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Katsuyuki can’t stop crying.
It’s legitimately a problem. Inashiro doesn’t have many joyful criers; if they did, he’d be smack bottom of the list. His head still throbs all around the site of impact but frankly, the pain isn’t any more severe than the headache he gets after listening to Mei for too long. He could make a laundry list of places on the body where getting hit with a baseball hurts more.
And yet.
And yet he can’t stop fucking crying.
He’s sitting alone in the changing room, someone promised to check on him again after his first evaluation but based on the thunderous roar still going on above, he’s been long forgotten.
The worst part, if he dares to label any of it as such, is that the tears started before they even won. Carlos had just reached home and Yoshizawa safe on base when Mei walked up to the plate, a man with a singular mission and all the drive in the world to make it happen, and suddenly Katsuyuki’s face was hot and tears were forming at extraordinary speeds.
He didn’t see Mei end the game but he sure as hell heard it. Even now there’s still a vague ringing in his ear, keeping the fragmented memory close. Apart from the fact that he’ll never be caught dead crying on the field, he’s honestly not entirely sure why he’s not up there celebrating with his teammates. As cold and detached as he likes to keep his demeanor, absolutely everyone on the team knows how much baseball and proving himself means to him.
Logically he knows that they’ve won. They’re going back to Koshien to finish what they couldn’t last year. Emotionally he feels...something. A lot of something apparently if his tears are anything to go by. So he has all the pieces, but there’s this weird disconnect between what he knows, what he feels, and what he’s doing that keeps him frozen here.
During a brief respite from the unexplained crying, Katsuyuki wonders if he’s entering his Narumiya Mei style breakdown. It seems unlikely. Unfortunately, he knows Mei well enough to know that every last drop of that devastation was very real. The theatrics may have seemed excessive to an outsider but to those who dared get close, it was evident it was genuine to what he was experiencing.
Anyway, Katsuyuki does not feel his world or self-worth crumbling around him, leaving him essentially dysfunctional so that’s probably not it. Something is definitely wrong though, he just for some reason lacks the vocabulary to articulate it.
Which means...Oh no.
Oh fuck.
He’s concussed. Seidou’s bastard southpaw concussed him. God fucking dammit. Coming off the field he honestly thought he was fine. Apparently not. It wasn’t even the Monster Rookie’s insane pitch that did the damage. It wasn’t the third-year ace. It was some first year with a fairly interesting breaking ball, who couldn’t quite handle the pressure of being one out away from victory. Katsuyuki has been at higher speeds before, but even now he knows that concussions aren’t about getting hit hard, they’re about getting hit wrong .
This is Miyuki’s fault. He can’t say exactly how yet, but he’s positive that there’s a direct thread to be drawn between Miyuki Kazuya refusing to come to Inashiro and the traumatic brain injury Katsuyuki has apparently just suffered.
“Shirakawa-san?” The first-year manager freezes on the steps like a prey animal trying not to be spotted.
Katsuyuki glances behind him checking for what could have spooked her so badly. Belatedly, he registers his own name and rubs at the fresh tear tracks on his cheeks, “Hey!” he tries to call but the syllable comes out hoarse, “Wait!”
She’s already gone, calling indistinctly as she races back toward the rest of the team.
Coach Kumitomo only has to take one look at Katsuyuki before immediately signaling for someone to call a taxi.
Katsuyuki is suddenly surrounded by teammates who are still high off the last-minute comeback of the decade, all moving too quickly and talking too loudly for him to process any of it. He thinks they’re trying to check on him, but it’s hard to tell and harder still to remember who he’s already spoken to and when.
He makes an honest attempt to answer the questions he can comprehend but his dwindling attention keeps drifting back to the celebration around then. Vaguely he wants to be a part of it. He wishes he could feel the full experience of the greatest moment. ‘ We won,’ he tells himself, trying to make it mean something, ‘ We won.’
