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Red fingers and bitter cold.
Tokyo’s winter was by no means mild that year, and the constant snow flurries forced classes to cease and caused traffic to freeze in its place. Miyuki Kazuya stood at an intersection, with a convenience store shopping bag draped in the crook of his arm. He blew on his hands in a desperate and futile attempt to keep them warm, and squinted at the blurry white haze before him for a moment before he made the final crossing to Seido High School.
The baseball world went quiet today, too.
There was no practice, because the snow and freezing weather got so bad that Coach Kataoka would rather send a snow plow to the practice grounds than a person. Everyone was pretty much cooped inside their rooms, brewing tea or chatting idly with their roommates. There was the occasional yell that echoed across the hallway, but… otherwise, the dorms could have easily been a scene in an apocalypse.
Miyuki, on the other hand, lost feeling in his limbs, and gritted his teeth when wet globs of ice slopped onto his face and hair.
It was about time that he looked for someplace warm,
and someone to talk to.
Kuramochi Youichi opened the door to room 5 quickly.
He recognized Miyuki’s knock, once describing it as a quiet, soft one that easily escaped his immediate attention.
Miyuki wondered how someone as brash as Kuramochi always remembered the little things about him.
The shortstop accepted Miyuki’s gift of green tea and onigiri with a huff of calm gratitude, and ushered the catcher inside. Sawamura Eijun was in Kominato Haruichi’s room to watch a movie, and the third bed was empty as it awaited the arrival of a first year with an unknown name.
In other words, Kuramochi Youichi was very much alone, his hair damp from his recent shower and his homework sprawled with abandon across his desk.
He also had the slightest hint of gray smudged underneath his eyes.
Kuramochi hardly ever admitted to tiredness, to pain, or to weakness. He was the type to see his sleepy stupor as a means to an end. Complaining, in all likelihood, was a waste of brain space that he would rather not consider.
Ah...
he was just a little too much like Miyuki after all.
The thought brought a bittersweet smile to his face.
As Kuramochi dug into his food, Miyuki listened with idle amusement at the sound of the bottle cap popping open, and the crinkle of the plastic wrap. Kuramochi chewed with polite silence, but eventually paused, staring at his companion with a raised eyebrow.
“You want to sit down?”
Miyuki felt like he was suddenly jolted back to the fullness of reality.
He followed up his awkward nodding with a prompt plop into Sawamura’s rolling chair.
But the peace that settled between them, not unlike a layer of freshly fallen snow, was interrupted just as soon as they got comfortable.
Sawamura Eijun busted through the door and heaved with bright-eyed excitement.
“There’s so much snow! Come outside, Miyu Miyu!”
Kuramochi snarled and threw his plastic wrap into the trash can with terrifying precision, and Miyuki watched as his vice-captain cracked his knuckles and put the pitcher into a choke hold.
Sawamura tried to tap Kuramochi’s arm to no avail, and Miyuki just grinned in place as he slipped his jacket and scarf back on.
“Interrupt me again, Sawamura! Go ahead, try!”
“I’m sorry, Mocchan! I’m sorry!”
Kuramochi’s eyes went feral as he tightened his grip and cackled.
“Don’t call me Mocchan!”
Miyuki decided to end Sawamura’s misery.
He opened the door and stepped out into the cold with calm silence.
The other two eventually followed, though not without plenty of bickering and banter.
Their little group soon made their way over to the team’s mega snow castle, where Furuya Satoru was busy building it up. The palatial structure already reached two stories high in the single hour that he was working. The other snow castle builders were busy carving in doorways and rooms, and Miyuki got a kick out of watching them all scramble around in the snowfall.
Kuramochi, however, wandered away from the crowd and propped himself against the side of a building. He was staring up at the falling snow, his breath puffing around him like a dragon’s breath. His eyes, too, were placid, with the glow of the outdoor lights shimmering in them as they pulled Miyuki’s feet ever so slightly in their direction.
