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Sawamura runs from the mound and straight into Chris’ waiting arms. Chris has the softest expression on his face as he brushes back the pitcher’s sweaty bangs and presses a fleeting kiss to his forehead. “You did good.”
Sawamura beams; smile more radiant than the sun.
Miyuki comes up behind them and gently shoves the pitcher’s shoulder. “You did alright. Don’t let it go to your head.”
Sawamura turns and glares at Miyuki, hackles raised and hissing like a cat.
Chris’ mouth quirks with the barest hint of amusement, “Be nice, Miyuki.”
Miyuki rolls his eyes as he moves passed the two of them, his fingers gently brushing against Chris’ casually enough to have been an accident. “You spoil him,” he says, but there’s an unmistakable fondness in his voice as he sits on the bench and starts removing his catcher’s gear.
Chris and Sawamura move as one; Sawamura dropping to his knees and reaching for the straps of Miyuki’s leg guards, Chris going for the harness of his chest protector.
“Only when he deserves it,” Chris says. “I spoil you, too.”
There was something about the way the three of them interacted that made all witnesses feel as though they were intruding on something private. Everyone in the dugout looked away.
-
Sawamura is bundled up in Chris’ bed, surrounded by shoujo manga and vending machine drinks. Well, Kanemaru thinks it’s Sawamura, at least. Only the top of his head is visible above the blanket burrito that he’s wrapped up in, and he’s really quiet-- possibly sleeping?
Miyuki is in the bed with him, stretched out above the covers with his feet in the general area of Sawamura’s face. He’s awake, listening to headphones and reading a baseball magazine.
Chris is seated at his desk, also listening to headphones and working on homework.
Kanemaru freezes in the open doorway. It’s raining hard enough outside that practice had been cancelled. Kanemaru had spent the morning in the weight room, and had honestly expected Sawamura to be (if not actually attempting to run through the storm) in the indoor bullpen pitching himself to exhaustion, with Chris or Miyuki with him trying to get him under control.
He had not expected to find the three of them shirking practice entirely to… do nothing in Kanemaru’s dorm room.
And there lies the problem.
They’re doing nothing .
Like, they’re not even talking to each other.
They’re just three bros, hanging out, doing nothing, and yet there’s an air about the place that makes Kanemaru feel like he’s intruding .
Like he’s not welcome here despite it being his room.
Chris and Miyuki haven’t even noticed Kanemaru is there and yet they’re making him feel like he’s not supposed to be here.
Kanemaru says nothing as he steps back out of the room.
-
“Wait,” Kuramochi says, tone heavy with denial and disbelief, “you’re dating Miyuki and Chris-senpai? Since when?”
Sawamura looks at him as if he’s the idiot here. “Two months, three weeks, four days. It’s almost our anniversary.”
“How did I not know this?” Kuramochi asks, mentally reviewing every interaction he’s witnessed between the three of them, and yeah he supposes there could be something there, but it could just as easily be summed up as the weird relationship that forms between batteries as it could be a romantic relationship.
Sawamura shrugs. “It’s not like we’ve tried to hide it.”
“I’ve never seen any of you do any… coupley things.”
“Well, we’re not a couple. There’s three of us.”
Kuramochi throws a pillow that his Sawamura square in the face. “You know what I meant. You all have never done any of the things people in relationships usually do.”
“Yes we do, all the time.”
Kuramochi purses his lips and peers hard at Sawamura like he’s a tricky math problem he was trying to unravel. “You know catching your pitches don’t count as dates, or as things ‘people in relationships’ do?”
Sawamura throws the pillow back at Kuramochi with a huff, but Kuramochi bats it out of the air before it can hit him. “We do more than play catch!”
Kuramochi looks unconvinced. “Really, like what?”
“We eat lunch together. And go for walks. And hold hands. And spend time together whenever we get the chance.”
“Okay, but do you ever like kiss or… you know ?”
“Or what?” Sawamura asks, brow furrowed in confusion.
Kuramochi isn’t sure if he’s kidding of if he really doesn’t get what he’s hinting at. “Just kiss. Do you guys ever kiss?”
