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Kuramochi knows of Miyuki Kazuya before he actually knows him. Genius first year catcher who has this confidence on the field, interwoven through him, genuine, natural. Anyone can see it in his plays—the plays he calls, the ability to follow them through, the speed of a ball he sends rocketing to second immediately after he’s caught a pitch.
Those are just a few of the things that make Miyuki Kazuya really fucking great…
at baseball.
Outside of the field? A whole different story.
Miyuki insults Kuramochi the very first time they meet beyond quick glances at each other and informal mentions of other first years. Miyuki laughs at him and earns a hand curled in the front of his jersey and angry declarations and threats. From then on, a simple, outward characterization of their interactions might go a bit like so: Miyuki makes a jab followed by his laughter, leaves Kuramochi with an annoyed or angry expression and shooting a comment back, making a threat as answer, traded banter.
At first, Miyuki does annoy Kuramochi. That’s easy for anyone to see. Miyuki Kazuya’s got the social graces of a piece of cardboard—stiff and awkward, no fucking clue how to properly deal with a person. And it’s not like Kuramochi’s an absolute expert in Social Interaction 101, but he damn sure knows that whatever Miyuki does—insulting the seniors, blunt comments permeating his speech—that sure as hell isn’t the way to do it.
Miyuki and Kuramochi are often lumped together, albeit reluctantly, at first. Two new first years who make the first string by the summer tournament. (“First years, take a lap!”; “First years, go get us drinks!”; “First years, you’d better eat your third bowl of rice or you’re running until you drop!”) They’re in the same class, Kuramochi’s seat in front of Miyuki’s, leaving Miyuki free to kick Kuramochi’s seat and throw notes onto his desk, laughing when Kuramochi reacts loudly and gets himself disapproving glances and scolding. Not as triumphant when he gets himself dragged into the repercussions. (“Kuramochi and Miyuki are always getting into trouble.”; “Aren’t Kuramochi-kun and Miyuki-kun on the baseball team together? They’re always bickering.”; “Detention. Both of you.”)
It’s always: first years, Kuramochi and Miyuki, Miyuki and Kuramochi. The baseball freaks who have the (unfortunate?) pleasure of sitting in the same row in classroom 1B and disrupt class in the middle of lectures, leave their classmates stifling laughs and covering grins behind their hands when they bicker and banter and cause general sorts of distractions from the front of the room or the books and notes placed in front of them.
Eventually, people go as far as to say that Kuramochi is Miyuki’s only friend and that Miyuki is Kuramochi’s. No one else dares to approach the abnormal first years. No one else fits together like they do—two outcasts who don’t claim to want to welcome someone else into their space, yet get a permanent tenant later.
“Don’t you have friends or something?” Miyuki looks up, chin propped in his palm.
“Nope.” He sits back down at his desk, legs outstretched, hands shoved in his pockets. Anything, even his feet, are more interesting than looking at Miyuki’s face right now. “Don’t you?”
“Nope.”
The room is by no means silent. It’s filled with the chatter of people sitting with their friends, chatting, having lunch. But the quiet stretches between them, and Kuramochi can’t stand being stagnant like this any longer.
“What are you doing?” He turns in his seat to look at Miyuki’s desk top.
“We have a game tomorrow.” With a flip of the page he glances up at Kuramochi again.
“That’s what you’re looking at?”
“Unless I’m hiding something under here or you can’t process words properly, yep!” He smirks, leans forward and says in a dramatic stage whisper, “I think it’s the second one, by the way.”
“No one asked you!” Kuramochi swats at Miyuki, but he’s already leaning back in his chair, laughing at his reaction.
This might (keyword: might) launch them into a usual routine of bickering and bantering, but once they settle a little more Kuramochi might scoot his chair a little closer to Miyuki’s desk. Miyuki might turn the scorebook just a little bit so Kuramochi can see too. They might look over it together.
But who’s counting?
After they lose, summer of their first year, Koshien seems a long road away, something constantly bobbing ahead of them that’s only yanked away no matter how close they get, no matter how hard they fight to catch it.
The current third years played their last game. They haven’t got any time left whereas the current first years do.
But it’s still a race to move forward, to grow so they can close their fingers around Koshien and hold it as their own. The minute they lose is like pressing a reset button: back at it again until we make it.
When he’s running by himself after practice one evening, Kuramochi sees Miyuki not too far ahead of him.
Miyuki Kazuya isn’t all talk, isn’t boundless skill just thrown upon him. He works damn hard at it. He deserves the attention he gets, deserves to feel the confidence running through his blood.
