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Miyuki discovers something interesting about Sawamura Eijun every day.
It’s funny, how much attention to detail is exhibited when it comes to this kid. His form, his eyes, his bedhead in the morning. Every little tick or habit. The way he scratches his nose, puffs his cheeks a bit when he’s feeling particularly tense on the mound, or how he counts with his fingers while solving simple equations from yesterday’s math assignment.
His whip-like hand releasing the ball at the peak of his pitch. Slender fingers curling like waves.
He bites his lip sometimes, rubs his eyes when he's tired.
It is, fascinating, if nothing else.
"Sawamura! C’mere." He calls out after just ten pitches, and sure enough, Sawamura obliges, albeit noisily and rife with protest after some moments of contemplation on his end. But he does, in the end, come over, apprehension knit tight in his brows. "Lemme see your hand."
He's skeptical but delivers, palm-up. Miyuki did like that about him, he supposes. That careful trust.
His hand is warm when Miyuki grasps it, firm. Sawamura pulls back a bit, just slightly, but no more than that.
Sawamura’s hands are unexpectedly soft, save for the callouses on his palms right above the heart line. Trimmed nails, thin fingers (but not too bony), almost feminine in its grace.
"Your fingernails are pretty healthy," says Miyuki, but at this point he’s just spinning words to keep him distracted for as long as possible.
It works.
He can almost see Sawamura’s ego behind that crooked grin when he scoffs, “Of course they are! I’m not that dumbass Furuya, first of all. Secondly—”
"Ah, but it seems your love life is doomed." Miyuki comments with unparalleled nonchalance. Sawamura takes the bait.
"Wow, 'kay—'Scuse you, since when did you become the local psychic."
Miyuki hums because he knows it only irritates him further.
"What, did you look that up on eHow or something. You're so funny, you know—"
His mouth effectively slams shut the moment feather-light lips graze the blush of his knuckle, and Miyuki can’t help but laugh a little, a deep sound in the back of his throat.
It’s more curiosity than anything, really. That, and a flustered Sawamura is just too much fun.
Chancing a glance upward might have been a mistake, though.
Sawamura is a blushing, livid mess, hooded eyes blown, half-hidden behind his only free hand with a chewed up lip, sweat on his collar bone and—
The hand is yanked out from under him, so fast, as if he had been burnt. His skin still ghosts against Miyuki's lips, feeling strange, out of place, and oh.
That probably shouldn't have felt as nice as it did.
.
.
.
He also probably shouldn’t stare so much, so blatantly, but he does anyway.
(After all, should not has always sounded more like a why not in his ears.)
So he watches Sawamura, now more than ever. Relishes the moments their eyes meet just barely, and Sawamura looks away with red ears and molten eyes.
Then there are the times he’s laughing, treading in a sea of people who can’t seem to look away, and that’s how it’s always been. That’s Sawamura Eijun: explosive, endearing, and so—
(untouchable.)
Miyuki looks down at his own hands, knuckles bony, ghost-white. Unsightly things.
.
.
.
Halfway through practice, Sawamura pulls out a little bag of candy from where he had hidden it somewhere on his body. It's the sour kind, colorful, misshapen, and completely fitting of him.
He catches Miyuki's eyes, pauses before tilting the bag over. "Want some?"
Now he contemplates it, he really does. And for some reason, accepting the offer feels almost—
wrong.
"Nah, I don't eat candy," is Miyuki's reply, half a beat off, but the reaction is well worth it. Sawamura, wild hair falling with the tilt of his head, looks completely and utterly offended.
"What do you mean you don't eat candy. No wonder you have such a shitty personality, everyone loves candy." Miyuki can feel him still staring at the side of his face. It almost catches fire. "You're weird."
Then Sawamura shrugs and licks the sugar dust off his fingers, wipes them on his shirt.
Miyuki, mind numb, agrees.
.
.
.
It's rare moments like these when Sawamura is more on the reticent side, exhausted from a long day of practice, that they sit outside and watch the darkness. They don't talk, usually, but it is a comfortable silence.
"Miyuki." No senpai, no honorifics. Just like him.
"Hm."
"Gimme your hand," is his quiet demand. Quiet, is unlike him.
"What, you wanna hold hands?"
"Just shut up and give it to me." Miyuki almost smiles at the sigh, the edge in his voice. He can see stars in his eyes, in his hair, but none in the sky, and he supposes that's rather like Sawamura as well. Always, always incandescent.
His hands are cold, ticklish when his fingertips trace constellations across Miyuki's palm.
"It seems your love life is doomed." He echoes, and it sounds all too familiar but somehow, better falling from his tongue.
"It's too dark to see anything. You're so full of shit." Miyuki catches on fast. Always has.
"So are you." He's quiet again. It is strange, unfamiliar, and leaves him breathless.
"Then I guess we match." Miyuki laughs, but it comes out choked. His pulse is like thunder in his ears when chapped lips brush against his knuckles.
"I guess we do." Sawamura murmurs against his skin.