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[daiya no a, ryo&jun] more abandoned fic
i haven't given up on the ryojun manifesto aka train rides fic but this is not how i wanna do it. lmao. i'm taking style crit ig? it's not "done" in any sense of the word so if smth reads weird it's bc i hadn't yet decided how i wanted to do this...
it's a couple hundred words of jun and ryosuke after the inashiro game so there's nothing objectionable... they're both depressed tho lmao!!
Jun's always thought it was spectacularly cruel that Koshien fell during summer vacation. Not because it meant playing at Koshien meant no summer break - summer was for baseball, and always has been, in his mind - but because not playing at Koshien left nothing but summer homework and days of no distractions. For three years running, he's said no to beach plans and day trips to theme parks, even back when he was in the stands instead of playing, and for three years running that's been one more useless effort.
As a first year, the vacation period before practice officially began again had meant he'd headed home for a week before he got stir-crazy and dragged a suitcase of new clothes that weren't stretched tight from his growth spurt back to the school, where he could at least swing his bat around teammates, instead of alone in the backyard. (The neighborhood sandlot kids he'd taken to helping practice breathed a sigh of relief that they weren't going to be fishing two dozen balls out of the reservoir from when he got too excited.) (His mother breathed a sigh of relief that she didn't have to make an extra mountain of rice just for him.) As a second year, that had been... harder. Watching Azuma's last summer slip away from them had left him down for days, the latest in a long year of disappointment, but then Coach wanted him to be the vice-captain. His mouth had tightened when Coach asked what he thought of Tetsu as a captain, but Tetsu was the spear behind which he had always fallen, so that had been that. A four day vacation was all he'd had time for - things got so busy after that that he'd stomped down on the hollow feeling rattling at his ribs and worked, worked until his body ached and burned, the loss that still choked him up inside fuel on fire, not grief stalled out.
This time is the last time, and he feels like a coward when he calls his mom to tell her he'll be coming home for a week and a half. Nightmares shouldn't be chasing him, but they are, and maybe having his own bed and his own room will make this seem less like free-fall. When he says he's heading back, teases Sakai about having their new room to himself with Fumiya already gone home, Sakai asks if he's going to go with Ryosuke, which reminds him that their second baseman is probably cleared to walk around again, and, well, they'd been taking the train home for winter vacation since they were first years, their houses twenty minutes apart off the Toyoko line.
They'd all skirted around Tanba and Ryosuke's room for a couple of days. For all that Jun was carrying regret like a shroud, he'd been able to play to the end. Tanba had gone home a day after their loss in the qualifiers, still puffy-eyed, but Ryosuke's stayed, remote without Fumiya to cushion his mood. Talking to him feels like the ghost of their first year, Ryosuke's fierce independence icing you out if you got too close, but they're older than that now. Jun knocks on the door, waits for Ryosuke's flat-sounding 'you can open it', and pushes it open to lean on the doorjamb. Light leaks into the dim room from the hallway lights and illuminates Ryosuke turned away from a paused movie, some horrifying, blood-stained something or other Jun doesn't look at for too long in case it makes his nightmares even worse on the screen. "When are you going home?" he asks, crossing his arms across his chest.
Ryosuke frowns. "Why?"
"Taking the train by myself is too boring," Jun answers, "we can go together."
Ryosuke's stiff shoulders move under his t-shirt, and he puts his weight on his palm to turn around in his chair. He gestures to the door. "You can come in," he says, resting his wrists on the chair's back, and Jun pushes the door closed, reaches blind for the lightswitch he knows is on the right side of the door, and flicks it on even though Ryosuke's nose wrinkles at the flood of light in his horror haven. Jun snags Tanba's desk chair and tugs it tipped back on two legs until he can settle on it, legs apart and just barely out of reach of Ryosuke's arm. (He's not a masochist.) "I was going to take a weekend," he says, and sounds as uncomfortable as he feels.
it's a couple hundred words of jun and ryosuke after the inashiro game so there's nothing objectionable... they're both depressed tho lmao!!
Jun's always thought it was spectacularly cruel that Koshien fell during summer vacation. Not because it meant playing at Koshien meant no summer break - summer was for baseball, and always has been, in his mind - but because not playing at Koshien left nothing but summer homework and days of no distractions. For three years running, he's said no to beach plans and day trips to theme parks, even back when he was in the stands instead of playing, and for three years running that's been one more useless effort.
As a first year, the vacation period before practice officially began again had meant he'd headed home for a week before he got stir-crazy and dragged a suitcase of new clothes that weren't stretched tight from his growth spurt back to the school, where he could at least swing his bat around teammates, instead of alone in the backyard. (The neighborhood sandlot kids he'd taken to helping practice breathed a sigh of relief that they weren't going to be fishing two dozen balls out of the reservoir from when he got too excited.) (His mother breathed a sigh of relief that she didn't have to make an extra mountain of rice just for him.) As a second year, that had been... harder. Watching Azuma's last summer slip away from them had left him down for days, the latest in a long year of disappointment, but then Coach wanted him to be the vice-captain. His mouth had tightened when Coach asked what he thought of Tetsu as a captain, but Tetsu was the spear behind which he had always fallen, so that had been that. A four day vacation was all he'd had time for - things got so busy after that that he'd stomped down on the hollow feeling rattling at his ribs and worked, worked until his body ached and burned, the loss that still choked him up inside fuel on fire, not grief stalled out.
This time is the last time, and he feels like a coward when he calls his mom to tell her he'll be coming home for a week and a half. Nightmares shouldn't be chasing him, but they are, and maybe having his own bed and his own room will make this seem less like free-fall. When he says he's heading back, teases Sakai about having their new room to himself with Fumiya already gone home, Sakai asks if he's going to go with Ryosuke, which reminds him that their second baseman is probably cleared to walk around again, and, well, they'd been taking the train home for winter vacation since they were first years, their houses twenty minutes apart off the Toyoko line.
They'd all skirted around Tanba and Ryosuke's room for a couple of days. For all that Jun was carrying regret like a shroud, he'd been able to play to the end. Tanba had gone home a day after their loss in the qualifiers, still puffy-eyed, but Ryosuke's stayed, remote without Fumiya to cushion his mood. Talking to him feels like the ghost of their first year, Ryosuke's fierce independence icing you out if you got too close, but they're older than that now. Jun knocks on the door, waits for Ryosuke's flat-sounding 'you can open it', and pushes it open to lean on the doorjamb. Light leaks into the dim room from the hallway lights and illuminates Ryosuke turned away from a paused movie, some horrifying, blood-stained something or other Jun doesn't look at for too long in case it makes his nightmares even worse on the screen. "When are you going home?" he asks, crossing his arms across his chest.
Ryosuke frowns. "Why?"
"Taking the train by myself is too boring," Jun answers, "we can go together."
Ryosuke's stiff shoulders move under his t-shirt, and he puts his weight on his palm to turn around in his chair. He gestures to the door. "You can come in," he says, resting his wrists on the chair's back, and Jun pushes the door closed, reaches blind for the lightswitch he knows is on the right side of the door, and flicks it on even though Ryosuke's nose wrinkles at the flood of light in his horror haven. Jun snags Tanba's desk chair and tugs it tipped back on two legs until he can settle on it, legs apart and just barely out of reach of Ryosuke's arm. (He's not a masochist.) "I was going to take a weekend," he says, and sounds as uncomfortable as he feels.