Title: Gravitation
Fandom: Daiya no Ace, Free!, Ore Monogatari
Character/Pairings: Miyuki/Furuya, Haruka/Makoto, Suna/Books, Furuya & Haruka & Suna
Summary:

Two peas in a pod? What about three?

College AU where Furuya, Haru and Suna are flatmates.

They get along surprisingly well.

Miyuki/Furuya established relationship, Makoto/Haru pre-relationship.

Notes: I thought at some point someone would have written something about Haru and Furuya at the very least but I guess not? This AU wouldn't be possible without everbad who suffered an inordinate amount of random conversations about this OT3 with me.

Kind of follows I Belong with You verse, but that's just for my personal headcanon. It's quite Furumiyu heavy in the beginning, but it should balance out by the third chapter. Tbh this AU began as a random fluff ball of the 'cool stoic guys' and then some plot was thrown in, though it's vague, it's all vague…


grav·i·ta·tion
noun
movement, or a tendency to move, toward a centre of attractive force


When Miyuki accepted his place in Tokyo University a year ago, he had jokingly made a comment to Furuya that went like this, "Hey, did you know if two people who love each other go to Todai, they'll live happily ever after?" He was probably quoting off some manga he had glanced at one time when Isashiki's manga was being passed around the team, but Furuya simply blinked and said seriously, "Then, I'll come with you."

It wasn't that Miyuki doubted Furuya would get scouted by Todai—on the contrary, with an additional year's worth of experience of being an ace that would bolster the reputation of Furuya's fearsome pitching, it was rather likely—in fact, much more likely than the chances of Furuya testing into Seido; sometimes he's still suspicious about how Furuya had done it, considering Furuya isn't exactly academically inclined.

A year later when he's helping Furuya to move into the dormitories before term starts, it then hits Miyuki how incredibly sappy that comment was no matter how flippantly he had meant it, it's moreso the fact was that it was said. He knew Furuya would take it literally—if Miyuki wanted to be honest, he might admit that it was a nice thought to have them play as a battery in official matches again. It's not the same over the past year where they can only play catch in their free time or sometimes in reunion games with Seido's team. And now thanks to Furuya's dead set persistence, there is.

The same sentiment shows through Furuya's aura which has been burning since he's been following Miyuki who leads them towards the dorms—first years are assigned the same building every year—staring at the back of Miyuki's head with twice his usual intensity. The usual request to pitch was immediately turned down the moment Miyuki had met Furuya on the campus; there are other things Furuya needs be doing, Miyuki had rolled his eyes, like to move in.

"Toru," Miyuki calls, glancing backward. "What number are you in?"

Furuya looks at the paper he grasps in his hand. "211."

Not on the ground floor and relatively near the staircase—it's a good location. The corridors are quiet as they stroll along the second floor. Considering that it's still early-March, majority of the students wouldn't move in that early but Furuya is supposed to join their team practice from next week, being on a baseball scholarship. When they reach the door number 211, Miyuki steps aside for Furuya to slot in his key. It goes in like expected, but when Furuya turns it, there ends up being a click.

Furuya blinks. "…It wasn't locked," he mumbles, turning it back.

"Maybe one of your flatmates is in," Miyuki answers. "Do you know who they are?"

The dorms are all arranged in three person flats—three bedrooms each with a shared kitchen and bathroom. Miyuki had his experience last year; nothing terrible had happened, but after years of living with people Miyuki isn't close to, he finally concedes under Narumiya Mei's—who incidentally, is with them in Todai—prodding and rents a flat share with them two.

Furuya shakes his head in reply to his question. It doesn't really matter, Miyuki supposes, it's all a gamble on who becomes Furuya's flatmates anyway. When they open the door, there is a pair of shoes stacked neatly on the shoe rack at the side.

"Sorry for intruding!" Miyuki calls, but no answer comes. "Hmm, maybe your flatmate forgot to lock the door behind him."

