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Kazuya has been able to hear what people were thinking for longer than he's understood that he wasn't supposed to.
It's one of his earliest memories: a long quiet drive back from his mother's service, saying nothing in the car while his father went over the hours he'd need to put in at the shop, managing that over Kazuya's schedule, the neighbors he could lean on to keep an eye on Kazuya while he was at work, making sure Kazuya had what he needed to continue with baseball.
"Dad, I'll be okay," Kazuya had said when the muttering got too loud and too overwhelming for him.
His father had blinked, glancing down at him from the side. "Kazuya?"
"You don't have to worry so much," he'd said. "I already know how to make food and I know the way to practice, so—"
"Kazuya." His father's gaze had softened, then. "We really were lucky to have you for our boy, weren't we."
"Don't be so embarrassing," Kazuya had said with a sniff, turning to look at the passing scenery on the window as his father snickered.
"I barely even said anything," he'd told Kazuya, his tone fond.
It isn't until later that Kazuya realizes his father really hadn't. That all he'd spoken out loud was his name.
Kazuya had just heard everything else, anyway.
Kazuya is playing baseball for the local club when it clicks into place for him.
He's just volunteered to play catcher when he hears, very distinctly, the kid next to him. "Good," he says, even though his mouth doesn't move from the closemouthed smile he wears. "He's too small to be playing any other position anyway."
Kazuya raises both eyebrows up, turning quickly over to the coach, who hums as he looks over his clipboard. "Ah, Miyuki Kazuya. We can give it a try—all he'll have to do is catch the ball at this level."
He never once moves his lips either, not until he meets Kazuya's gaze and his smile widens.
"Now, catcher's a very important position in baseball," he tells Kazuya in direct contradiction to what he's just been thinking. "I bet you'll be terrific at it."
It becomes difficult to ignore from there. The constant noise that has filled his every waking moment—that has always just felt like everybody being too loud all the time—suddenly makes sense to Kazuya.
People weren't just being loud for no good reason.
Kazuya could just hear everything they were thinking.
He doesn't do anything dumb, like tell anyone about it. Or let anybody know he can hear what they're saying inside their heads. He's always been able to tune it out, like it's just background noise, because it is, but now that he's realized what it is he's hearing, it makes him understand how good—and bad—people can be about saying one thing and meaning another.
Like what his pitchers really feel when he tries to practice signals with them.
Or what his teammates think when the coaches put Kazuya in first string over them.
Or how the other parents offer him a ride back home with a smile while thinking uncharitable thoughts toward his father in their heads.
Or how his father tells him his day was fine even while he's noting all the aches and tension in his body, sitting down to eat the dinner Kazuya makes for them even when all he really wants to do is sink into a hot bath.
But that's how he also figures out that not everybody is a liar, for good or bad reasons. Rei-san really is impressed when she comes by to watch Chris and finds Kazuya catching for the other team, and Kazuya tries very hard not to grin too much when he hears her making a note to herself to come back and watch more of Kazuya's games next time.
It's the same thing Kazuya catches Chris thinking after the game when Chris's team beats Kazuya's. He shakes Kazuya's hand and smiles warmly, saying, "Good game," and meaning it, too. Kazuya can hear how excited he is to play against Kazuya again, and that makes Kazuya's chest bloom with a warmth that feels a lot like pride.
And some people, funnily enough, sound nicer in their heads than the words they utter.
Like Narumiya Mei, who likes to mouth off even more than Kazuya, but quietly fumes in his head about how Kazuya managed to hit off that pitch and how did he know how to stop Mei and if only they were a battery together, they'd be so unstoppable—
Kazuya had already committed to Seidou, of course, but he was actually tempted when Mei extended that invitation to go form a battery in Inajitsu. Mei really did want to play so badly with Kazuya, and Kazuya thought he was an interesting enough pitcher who'll be fun to play with, but—
It'll be easier with Miyuki, Shirakawa was thinking, echoing the sentiments of everybody else Mei had gathered together. They weren't particularly excited about being on a team with Kazuya—they weren't particularly excited about being on a team with Mei—but they knew what a powerhouse team they would be if they all agreed.
And that, Kazuya had thought, wouldn't be as fun.
