A pound of flesh
This was written for a prompt from Kristel: "hyperventilating on a red light". I originally intended this to be for ANOTHER pairing and for it to be happier, but then this came along and demanded to be written.
The title is taken from the 31 Days theme for February 11, 2007.
Ever since their practice game with Nishiura, "team training" had turned into a more politically correct way of saying "Squat at fourth base, keep your mitt up and prepare to be Kanou's talking but otherwise unimportant and uninteresting target as Kanou pitched himself dead for the day". What distressed Hatake was that he and Oda seemed to be the only ones who cared enough to worry about their team's pitcher, but he figured that he shouldn't have been very surprised — everyone else could not understand why Kanou was suddenly so hostile. It wasn't that he openly hated them; it was that he had put some sort of barrier up between himself and their group, and he only connected with them when they needed to work as a team. He stopped joining them for meals, for arcade trips, for study groups. He only spoke when spoken to, and kept conversations brief and impersonal.
It might have been a wise decision to leave matters up to Oda, but since Hatake was not very comfortable with that, Mihoshi's catcher eventually attempted to take matters into his own hands.
"You know, Kanou… um."
"What?"
Hatake paused; something in his pitcher's tone had made him lose the words. They were practicing throws and signals while the rest of the team ran other drills around them, but it felt like they were alone on the field — or more like, Hatake felt like he was alone on the field, with nothing but the sound and force of Kanou's pitch.
"Er. Try your curve ball."
"Okay. So what is it?" Kanou ventured, after he had tossed. "You sound like you have something to tell me."
"I-it's nothing important, really, I just thought… well, I mean, you've been kinda, uh, distant and stuff… so. Um."
Kanou paused. Hatake almost lowered his mitt, but then thought better of it. Kanou's lips pursed. The next pitch that he threw had a bit more force than usual. "I've got a lot on my mind," was all he offered, and the last thing he said to Hatake for the day.
"Did you piss him off somehow?" Oda would ask of Hatake the following afternoon, over lunch. "I mean, I'm not blaming you or anything. I'm just asking."
"I think I did."
"Heh, all right. Thinking usually means doing, with Kanou. So, how do youthink it happened?"
Hatake didn't answer. He muttered something about cramming for next period and went off to finish his sandwich in another place, alone.