we built a dynasty, chapter one: (where has it gone)
Fandom: Daiya no Ace
Summary: In which Narumiya Mei is Narumiya Mei, and that makes all the difference when he ends up stuck back in his first year body.
Word Count: 1158
WARNINGS for a panic attack, and also all the cursing because it’s Mei (and occasionally Carlos).
The first two parts are serious angst, but the rest somehow devolved into crack fic. I sincerely apologize.
This chapter, chapter two / 2
Title thanks to MIIA��s “Dynasty” and my beta Bookdancer!
I do not own Daiya no Ace.
It’s Mei’s first year again. Or rather, it had been the end of Mei’s third year, but now he’s staring at his phone and the stupid, stupid digitized date that insists he’s suddenly fifteen again.
How short he suddenly is is pretty convincing, too. But that’s not the point.
The point is that Mei has fucked up even worse than he did the fall of his second year and erased a solid two and a half years of his life, and that’s enough time that the rest of the Inashiro gang will know what to expect from him, and also care about him—but only a little. They’re not family yet.
And fuck, but that realization tears Mei’s heart out and he spends an hour in the bathroom alternating between sobbing into a toilet and throwing up in it, because he’s been calling them family in his head for months now but he never said it out loud and now he’ll never have the chance—and if he does, it will be months and months from now. He can’t wait that long.
He’s Narumiya Mei, and he wants Shirakawa to give him death stares while he mothers him, and for Carlos to cuddle him pretending he’s only in it for the blankets and not the body heat, and Yamaoka to sit quiet but steadfast in the corner.
And—fuck—he wants Itsuki. He wants his catcher back. He’s Narumiya Mei, and he wants his silly, clumsy, physically can’t do anything but the right thing catcher back. And—
Mei opens the bathroom stall and runs right into a tall, strong chest. His eyes widen as they travel up slowly, and by the time they land on Masa-san’s face, they’re already filled with tears. Because at least he has one catcher back, but at the same time, he might as well not. He’s just an itty bitty first year, a pitcher-sized nuisance. Mei runs.
Katsuyuki isn’t sure what’s wrong with Narumiya. One day, the pitcher was his normal arrogant self. The next, he turned into a ball of anxiety. He leaned into Katsuyuki and the other first years, brushing shoulders and generally getting comfy in their personal space, only to startle, leap ten feet away, and act like they didn’t exist. Over the next hour, he would slowly drift back, and the entire process would happen again—when the incidents weren’t interrupted with periods of Narumiya sitting in the bullpen, arms crossed and pouting.
After one incident where Narumiya had slowly but surely worked his way under Carlos’s arm, only to jolt out again and run away to sulk, Carlos finally throws his hands up.
“I give,” he groans. “Does anyone have an idea what’s going on? And what are we supposed to do about it? Are we supposed to do anything?”
Yamaoka sighs and shrugs.
Katsuyuki rolls his eyes. “Well obviously something happened. The question is what, and…” He pauses to study Narumiya across the field. “What will happen when Narumiya hits his breaking point.”
“His breaking point?” Carlos repeats.
Katsuyuki nods. “Yes. Right now he’s working himself up to something—obviously he wants to be by us, or at least have human contact, but he’s denying himself of it for some reason. Eventually that want and denial will collide, and maybe even combust.”
Yamaoka’s eyes widen.
“So we need to stop that combustion, especially because it could result in us losing him as a pitcher.”
“Whoa, whoa!” Carlos objects. “I get the whole combustion thing, I guess—it’s kind of extreme, but, it is Narumiya—but at the same time, this is Narumiya. Pitching is his life. He’s not just going to abandon it!”
Katsuyuki cocks an eyebrow and nods to the bullpen, where Narumiya has been sitting for the last thirty minutes doing nothing but watching another pitcher throw to Harada. “Won’t he?”
For a moment, all of them just look at their pitcher. He had called them to Inashiro, and they had followed. They had named him their ace back in junior high, and now…
Carlos sighs and throws his hands up. “So we wait, right? We’re not going to just abandon him.”
“Right,” Katsuyuki says. “But… if you see an opportunity to figure out what’s going on with him…”
The other two nod, and they all part ways.
“Investigate quietly” didn’t need to be said.
Masatoshi closes his dorm room door behind him and allows himself a moment to just stand there, leaning his head back against it to stare at the ceiling. The first years have finally done it. They have pushed him to the point where he would gladly pay them money if they would just tell him what was going on.
Narumiya used to stick to him like the stitching on his glove, but ever since he ran into him throwing up in the bathroom, the pitcher all but sprints away from him. Just that morning, Masatoshi had to hand Narumiya’s practice schedule off to the second string’s catcher for the countless time that week. It isn’t even a problem with Narumiya’s pitching; if anything, the pitcher pays greater attention to each pitch than before, his changeup is evolving at an alarming rate, and his practice time and effort—as long as it didn’t involve Masatoshi himself—has gone up.
The sad thing is, Masatoshi reflects, tracing an old water damage stain along the ceiling, is that it isn’t just Narumiya. He can deal with a single temperamental pitcher; that isn’t out of the norm. But four first years?
Kamiya, in a weird twist from Narumiya, is fine being near him—but the moment Masatoshi opens his mouth, he runs the other way. So far it’s resulted in a few awkward moments on the field, Kamiya running into other people at least a half dozen times, and in one very embarrassing moment, Masatoshi colliding with the team captain.
Meanwhile, Yamaoka combines Narumiya and Kamiya’s new habits to edge away slowly. For a boy already as big as Masatoshi himself, he’s surprisingly quiet and stealthy about it.
And whenever he tries asking Shirakawa if he knows what’s wrong, he only receives a blank stare in return, before the shortstop walks away and turns a corner. When Masatoshi reaches the corner himself, Shirakawa has always disappeared—as if he broke into a dead run the instant he was out of Masatoshi’s sight.
The first years besides Narumiya, Masatoshi thinks, had been fine up until a few days before. That had been when… the catcher groans and drops his head to stare at the floor, hands coming up to cradle his forehead. That had been when he noticed them having a mini-conference during a water break and—like an idiot, apparently—tried to talk to them about it after practice. He distinctly remembers a question about Narumiya sneaking out as well. So they were… what? Trying to protect each other? Or just… or just Narumiya?
I hope you all enjoyed, and please let me know what you think! Chapter two should be out within a few days.
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