Maybe it's because he lives with everybody else's thoughts in his own for as long as he does, but there are things Kazuya learns to do with an ability like his.
Ignoring the thoughts is foremost, especially during games when he wants to get by on the strength of abilities anybody else can hone as well. Parsing between what was thought and what was said is another—though, he notices, most people just assume he's really good at reading people.
But a surprising side effect of this ability is learning to make his own thoughts louder than anyone else's so that he can listen to his own voice above all. Some people—like Mei, yes, but also so many other athletes who are just as driven and intense as Mei—can think so strongly about things that they can bowl Kazuya over with the strength of their beliefs.
So Kazuya learns to make his own thoughts so loud it drowns nearly everything else out, to figure out what his thoughts are and what he wants to do so he isn't swayed by anyone else. He learns to dig his heels in because the alternative is getting swept away by stronger tides.
It makes him stubborn, but Kazuya's learned not to care about what people think of him long, long ago, too.
But he's always been able to hear what people think, and he's had years to figure out how to make the best of this situation. Usually, Kazuya lets the sound fade into the background, a constant din that never quite stops, but never becomes too much for him to handle. It's just always there, and he's never really known what it's like without, so he manages. With Seidou baseball, too, it's easy enough to have bigger things to think about.
It's probably why it takes him so long to realize he can't actually hear what Sawamura Eijun is ever thinking.
In Kazuya's defense, Sawamura usually just broadcasts his thoughts for everyone to hear, no matter how embarrassing.
That was how they first met, after all, with Sawamura mouthing off and getting himself in trouble, Kazuya finding himself too amused by this cocky little middle schooler from the countryside challenging Azuma, of all people, while everybody else around them balks at his audacity.
"Where'd you find the kid, Rei-san?" Kazuya had asked after Sawamura left, wondering if he'd get to see him again. If Sawamura's promises were worth believing. Kazuya knew he meant them—anyone could tell that—but competitive high school baseball was a whole new level for someone like Sawamura. He was unpolished and rougher around the edges than anyone Kazuya had met before, but he was interesting. He could be something in Seidou.
"He's only a year younger than you, you know," Rei had told him with a small huff, the corners of her eyes crinkling in amusement. "Found him watching someone else, like I found you, actually. What do you think?"
"It's up to him, isn't it?" Kazuya grinned. "Guess you and I will just have to find out, Rei-san."
He wasn't surprised to find Sawamura among the batch of first years the team had the next year, and even less surprised to find almost nothing had changed from his first impression of him.
Sawamura is loud in a way he can't ignore, persistent and eager and hopelessly, embarrassingly honest. Kazuya is used to involuntary honesty, naturally, just needing to tune into people's thoughts to realize yes, Kominato-senpai really is that scary, though he isn't unreasonable, while Isashiki-senpai is more bark than bite. Kuramochi may look like a delinquent, but he actually feels a little shy around starting conversations with any of their classmates, and Tetsuya's stoicism may seem intimidating until you realize what old grandpa thoughts he holds—Kazuya has never tuned into someone who is so concerned about shogi and wearing socks that are just the right level of warmth for the season.
But that's between them and Kazuya, and they don't even know Kazuya can hear them. Sawamura's guileless when he speaks his most private thoughts in the vicinity of the entire club, regardless of whether or not it's something he should be saying. He's so shameless it's almost impressive, but Kazuya doesn't find himself thinking much more about it until well into the season, when Sawamura's finally allowed to practice pitching with Kazuya.
"Can you catch for me a little more?" Sawamura asks when Kominato—the younger one—and Maezono head out. Kazuya had hoped to practice swinging as well, but now that Sawamura's got Kazuya catching for him, he's insatiable. He looks at Kazuya with such fierceness that Kazuya finds himself nodding even before he'd consciously made the decision to. Sawamura's face immediately brightens, his grin wide and almost infectious before he picks up the next ball and gets into position.
The sound of the ball landing smack dab in the center of Kazuya's mitt is loud, echoing in the quiet of the practice center. Kazuya frowns, staring at the ball in his hand for so long that Sawamura jogs over to him to call out his name.
"Did I do something wrong?" he wants to know, scrunching up his face when Kazuya turns to look.