The drive to the hospital is miserable. Cars must be designed specifically to torment concussed people, Katsuyuki thinks because holy shit . He has no memory of the crowd chanting his name after he got back up but his brain is suddenly present enough to register every jolt and bump in the road in agonizing detail.
Between the growing pressure in his head and the unrelenting nausea at every irregular movement, Katsuyuki breaks out in a sweat comparable to when he was actually on the field. His only reprieve is when the taxi driver asks how their game went and he finds himself laughing inexplicably for almost 90 seconds straight.
Somehow though, he arrives at the hospital without throwing up on his coach or captain which is a small but critical moral victory.
The hospital itself is far quieter than the stadium and more stationary than the taxi, but the overhead lights are all aggressively white and bright, and at this point, Katsuyuki is half convinced he’s just going on a tour of the various circles of hell.
“Shirakawa,” The doctor prompts both gently and stiffly, “Can you recall what happened in as much detail as you can for me please?”
Katsuyuki sighs. He doesn’t know why they’re bothering to ask again when it’s become pretty apparent through all of the tests that his memory of the last hour or so is pretty fucked. He’s significantly less out of it than he was when the adrenaline first faded but the pieces of memory that he does have don’t fit together neatly.
The last thing he truly fully remembers is standing at the plate, game on his bat. Bottom of the ninth. They were losing, two outs. Something had to change and so he crowded the plate to put a little more pressure on the first-year pitcher. He remembers seeing the pitch fly toward him and knowing it would be a ball. He almost remembers realizing where the ball would strike him. He remembers hitting the ground. He remembers the horror on Miyuki’s face as the catcher crouched over him.
Most of all he remembers being surprised at the volume of his own roar as he stood back up knowing that their summer wasn’t over yet. The high of the adrenaline of the moment made that feeling sharp and blocked out the pain and confusion to come. He’s not a power batter and he doesn’t have inhuman speed, all he has is his batting eye and so, with his particular skill set, this was perhaps the greatest thing he could have done for his team.
Everything after that sort of blurs together in varying degrees of coherent comprehension. Every time he tries to recall an exact timeline of who hit what and when he gets a different result and a worse headache. There are bits and pieces that stick, and while he recalls the general energy of the moment as joyous, it’s tinged by the slight melancholy of never knowing what of it was real.
He’s tired of talking about it. He’s tired of searching for words he knows he knows but presently are entirely out of reach. He’s tired in general, though that may not be the fault of the concussion.
Katsuyuki doesn’t say any of that since he’s not Mei who needs to be the center of attention or he’ll explode and he’s not Carlos who is remarkably good at finding the elegant in the mundane.
He stubbornly stalls and refuses to answer but Coach Kumitomo refuses to bail him out of this one. So, while his emotions may be all out of whack, he’s still Shirakawa Katsuyuki, coldhearted and bitchy to his last breath. He defiantly lifts his chin and simply states, “We won.”
If Inashiro were a stranger to winning tournaments, then Katsuyuki would be surprised at how quiet the dorm is when they get back. But they’re not, they’ve won before and they’ll win again. The joyous celebration is always intense but it burns out quickly. Those who played in most or all of the games finally crash into exhaustion while those who warmed the bench can typically be found down at the fields or batting cages readying and bettering themselves for whenever they’re next called on.
Everyone is already pivoting to ready themselves for Koshien. Katsuyuki wouldn’t be surprised if some of the third years are already packing up their rooms. The calendar in the entrance hall reminds them all that they may have won today but their greatest challenge is coming alarmingly soon. There’s barely any time to fix small chinks in their play before they have to leave, there definitely isn’t time to be concussed. Katsuyuki is unspeakably glad everyone is too busy with their own lives to come down and bombard him.
Just as Harada reaches to help Katsuyuki get his key in his keyhole the door swings open and pulls away from them. Carlos, remarkably still dressed, stands just inside. Harada wordlessly leaves Katsuyuki in his care.
