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mangoisms · 2 years ago

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wolves without teeth ━ miyuki kazuya

━ chapter two: need something that i can confess (’til all my sleeves are stained red) / read chapter one

━ word count: 6.2k

━ warnings: none

━ masterpost

You knew your day wasn’t going to be great. The drone and then the third degree you suffered during lunch proved that. At least things were fine in the city but this — being face to face with the one person who knows you the best, the one person who could probably figure out who you are…

It’s not great.

You jump to your feet. Too quickly, you guess, by the way he tenses and takes several steps back, eyeing you warily.

You can only imagine what you must look like to him.

You didn’t take after Spider-Man’s red and blue color scheme, opting for black and white — mostly black. The mask is the same, with the big white eyes, and then a hood over that. Despite working hard to be the ‘friendly neighborhood Spider-Woman,’ you still use your slightly-creepy appearance (at night anyway) and powers to your advantage. Delphi says you look like an eldritch creature sometimes.

With the low lighting in the neighborhood and the full moon above your heads, you understand his unease.

Still. You would rather die than ever hurt him.

Miyuki Kazuya. Your best friend. You’ve known him for over sixteen years. You’ve been with him through everything.

Everything.

And the way he looks at you now, not like his best friend, but a stranger, a dangerous stranger… something inside you crumples.

Your chest feels heavy, each breath, each beat of your heart harder than the last.

Your fingers twitch to unmask, to reveal yourself and say, Don’t look at me like that. You know who I am. You know me. Everything about me. I would never hurt you. Never.

You’ve avoided seeing the others like this. Mostly because you fear they might recognize you, the shape of your body, the way you move.

You avoid Kazuya for the same reasons. And you knew, if you ever did stumble into him, you two wouldn’t exactly be buddy-buddy. But thinking that and actually being faced with it are two different things. This hostility. This guarded expression, this distrust — it hurts more than you would like to admit. Even if you should know better and should’ve realized it, that the others would regard you with wonder and amazement but not him. Never him.

You know why he doesn’t like her.

Spider-Woman, you mean.

He sees you as trouble.

Not the good kind, either, not the kind that comes in the form of a hot-headed, passionate Southpaw pitcher with a moving fastball, with a pitching style just waiting to be turned into something great. Not a tricky batter he has to figure out how to strike out, not a pitcher he has to break down.

You are none of that.

You are the kind of trouble that brings danger, bad luck, and misfortune. You are the kind of trouble that would put his life in danger.

“Well?”

You shake your head quickly.

“No? No to what? No to leaving?”

You open your mouth. The back of your neck explodes into tingles no don’t say anything don’t open your mouth he will know hewillknow —

Stop. Stop. Just stop.

Your heart pounds too hard in your chest. You feel cast ashore. Struggling to get your head above the water.

A dog barks somewhere in the distance, a cat yowls, getting into a fight with another, a few houses down, someone’s garage is opening, next door, the son and daughter of the couple there start to argue, in front of you, Kazuya shifts, a hand floating to the pocket of his pants, where his phone is —

No.

Everything comes back into focus. The extra information fades to the back of your mind. Kept in range but not your primary concern in this moment.

Your primary concern in this moment is him. And you know, you should’ve realized it, but you cannot talk. He would know instantly. He would recognize your voice.

Sixteen years. You’ve been friends for sixteen years.

If your roles were reversed, if he ended up like you right now, you think you’d recognize his voice. You would recognize it anywhere.

And you know it’s the same for him.

So, you shake your head again, then fold your index, middle, and ring fingers to your palm, leaving your pinky and thumb out. You point at it, then shake your head. Don’t call the cops.

He wouldn’t. It was just a bluff. But how can Spider-Woman know that?

“Oh, come on,” he scoffs. “I know you can talk. People have heard you. That’s how you got the media to call you that ridiculous name.”

Now that’s just uncalled for!

Sorry. Focus.

You shrug at him, shaking your head.

He sighs. “Whatever, I guess. I don’t really care. Could you leave?”

You should.

You really should.

But your feet stay on the ground. You place a hand on your chest, chest heaving breaths for a moment, then using both of your hands to gesture downward, shoulders raising sheepishly. Just a few minutes to rest. Please?

Kazuya narrows his eyes. “You can’t do that on anyone else’s roof?”

A shrug. Then you clasp your hands together in another imploring gesture.