Kazuya waits for the echo of the sentiment. The one that usually follows when people say something to him. The one that's the thought they haven't voiced out loud.
But there's only silence.
"It's quieter tonight," Kazuya says after a while, tossing the ball back to Sawamura. "Go back to the mound. I want to see that again."
There's a moment—Sawamura's face twists up like caught in some fleeting thought—before he nods. "Okay!" he says, hurrying back to get into position.
"Try it—" Kazuya falters, watching Sawamura tilt his head to the side as he waits for Kazuya to finish his thought. Silence blankets them, heavy and unusual. Kazuya shakes his head—maybe Sawamura's just one of those types. "Try it without saying anything for a bit," he says. "Let's see how well you've memorized the signals."
Sawamura grins, throwing him a thumbs up and saying nothing else.
And Kazuya—
Kazuya hears nothing else, too.
It's not an isolated incident like Kazuya first thinks. He has a moment of—not relief, not really, but—normalcy, maybe? the next day when he's woken by Kimura's sluggish early morning thoughts, and then again when he walks into the locker room and is greeted with the same murmur of everyone else's voices as they wake themselves up and get ready for practice.
But then Sawamura walks in with only a jovially uttered, "Good morning, Miyuki Kazuya!" followed by nothing else, and Kazuya has to wonder.
Has he ever heard any of Sawamura Eijun's thoughts?
He casts his mind back through all the instances he can remember—that first meeting, the day Sawamura woke up late for first practice, the time he mouthed off about Chris and Kazuya lost his temper on him—but none of them had Kazuya hearing anything beyond what Sawamura said. From the moment they met, Sawamura's voice rang loud in his ears—never in his head. His intentions have always been clear to anyone watching, and Kazuya was never privy to anything more than what everyone else could tell, either.
And when they stay late that evening, practicing Sawamura's pitches with nothing more but the sound of leather ball hitting leather mitt—that satisfying, rhythmic thump of a perfect pitch, a flawless catch in the midst of a blessed, golden silence Kazuya has not experienced in a long, long time—Kazuya finds himself wondering, for the very first time, what someone else might be thinking.
Kazuya agrees to more pitching practice with Sawamura. Only after he's done with his own batting practice, though, which usually means that it's late enough they're the last ones still practicing.
At first, it's because he likes the quiet, which is an interesting thing to feel about anything related to Sawamura. But once they get going on Sawamura's pitches—once it's down to the line drawn from the trajectory of the ball as it leaves Sawamura's palm until it hits Kazuya's mitt—everything else fades away. No other voices at a constant murmur in the background, only the fierce smile gracing Sawamura's face as he takes Kazuya's signal and gears up for the next pitch, the occasional protest when he flubs the throw and Kazuya gives him a hard time for it.
But the quiet majority of their practice becomes precious to Kazuya in a way he doesn't expect anything like this to be, maybe because it was never anything he thought he'd get to experience.
"Miyuki Kazuya, what are you smiling so creepily about!" Sawamura demands, hands on his hips and tilting his head to the side like a confused owl.
"There's nothing creepy about my smile," Kazuya tells him breezily, smiling even harder.
"That!! That right there!" Sawamura barks, pointing straight up. "It's very creepy! Did something good happen to you?"
"I wonder about that," Kazuya says, laughing when Sawamura's face scrunches up even more—he's probably wondering what kind of sinister thing Kazuya's up to now, but Kazuya won't know for sure.
He won't ever know for sure, even if Sawamura is this obvious about what he's thinking.
"Are you going to catch my next pitch, or are you going to continue giving me nightmares!" Sawamura complains, huffing when all Kazuya does is laugh once more and get into position.
"Let's try your fastball again," he calls out, and even this far out he can see how brightly red the tips of Sawamura's ears have gotten, flustered over something so simple like Kazuya's good mood.
Probably.
But the more that they practice together, the more Kazuya finds himself wanting to know exactly what Sawamura is thinking, after all.
He does get agitated a lot more frequently than anyone else Kazuya has ever met, and it's a lot of fun pressing his buttons—nobody needs to be a mind-reader to figure out which buttons he even has. He's just too easy to bully for his reactions. He still lets his thoughts show clear as day on his face at nearly everything—Sawamura has a very expressive face, Kazuya notices. And he is still as loud and honest as ever, whether it's just the two of them working their numbers out or at practice or at matches, heart on his sleeve for everyone else to see.