Sawamura smiles all soft and shy and Kuramochi is grossed out, because that tooth-rotting sweet expression on the face of someone he thinks of as a kid brother is disgusting. “Chris-senpai likes to kiss me on the forehead.”
It takes Kuramochi a long second to process what he’d just heard; he looks to the ceiling, then down at his lap, then at Sawamura’s dopey face, but there’s no proper explanation written on any of those places. He has to asks, “Do they know you’re dating, or is this something you decided?”
Sawamura looks genuinely offended. “Of course they know!”
Kuramochi’s still not entirely convinced.
-
The team had gathered in Miyuki’s room for their usual video games and bonding, but it was now late enough that everyone was begging off a couple people at a time to go find their beds.
Sawamura had passed out with his head in Chris’ lap nearly an hour ago, but the older catcher hadn’t said a word about it. Every so often, someone would catch him gently carding his fingers through the boy’s hair with a soft expression on his face, but no one said a word about that.
Kuramochi stands and stretches. He’s the last straggler aside from Chris and Sawamura still present. “Alright, I’m going to head to bed,” he glances over at Sawamura. “Guess I should take the kid, too.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Miyuki says, almost too quickly. “If you wake him now, he’ll never get back to sleep. I’ve got an extra bed. He can stay.”
“You sure?” Kuramochi asks, surprised.
“Yeah, it's fine. I told him I’d go running with him in the morning, anyway. If he stays here, maybe he’ll sleep in and forget about it.”
“Huh… okay,” Kuramochi says, suddenly wondering if maybe Sawamura had been telling the truth when he’d said he was dating Miyuki and Chris.
-
“So did you two like lose a bet or something?” Tetsu asks, finally addressing the elephant in the room.
Miyuki is completely expressionless when he says, “whatever do you mean?” He and Chris had entered the dining hall for breakfast, both catchers sporting heads full of messily done braids held together by colorful rubber bands and barrettes.
They’d acted like there was nothing out of the ordinary as they’d collected their food and sat down together, which had made the entire situation even more surreal and had made everyone hesitant to actually say anything.
Tetsu pauses, seemingly unsure how to continue with his line of questioning.
Chris seemed to take pity on him. “Sawamura’s friend Wakana recently mentioned that her hair was getting longer and she wished for a way to hold it back,” Chris says calmly between bites of his food, “Sawamura decided he wanted to learn how to do braids so he could help her.”
“Ah…”
“And you decided you were going to wear them all day, because…?” Kuramochi asks.
“We were running late. There was no time to take them down if wanted to get breakfast before class.”
“Why would you let him in your head in the first place?” Jun asks.
Miyuki slides a look towards Chris before turning his attention back to his meal. “Because Chris-senpai is a pushover.”
“Where is Sawamura anyway?” Masuko asks.
Miyuki and Chris shrug in unison and continue eating their food.
-
“Sawamura…”
The pitcher looks up at the sound of his name being said by one of his classmates. The girl standing in front of his desk shyly points towards the classroom door. Sawamura turns and his entire face lights up when he sees who’s waiting for him.
“Senpai!” He yells, clambering out of his seat rushing across the room. Chris’ broad form takes up the entire doorway, but Miyuki can just be seen behind him.
“Lunch?” Chris asks, holding out a bento towards the excited boy.
“Can we sit outside under the tree?”
The two upperclassmen smile indulgently at him as the three of them walk off together.
-
Chris and Miyuki had claimed a table in the mostly empty dining hall and sat, heads bent together, pouring over stat books.
“They’re cute together,” Takako says as she and the other managers pat together rice balls on the other side of the room.
“Wait, they’re dating?” Haruno asks, nearly dropping the rice ball in her hands.
“You didn’t know?” Sachiko asks.
“I… uh… I thought Miyuki-senpai and Sawamura…”
Takako laughs. “Well, they’re dating him too.”
“What!?! All three of them?”
Yui nods. “Yeah. It’s adorable.”
“It’s sickening,” Sachiko interrupts. “They’re so sweet to each other. Gross. Even when Miyuki’s being mean to Sawamura, you can tell it’s just their way of flirting.”
“The way Chris looks at the two of them during games is something out of a shoujo manga,” Yui says.
“They’re all happy together,” Takako says softly, “that’s all that really matters.”