He watches you for a second, arms still crossed tightly over his chest, every inch of his body language defensive.

And for a reason you aren’t sure of, even after being friends with him for so long, he says, “Fine.”

But then he turns, heading for the small hatch. The hatch is in his room instead of the hall. You noticed when moving in and the owner didn’t have much to say for explaining why. None of you ever come up here because it’s kind of dangerous — completely flat without anything running along the perimeter. A simple stumble could have you falling over the side. You don’t know why Kazuya is up here but… what you do know is that he is about to leave you here alone and something like disappointment bubbles in your chest.

You aren’t sure what you were expecting. For him to stay up here and make small talk? Ask about your day? You can’t even talk around him.

So, you watch him go, disappearing back into the house. When the hatch is firmly shut and locked, you collapse onto the ground, dropping your head into your hands.

“Stupid,” you whisper to yourself. “So stupid.”

You let yourself wallow in self-pity for a few minutes before getting up. You’ll make a circuit of the neighborhood then come back. As yourself, not Spider-Woman.

Not much goes on here. A few teenagers playing a night game of soccer. They cheer when they see you, yelling out greetings. You make sure to wave back before you go. You have to make a quick escape when you glimpse a police car slowly patrolling the neighborhood.

Did he…?

No. He didn’t. He couldn’t have. He would never.

Others must have seen you and called it in. The older ones, probably, who disapprove of your actions.

You brush off the thoughts and land in an alley near the house; a couple cats, including the newly-returned Momo, hiss at you. They usually crawl into the house’s tiny backyard through a small hole in the fence and that’s where you and Eijun feed them breakfast and dinner.

“Aw, you know who I am. Don’t be like that,” you say, kneeling and extending your hand to her. Her emerald green eyes flash in the night. She hisses and swipes a paw at you.

“Man, I can’t get a break,” you mutter, standing and, after ensuring no one can see you, vaulting over the fence and climbing up to your room where you quickly and quietly change into your normal clothes. You do your best to fix your appearance, then you grab your bag, drop back down, and come around the street. Terribly complicated, you know, but like always, Kazuya throws a wrench in your plans.

When you enter, you expect to find Kazuya in the kitchen or living room, but he isn’t. You frown, kicking off your shoes in the genkan, and slipping further inside. Eijun and Wakana’s bedrooms are down here and he has no business being there.

You let yourself tune into your senses. Next door is quiet by now. So are most of the houses around. Movement upstairs. He’s here.

Like a thread connecting you two, your senses easily hone in on him, your feet leading you to his bedroom, where you push open the door and pause in the doorway as you see him climbing back down from the hatch.

“Kazuya?”

“Jesus —”

He jumps, nearly missing the last step to the ground. Every muscle in you wants to jump forward to steady him but you withhold it, seeing him regain his balance with a few well-placed expletives under his breath, feet back safely on the wood floors.

“Seriously, you have to stop doing that,” he complains, a petulant expression on his face as he turns to look at you, closing the hatch behind him.

“Sorry,” you say, meaning it. Sometimes you forget how quiet you are these days and scare the shit out of him (and the others) on accident. But to be fair, he does the same to you.

You glance between him and the hatch, watching him stretch to his toes to lock it.

“What were you doing up on the roof?” You don’t even have to pretend to be mystified.

Was he… No, he was probably just checking. Just making sure you’d left eventually. Else a well-placed threat for calling the cops would come again, you’re sure.

But you still wait with bated breath for his answer. What will he say? Will he tell you the truth? Complain about how ‘Spider-Girl’ took up post on the roof? Probably say something about making her pay rent if she keeps coming?

You get your answer in the next moment.

“Just thought I heard something.”

You laugh. It feels a little breathless. There’s no way. “Like what?”

He shrugs. “Dunno. Maybe the cats got up there. But I didn’t see anything. It’s nothing, I guess.”

You latch onto the opportunity for distraction. “The cats —”

He holds up a hand, stepping around you to go back downstairs. “Relax, I already fed them.”

“Thank you.”

He waves it off. You follow him distractedly.

He lied. Kazuya lied to you. No mention of Spider-Woman. You’d have believed it, too, were it not for the fact that your senses are particularly tuned for that kind of thing and, well, you had quite literally been there.

Why did he lie?

You struggle to decide on whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

Man, who are you kidding? You know the answer to that.