But there are moments that Kazuya catches himself glancing over at Sawamura, and he doesn't quite know what to make of his pursed lips and furrowed brow. Where he can't hear what he's muttering to himself and so can't really tell if he's overthinking things or getting ahead of himself.
Times when he huffs after Furuya's picked to pitch over him, stewing a little in the moment before he squares his shoulders up and juts his chin out, and Kazuya wonders what it is he told himself to get that single-minded resolve back.
Fleeting seconds when Kazuya catches a glimpse of something fiery and intense in the set of his shoulders and the glimmer in his gaze that stops him in his tracks, like lightning striking land, that leaves him incurably curious.
Or even sometimes—
"Hey," Kazuya calls out, brushing off the dirt from his legs as he pulls himself up to stand, adjusting his visors and walking over to Sawamura. He thrusts the ball right to Sawamura's chest, peering into his eyes. "What was that about?"
Sawamura blinks, and the haziness in his gaze clears out. "It's nothing, Miyuki Kazuya!" he says. "I'm sorry about that! This Sawamura Eijun will do his best at the next pitch, I promise!"
It's clearly a lie—Sawamura had gotten that look just a little bit ago, enough of a distraction that his pitch looked and felt off to Kazuya—but there's nothing Kazuya can really do to pry it out of Sawamura if he refuses to admit it.
"Alright, then—" Kazuya narrows his gaze. He can't tell for sure, but Sawamura at least looks like he means it. "Make sure of it."
"Aye aye!" Sawamura says, back ramrod straight as he salutes, and the weird mood is broken.
The rest of their practice goes without incident that evening, but Kazuya stays up long into the night wondering what brought a look as soft as that onto Sawamura's eyes.
He's never not had the ability to know, before.
It's—
Huh.
It's a little irritating, actually.
So, eventually, Kazuya starts to learn Sawamura's tells.
Sawamura was never much of a closed book to start, and Kazuya has a lifetime of picking up the hidden thoughts behind everybody else's words to parse through patterns and tendencies and make educated, reasoned conclusions. Kazuya finds himself watching Sawamura especially in those moments when he's trying to be subtle: biting down the disappointment of coming in as relief versus starter, pushing through the frustrations of overcoming the yips, making those small adjustments in regaining his form.
But there's more to Sawamura than baseball, too, that Kazuya starts seeing when they begin spending some of their evenings in Kazuya's room learning about baseball theory. The way his gaze is bright and focused when he's interested and listening at first, how it glazes over the moment Kazuya starts getting too technical with his explanations. The scrunch of his nose when he's thinking long and hard about a new concept he's trying to wrap his head around. The little tsk he lets out whenever someone else interrupts or joins in, taking Kazuya's attention away from him.
Sawamura, Kazuya realizes, doesn't give all of it away.
There's some things he's particularly tight-lipped about, like the childhood friend that Kuramochi's convinced is Sawamura's girlfriend. But while Sawamura snarls like a feral animal with his hackles raised anytime Kuramochi asks about his texts, his ears don't flush and he grumbles more like an old man about it—maybe she's more like a sister to him, after all, and maybe the defensiveness is actually protectiveness.
Or some days he'd show up to Kazuya's room with puffiness around his eyes and faint red on his nose, a little dampness clinging to the ends of his bangs, like he'd just sobbed into his pillow and washed his face in a hurry to clear the evidence, refusing to talk about what it was about until the day Kazuya spots the well-worn edge of a shoujou manga peeking out from his school bag, hastily dumped at the floor of Kazuya's room, and puts it together himself.
Or the way he chews on his lower lip, huffing through his nose for a millisecond before loudly declaring something wild and grandiose that has everyone mocking him goodnaturedly, like it hasn't just abruptly steered conversation away from a couple of guys on the team aggressively recruiting Toujou into joining a group date they're putting together. Like it hasn't just eased the pinched look on Kanemaru's face, right next to Toujou.
"Why do you have that face, Miyuki Kazuya?" Sawamura asks later, squinting at him as they settle down for their evening lesson.