Furuya enters first, glancing at the walls as he makes way down the narrow corridor that lead to a wider space with tatami flooring, a low table and several cushions on the floor, most probably their living room. To the right there is a closed door, followed by another doorway that opens up to a nice airy kitchen; in clockwise direction, there are two open doors that show a peek of a bed and desk each inside, and the last one is a closed door.

Miyuki explores the kitchen first by habit—it looks exactly like the one he had last year, albeit lightly stocked and much cleaner, with no dirty dishes or mess in sight. The refrigerator holds some bottles of water and a few pieces of raw fish—mackerel, he thinks—wrapped in plastic. The freezer contains even more packets of the same fish, though frozen. A fish diet? Miyuki blinks, closing the freezer door. He walks out, vaguely noting that Furuya has gone into the centre bedroom, and turns his attention to the first closed door, which should be the bathroom.

The silence from Miyuki's greeting at the front door had mostly cancelled out any expectation that anyone was in the flat, and thus Miyuki is certainly not prepared to see another youth sitting in the bathtub when he swings the toilet door open.

"…You're not Makoto," the black-haired boy says after a moment of silent staring, blinking calmly.

"Um," Miyuki manages, thrown off. "No, I'm not."

It's not that he just walked in on someone bathing, there is that, but there is also the fact that this other person startlingly reminds him a lot of his pitcher—the short black hair, the blue eyes, the stoic face—the other doesn't exactly look like Furuya, but he kind of does in some weird alternative universe way, and Miyuki can't put his finger on it. He isn't sure if he should say something more to his statement, but abruptly there is the sound of the front door bursting wide open.

"Haru!" someone else calls, hurried, voice laced with a bit of breathlessness. "I'm sorry I'm late—"

Miyuki turns in time to see another male pause at his presence. Tall, spectacled, green eyes, sandy coloured hair.

"Ah. Makoto," the one in the tub says.

"Ahhh, why didn't you get out of the tub, Haru? We're really late!" The one who had just entered exclaims when his attention gets shifted.

Miyuki stands back and watches the one named Makoto one hold out a hand to the other, and he raises both eyebrows when the other one—Haru, he guesses—just stands up from the tub. He would cough at this vastly weird shameless scene that he's witnessing, but then he realises that Haru is wearing swimsuit jammers.

…That kind of increases the weird factor, but Miyuki is polite enough to keep his mouth shut, though Makoto snaps his attention back to him and the green eyes widen in panic.

"Um, I'm so sorry you had to see that—" he cries aghast, shoving a towel over Haru's shoulders. "Haru, please, go get changed!"

Miyuki hides an amused chuckle underneath a deceivingly polite smile. "It's okay. I'm Miyuki Kazuya," he introduces. "And you are?"

"Tachibana Makoto," the taller boy smiles, skin around the eyes crinkling before he bows shortly. "I don't live here, I'm just here to pick Haru up."

"Nanase Haruka," the black-haired teen says with a short nod of acknowledgement, blue eyes meeting Miyuki's directly.

"Pleased to meet you," Miyuki replies in automatic reflex, the weird familiar feeling back in his mind. "Though, I'm not the one moving in. I'm a second year. My…junior is moving in today," he informs them. "Furuya!" he calls, poking his head out of the bathroom for a bit. "Furuya?"

There is no response, and Miyuki knows exactly why. With an exasperated sigh he excuses himself from the duo, padding into the centre empty bedroom to see Furuya lying sideways curled up on the bare mattress, dead asleep. He nudges Furuya's shoulder.

"Hey, wake up. One of your flatmates is in," he shakes Furuya again. "Furuya, wake up."

Furuya stirs groggily, and Miyuki gives a quick glance to the doorway to ascertain that they're alone for now. He ruffles Furuya's hair for a bit.

"Get up, come on."

The pitcher drags himself up, blinking sleepily. "…It's too hot."

Miyuki rolls his eyes. "It's just the central heating—you can adjust that later."

He gestures for Furuya to exit the room, wherein he meets Makoto standing in the living room alone fidgeting a little.

"Haru went to change," Makoto says, and then his gaze rests upon Furuya. "You must be Furuya-san?"

