journeys end in lovers’ meeting
warnings - alternate universe - baseball, mentions of anxiety and depression
notes - once upon a time my friend jo and i decided to start our own zine project, @yoichasinggoldzine. it’s a zine that focuses on yuri on ice characters celebrating athleticism, friendship, and unity. i am a huge fan of baseball, so this fic was born!
series: yuri!!! on zines; hunting through the leaves of the night for your hands
read in full on: ao3 || ffnet
@minatu drew something absolutely gorgeous for this fic! please go check it out!
Bottom of the ninth, two outs, one strike and no balls.
Yuuri stretches his arm out slow, feeling the quiver and ache in every atom of him. Matsumoto throws back and settles into his crouch behind home, his glove squeezing and opening. He is a steady point on which to focus, but Yuuri still burns with nerves.
The thing is, the ball feels familiar in his grip and a mound is a mound no matter where you go — that is for certain — but playing here at the Games in his home country drapes an invisible weight across his shoulders. He never thought he’d be here, to be honest. He’d been too young in 2008 and then the twelve years between had been no guarantee, even when the Committee announced bringing the game back in 2020.
He’d learned that in the most bitter of ways, staring at the dust still rising from home plate, listening to the surge of the crowd and the joyous screams of a team clad in yellow and blue, the debt of years of blood and sweat paid off with Yuuri’s final failure of a pitch.
He will never forget the silence of his team, the quivering of their mouths pressed in tight lines across their faces, the sight of their sweat and their tears dripping down their chins. He’d wanted so badly to tell them how hard they’d worked, how amazing they were, how proud he’d been to stand with them through his two and a half years of high school — and he was so, so proud. They’d worked so hard to get to that point, that defeat.
Only, he’d let all of it slip through his shaking, weak fingers.
An errant pitch had been all that stood between them and the other team, but it had been the difference between a jubilant celebration and scraping dirt into tiny bags to take hom to their parents.
He never imagined he’d be here, on this mound, representing his country like this. Never thought he’d get to hold an Olympic baseball in his hands, or that it would feel so familiar. Never thought he’d have someone like Viktor watching him and supporting him as he struggled — and it has been a long, long struggle — toward his dream.
The weight of it is enough to crush him.
The batter settles into the box and Matsumoto signals another pitch — curveball. Yuuri takes a breath, trying to calm down his racing heart, discreetly brushes his sweaty palms down his uniform.
God, please, he thinks as he tugs his cap down. He goes into his windup, leg rising up and leaving a trail of dust behind. Please don’t let it end like that.
The ball slips off fingertips slick with sweat, lands in Matsumoto’s mitt just outside the batter’s box.