Hope blossoms in your chest. Could you make him like Spider-Woman? Or at the very least tolerant? He lied — to you. His best friend. You wouldn’t have reacted negatively to hearing about it. Not at all. And yet…

You don’t know. But a part of you wants to believe that this could be hope.

“Are you hungry?” he asks, opening the door to the fridge.

You blink, coming back to yourself. “Am I — oh. You know the answer to that. I’m —”

“Always hungry,” he finishes, chuckling. “Are you sure you’re not pregnant?”

“Kazuya!”

He just laughs. It’s impossible for you not to smile at the sound, warmth unspooling in your chest. That heavy feeling is back again but it’s sweet, full of honey-thick warmth.

God, you’re so…

He tosses a grin over his shoulder, amber brown eyes twinkling with mirth. Nothing like earlier. He is open to you, warm. This is how it should be.

“I’m not pregnant,” you grumble, though the effect is negated by the way your lips twitch.

“It’s okay if you are!”

“Shut up! I’m not!”

This is from a few months ago, when they’d all noticed your increased food intake; all of them were admittedly concerned about it and theorizing on their own as to why. Kuramochi was the one who had to bite the bullet and ask if you were pregnant, since that was the only feasible explanation they could come up with. (Kazuya privately insists he knew better but went along with it, anyway; you think he’s a big fat liar.)

While embarrassing, as you had to stammer through a firm denial that you were not pregnant — you hadn’t been with someone since last year — it was better than them concluding you were Spider-Woman.

Kazuya shuts the fridge door with his hip, turning, hands settling on your shoulders, squeezing, a mock earnest look on his face.

“We’d help, you know. With the appointments… and then after… it’d really be more economical.”

“Help? God save a child raised by the funky bunch of idiots.”

He throws his head back and laughs. You push his chest gently, face warming at his proximity. He smells like cinnamon.

Though you’re pushing him away, the urge to grab him and bury your face in his chest is monumental, like a tsunami crashing into you.

You’re strong enough to lift a car and then some but in moments like these, you feel so weak.

Especially as his hand comes to your cheek, eyes narrowing at something on your face.

“Huh,” he says, reaching up to pull the band-aid on the cut on your temple free. “This looks… a lot better than earlier.”

Shit. You’d forgotten about that.

The skin is no longer red and irritated and the cut itself is scabbed over. That’s the healing factor. Great for when it comes to nastier injuries, that way you’re not hobbling around and making the others suspicious, but for the smaller stuff, the ones they notice… not great. You usually have to do some makeup magic so as to not raise alarm.

“It feels better,” you quickly say. “Probably because of that ointment you put on it.”

“Huh.”

Your stomach rumbles at that moment, saving you as he snickers.

“Come on,” you needle him, turning him around to face the kitchen, pushing him towards the stove. “I’m hungry.”

“Make your own food!”

“Aw, but it’s never as good as yours!”

“Kiss-ass,” he mutters, turning towards the pantry to grab a bag of rice. “Fine. Go find something for us to watch.”

That’s better. You drop a kiss to his shoulder then turn away quickly. You used to be able to do things like that without a second thought. These days…

You shake your head, stepping into the living room and picking up the remote.

“What are you in the mood for?”

He blows out a breath. “To see some other people make bad decisions.”

Bad decisions, huh?

You watch his back for a moment. He moves fluidly in the kitchen, hands opening cabinets mindlessly, everything second-nature to him by this point. You remember what it used to be like, him bumbling through every move but it was necessary, because his dad wasn’t doing anything to help cook or take care of the house or the bills and you and your parents wouldn’t learn about this for a few months, but when they did, when they did, oh, they were furious.

Your mom had you take him out of the house, so she and your dad could talk to Miyuki Kazushi — well, talk is generous. Whatever they said that day dissolved any remaining relations between your parents but he picked up his slack. Most of it.

Kazuya still took the reins on the food. He refused to let it go. You think it was his way of coping with his mom’s death and his dad’s distance.

Now, it’s one of the main ways he takes care of the ones he loves.

You would know.

You don’t come back to the house the next day.

It’s too soon. And who knows if he is even out there?

All of this is just… wishful thinking and though you hope, you know you cannot let yourself get carried away with trying to win his approval. It might only hurt you more in the long run.

Not to mention, this is a line you logically know you should not cross.

You won’t.

“You better not write that in any language other than Japanese!”

“Leave me alone! I get to write my wish in any language I please!”