"I was born with this face, Sawamura. Is there a problem with it?"
"That's not what I—that look! You look sneaky! Why!"
Kazuya laughs into the back of his palm, but something about the way Sawamura puffs up, ruffled as anything, makes him take a little bit of mercy on him. "I was just thinking, I didn't think you'd be the type to be able to keep a secret at all." When Sawamura just looks even more confused, he adds, "About Toujou? And Kanemaru?"
Sawamura's eyes go comically wide, his hand flying to his mouth. "You didn't hear it from me!" he claims, shaking his head. "Did you? Did you—did you hear me say anything?"
"No, you didn't," Kazuya says with amusement. What an odd boy he is. Of course he'd known about Toujou and Kanemaru for a while now—he'd caught a few of their thoughts when their feelings began to grow, heard the way Kanemaru steeled himself to confess, the dazed blur clouding both their heads in the aftermath. But it had also been easy to look for evidence, once you had that kernel of a clue to start with. "Some of us are just more observant than others, Sawamura. What I'm curious about is how long you've known about it."
"Couple months ago, around the cultural festival," Sawamura admits. "I forgot something in our classroom, and Kanemaru was there with Toujou. You—"
"I've known for longer, so you don't have anything to worry about," Kazuya assures him.
"I promised them no one else would know!" Sawamura says, and the way he knits his forehead and worries at his lip makes Kazuya realize just how much keeping that secret must have been weighing on him.
"No one else knows," Kazuya promises, because he really hasn't heard anyone think about it lately, as far as he's aware. Some people may suspect, but—He mimes zipping his lips tight. "Secret's safe with me."
Sawamura breathes out then, tension bleeding from where he was carrying it in his shoulders, before he gazes at Kazuya with something that looks like dawning awe. "You're an even sharper man than anyone thinks you are, Miyuki Kazuya," he whispers, eyes sparkling in the bright lights of Kazuya's dorm room.
"Hah," Kazuya says, a little weakly, rubbing the back of his neck before he turns back to his notes for the evening. "No reason to sound so surprised about it."
Kazuya knows enough about everyone's secrets, but he's never understood before how different it is when it's a secret shared with him.
He finds Sawamura's gaze seeking him out after Kanemaru volunteers to help Toujou with something after practice, the soft tilt of the corner of his lips a gentler look on his vibrant features than Kazuya's used to seeing. That evening, Sawamura scratches the back of his head sheepishly when Kazuya asks him what manga made him weep this time before pulling out a volume he tells Kazuya is a masterclass in emotion and storytelling; he should really give it a try first before he makes fun of Sawamura for it, see if he doesn't cry too, Miyuki Kazuya! And when Kazuya tells Kuramochi off for wrestling Sawamura into the ground again after a text from his friend, a drawled, "Wakana-san clearly isn't dating Sawamura, and if she isn't then it means she's got standards high enough you probably won't meet them either," Sawamura looks at him first with baffled, open-mouthed disbelief before he laughs, shoving Kuramochi back on his ass and cheekily adding his own retort.
"That's right! She was just telling me about her boyfriend, in fact. Sorry to break your heart, Kuramochi-senpai!"
"She really got a boyfriend, huh?" Kazuya asks long after that moment, watching the way Sawamura blinks owlish eyes back at him before his mind catches up to which thread of conversation Kazuya's following up on.
"Yes, she really wasn't my girlfriend, you know!"
"Oh, I didn't think you liked her in that way," Kazuya adds easily, half-shrugging. "But I wasn't sure how non-mutual those feelings were."
Sawamura almost falls over in surprise, sputtering with endearing embarrassment. "We're like siblings! Neither of us would ever!"
"Okay, okay, calm down already," Kazuya says with a laugh, reaching out to ruffle Sawamura's hair. It's finer than he expects, softer to the touch for the volume it looks like it holds. Well, he supposes no amount of mind-reading would have told him that. "Huh."
"Miyuki Kazuya?" Sawamura asks, peering up at him. His eyes are bright. They look almost awed.
Kazuya draws his hand away slowly. "Sorry, I was just—anyway, I'd sleep with one eye open tonight. Kuramochi looks pretty heartbroken about the news; who knows what he'd do."