“Hey, you,” Carlos greets. The way he deliberately keeps his voice low tells Katsuyuki he’s not completely in the dark about his diagnosis.
Katsuyuki grunts a vague reply.
“How did it go?”
Honestly, Katsuyuki doesn’t know. They’ve at least confirmed he’s not going to immediately drop dead. The doctor prescribed him painkillers and nausea medication to take as needed. He has orders to rest as much as possible. Theoretically, the worst of his symptoms should be gone in the next 48 hours. But, he still feels like absolute garbage and while he can barely see to the other side of the room, he can very clearly see his spot on the 18-man Koshien roster slipping away, “‘m tired,” he deflects, and Carlos, easily the more understanding of his partners, lets it go.
As for their other partner, Mei is curled up in Katsuyuki’s bed. He’s out of his uniform, dressed in shorts and a t-shirt that’s too large to belong to any of them other than Carlos. As Katsuyuki approaches, Mei’s sleeping frame tightens around the pillow he has clutched to his chest.
Perhaps he also tried to stay awake waiting for Katsuyuki’s return but their ace always crashes like this. He’s untouchable and unstoppable, a demon on the pitch until the job is done. And then he reverts past his typical petulant childish self to something more innocent and vulnerable. Were it any other day, Katsuyuki would needle the pitcher until he woke enough to relocate to his own bed, but for as much as he desperately craves sleep, the general sense of wrongness still has not left his brain and he finds himself longing for Mei’s companionship while he rests.
Katsuyuki whines without meaning to when Carlos gently grabs his arm to keep him from getting into bed still in his uniform. Right now, his clothing is the least uncomfortable part of his being. But Carlos has always been better at looking after others than himself, and to those he knows best, he’s impossibly caring and kind.
Getting changed is quite probably the most embarrassing moment in Katsuyuki’s life. It’s not like Carlos hasn’t seen him naked before, but it’s certainly less fun when he’s reduced to the horrible combination of a toddler too clumsy to undo his own buttons and a 90-year-old who threatens to pass out if his arms are above his head for too long.
As Carlos carefully shifts Mei over, Katsuyuki startles them all and nearly wakes Mei as he makes himself laugh thinking about how it’s no wonder that Carlos is never wearing a shirt if he’s constantly dressing others in his clothes.
The closer Katsuyuki physically gets to Mei, the more the strange knot of anxiety in his chest loosens. It’s always strange to see Mei as anything other than invincible, but there’s something else to it today. He’s truly given everything he has to this team, and while Katsuyuki may not be sure of much right now, he knows it’s finally paying off.
He doesn’t know where Yabe and Yamaoka are, but he hopes they’re enjoying the moment as well. The five of them entered Inashiro together, collectively carrying the weight of being Mei’s carefully selected best team ever. They seem like an odd group, sometimes it’s hard to believe they even like each other enough to be a team, but they came here for a reason because they’ve always believed in Mei’s image. And while it hasn’t always gone as planned, they’ve proved something big here today.
Screw Miyuki Kazuya and his eternal need to prove...whatever it is he’s trying to prove. Katsuyuki will never understand it. For right though, it’s okay because they didn’t need him, they’re the best even without him. People might say that the result of the game was more Seidou’s loss, than Inashiro’s win, Katsuyuki knows better, he knows how they all fought for this.
Closing his eyes doesn’t completely relieve Katsuyuki of the myriad of dizzying symptoms that keep popping up like the world’s worst game of whack-a-mole, but he finds himself sliding toward sleep fairly easily anyway. As he finally finds rest, sharing a bed with Mei, he has one last conscious thought, ‘We won.’