An arm slides around your shoulders. Kazuya pulls you into his side and he uses his other hand to try and steal the pen from you.

You grin, wiggling out of his grasp.

“Seriously,” he whines. “First, you pick out white and you won’t tell me why. Now, you want to write your wish in a language I don’t understand.” His fingers find a ticklish spot at your ribs, above the obi tied into a bow on the right side of your waist.

You giggle, jerking away from him. “Stop that! It’s nothing, Kazuya. I mean, it’s just… you know. We’re graduating soon.”

He rolls his eyes. “Next year.”

“This is still our last year.”

“Well, still. It’s not like we have anything to worry about.” He pulls you into his side again and the two of you step away from the vendor handing out the tanzaku in the usual five colors — purple, red, blue, yellow, and white.

Bodies shuffle up and down the street. Hiratsuka is bustling with activity tonight, the start of the weekend for Tanabata. Located a prefecture over in Kanagawa, the five of you had jumped on the Shinkansen earlier, taking the hour and a half ride from Toshima to Hiratsuka Station, where the festival is centered around the shopping street on the north side of the station.

It’s… a lot on your senses. But there is no trouble here. Focusing on Kazuya helps.

Warm lights illuminate the street, the sun already below the horizon, most of the sky midnight blue with sparse smudges of deep purple and red.

Above your head, decorations flutter in the breeze, glowing lanterns and fukinagashi, streamers representing threads for those wanting to be better weavers, gossamer amikazari symbolizing wishes by fishermen for full nets, hanging kinchaku bags for prosperity, and orizuru for longevity.

You still have distant memories of your first Tanabata, when you were six. His mom was sick by that point and his dad was worried sick. In the hopes of distracting him, your parents brought the two of you to the festival, along with your siblings.

You remember taking turns being carried on your dad’s shoulders, the tepid heat of the July evening, colorful decorations fully engaging your attention as they fluttered above your heads and even tickled your face a few times, when you came up on lower-hanging ones.

Stage productions of the tale of Orihime and Hikoboshi regaling you while you feasted on yakitori, chicken skewers with soy sauce and karashi, and takoyaki, batter fried balls with pieces of octopus, tenkasu, pickled ginger, and onion, slathered with mayonnaise. For dessert, mitarashi dango, dumplings made from rice flour, grilled, then coated with a sweet soy glaze, and imagawayaki, a stuffed pancake-like sweet filled with custard.

You wrote your wishes together that year. A wish shared — for Miyuki Mayumi to get better, to beat the pancreatic cancer killing her.

In the end, it would not come true.

But Tanabata remains one of your favorite holidays. Kazuya never accompanied you and your family again after that, but after high school, he started to come around again.

This year is more special, though. The five of you have made it a tradition to visit the festival when it came around, most often in Tokyo; but you and Kazuya will be leaving after graduation next year, to… well, you don’t know yet. The NPB is going to try their best to lure him to stay here a couple years and the MLB is gearing to snatch him up as soon as the draft opens.

But regardless of where he’ll end up, you’ll be with him. You two are a package deal. If you stay here, you’ll help the team as an interpreter for the international players. If you cross the pacific, you’ll be his interpreter.

(That’s another story for another time, but it wasn’t a conclusion you two had to come easily or quickly at all.)

So, you’re here in Hiratsuka, Kanagawa, at the Shonan Hiratsuka Tanabata Festival, one of the largest in the country. Most years, you guys didn’t dress up, but this year, at your behest, all of you did.

You adjust your hold on the tanzaku and the pen. Your nails, freshly painted midnight blue, glint under the lights; your toes match since you’d be in sandals. The color coincidentally goes with the dark blue yukata Kazuya wears, the color flattering his light brown skin. The obi around his hips — that you’d tied for him — is white. Your yukata is pale blue, with patterns of lilies, the obi dark blue. Your makeup and hair are done, the most done up you’ve been in a while with school and your nightly escapades.

Haruichi, Furuya, and several other old classmates had come out here, too, but you’ve all split up by this point. You’ll meet again for the fireworks.

Kazuya nudges you over to a bamboo tree with some space left for your tanzaku.

“Let me go first,” you say, reluctantly stepping out of his embrace and motioning for him to turn around so you could use him to write out your wish.

“It better be in Japanese,” he threatens, turning obligingly. “Like I said, it’s bad enough you’re going with white instead of yellow.”