“Miyuki?” Kuramochi falls into step beside him. “You running?”
“Kinda what it looks like, huh?”
He lets out an exasperated puff of breath, you can see it in the fall air. But he doesn’t run past Miyuki this time, only keeps pace by his side.
“You’re not racing ahead?” Surprise, because Kuramochi is quicker than Miyuki, even in something like this.
“Not today.”
“Tired?”
“Something like that.”
Out of the corner of his eyes, Kuramochi catches the small smile on Miyuki’s lips. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. They run together in silence.
.
“We’ve got time, right?” Kuramochi finds himself asking when they stop to catch their breath. He doesn’t even care if Miyuki responds, doesn’t even know if he heard him.
“Yeah.” As if to prove the point, to add the flourishing punctuation that makes it a declaration, a statement of fact, Miyuki stands straight again, takes a step back towards Seido with Kuramochi on his heels, then at his side.
Let’s make the most of it, their determined footfalls say.
Let’s go to Koshien.
“Problem?” Miyuki asks, quick to recover from the look of mild surprise as he opens the door to his room and finds Kuramochi outside of it.
“The universe won’t let me escape you.” Kuramochi waits for Miyuki to laugh, to step aside and let him in. He settles himself on Miyuki’s bed—almost like it’s his own—and slams his textbook open. “Lemme see what you got for number three.”
As frustrating as Miyuki might be sometimes, he’s pretty fun to be around. Kuramochi has never laughed like this. Has never felt himself smiling so much. Has never truly enjoyed someone’s presence at his side like he does this.
He’d never tell Miyuki that, of course, because he’d probably never hear the end of it.
Miyuki’s done more than just walk into Kuramochi’s life unwelcome. He’s settled there, no invitation, no grounds for being there. But he stays. He sticks. He fits. And, admittedly, he’s made himself a home there, here.
Kuramochi knows if he’s doing something stupid—a prank, a joke, teasing Sawamura—they’re probably doing it together. Knows that in all of this, it’s Miyuki who he wants to be here with, who he’s grown used to and likes and can’t imagine Seido without now—as both a teammate and a friend.
Friend. It takes Kuramochi half of his first year at Seido to even call Miyuki a friend in his head, to admit that yeah, he’s become that. It takes him a full year to say it aloud, and a few months more to admit that it was more than just them being buddies, thrown together through a shared interest and goal, forced to stick together to reach it.
But by the middle of second year, he thinks it might even be a little bit more than that.
.
“Thanks,” Miyuki says, quiet as Kuramochi holds him upright, supports his weight on the way to the taxi to take him to the hospital.
“For holding up your damn heavy ass for so long?” He grins. “I’ll give you a pass for now.”
“How generous.” Miyuki laughs a little. “Really though. Thank you.”
Miyuki looks serious, genuine. There’s no hint of a pause for an imminent follow-up of some snarky remark.
And Kuramochi thinks he understands what Miyuki’s getting at. Well, at least, he hopes he does.
“Yeah. It was nothing.” He leans a little closer to Miyuki, the sides of their heads meeting in a gentle bump. “Don’t do it again, though. We’re counting on you, captain.”
To anyone else, this may look simple.
To Kuramochi, this feels like the most intimate they’ve ever been, close and honest.
“Aye aye, vice-captain.”
Kuramochi falls for someone who slips through the spaces between his fingers. Miyuki doesn’t make this—coming to terms with this newfound feeling, wanting to get closer, thinking he can—easy.
(This: Miyuki’s hand grazing the back of Kuramochi’s on their way back to the dorms after practice, his laughter loud and clear and bright at something Kuramochi had said, the way their footfalls match and keep steady pace with each other.
this: Miyuki’s smile—something Kuramochi can’t get out of his head every time he sees it. His laugh—one of Kuramochi’s favorite sounds. How they seek each other out when they need something or just want to be around someone. How they slowly have gravitated into each other’s space until there’s no space left between them anymore besides this thin line they’re standing on.)
“Aren’t you supposed to be good at this?” Miyuki snickers, too close to Kuramochi’s ear.
“Shut up.” Out of the corner of his eye, Kuramochi can see Miyuki, sprawled out on his bed, stats spread out in front of him. He spends his time split between actually looking over them and watching Kuramochi, poking fun of him, nudging his shoulder every so often.