"Furuya Satoru. Pleased to meet you," Furuya bows politely, though in that time, Miyuki meets his gaze with Makoto who gives him some kind of hesitant confused wide-eyed look back.

So, he's not the only one.

"I'm Tachibana Makoto," Makoto returns the bow. "Are you an athlete too? Haru told me only the sports players on scholarship move in this early."

Furuya nods. "Baseball. I'm a pitcher."

"Oh?" Makoto beams. "Haru's a—"

"Swimmer," they all turn when Haru exits that third closed bedroom door, dressed. "I only swim free."

Haru walks up to Furuya and stares at him squarely in the eye—other than the massive similarities of hair styles and eye colour, the height difference is rather obvious. Miyuki watches from the side lines warily; suddenly it becomes too quiet as the other two just look at each other, and out of the corner of his eye he sees Makoto's fingers fidgeting as though he's not sure whether to break the ice. Then, the shorter black-haired youth speaks.

"Nanase Haruka. Pleased to meet you," Haru says, dipping his head slightly.

Furuya returns the bow a little lower. "Furuya Satoru."

It settles into another silence after that, and after a few more seconds that tick by, Makoto coughs into his fist.

"I'm so sorry Miyuki-san, Furuya-san, but we're really late to pick our friends up from the train station," Makoto says, glancing at his phone. "If we had known Furuya-san was moving in, we would've stayed to help, but—"

"Oh, don't trouble yourself. The delivery man will do most of the work anyway," Miyuki replies, waving his hands. "We'll meet again soon, I'm sure."

"Please excuse us, I'm sorry!" Makoto calls as he rushes both him and Haru to the front door.

Haru turns back for a bit as he's putting on his shoes, meeting gaze with Furuya, but it's over once he and Makoto leave the flat.

Miyuki exhales when he's left alone with Furuya, scratching the base of his neck. "Well. What do you think of him?" he asks.

Furuya considers this in thoughtful silence.

"Tachibana-san is nice."

"Yeah, he does seem so," Miyuki agrees. "What about your flatmate, Nanase-san? You think you'll get along with him? It's a whole year, you know."

This time Furuya takes even longer to consider, and the moment that he opens his mouth after carefully deciding what to say, his phone rings in his back pocket. He answers it while Miyuki waits, and after a long moment of silence, Furuya lifts the phone away.

"The delivery van is here," he states.

"Here as in in front of the dorms or in front of the main campus gate?" Miyuki raises an eyebrow.

Furuya presses the phone back and mumbles some words. "…He says he's at the entrance."

"The entrance of what, exactly?"

"…There's a building inside—" Furuya recites as he listens to the phone again.

"Toru," Miyuki sighs, holding out his hand. "Give me the phone."


It takes a better half of the afternoon to help Furuya unpack—Miyuki never really considered that Furuya was the type to hoard a lot of things, but when he opens a box and sees at least ten whole packs of disposable heat pads, he understands why Furuya has so many boxes.

What a mother's boy.

"Do you even use these?" Miyuki grins, taking one out to show the other.

"…No," Furuya answers, busy with another box. "But okaa-san always packs them anyway."

"It's about time you packed your own things," Miyuki snorts, glancing over to see what Furuya is doing and he squints. "…Did you really have to bring that?"

Furuya cradles a large white polar bear soft toy in his arms, carrying it to the bed. "Yes."

Miyuki leans over to see what else is in the box—it's a stack of animal picture books, and on top of that there is small black box, almost like a ring box. He picks it out. "What's this?"

Furuya's eyes widen fractionally when he sees it, taking the item into his hands carefully. He moves to put it into his top desk drawer, but Miyuki catches his arm with a curious smirk.

"So what is it?"

Either Furuya knows that Miyuki's terrible personality means the other is going to get his answer no matter what, or maybe Furuya doesn't seem to think it's that big of a deal to hide it because the pitcher sits back down and opens the box to show Miyuki. It is a ring box, but there isn't a ring inside, just a white button.

Miyuki cocks his head, blinking. "I thought it'd be something a little more—" he starts, but then it abruptly dawns upon him what that button really is.

