Little Nothings

By Yukitsu

Standard Disclaimers Apply

Notes: Requested by the usual girls in the Oofuri chat. SPOILERS FOR CHAPTER 54 of the magazine!

It was only five hours later that Hanai truly broke down. It wasn't really a breakdown than a slow spiral to that point when he could see nothing but hazy blurs in front of him and his body refused to comply with the logical side of his brain. Still, though, he was a smart one and waited until the clubroom was empty, until all his teammates had gone home and Momokan was not in the area before he let the first sob out.

Seeing him cry was the last thing his teammates needed. Sometimes, it sucked to be captain.

His head hurt from keeping it in for so long and his chest hurt from letting it out slowly, but hurting was the one thing he welcomed right now. Maybe something he even deserved. His sobs came out in thick coughs, followed by short, difficult pulls of breath, and it was hard to remember the last time he'd felt like this.

There was something pathetic but very natural about crying with his back to a locker. Vaguely, he knew this happened to teams all the time. People lost more than they won, and for the first time since Tosei, Hanai finally understood the vulnerability of his team and his weakness as a captain.

Remaining straight and tall was all he could give.

So many ifs and could haves. Leading was an investment in time, effort, and emotion, and he'd never felt the weight of that more than now, when he was finally free to let go. (Momokan was right, crying didn't really do much good. But, he rationalized, not crying made him feel like his chest would explode.)

The locker door was starting to rattle from his shaking. He should get his breathing back, there was something heavy pressing down on his chest and all he could do was heave. They lost and he hadn't been able to do anything about it. The fact pained him with every breath he sucked in and coughed out.

Still, though, bawling his eyes out didn't sit too well with him, even through the haze. Hanai was just contemplating on stuffing his face against a dirty shirt to muffle the rising noise when the door opened.

"Hanai?" Tajima called uncertainly, flicking the light on and making his way over. Hanai knew he should stop, he really had to, but he only cried harder at the sound of their ace's voice.

"Don't--" he managed to choke out, keeping his face hidden under his arm and blindly reaching out for that towel he knew he dropped with his free hand. "Don't. Say anything."

"I'm not," Tajima said the same time Hanai touched his knee. "I'm not, okey?"

He couldn't even muster up an 'okey', wasn't even allowed to when he found his nose pressed to a small, warm chest, a hand on the back of his neck and a body mostly looming very close over him.

The idea of Tajima comforting him should have made him stop, but instead the sobs came wetter, louder, and he had a sinking feeling he was never going to ever get up from the hole he'd dug himself into. And he was apologizing, saying sorry because he hadn't been good enough as a player and now he was being weak as a captain, and really, wasn't it disgraceful to see him like this?

"It's not, not really," Tajima said, rubbing the back of his neck, and Hanai thought he might have coughed on Tajima's shirt and there's spit there now, and he apologized for that, too.

"That's okey, I don't like this shirt much anyway," the idiot was telling him, and Hanai couldn't help but laugh a little, a small hysterical chuckle that sounded a little like a giggle. He'd feel embarrassed but his head hurt and his chest hurt, and their team had still lost.

"I don't feel so good," he forced out as he let the smaller boy pull him tighter against his chest. "Sorry."

"It must be because you haven't cried in a while," Tajima suggested, patting his head. It felt warm. Another sob he tried to keep in, ending up as a half-hiccup-half-cough.

"Ow."

"Do you feel better now?"

"No," he said honestly, then apologized again.

Tajima kissed his forehead.

Hanai choked painfully, stunned to pause in his self-loathing in favor of touching the spot and staring up at Tajima.

"I guess that sort of works. Hey, hey Hanai, breathe, will you?" The cleanup thumped his back to assist him as he wheezed for the air that he'd coughed up the wrong pipe.

"W-what."

"NOW do you feel better?"

"NO!"

"Good enough to talk about it?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

Hanai should have expected it. Even through something like this, Tajima would find some way to act in his Tajima way and completely knock him off his feet.

"Why not?" And there was that inquisitive, open look that meant Hanai had to answer the question or suffer through Tajima's guesswork.

"I wish you'd leave me alone when I'm supposed to be crying my eyes out in secret," he said tiredly.

"Why does it have to be a secret?"

"Why do you ask hard questions?"

"Because we're teammates that way."

"I let you down," Hanai pointed out. Tajima gave him a blank look. "You what?"