“And what about you, huh? You never pick yellow. It’s always white! Why can’t I do white this year and why do you get to do yellow?”

“I have my reasons!”

“Well, so do I,” you laugh, clicking the pen and splaying out the white strip against his back. Despite his blustering about your color choice, he bends forward a little, helping you write easier.

Just like the idea of hanging up tanzaku on bamboo trees is supposed to help wishes come true, the color of the tanzaku has certain meanings as well. You’ve always used yellow, the color of friendship and also helpful for wishes about relationships. Now, this year, after everything, you’ve picked out white, a color for determination and responsibility.

Kazuya used to pick that one, too. For baseball, obviously. Now, he’s picked yellow. You don’t know why but you can guess even he is feeling it, the impending separation from your friend group. Kuramochi is staying here to go to grad school for social work and Wakana and Eijun have one more year to go as well. It’s just the two of you that might be leaving.

You know why you picked white. You need the hope, a wish for determination and responsibility to keep you on track, to keep others safe, but more importantly…

Keep my friends and family safe.

You don’t know what you’d do if anything happened to them because of Spider-Woman.

You really don’t.

You tap his shoulder and he straightens, turning around to take the pen from you. You turn around to return the favor and also hang it up on the tree, finding a branch level with your chest and tying the tanzaku there. You feel the pressure of Kazuya holding down the strip against your shoulder, the pen moving quickly, then nothing.

You turn.

“No looking!”

“Aw, why not?”

He shoves your face away when you try to see what he’s written. You giggle, batting away his hand.

He glares at you but it holds little heat. “Don’t ask me that, you menace — you wrote yours in German!” He stabs the pen in the direction of yours, swaying in the breeze, blue ink glistening in the aforementioned language.

You laugh at that for a while.

You’re still giggling when he finishes tying his and quickly turns you away from the tree before you can get a glimpse of it.

“You learn a couple languages and you get unbearable,” he says, mock disappointed, shaking his head.

“It’s good practice!”

“As if you need practice.”

“Is that a compliment?”

“Well, I have to make sure I don’t run you off before I get to the US.”

“Run me off? Miyuki Kazuya, don’t insult me!” You point at him threateningly. “You’re stuck with me until we die, you hear me, mister? And then after, too!”

He grins, throwing an arm around your shoulder as you start walking again. “So, my luck holds. I’m happy to hear it.”

“Yeah, I bet you are.” You bump your hip against his. “You owe me dango for that comment.”

He chuckles. “Yeah, alright. Let’s find some.”

You come up on a stall near one of the stage productions. While Kazuya gets in line for it, you find yourself drifting toward the assembled crowd of people, mostly kids.

You watch, a small smile tugging at your lips as the actors tell the folktale of Orihime, a gifted weaver, and Hikoboshi, a hard-working cow herder.

The story goes that after Orihime and Hikoboshi were wed, they were so in love, they began to neglect their duties. In doing so, they incurred the wrath of Orihime’s father, Tentei, the emperor of heaven. To punish them, they were exiled to separate ends of the Milky Way. They can only meet on the seventh day of the seventh month of the year, provided they are diligent in their obligations throughout the rest of the year. It’s based off real constellations, with Orihime being Vega and Hikoboshi being Altair. It’s one of your favorite tales.

Kazuya appears at your side at one point, scaring you slightly when you realize he’s next to you.

He snickers. “Here.” He passes you a skewer with dango, golden brown and glistening.

“Thank you,” you say, pulling off the first dumpling into your mouth. You nod towards the set-up, the narrator now connecting the story to the celebration of Tanabata. “You remember this?”

“The usual tragic love story. Sure.”

“It’s romantic.”

“Is it?” he asks, just to annoy you, you’re sure. You still offer him the dango, anyway.

“Yes, it is.”

“To you, maybe,” he chuckles, leaning forward to take the second piece of dango into his mouth. “I just think it’s proof that love makes you stupid.”

You pull the skewer back sharply, narrowing your eyes at him. “Love… is the most important thing in the world, Miyuki Kazuya.”

He looks down at you, lips quirked; the warm lights of the street turn his eyes chocolate brown, so easy to get lost into.

“Is it?”

You tilt your head. “You love me, don’t you?”

Feelings like those always come heavy. Especially when it comes to him. Not easily spoken, not easily found, it always threatens to suffocate you when it does come up. Like now.