This has become a part of their routine now, too. In their first year, they might have done things like this alone, but they do it together now. Even if they’re not actually doing something together, they’re sitting near each other, and the proximity is enough.
“Comeback of the century.”
“I try.”
When their faces are this close, their breath mingling, it makes him realize how bad he does have it for Miyuki. How much he’d like to kiss him, to say “hey, I like you.” and have that be that.
Kuramochi likes to think he's good at reading Miyuki. Like to think that he can get a good enough grip on awareness. But thinking something and knowing it? Those are two completely different things.
(What he does know: Miyuki doesn't like opening up to people, not completely and truthfully, anyway. Not without a guard right behind him to cut things off if they get too personal, too close. Miyuki doesn't like being an open-faced book with plain and visible text on its pages, easy for the world to see. Somehow, he's managed to keep himself closed, the words on his pages blurred and difficult to decipher.)
But Kuramochi is perceptive, has slowly gained this sort of talent at reading Miyuki like no one else can, at being able to piece together what's not stated or what's not on the surface, but instead what is implied, what is buried away.
But here, now he doesn’t know exactly what Miyuki wants, or even if their feelings are in the same orbit. This, all of this, is a completely different ballgame.
But... but he thinks that maybe—if they are on the same page—it would be worth it. They would be worth it.
So he waits because this is what he’s good at. Kuramochi pours all of himself—his whole heart—into what he cares about, reaches the furthest border he can, stands, waits. Waits.
Sometimes, as he’s learned in the past, it doesn’t pay off. Sometimes, it’s not worth it at all.
But with Miyuki… with Miyuki he thinks it is.
And if Kuramochi wasn’t patient all of this time, if he hadn’t stuck around Miyuki and had just decided day one to cut him out and have that be that, he might have missed Miyuki’s smiles—soft, not always intended to be seen directly. He might have missed the brush of their thighs when they sit near each other. He might have missed the way both of their jagged edges have smoothed, how the gates they'd both kept tightly guarded had begun to slip open, and welcome the other. He might have missed the slow ache of Miyuki’s fist closing around his heart, squeezing.
He might have missed it all together.
“You’re good at this,” Miyuki finally says, a little offhanded, one evening when Kuramochi sits in front of him on the bench of the dugout after practice, patching up a cut on his elbow.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” The words aren’t combative in tone at all. Honestly, Kuramochi wants to laugh at the sudden comment. Miyuki takes it as a go ahead to continue.
“That you’re surprisingly good at patching up cuts and scratches. So thanks. Consider making a future out of it?”
“Ah…” Kuramochi trails off, looks away from Miyuki’s face. He nudges Miyuki’s leg with his own. “Quit making fun of me, asshole.”
“Am I that transparent?”
“Just predictable as hell.”
“Guess I’ll have to shake it up sometimes.” Comfortable silence settles between them for a moment, until Miyuki nudges Kuramochi’s leg this time. “You are good at this.”
Kuramochi pauses for a moment, then grins. “Honesty out of Miyuki Kazuya? How did I get so lucky?”
“Only for you.” He wonders if that’s a joke or if it’s something Miyuki means. By now, Kuramochi knows that if he were to direct a comment like that at Miyuki, it’d be genuine. Something he had never expected to happen back when they first met, but has within his grasp now.
Kuramochi’s hand slides down Miyuki’s arm, away from his elbow now that he’s finished, lingering. Miyuki doesn’t reach for his hand. Not necessarily. But he does flip his palm over. He does curl his fingers around Kuramochi’s when their palms press together in an experimental touch.
He doesn’t pull away. Neither of them do.
It lasts for a brief few seconds, until there are others watching them, stepping into their private space, so they let go. The pressure from Miyuki’s touch still lingers on Kuramochi’s palm long after practice, though. He wants it back. He wants that and more all to himself, all over again.
Sometimes, the stress drawn tight across Miyuki’s shoulders is evident, fearful questions like am i good enough? can i do this? painted in clear letters across his back. He might hide it from the rest of the team, from the rest of the world, but after all of the time he’s spent getting to know Miyuki, Kuramochi can see them. Even if it’s faint, he notices it.
On those days, he’ll usually stick around after practice longer. Will nudge Miyuki’s shoulder, a gentle way to ask if he’s good. Sometimes he’ll invite Miyuki to his room to take his mind of whatever it is bothering him. To hope that maybe he’ll open up and actually tell Kuramochi what’s wrong.
Sometimes he doesn’t. But sometimes he does, in so many words.