"This isn't the time to be stupid, Tajima."

The boy patted his head again. "I'm not. You are, though."

Hanai stared at him. Tajima sighed, reached over and bumped their foreheads together. "We're a team, so when we lose, we lose as Nishiura. Not as Captain Hanai and his players. See?"

"... Not really," Hanai grumbled, distracted by warmth on his neck where Tajima had grabbed him and Tajima's eyes at very close proximity.

"What I mean is," he said patiently, as if talking to Mihashi, "No one's blaming you but yourself, which is a very silly thing to do."

"Oh." They were staring at each other, Tajima grinning and Hanai trying not to cough in Tajima's face, and suddenly, everything felt just a little better.

"Now?" Tajima asked again, breath a little minty and voice soft. He was still smiling, like he'd won over something, which Hanai knew he had. It wasn't like he'd put up much of a fight.

"I guess?"

"Geez, Hanai, you're really hard to please." And then Tajima was kissing him on the lips, a little awkwardly because he was in a half-kneel, most of his weight on the hand that had ended up on Hanai's thigh. Sometimes, Hanai wondered how being so short must suck, but figured that with Tajima's lips on his, that wasn't really very important.

"W-w-what---!" he sputtered, pulling away and dislodging the hand. "What are you doing?"

"Comforting you?"

"WHAT. I don't need--"

"You do, actually."

Tajima reached over again, in a better position than the last time, and kissed him again. This time, Hanai did put up a sort-of struggle, but he was against the locker door and he still felt all limp and weak from crying that much.

And really, it didn't feel all that bad.

"Would you stop if I said I felt better?" he asked vaguely when Tajima pulled away, settling down between his legs.

"Maybe? Are you feeling better?"

Hanai thought about it, figured that he couldn't really blush any more than what crying had done to him. "No, not really."

Then there was that grin, the triumphant one Tajima got before that first steal he made Hanai do in the Tosei game. The one that made him feel a little hot under the collar and maybe just a little tight in places that shouldn't really be there when he was supposed to be depressed.

Only this time, he could see it up close, less than a few inches from his face, and it was really-- really-- turning him on. Not that he'd ever admit it. He was i depressed /i , and Tajima was helping him.

Helping him by lifting his shirt up over his head, helping him by tugging open his fly, helping him by kissing him fully and hotly on the mouth. Being depressed was a little nice.

Really nice, actually.

Nice like the hand on that place between his legs, nice like the hand roaming his chest, nice like the warm skin he was touching with his hands.

And then he figured that maybe Tajima was depressed, too, and tugged the boy's shirt up and pulled him closer because being warm was nice and more body contact meant being warmer. Tajima was kissing his neck, that spot under the ear, and Hanai was kissing Tajima's shoulder, because really, what else could he do? And then Tajima bit him, and the logical course of action would have been to bite back, but Hanai hissed instead.

He had to do something in with his hands, because Tajima had only so much chest to paw, and the hand in his pants felt really good. Clearly, Tajima was doing this comfort thing right, so he reached over for the zipper of Tajima's pants and pulled it down.

"You're really," he mumbled as he tugged Tajima closer until the clean up was practically sitting on his lap, "really good at this."

"Only for the captain," was the cheeky, but equally breathless reply. And then they both stopped talking, and all that mattered were their hands and Tajima's face pressed against Hanai's neck, the bridge of Hanai's nose pressed against Tajima's shoulder, and the urgency coming with the warmth pooling between them.

When they came in a shuddering heap of limbs and white heat, Hanai couldn't help but think coming was a lot like crying, only a few hundred times better.

Worked, too.

"Better?"

"Much."

"You should get depressed more often, Hanai. We should test this some more."

"As long as we don't lose any more games," he replied with a small smile, tired but not weary.

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Omake 1: by Akiha

When Abe opened the clubroom the next morning, he found a sticky floor and something hasty written underneath the window sill in pencil; "♥Tajima's Personal Loveshack♥"

He made a mental note of the clean up batter's graffiti and went on about his routine. There was a wet rag set to smack the freckled player in the face as soon as he walked in that day.

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Omake 2: by Factorielle

"You don't have to be jealous just because YOU didn't get laid," said Tajima, artfully dodging the rag.

Izumi, who'd been standing right behind him at the time Abe attacked, was not amused

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Sometime in the wee hours of the morning of Feb 26, 2007.