It's his second button from the Seido baseball jersey—one that Furuya had quietly asked for during his graduation.

"Why did you bring that?" Miyuki manages, trying not to feel so self-conscious—how long has it been that they're dating already, coming to two years (?) and yet Furuya keeps throwing these curveballs.

"It's important to me," Furuya says, closing the box and taking it to his desk.

There aren't many things Miyuki can say to that. "The real thing is here, monster rookie," he grins, pointing to himself.

"I can't keep Miyuki-senpai in a box."

Miyuki pauses as he meets Furuya's deadpan expression, but he knows the other well enough that he knows it's actually a joke. He thinks. He chuckles and pats the empty floor beside him.

"Come here."

Furuya acquiesces to his request. He tugs the front of Furuya's shirt and kisses the other very lightly on the lips. It's nice to finally have Furuya within reach so easily, especially after a year's worth of texting and occasional weekend dates when their schedules could allow it, which weren't very often considering Furuya's third year in high school and Miyuki's first in a new college. The same sentiment seems to burn in Furuya, who cups Miyuki's jaw and kisses back a little deeper, and no one can really blame them if Furuya never finishes unpacking his room that day.


Furuya does try to ask him to stay over, and Miyuki would if he had actually planned to—but he doesn't have a change of clothes and there's practice for the team tomorrow, also, he's a little—or more than a little—afraid that Mei will burn the apartment down seeing as he was supposed to cook dinner for them both, instead, it's way over the time he should've been home to cook with his phone vibrating at a near constant pace from Mei's frantic texting. Miyuki tries to ignore his pocket the best he can as he placates Furuya at the front door.

"I'll come to pick you up for Monday practice," Miyuki says, squeezing his feet into his shoes. "Remember to put the rest of the fried rice into the fridge. You can heat it up for tomorrow."

"Can't I come for practice tomorrow?"

"You can watch from the fence, but you won't be let into the field yet."

"Then, after—"

"No pitching," Miyuki interrupts, rolling his eyes at the unhappy gloom. "I want you to relax. Hang out with your flatmate. Come Monday, you won't really get time to rest. Okay?"

Furuya twitches his fingers, an obvious sign that he's frustrated and wants to pitch, but he nods reluctantly. Before Miyuki grins and turns on his heel to go, Furuya grabs the other's hand.

"I'm happy I am here," Furuya says when their gazes meet.

Miyuki's lips twitch into a slight smile.

"…Yeah," he says eventually, one hand coming up to pat Furuya on the cheek. "Night, Toru-chan," he murmurs with a teasing tilt, and gives a wider smile before he goes.

Furuya watches the catcher's back trot down the corridor and disappear into the stairwell before he closes the door behind him, feet moving to the kitchen to put the extra bowls Miyuki had cooked into the refrigerator. It's still the evening, which makes Furuya wonder what he should do tonight—more unpacking? Or maybe he could throw a bit of ball towards the ceiling.

He's just about to enter his room when the front door is flung wide open, with a loud voice carrying through from the corridor.

"Haru-chan's flatmate! Hi, hi! We've come to meet you!"

"Nagisa—!" another voice cries immediately, sounding distressed. "Don't shout! And take off your shoes first!"

Furuya pauses when the black haired youth he met in the morning emerges, blue eyes blinking back at him. Nanase—if Furuya remembers correctly—nods at him, and he nods back in acknowledgement just as the other suddenly topples forwards when a shorter blond teen pushes from behind.

"Oh!" the blond gasps, eyes wide and sparkling. "Mako-chan, you were right! He really does look like Haru-chan!"

"Nagisa!" This time, the distressed voice turns into somewhat appalled, and Furuya matches the voice to the tall green-eyed boy he met—Tachibana—in the morning trotting in.

Another tall but bespectacled youth comes in last; this one Furuya doesn't recognise.

"Naigsa-kun, that's really rude," he says, nudging the blond in the ribs. "Hi," he turns up his smile at Furuya directly. "I'm Ryuugazaki Rei."