He’s close enough for you to smell cinnamon, overlayed by the smell of sweet fried foods. Everything else fuzzes out. Your senses stop whispering about the others around you, the police stationed throughout the street, the potential dangers of those closest to you.

Everything is always so much easier with him. A balm to the rest of the world. The only time you get to breathe, when things go quiet, and it’s just you, a girl in love with her best friend, crushed by the knowledge that he loves you, too. Just… in a different way.

The quirk of Kazuya’s lips eases into something softer, something more tender. A small thing, but no less brilliant, no less breathtaking, his eyes crinkling with it, looking down at you with a familiar affection that punches the air out of you like it usually does when he looks so openly at you.

“That is true,” he says softly.

Honey-thick warmth wells up in your chest, clogging your lungs and the arteries of your heart. Moments like these you can hardly believe you get the privilege of seeing that openness. But you also know it’s sixteen years of work, of friendship, of time spent together and of fights resolved.

You’re so lucky to be here. So lucky.

The thought overwhelms you, especially as you say, “And I love you.”

He doesn’t say anything. Just looks at you.

You look away first. “That’s not stupid, is it?”

His hand finds yours, catcher’s callouses ticklish against the softer skin of your palms; he squeezes gently. “No. It’s not.”

You look back at the set-up. “Love does make people do foolish things. But it’s love. That distinction matters more than anything else. Maybe it doesn’t work out but the love was there, wasn’t it? It still is.”

You wonder, who are you talking about? Orihime and Hikoboshi or yourselves? You aren’t so different from them. The thing is, their love was returned. They loved too much. And you… well. The ending of that story hasn’t been written yet, has it?

Not yet.

After you finish your dango, the two of you head for the meet-up point with the others, at a small park on the other side of the street, where you’ll wait and watch the fireworks.

You and Kazuya are the first to arrive and he excuses himself to the restroom for the moment, leaving you to lean against a large tree, branches decorated with tanzaku. A warm breeze flutters through your hair.

You people-watch for a little bit, smiling softly as you watch excited kids drag tired-looking parents around to find good spots for the fireworks, teenagers chattering together happily, moving in groups of three or more, and older couples, alone, traversing calmly, just happy to be here with each other.

But though your attention is on them, you still feel the slightest prickle at the back of your neck. Not a tingling sensation that tells you danger imminent, no, it’s not danger, per se, but rather —

“BOO!”

You smile. “Hey, Sachiko. What’d you guys get up to?”

Kuramochi’s familiar laugh fills the air. “I told you! She’s impossible to scare these days!”

Umemoto Sachiko, one of the old managers for Seido in your year, scowls, glaring a little at you. “What’s your secret?! That was a great scare!”

“Eh, it was okay,” Kuramochi says.

“You don’t get to talk because even you said you can’t scare her these days.”

You laugh. “There’s no secret. I’d say Mochi’s just ruined it for himself and others by scaring me too often. I’m vigilant these days.”

Heh. Vigilant.

Sachiko swats at his shoulder, grumbling. “Great job, Kuramochi. Great job.”

It’s him, Sachiko, Natsukawa Yui, the other old manager in your year, Wakana, Shirasu, and Nori.

Sachiko and Yui only really came for you. Whenever you spared the time to visit the club, they — and your old senpai, Fujiwara, and your old kouhai, Haruno — often hung out with you. Said it was nice to talk to someone from the ‘outside.’ Sachiko is a diehard baseball fan, sure, but even they felt the lag sometimes. Being a manager was often a thankless job — at least in high school and college. That’s why you stayed away.

Well, that, and you weren’t that interested in it, anyway.

Kazuya had made the mistake of assuming you’d take up the position when you two started Seido. It had been one of your nastier arguments, mostly because you didn’t want to be a manager. You wanted to join the cheerleading team. And when he learned that, he said — That’s basically the same thing, isn’t it?

As a matter of fact, no, it was not — the cheerleading team did cheer for the baseball games but they did for the soccer games, and they had their own meets, too.

To which he said — There’s actual competitions for cheerleading?

You didn’t talk to him for a month after that.

You’ve always supported him in his baseball endeavors. Even when he was being a weirdo about it, like when he came sprinting to you after a game against Chris-senpai’s old junior high league, raving about how he was going to go to Seido and challenge him since he was the only catcher Kazuya ever lost against. Of course, that didn’t pan out but still. You’ve always been there for him.