"What would he do?" Sawamura asks, eyes wide and panicked and pretty funny, even as Kazuya shoos him out of his room. "Miyuki Kazuya! What would he do!"
Kazuya's still laughing when he closes the door on his face and settles back at his desk to start on his schoolwork—later than he'd intended, but worth it, he thinks, for the look on Sawamura's face as he was leaving.
From where he's been buried beneath a blanket in his bunk, Okumura Koushuu pops his blond head out, murderous blue gaze aimed at Kazuya. "You're both ridiculous," he grouses disdainfully before turning back in.
"Sorry!" Kazuya calls out. It sounds way too cheerful to be an apology, he can hear Okumura thinking.
And maybe it does.
"You're in a good mood," Kuramochi notes as they're taking a break in the middle of practice.
Kazuya sets down his water bottle, arching an eyebrow at the smug look Kuramochi is giving him. He frowns as the echoes of Kuramochi's thoughts become clear, making a face that Kuramochi laughs at. "Whatever good mood I was in is gone now, thanks to your face," he says in deflection.
"Mm, sure it is," Kuramochi says, getting more brazen when he tracks where Kazuya's gaze had, by chance, fallen—to the batting cages, where Sawamura was so very helpfully correcting Kanemaru's stance. "I don't have Sawamura's face, after all, do I?"
Kazuya just rolls his eyes in reply, half-heartedly lobbing a water bottle at Kuramochi, who catches it with nimble fingers and an even wider grin than before. He oozes smugness in such excessive quantities even Furuya would probably pick up on it. "No idea what you're talking about," he says. "None whatsoever."
"Okay, if you say so," Kuramochi says, toweling off before he heads off to do more fielding practice with Haruichi. "You don't have to keep being stubborn about this, you know."
"Keep being stubborn about what?" Kazuya asks, confused with the way Kuramochi says it. "What are you talking about?"
But Kuramochi is already too far away for Kazuya to hear his thoughts.
"Let's try that again," Kazuya calls out, rolling the ball in his palm before he throws it back to Sawamura. "You need to aim for this last one more."
Sawamura nods, that well-worn crease between his brows deepening as he takes in a deep breath, shaking his shoulders loose before he gets into position. They've been working on some of the trickier numbers lately, refining and honing and attempting to perfect them so they can insert them into the sequences they've come up with for future games against specific opponents. It's later than they tend to be doing this, Kazuya's thighs at last beginning to feel the strain of being in position for as long as he has, Sawamura's shirt beginning to soak with sweat from the exertion.
But they are so close to getting this right, and neither one of them is willing to be the first to call it before they do.
"Ready?" Sawamura calls out, snapping Kazuya out of his thoughts.
"Always," he says, smirking as Sawamura winds up, glove covering his hand until the very last second when he lets go of the ball and Kazuya can see, clear as day, the way it arches through the air, spinning suddenly just as it reaches home plate, and Kazuya twists to catch it where the batter could not possibly be swinging to hit.
The ball lands right smack in the center of his mitt, a satisfying oomph that echoes in the practice area.
Kazuya glances up after a moment, catches Sawamura's gaze next as he waits, bated breath, for Kazuya to give him his verdict.
"That was beautiful," Kazuya breathes out, watching Sawamura's mouth curl into a wide smile, laughter and relief in his bright brown eyes.
Sawamura whoops—a pure, joyful sound—and his smile takes on that familiar cocky intensity that Kazuya knows is mirrored in his own face, the one that they've shared multiple times as a battery when they know they're about to do something only the two of them can.
"Again!" he calls out even before Kazuya himself asks for it, because they're not here for a one-in-a-hundred chance of nailing this pitch. "I can do it again!"
"Of course you can," Kazuya says, keeping his gaze on Sawamura as he gets back into position, firelight gaze blazing wild. It sparks a heat in his gut that spreads fast and sudden through his veins, thrumming with his speeding heartbeat until it warms even the tips of his fingers and fires him up from the core.
Sawamura grins at him from the other end of this line, just as thrilled and manic and in sync as he winds up anew, and with another glorious, awe-inspiring pitch, he cuts down the distance between mound and plate, bridges the gap between what Kazuya can't see in his head.
This is how they connect.