Katsuyuki wakes with Mei’s head on his chest. His hair is the same sweaty mess of a bird's nest as it was when they stepped off the field and his cheeks are bright with what they once always feared was fever but have since grown to accept as just another part of Narumiya Mei. Despite being dead to the world,
He can’t tell exactly how long he slept, but however long it was was enough to already start taking the edge off some of his more pressing symptoms. His vision is much clearer, as are his thoughts as the fog across his brain seems to have lightened up. The headache and nausea are both still present but he can at least look at the color green without wanting to throw up now.
Maybe it is possible for him to complete his full recovery before the end of Koshien. Maybe there’s a chance he hasn’t lost his spot and his dreams are still possible. They’re just second years but he knows how badly Mei wants to win with this team in particular and so Katsuyuki wants just as badly to be a part of it.
He realizes a couple of seconds too late that he’s once again in tears without warning. His groan comes out pathetically close to a stifled sob as he tries to twist away from Mei. Screw the headache, screw the fatigue, this is the worst symptom by far. He’s pretty sure the last time he cried this much in one day, it was still socially acceptable to refer to him as a baby.
“Katsu-chan?” Mei asks. His voice is a comedic combination of deep from sleep and childishly disoriented. Apparently, there is a limit to how much you can move around beneath him before waking him up.
Still trying to conceal his tear-stained face, Katsuyuki attempts to twist further and burrow into Carlos’ borrowed shirt. Through gritted teeth, he hisses something that sounds vaguely affirmative.
“What’s wrong?” Evidently not convinced, Mei sits up and reaches curiously toward Katsuyuki’s face. One of Katsuyuki’s greatest flaws is that even after dating Mei, he still continually forgets the pitcher is only a single centimeter shorter than him and has to jerk in a way his bruised brain does not appreciate in order to successfully evade. Mei’s tongue clicks in distaste as he loses his single thread of patience, “Katsuyuki~,” he somehow both sings and snaps, “Look at me.”
Their little scuffle is enough to get Carlos’ attention away from whatever he was working on at the desk by the window. He approaches the bed from the direction opposite Mei and Katsuyuki quickly finds himself very trapped. Despite the ache in his neck, he drops his chin to his chest and squeezes his eyes shut even as he knows there’s nowhere to hide.
“Katsuyuki,” Carlos tries, deliberately more gently than Mei, “What hurts?”
If he trusted himself to make any sound at all, Katsuyuki would laugh so hard. He knows they mean well, they always do, but it’s far from the question they should be asking. He tries his best to rely on his tried and true technique of dismissing his emotions as distractions until they’re down to a manageable level to finish off with logic, but whatever is wrong with his brain, whatever signals it’s persistently sending apparently cannot and will not be reasoned with.
Eventually, he has no choice but to give in to the inevitable and a full sob shakes free and escapes from Katsuyuki’s chest. His breath shudders as he struggles to regain his composure.
Carlos jumps to his feet, preparing to go fetch an adult while Mei shifts to better sit face-to-face with Katsuyuki. Katsuyuki desperately latches on to Carlos’ wrist. This may be the most humiliating thing to possibly happen, but as his out-of-control emotions get wilder it grows harder and harder to think again, and the only thing Katsuyuki knows for sure is that he doesn’t want either of them going anywhere.
There’s so much that he’s physically incapable of processing right now, but he knows he wants them.
“Stupid,” he manages to spit around inconsistent breaths, “ fucking concussion. Makes me cry.”
The relief on both Carlos and Mei is immediate. It’s hardly a thorough explanation, but they’ve both taken a health class at some point, surely they remember the possibility of emotional volatility.
Mei reaches for Katsuyuki’s face again, and this time, taking advantage of the shortstop’s dulled reflexes manages to latch on to his chin, “Say that next time.”
Katsuyuki glowers, tears still bright on his cheeks, “I was trying .”
Carlos melts back into a sitting position alongside the other two, “We’re allowed to be worried about you.”
A new, now altogether too familiar lump forms in Katsuyuki’s throat. Sliding to the edge of the bed, he stomps both feet in a petulant childish tantrum, “No!” he whines. He leans aggressively into Carlos, “Stop it! Stop!” he demands, though the second stop is more aimed at himself.