Miyuki only realized he was staring when Kuramochi turned his head.
“Hey! Miyuki! Your head in the clouds?”
“Don’t start.”
The shortstop’s ear-splitting laugh bounced along on the air, and Miyuki rolled his eyes as he sauntered over to Kuramochi’s side.
“Did you get the notes I left you?"
“Yeah. You really don’t sugarcoat things.”
Miyuki’s smile had disappeared at that point, but he soon felt the corner of his mouth turn up.
“...I don’t.”
“Heh.
I know.”
Kuramochi shrugged as his smile appeared for the first time that day. He seemed as though he was about to say something,
but,
of course,
a Sawamura Snowball suddenly slammed into his face and sent a spray of sparkling chunks everywhere. Miyuki gazed on in surprise for only a second before he, too, lost all feeling in one of his cheeks to ice. The two second years were reeling and nursing their faces as they struggled to stand upright again.
Kuramochi spat on the ground, his expression somewhere neatly between pissed and downright excited.
He could hardly resist a challenge.
Kuramochi crouched and started to form a snowball with venomous determination, howling with loud, chaotic laughter all the while.
But he found himself pausing again, seemingly realizing something as he stood with slow and intentional silence.
“Miyuki... is your cheek hurt?”
The catcher jolted, his subconscious propelling his hand to his cheek… and there it was, right where the snow had made contact.
A small patch of his skin felt like it was on fire.
“Hold on.”
The concern in Kuramochi’s voice rose as he took Miyuki’s dazed reaction in. He hurried away and back, toting a bandage and a wet towel. Miyuki’s injury was fixed with an efficient and gentle hand in an instant. Even though he did everything he could to keep his emotions at bay, there was a part of him that reacted to that brief sensation of warmth.
The catcher swallowed and looked away with as much subtlety as he could manage.
When he laid in bed later, after all of the snow castle building and snowball fighting had slowed to quiet hum,
Miyuki Kazuya, who had always seen the world through baseball-colored glasses,
touched his hand to his cheek,
and stared at the ceiling for just a little bit too long.
“Do you want to take a walk?”
Miyuki turned in his rolling chair to face Kuramochi, who was standing in the doorway with a huge, soft scarf wrapped haphazardly around his neck and face.
Miyuki took this image in and tried so very hard not to laugh,
however futile it was.
Kuramochi quickly noticed and huffed.
“Well? I can’t wait all day,
Miyu Miyu.”
Miyuki just chuckled. “Ouch, the way you said that…! Well, I guess I could stretch my legs. There’s been way too many off days lately.”
“Right?”
He did not realize it in that moment, but Kuramochi’s eyes were fixed on him and the flex of his arm as he pulled on his puffy coat.
“Let’s go.”
The snow was not falling nearly as hard as the previous time they had ventured out, and little snowflakes whirred in rivulets as the two high schoolers made their way along the nearby riverbank. The lights from the dorm flickered with warm, golden light, and Miyuki felt his soul settle in his belly as they made their way along.
In the split second that he was not paying attention, however,
Kuramochi made a snowball the size of his face, and was tossing it with casual lops in one hand.
“Your cheek is healed, right?”
There it was.
That feeling in both of their chests, buried somewhere in a corner, started to pulse with rhythm again.
They beamed at each other, the fire of competition dancing in their eyes.
Miyuki was allowed one minute to craft his weapon as Kuramochi watched with great intent. When the catcher stood, his expression was ever cool and mischievous as his glasses glinted in the glimmer of the street lamps.
“Go for it.”
The two of them bounded around by the steady, flowing winter river, snow crashing and crumbling at their feet. Miyuki hardly ever got hit directly, and Kuramochi was so fast on his feet that they found themselves wasting their hand-crafted ammo on terrible throws.
Neither of them had had this much pointless fun in their entire lives.
With no one else around, there was little holding either of them back from bursting into peals of tearful laughter.
