally getting on the right track with Chris, his first month at Seidō had been a trainwreck on all fronts, and getting used to living alone, in an unfamiliar environment with unfamiliar people, was more than he could handle at that point.
After the first few days, he’d come to look forward to the time he spent running, if only because it tired him out so much that he physically couldn’t think about how his friends would have looked amused if he played the fool for them, instead of irritated; about how he wouldn’t have minded three bowls of his mother’s cooking, while the cafeteria food felt so damn hard to swallow; about how his grandpa disciplined him, yes, but also ruffled his hair and occasionally snuck him a sip of shōchū behind his parents’ back, while Kuramochi just wrestled him and went to sleep, not sparing him a second glance.
For all that Eijun is prone to going down memory lane wearing rose-tinted glasses, he still wouldn’t say that first month was good. Even then, he can concede that it did prepare him, in some way, for the second time he had left everyone behind, right after university, to move to California and chase his dream of playing baseball on the grandest stage of all. Those were the hard times.
Man, hindsight really is 20/20, huh?
His thoughts wander, and so does his gaze, landing on an envelope he’s outraged he’s left to collect dust in a box. His hands shake as he takes a yellowed letter out from it, and he turns his eyes to the ceiling with a small gasp, blinking away the tears that have begun pooling at the corners. He refocuses on the letter, and with a wry smile he scans the first line, one he’s long since committed to memory.
To my beloved dumbass, who’s turning 23 on the other side of the world where he insisted on going
To this day, Eijun still considers this one of the sweetest, most thoughtful things Kazuya has ever done for him.
At a time when insecurity ate away at him from sunrise to nightfall; when he doubted his hard-earned skill on the diamond at every step; when every call with Kazuya left him with the bitter feeling that he was fucking up the most important relationship of his life; his beautiful, thoughtful, caring not-yet-husband had written him a letter. A long, meandering stream of consciousness where he had let loose all his thoughts and feelings onto the pages, things Eijun had never heard him utter, not even in the sanctuary of their own bedroom, in words more eloquent than Kazuya had ever used.
He had told him of how loneliness and longing constantly gnawed at him; how excitement for Eijun’s successes and envy for his new teammates waged war in his heart; how every update from him made him restless, left him yearning for a future where they could be together without hiding.
He wrote about how proud he was of Eijun; a testament, of sorts, a permanent reminder that he wasn’t alone, not in his doubts and fears, not in his triumphs. Not alone in building a future that, when they’d gotten together so long ago on Seidō’s fields, seemed painfully out of reach; a future that they live, now.
Eijun rereads the letter, hastily wiping his eyes with the hem of his shirt to not stain the paper; he then kisses the signature at the bottom of the last page and neatly folds it, sliding it back into its envelope with care. He sets it on his lap, on top of Megumi-chan’s drawing, to be put in his nightstand drawer later.
Right then, a childish voice whisper-yells “Boo!” right into his ear, and Eijun shrieks, jolting and putting a hand on his heart.
“Miyuki Kira! You scared me!” He turns around and mock-scowls at his six-year-old, who just grins all innocent at him from behind her pink glasses.
“Sorry Papa, I won’t scare you anymore,” she sing-songs, showing all her missing teeth. She sways on her feet, hands tucked behind her back, and eyes the mess on the bed. “What’re you doing?”
“I was looking at some old photos!” he tells her with a grin of his own. “Wanna see?”
She nods enthusiastically, so he sets the tin box aside and sweeps her into his arms, sitting her in between his crisscrossed legs. He bends down to kiss the crown of her head and asks, “Where’re Dad and Aiden?”
“They were putting away the stuff in the car,” she answers distractedly, clearly already taken with the sea of colors in front of her. She picks up one of the pictures and pushes it so close to his face it makes him go cross-eyed; he chuckles as he pushes it gently away to take a better look at it.
There’s a family of six on a pier, with a stunning orangey-pink sunset in the background. The two adults are holding the kids protectively, and their expressions as they look at each other are positively smitten.
His daughter peers up at him, eyes round with curiosity. “Are they Uncle Chris and Aunt Esther?”
“Yeah, they are,” he tells her. “That was before either you or Aiden were born.” It was taken, now that Eijun thinks about it, almost exactly ten years ago, a couple months after Chris had finally reunited with his proverbial “one that got away” at the San Diego Padres training camp.
“They look really happy, Papa,” Kira pipes up, craning her neck to see the picture better.
He snorts and lowers it down to her eye-level. “Yeah, they were super happy here! It was the first time they went out together as a family, y’know?” he tells her conspiratorially.
The four years between their breakup and their reunion had been hard on Chris, who’d never forgotten Esther, so he and Kazuya had been skeptical when he’d told them he’d seen her again as an interpreter on the Padres’ practice field. They’d called him as soon as they were able to, and had had to sit there as Chris laughed at their (understandable!) concerns and told them he was exactly where he was meant to be.
When Chris told them they’d got back together, Kazuya and he were happy for them, obviously, but the day they got this photograph in the mail, alongside an elegant wedding invitation, they couldn’t help but sigh in relief.
He watches as Kira smiles at the picture, and this time he does hear the pitter-patter of eager steps down the hall, alongside a familiar heavy footfall. Just as they get to the door, Eijun twists his torso towards the door and contorts his face in a grimace, yelling “Boo!” at his son and husband.
He and Kazuya laugh as Aiden flails for a bit, taken unawares, then pouts. “Papa! I was meant to scare you! No fair!”
Eijun shakes with laughter, jostling Kira from his lap; she gets down with a disgruntled frown and runs to hug Kazuya, who scoops her up and presses a kiss on her cheek.
Eijun rolls off the bed, then pounces on Aiden, tickling him. “I’ll show you no fair! Trying to attack your enemy when he has his back to you is a cowardly move, young man!” he accuses in his most pompous voice, soon dissolving in a fit of giggles alongside the rest of his family.
When he has caged his son in his arms on the floor and they’ve finally stopped laughing, Kazuya leans down towards him with a fond, mischievous smile, the one that unfailingly makes Eijun’s heart beat faster, and pecks him softly on the lips, before retreating with a wink. “Yeah, it’s better to go for a direct attack,” he says all high-and-mighty, “isn’t it, Eijun?”
The kids groan, but Eijun just shoots his husband a grin, as hopelessly endeared at thirty-five as he was at fifteen. He dusts his pants as he gets up, and goes to put an arm around Kazuya’s shoulders. “Kira and I were looking at some old pictures,” he nods towards the bed, “wanna join?”
Aiden whoops and scrambles on the bed, while Kira begins squirming for Kazuya to put her down. They exchange an amused glance and settle down behind the kids, who are already bickering, winding their arms around each other’s waists. They look on at their collection of memories, when Aiden snatches yet another photo from the pile and exclaims: “Look! That’s you with Uncle and Auntie!”
He and Kazuya take a look at the picture and burst out laughing. It’s quite an old snapshot, taken almost twenty years ago, of the two of them with Yōichi and Wakana, sat on the floor in the living room of Eijun’s childhood home. Eijun has a guitar strapped around his neck and he and Wakana are caught mid-song, while Kazuya and Yōichi are both red, twin startled looks on their faces.
They catch their breath, and Kazuya smiles indulgently at their son. “This was the first time Uncle and I went to your grandparents’ house in Nagano; now that’s a funny story,” he smirks at the kids, who are clambering on top of them, eager to know more.
Eijun puts on his story-teller voice, and begins: “It was the summer when we won Kōshien…”