Chuckling softly, Carlos doesn’t continue. Mei, on the other hand, leans in closer, his grip on Katsuyuki only tightening, “You’re so cute,” he observes, “Pity you waste this face scowling all the time,” his voice shifts to something close to but not quite at his teasing tone.
“It’s not funny,” Katsuyuki protests. But then again, maybe it is. Mei pretends to be friendly, Carlos actually is friendly, and Katsuyuki stands behind them, glaring at any and everyone who might dare to hurt them. So maybe it is a little funny that it’s Mei now wiping away his tears when there’s nothing to be crying about.
“It’s not,” Carlos placates, even as his smile is a little too amused to be just fond, “I’m sorry you don’t feel well,” Katsuyuki blinks and misses his window to point out he never verbally said anything like that, “It’s just, today is the first time we’ve seen you cry. The fact it’s not world ending is a relief.”
Katsuyuki is more surprised than he probably should be. Mei is well known for being an emotional firecracker, he’s far from the pinnacle of healthy emotional regulation but probably most of the school has seen him cry for one reason or another. Carlos is more in touch with himself, but he’s not too big a person to let down his guard every so often with those he trusts. And then there’s him, who until Sawamura Eijun threw a baseball at his head was simply resigned to never shedding another tear.
Of course, it would be strange for his partners to see him emotional over seemingly nothing. Apart from agreeing to date them in the first place, they don’t know how grateful he is to have them. He never thinks about how he needs to tell them.
“Does it count?” Mei inquires, “Right now a commercial could probably make him cry,” his eyes light up mischievously, and if Katsuyuki had more brain power or energy, he’d be shutting that bullshit down immediately, “Katsu-chan, don’t you want to give a poor kitten a home? Only you can save him~”
“Shut up,” Katsuyuki bites hard on his bottom lip, determined not to prove Mei’s point. He’s moderately successful.
“I was just expecting it to be at a big moment,” Carlos affectionately nudges Katsuyuki’s side, “Like after we win at Koshien.”
Katsuyuki softly gasps and he mentally prepares himself to cry again, but this time the tears don’t come. His memories of the day are still incomplete, they probably always will be, but for the first time, he fully really processes everything that’s happened.
He’s told himself over and over that they won. He’s told himself that they’re going to Koshien. He’s told himself that they’re proved themselves the best team in the prefecture. He’s experienced each of these moments on their own but now he’s finally feeling them in their collective entirety. This is real.
The emotions that have run so wild around in his brain may be processing all wrong, but the experience is true. He feels that absolute joy of victory and he feels the despair of being taken out for some unspecified amount of time.
“We won,” he says, and though his eyes are finally dry, his surprised laugh could almost pass a sob.
“We won,” Mei agrees, smug as he always is, but still disheveled from his nap, it’s softer than usual and comes from an honest place of deep pride.
“We won,” Carlos finishes, joyous and bright even as he takes extreme care to be gentle with the hand that he lays on Katsuyuki’s head.
Katsuyuki sinks back into the bed. It’s been a long day and he has a lot more of them to come. Koshien is soon and head injuries are tricky, so he can’t say for sure if he’s going to be healthy enough to stand with his teammates on the field of dreams. He wants to. He wants to play alongside this team, this greatest team as much as he can.
But wanting makes his head hurt and the world look fuzzy, and it doesn’t matter right now anyway. What matters is what he can focus on in the here and now. It might not seem like much but he has two people who he cares about very much.
As if drawn in by invisible strings, Mei and Carlos lean in closer. The bed will not fit all three of laying down but this is a pretty damn good compromise. As he listens to their breathing fall into unison, the ringing in Katsuyuki’s ears finally fades, and under his breath so quiet he’s barely sure he actually says it, whispers, “I won.”