Miyuki felt that familiar rush in his heart, the kind that he felt whenever he stepped onto the field in baseball. It was a feeling that felt like thunder, like rain, like flowers falling, like anything and everything at once was happening - and he was ready for it.
Maybe Miyuki had never actually allowed himself to let loose.
His feet carried him all over the place without his direct will. He found himself laughing until he cried. His glasses were blurry from the fog that built up on them. He couldn't breathe through his tears.
It was only after Miyuki almost tumbled into the river that the two of them started to slow down their game, and Kuramochi found himself doting with irritation as Miyuki tried to insist that he was fine.
But Miyuki could feel Kuramochi's hand shivering in his.
He looked up at the shortstop with mild intrigue as Kuramochi analyzed the extent of the bruise on Miyuki's hand. In the fall, Miyuki had caught himself with his right palm, slamming it down into the concrete just below the snowfall. He was usually quite good about hiding things, but he couldn't help the brief expletive that he muttered under his breath as he winced.
It was obvious to him that there was no way he would get past Kuramochi Youichi, even if he tried.
"You need to take care of yourself sometimes, too, you know!"
Miyuki allowed a small smile to shine through as he let go of Kuramochi's hand, watching it fall to his companion's side.
But Kuramochi was not done with him - not by any stretch of the imagination.
Kuramochi Youichi’s face had turned the palest, slightest shade of pink, right in front of Miyuki Kazuya, and he looked away with a flash of blushy annoyance.
"...And me. Me too."
The two of them froze, as if bound by a spell. Neither of them moved a muscle as they stared each other down.
Miyuki eventually cracked, though, bringing a red hand to his face as he covered up a growing grin underneath. Kuramochi seemed as if he was going to slam into the catcher at a full speed run for a whole twenty seconds.
On the twenty first, he slowly reached out a mitted palm.
"It's cold out here. Do you want to hold my hand?
You know, until we get back. Look at your hands! You're a catcher, dammit! Are you crazy?"
Kuramochi's voice seemed to speed up and warble as he kept talking, and Miyuki finally gave up on trying to hide his smile.
The catcher slipped his hand into Kuramochi's warm, fuzzy gloved palm, and squeezed it ever so slightly.
"If you're scared on the way to the bathroom later, I can walk you there if you need me."
Kuramochi reeled and began to pull Miyuki along with a lurch.
"I won't need your clammy, chapped hand go to the bathroom! What's your deal?!"
"Haha!"
Even with their usual charged banter, the two of them found themselves bubbling with the promise of a new beginning.
The emotions that they both carefully tucked away behind all of their duties and their walls began to crumble.
In the first dark corner that they came to, Kuramochi paused and brushed a hand at Miyuki's tufts of brown hair. Miyuki tried to steady his mind as the two of them leaned in, and Kuramochi's warm breath tickled his skin. Instead of the usual, well-organized, strategic mental library that he blasted through as a catcher, there was nothing there -
nothing but the overwhelming relief of someone else's proximity.
Their first kiss tasted like ice.
Miyuki felt Kuramochi start to wrap around him, in a weird but sweet oscillation between coldness and heat that left his entire body shaking.
The shortstop peppered his love in kisses on his forehead, his cheeks, and everywhere that he could still reach with all of Miyuki's winter gear. The two of them parted with a sparkle in their eye, and Miyuki readjusted his body and mind for their return.
"Practice is early tomorrow. Don't think of me too much if you can help it."
Kuramochi rolled his eyes. "I won't.
...Kazuya."
Miyuki could not help but admire Kuramochi's daring implication.
After all, that irreverence was probably what made him fall in the first place.
Their fingers laced together again as they made the short and snowy trek back to their rooms. Kuramochi stopped at the door halfway through turning the handle, only completing the rotation when he felt Miyuki telling him to go.
"Make sure you rest well."
It was simple, but...
Miyuki could feel the love that radiated from that statement, and his soul stirred with a pleasant sense of comfort.
I'll see you tomorrow,
Youichi.