It must've been something in Furuya's wary expression, because Rei elbows the blond youth who coughs, looking a little contrite. "I'm Hazuki Nagisa. You can call me anything you like!" the other says happily. "But 'Nagisa' is preferable, or even 'Nacchan'!"

"No one calls you that," Haru murmurs from his side, and Makoto and Rei stifle a chuckle when Nagisa pouts.

"Well, Sacchan can be the first one!"

"Nagisa!" Makoto groans, face in his palms. "You can't just—"

Nagisa merely beams wider, trotting up to the silent pitcher to cling to his arm. "It's fine, isn't it? Since he's living with Haru-chan, they'll get to know each other—and us—well!" the blond says, titling his head up to smile at Furuya. "Ne, Sacchan?"

Furuya looks at Nagisa for a moment before nodding slowly. It's overwhelming to be thrusted into the spotlight so suddenly, and there isn't anything he can say in defense to the blond boy's expectant grin. It is a little weird to be called that by someone else but his mother; Miyuki calls him another variation of his first name, and no one else uses his first name, not even Haruichi or Sawamura whom are admittedly his closest friends.

"So, Sacchan," Nagisa begins, dragging him to the low table to sit down, whilst Haru and Makoto seemingly disappear to the kitchen. "Mako-chan said you play baseball."

"Pitcher," Furuya nods.

"That's really amazing, isn't it?" Nagisa gushes, eyes sparkling. "I heard the pitcher usually has the ace number. And for Todai too!"

Furuya simmers warmly in the praise, aura brightening. "I'm not the ace yet," he says, because it's true—the number one is currently held by Narumiya Mei, and that's not an easy rival to surpass.

"Even so!" Nagisa continues. "What's your speciality?"

"Fastballs."

"Your arm must be really strong," Nagisa comments, patting Furuya's bicep. "Woah, Gou-chan is missing out!" he says excitedly, touching the arm muscles more.

"Naigsa-kun, you're making him uncomfortable," Rei interrupts, smacking Nagisa lightly behind the head.

"But look at this!" Nagisa whines. "It's super impressive!"

"Nagisa, what are you doing?" Makoto exclaims when he enters the living with hot cups of tea in hand.

"Mako-chan, look at his muscles! Let's take a picture of it with yours!"

There isn't much one can do against Hazuki Nagisa, Furuya learns, not even his own friends. Makoto gives him a sheepish apologetic smile when their biceps are positioned side by side for the blond to take a picture—Furuya notices how tanned Makoto's skin against his, which reminds him of Miyuki's.

"Makoto."

Everyone looks up when they hear the quiet call from Haru who peeks out from behind the kitchen door.

"The tea."

"Oh!" Makoto cries, aghast. "I'm sorry, I'm coming!" he apologises as he gets up to retrieve the rest of the tea presumably in the kitchen. "Furuya-san, can I trouble you to help me?" Makoto says gently, before he stands up fully.

Nagisa makes a dissatisfied noise but allows Furuya to leave, where in the pitcher finds himself standing in the kitchen with Haru alone after Makoto gives him a smile and makes off with the pot of tea he was supposed to help with. Furuya fidgets a little when Haru glances out of the door before taking his time to speak.

"Sorry," Haru says. "I know they can be loud. You can go into your room if you want."

Furuya blinks, before slowly shaking his head. "…They are nice."

Blue eyes meet blue eyes. A small smile creeps up the edge of Haru's lips as he turns to the freezer and picks out an ice popsicle, tearing away the wrapper easily and breaking it into halves. He holds one out to Furuya, who hesitates before taking it.

"You don't want to join them?" Furuya asks when Haru puts the dessert into his mouth and leans against the kitchen counter.

"Later. It's too noisy," Haru replies, and at that same moment there is laughter from all three outside. "…'Haru' is fine."

Furuya looks at his ice popsicle and back at Haru again, and then towards direction of the living room where Nagisa's voice can be heard from.

"…'Satoru' is fine too," he says softly, and puts the popsicle into his mouth.