A winding arm aiming for a steady glove.
Ball to mitt.
Just like this.
The night is deep and the grounds silent by the time they figure it's time to wrap up practice for the evening. Kazuya had let them linger, maybe far longer than was responsible for him to do, but it had been such a good night, just the two of them. The kind of practice neither of them wanted to end.
"Are you humming?" Sawamura asks him, wiping down the sweat gleaming on his neck and arms before he takes a deep swig of his water bottle. His throat bobs once, twice, his hair damp at the fringes, but his gaze stays on Kazuya, following his movement from the corner of warm brown eyes.
"You did good work today," Kazuya just says. "That's the most control I've seen on number 7 since we started."
Sawamura blinks, the tips of his ears turning pink. "Is—is that really so?" he says, stumbling over his words.
"What, never heard a compliment before?" Kazuya asks, raising an eyebrow. He sees the way Sawamura's shoulders begin to settle down, but the teasing that should come second-nature to Kazuya dies on the tip of his tongue, and instead what follows is an earnest, genuine, "You should get used to it, if you keep pitching like that. Remember the feeling. And then, let's take it to Koshien."
Sawamura gapes at him, his eyes widening and the towel falling to the ground. "Miyuki Kazuya—" he starts to say, faltering, swallowing, licking his lips as he stumbles over his next words. "You—yes, of course, I'll—this Sawamura Eijun will do his best to give you every pitch you ask for!"
Kazuya laughs, warmth spreading through his chest, heating his cheeks up with a gentleness he's never known from the summer sun. "What's with that, sounding so formal and earnest. We're partners, aren't we?" he asks, reaching out to ruffle Sawamura's hair.
Or at least, that's what he means to do.
But instead, his breath catches on partner, his movement wavering for a moment. His fingers tangle in the sweat-dampened locks of Sawamura's hair, the motion stilted, turning the casual gesture into something more intimate and tender.
"Hey—" he starts to say, the same moment Sawamura ducks down to pick up his fallen towel and drape it over his head, wrenching himself from Kazuya's touch and hiding his face from him, but not enough that Kazuya can't see the way his nose and cheeks burn a deep red.
"That's not fair, Miyuki Kazuya," he says, and Kazuya can't make sense of why his voice breaks the way it does, or why it sounds so raw. His stomach drops, a lump of bitter-tasting dread rising up in his throat. He has the feeling he's missed something he shouldn't have. "You know I—"
"What do you mean? What do I know?" Kazuya asks, but Sawamura's already pushed past him, rushing out before Kazuya can get an answer.
"What do you mean, you really don't know?" Kuramochi asks him while they're waiting for first period to start. He's taken the seat in front of Kazuya as usual—Tsutomu's never had the nerve to ask Kuramochi to stop doing that—both arms over the top of the seat, his chin resting over them. Is he for real? Is he that thick?
"Can you stop acting like I'm being an idiot?" Kazuya asks, his irritation showing. Kuramochi's thoughts are more baffled than anything, and looking into them is still telling Kazuya nothing. "What was I supposed to know?"
Practice that morning hadn't quite been a disaster, but Kazuya's played baseball long enough to know that it was off, somehow. That there was something missing. Sawamura wasn't quite in the same form he'd been while he was going through the yips, doing what Coach wanted to do and pitching a few times with Kazuya when they were supposed to, but at the soonest possible chance he got, he asked Okumura to catch for him.
Furuya was raring to pitch in his place, so it wasn't like Kazuya was left there hanging, but Okumura had thrown him a dirty look, lacking the condescension that usually came with it. He was pissed at Kazuya for reasons his thoughts didn't show.
And everybody else could sense it too.
Kazuya couldn't sift through everybody's thoughts enough to find the nugget of why, of what they knew that he didn't, not in the middle of training, not while everyone's thoughts were so loud and scattered at the same time, not when Sawamura remained so unknowable from where Kazuya stood.
On Tsutomu's seat, Kuramochi gives him a long, hard look. "Listen," he says, in a tone Kazuya rarely hears him use. It's the serious one. He'd used it on Kazuya when he hid his injury, and again when he made that glib comment about Nabe quitting. "I know you can be a bit of a jerk, but you usually don't step over the line. I thought that was because you knew where the line was, but in case it's not clear, this is stepping over it. Sawamura got back to the room last night and—"
"You talked to him?" Kazuya asks, sitting up straight at the first possibly helpful thing Kuramochi has said.
