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"You slapped the players in the opposing team??"
Kazuya goggles at him. Eijun blinks innocently.
"What? They were being super rude."
Kazuya's chin slips from the hand it was leaning on. He starts laughing uproariously. Eijun blushes to his roots, flustered. He was wondering whether he should mention that he also accidentally hit the umpire while on his revenge spree (why did the guy try to dive in, anyway? it wasn't any of his business!) but now he's going to abstain.
"It's not that funny!" he protests. "I was defending the honor of Akagi Junior High!"
Kazuya hiccups. It's probably because they just had dinner, but he looks so surprised that it's Eijun's turn to collapse in a fit of laughter. Kazuya's wide-eyed look dissolves into a lopsided smile.
"Alright, alright," he says, nudging him with his bare foot.
Eijun pushes it away and settles down, grinning. They're on the floor of his room in Nagano. Kazuya has been here a few days now. Eijun hadn't known what to expect when he invited his newly found soulmate for the winter break, but he's glad he did. Text conversations really don't hold a candle to actually spending time together.
"In all seriousness," Kazuya says, "try something like that in Seidou and Coach Kataoka will have your head. And that's after you get suspended by the highschool baseball federation. Got it?"
"You can get suspended from baseball??" Eijun balks.
"Seriously. Did you just never bother reading the rulebook of an official tournament?"
"There is a rulebook??"
Kazuya sighs. He makes a show of it, but Eijun can see how amused he is.
"Unbelievable. You guys have just been living your best life for three years, huh? Baseball in the countryside sure is wild."
While Eijun grumbles at him, red-cheeked, Kazuya leans over and opens a new tab on his laptop's browser. The computer sits on the bed, forgotten from when Kazuya had been trying to show Eijun videos of a professional match before they got distracted by tales of his past exploits.
There is only one computer in Eijun's house and it's the clunky one downstairs which his parents mostly use for accounting. It sure is handy to have one in the bedroom. Kazuya must be the type to come prepared if he thought to bring it. That's good, because Eijun is an organizational disaster.
He glances sidelong at his soulmate. Kazuya nudges his glasses up with a knuckle as he types. He's focused on the screen. That leaves Eijun free to stare.
He likes looking at Kazuya. He hasn't had many occasions since he first found him, so he's making the most of this week. His favorite sight, of course, is him squatting in the catcher's box, but Kazuya is a jerk and keeps slithering out of catching for him. So Eijun makes do with memorizing the way he looks waking up in the morning, mussy-haired and bleary-eyed from sleep, or how at ease he's in the kitchen, cooking and chatting with his mother, or the way he sprawls comfortably on Eijun's floor or bed in the evening, while they squabble or chip away at their homework.
Eijun doesn't know what kind of soulmates they'll be, but he already knows that Kazuya will be someone very important in his life.
"Here," Kazuya says, turning the screen toward him.
It's displaying the list of rules on the federation's website. Eijun immediately hunches over it. It's important. He's not going to be forbidden from playing baseball in highschool just because the bullies in the other team deserved a good slapping!
Kazuya ruffles his hair. Eijun ducks his head with a whine. Kazuya is a pretty tactile person, and he's starting to get used to it, but it bothers him when he treats him like a kid.
"I'm going to get changed in the bathroom, alright?" Kazuya says.
Eijun hums his agreement, his focus on the laptop. Once Kazuya is gone, he digs out his own night clothes and starts getting changed too.
He speedreads, but it still takes him a while to ascertain that he's in no obvious danger to fall to some obscure rule. As long as he keeps his palms to himself. Who knew a little slap could count as assault?
He nods to himself, reassured, and looks up. That's when he notices Kazuya standing at the door.
He's leaning against the doorframe. The shorts and short-sleeved shirt he wears to sleep show more of his body than his hoodies and jeans. He's solid muscle from head to toe. Eijun had never met a 16-year-old that fit before Kazuya. It's sort of intimidating. It's a sign that he still has a long way to go.
It takes him a while to realize that Kazuya is the one staring at him, for once. In fact, he's staring at—
Eijun becomes aware all of a sudden that, wrapped up as he was in his reading, he hasn't finished changing. He's sitting cross-legged on the floor, the computer on his lap, completely shirtless.
All the blood in his body rushes to his cheeks.
"Hey!" he yells in mortification, slapping a hand against the soulmark on his chest.
Kazuya snaps out of his thoughts. His eyebrows rise. He smirks.
"What are you getting embarrassed about, idiot? It's my name."
"W-well..." Eijun blusters. "That's true, but still...!"