But… you didn’t want to be a manager, someone relegated to the sidelines of his story. You wanted to have your own thing, too. Sure, maybe you could’ve shined enough as a manager but… on the cheerleading team, it was entirely separate. The Seido cheer club was one of the best in the Kanto region. They consistently won meets and competitions — more than Inashiro, who were really only a baseball powerhouse. You’d liked cheerleading since you were a kid. Even with all the stereotypes around it, mostly because you knew they were just that — stereotypes. Falsities. Everyone in the cheer club at Seido was kind to you and the same could be said about Waseda’s cheer club.

Sure, in high school, you encountered a couple girls who were particularly nasty, believing this to be some kind of trashy American movie where they could be the main characters, but for the most part, it was fun.

Kazuya understood eventually and apologized to you. Really apologized. You suspect even to this day, he feels guilty about undermining you like that.

You still miss it now, six months after quitting. But it was too dangerous at the time. You didn’t know your own strength. If you’d kept going, you’re sure you would’ve hurt someone. Or worse.

“So, how are things in school?” Yui asks, a warm smile on her lips.

“Miyuki is as annoying as ever, I assume?” Sachiko tacks on. Yui makes a noise of agreement.

You grin. “As ever. Things are good. Little weird but good.”

“Is it true you quit the cheerleading team?” Sachiko asks next, head tilting.

You grimace. “Ah, yeah…”

“I get it,” Yui says. “I’m glad baseball activities are over by now, since it’s the last month before the term ends.”

Sachiko nods firmly. “More time to focus on your grades! Gotta make sure those Americans have no choice but to employ you!”

You laugh, relaxing, pleased they understand — that they are supportive. You understand the others’ concern but… you’d prefer this. You can’t go back on your decision so, all that there is left to do is look forward.

“Ah, that’s exciting,” Yui sighs, a little wistful. “I’d love to go overseas.”

“Once I start making money, I’ll fly you guys out.”

They beam.

You ask about them, how their studies are going. Yui goes to Meiji and Sachiko goes to the University of Tokyo. The former is studying chemistry to go into pharmaceuticals and the latter is doing sports medicine, intent on continuing to work with baseball but in a much more important (and recognized) position. They’ll be graduating next year in March, too, just like you, Kazuya, and Kuramochi.

“ARE WE LATE?!” Eijun’s boisterous voice interrupts your conversation.

“We’re not late, idiot!” comes Kanemaru’s familiar bark; all of you turn, seeing him, Eijun, Haruichi, and Furuya join your group. “If we were late — we’d know.”

“Well, how do you know that?!”

“We’d be hearing the fireworks already, Sawamura,” he says, exasperated. “They haven’t gone off. So, no, we’re not late.”

“Excellent!” He turns and beams at all of you. “Hello, senpai! It’s great to see all of you!”

“You saw us earlier,” Nori points out, amusement tinging his voice.

Eijun pouts. “Well, I started missing everyone when we got split up!”

Kuramochi gets him into a headlock. “Stop being sappy!”

“Just like high school, huh?” Warm breath tickles your ear.

You squeak, jumping.

Kazuya laughs.

“Oi!” Sachiko complains. “Why does he scare you?”

A heavy arm slings over your shoulders. Kazuya smirks at her. “It’s just different between us. You wouldn’t understand.”

Kuramochi releases Eijun, who stumbles away, Haruichi steadying him with a small smile on his lips.

He looks at Shirasu and Nori, huffing. “See what I have to deal with?”

Kazuya laughs again — even when they (and most of the others) agree.

The first pop of fireworks scares them. Everyone had lost track of time. But soon enough, you’re all turning your eyes skyward, chatter falling quiet as fireworks pop in the sky. Blue, green, red, an assortment of colors illuminating the streets and faces of those watching.

Kazuya moves behind you, tugging you into his chest, arms locking around your waist while he leans his chin on your head. The night is warm but you feel warmer, Kazuya a long line of heat against your back. Like always, being in such close proximity calms your senses. You relax. His arms tighten, a gentle squeeze, something like There you go.

This is what you’re trying to protect.

Exactly this.

#daiya no ace #ace of diamond #miyuki kazuya #sawamura eijun #kuramochi youichi #aotsuki wakana #miyuki kazuya x reader #ace of diamond x reader #daiya no ace x reader #moss writes #miyuki x reader

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