"Talked to him?" Kuramochi echoes, blinking. "I didn't have to. Everybody who was still up could hear it all."
Sawamura's quiet when Kazuya manages to corner him after practice that afternoon.
"Come swing bats with me?" he'd asked before Sawamura could make plans with anyone else, grateful for the way Kuramochi nodded when Sawamura turned to him.
"Go on," Kuramochi had said, nudging him against the shoulder. "You need the practice."
They'd wandered over to the hills, past the usual spots where some of the guys on the team were swinging away. Farther than that, until they could barely hear the batting cages or see the diamond on the field, closer to the stretch of empty land surrounding Seidou grounds than the school.
It's quiet over here, too. Kazuya closes his eyes—just to take the silence in, maybe.
Or just to figure out how to start.
"I've been able to hear what people were thinking for as long as I can remember," he finds himself saying. It's the first time he puts real, spoken words to this, the truth he's lived with his whole life. He opens his eyes and finds Sawamura's locked onto his, like the statement is incomplete and he's waiting for the rest. "Until I met you."
Sawamura's gaze flickers, for a moment, with something that looks like how Sawamura usually looks at him, so Kazuya presses on.
"I've never once been able to hear any of your thoughts," he says. "Not a single time. I kind of—I liked it. I didn't really wonder why it was just with you, but I guess I just—"
"You used to say you liked the quiet when we practiced," Sawamura says, his brow furrowed in thought. In piecing things together. He lets out a slow exhale, knees bending until he was sitting on the slope of the hill, huffing as he stares up at the sky. "I thought you were maybe teasing me."
"It's hard to tell sometimes, huh?" Kazuya asks, scratching at his cheek. "Imagine my surprise when Mochi told me that only happened to me."
Sawamura stretches his legs out, falls back to the ground. His eyes are closed when he speaks. "Everyone's always heard what I was thinking," he says, the same thing Kazuya heard from Kuramochi that morning. "Since I was a kid. Since I could remember thinking anything. I didn't really know how to hide it until later, so I just said what I thought anyway, figured it was out there one way or the other."
"So with Toujou and Kanemaru—"
"I just tried not to think about it, usually by thinking of something else," Sawamura says. "S'how I figured to hide stuff. But I didn't—when I realized—you were there when I thought—"
"Well, I didn't hear it," Kazuya says, gentle as he can. "So I didn't know."
"The whole team did," Sawamura says, his voice muffled when he places his arm over his mouth. "But you didn't say anything, so I just thought you were being—"
"Polite?" Kazuya asks, sitting down next to Sawamura. He pokes at the arm covering Sawamura's face, nudging it out of the way so he's got no choice but to look at him. "Since when has anyone ever called me polite?"
"Kind," Sawamura corrects him, shaking his head, his face burning. "Because, you know, otherwise you'd have to turn me down and then everybody would know about that too, and then—"
"Would I have?" Kazuya wonders. He watches Sawamura go still, the blush not receding. "Last night, did you think I was making fun of you? For what you thought I knew?"
Sawamura is quiet for a long, long time.
"Sawamura."
"What else would you have been?" he finally asks, glancing up at Kazuya with bright, worried eyes.
Kazuya can kick himself for not seeing it sooner. "Does nothing else really come to mind?" he shoots back, holding Sawamura's arm and keeping it out of his face when he moves to cover it again. He leans over closer, close enough to catch the way Sawamura's pupils go wide, the little flare in his nostrils, the hitch of his breath. The flicker of his gaze to Kazuya's lips. The way his own mouth parts, just a bit. "Hey, Sawamura."
"Miyuki Kazuya—" he starts to say at the same time, and Kazuya isn't imagining it when it happens: the tilt of his head, the way he leans up, eyes falling shut, to meet Kazuya halfway. The tender press of velvet soft lips against his own, the hot puff of breath against his skin, the words mouthed into the kiss. "Yeah?"
Kazuya's lips curl up against Sawamura's. "Can you tell me what you're thinking?"