How is Kazuya never embarrassed by that kind of thing? He's so blasé about it, it's infuriating. Do people in the city really not care about keeping their mark private?
Kazuya comes in and drops down next to him.
"Here."
Before Eijun can squawk a protest, he lifts the bottom hem of his own shirt. And no matter how much Eijun thinks he should look away, he finds his eyes glued to the kanji penned over his left pectoral.
It's not like Eijun makes it a habit to look at other people's soulmarks. So it's weird enough, seeing that square of skin bared on someone else. But it's something else altogether to see it covered with the four kanji he has used all his life to sign his name.
Sawamura Eijun. Spelled right here on Kazuya's skin. As if Eijun had reached out and written him as his property, like he did with his favorite glove.
Part of him wants to extend a hand and touch. But superstitious awe and another, nameless emotion keep him frozen, his throat closed up.
He shouldn't be allowed to touch. He's not sure he'd be able to let go.
Kazuya lets his shirt fall back. The look in his eyes says he might understand what's going through Eijun's head. It's one of these rare moments that echo in Eijun's bones, like they've found that elusive wavelength that lets them vibrate in unison.
So, of course, Kazuya ruins it.
"See. You showed me yours, I showed you mine. Now we're even," he says with a grin that's bordering on lewd.
Eijun flushes again and throws his pillow at him. Kazuya catches it with a laugh.
"I nearly forgot you have the sensibilities of a young maiden. How someone so brash can be so prudish, I'll never know."
Eijun pointedly turns his back to him to tug his shirt on.
"Shut up."
"Hey. Come on, don't take it out on my laptop." Kazuya retrieves the computer that slid haphazardly from Eijun's thighs.
"Oh, sorry," he says, popping his head out of the neck hole. "Is it okay?"
"Yeah, it's fine."
Kazuya closes it and sets it to charge, then pats Eijun's knee.
"Let's get to bed so we can at least pretend we're sleeping if Ruri-san checks up on us."
"Mom would just blame me for being too talkative and keeping you from sleeping," Eijun pouts.
"What, that's not what's happening?" Kazuya snickers.
Eijun wants to throw his pillow at him again, but first he has to retrieve it from the floor. Then he's kind of lost the momentum of the conversation, so he just glowers at his smirking soulmate and collapses onto his bed.
Pensive, he watches as Kazuya unrolls the spare futon. Kazuya gets on well with his mom. He wonders if Kazuya's mother would have liked him too.
Eijun might not be as smart as his soulmate, but he's not stupid. By now he's noticed that Kazuya never talks about her. He just wishes that he didn't avoid the subject like that. Eijun wanted to force his hand, but Mom noticed and gave him a stern talk about respecting people's boundaries. So now he can't bring it up. He is not accustomed to tailoring his words. It chafes.
"Does your dad care about your bedtime?" he dares to ask.
Kazuya scoffs.
"I wish, then he might care about his."
And that's the other thing. Kazuya's dad sounds like a real workaholic. Eijun doesn't like what little he hears about his soulmate's family.
"Is he not usually back from work when you go to bed?"
"I haven't lived with him in nearly a year, you know," Kazuya deflects, because of course he does. "I'm turning off the light."
Eijun suppresses a frustrated sigh.
"Okay."
He dives under his blanket. There's a click, then the sounds of footsteps and rustling as Kazuya settles on the futon. He hears him take off his glasses and set them down on the ground beside him.
Eijun slips his head over the edge of his mattress. Kazuya has got his eyemask pushed up onto his hair as he stares at the ceiling. He glances at him and quirks a brow.
"You know," Eijun resolves, "one day, I'll get you to talk to me about anything."
"What?" Kazuya chuckles. "You say that like we haven't been spending all our time talking since I got here."
"About baseball! Don't pretend, Miyuki Kazuya. You're not exactly an open book!"
And since he can already feel the sarcastic misdirection that's going to follow, Eijun lets himself slip from the bed and land on the futon below in retribution.
"Oof! And you're not exactly light as a feather."
"I'm serious," Eijun mutters, sullen, face buried in Kazuya's blanket.
Kazuya sighs. There is a moment of silence. Eijun can nearly feel his warmth through the thick fabric.
"Well, who knows. Stick around and it might happen."
"Of course I'm going to stick around."
Kazuya hums. It's noncommittal and it makes Eijun angry.
Miyuki Kazuya is stupid, he decides. He shows off what should be private and hides what doesn't need to be hidden. And he has doubts about all the wrong things.
"I'll show you," he promises.
Kazuya's body moves under his weight. He frees an arm from the blanket and curls it around Eijun's shoulders.
"I'll be waiting."