(“I’m not cut out for this,” Miyuki says through a stifled fake laugh one night, frustration glimmering in his eyes, vulnerability lingering in the way he drags a hand over his face, the way he fidgets.
“Yeah you are.” Kuramochi insists. Because it’s true and they all know it. Miyuki’s the best choice for captain. And he’s a damn good one.
“And what if I can’t do it?”
“Rely on me, then, dumbass.” He stretches out his bare foot, kicks Miyuki’s thigh. “You’re not in this alone.”
“Encouraging.” It sounds like a joke, but Kuramochi knows better. Miyuki means it. They both do.)
Sometimes, if they’re texting before bed—like they so often do—and Miyuki takes a little too long to reply, Kuramochi will be the one to forget being jaded and closed off, will make the first move, the first step to making it right.
To: miyuki
From: kuramochi (11:37 pm): you’re a good captain
To: kuramochi
From: miyuki (11:37 pm): lol thanks
He wants to reply it’s not a joke. Wants to reply i mean it. Wants to reply you should think it too.
But sometimes, it’s best to not push it. Earlier in their friendship, he might have gotten more frustrated with Miyuki, might have gotten angry, even. Now he’s a lot more patient, now he understands a lot more.
To: kuramochi
From: miyuki (11:38 pm): really. thanks
To: kuramochi
From: miyuki (11:38 pm): you free?
To: miyuki
From: kuramochi (11:39 pm): depends what you had in mind
There’s no response right away, and Kuramochi thinks, maybe that will be it. They’ll get up tomorrow, pretend these texts never happened, fall into their usual comfortable routine. Fall into what they’re used to.
He rolls over in bed, away from his phone, trying to convince himself that he doesn't want more than that. He doesn’t.
The quiet buzz of his phone receiving a new message draws his attention.
To: kuramochi
From: miyuki (11:45 pm): open your door.
At first, the sudden reply when he thought they’d been done confuses him. But it doesn’t stop him from climbing out of bed, shoving his phone into the pocket of his sweats, and making his way to the door.
When he opens it, he finds Miyuki leaning against the doorway on the other side, smiling. “Long time no see.”
Kuramochi snorts. “What kind of way to say hello is that?”
“A good one. You’ve gotta be jealous.”
“Keep telling yourself that.”
“Don’t say I never gave you anything.” Miyuki tosses Kuramochi a drink, one he catches effortlessly, and steps out of his room, shutting the door behind him.
“Where to?”
“Since I’m feeling generous tonight, I figured I’d let you choose.”
He rolls his eyes, sending a gentle kick to the back of Miyuki’s leg before he’s a few steps ahead of him, then. “Let’s go, then.”
Neither say anything as Kuramochi slows down, waits for Miyuki to fall into step with him as they move forward.
.
“Hey,” Kuramochi finally mutters, when they’re sitting side by side in the grass, hands resting near each other. “I like you.”
There’s no fanfare to it, no build up, no planning. He just says it because it felt right, confesses because he wants to know if feeling this way is useless or if there’s some sliver of hope.
Miyuki looks uncertain, frozen, like his first instinct is to run away rather than address this.
“Miyuki?” Kuramochi turns to face him now, turns and makes a tentative reach for his hand. “I don’t care if it’s not the same for you. Just… say something and that’s okay—”
Miyuki’s hand meets his, somewhere in the middle. And when he squeezes it—an answer—it’s like something has anchored him to reality, tethered them here together in something that’s otherwise dreamlike.
“You mean it?” The look in Miyuki’s eyes says surprise. A genuine question that Kuramochi might actually have those tightly wound feelings for him. A genuine question of why him?
“Yeah.” And Kuramochi leans forward, to make the tentative punctuation to his answer, the one he’s known all along.
Their lips meet, somewhere in the middle. Their noses bump before their lips do, and it’s a little too quick and tentative to match what one might describe as a perfect first kiss, but hell, Kuramochi feels like he’s on top of the whole damn world right now and that’s damn perfect for him.
“I’m not sure how this works,” Miyuki confesses, cheeks flushed as he looks down at his lap—at their still entwined fingers—when Kuramochi pulls away.
“Neither am I,” he admits, open, completely honest. Normally, he wouldn’t want to admit a vulnerability like that to anyone, but now? He would. With Miyuki, he would.
Miyuki’s kiss—their second kiss that follows his soft smile—says enough.
We can figure it all out together.
In the bottom of the ninth, Miyuki hits a home run. The score changes from tied 4-4 to 6-4 in their favor. Seido claims their win in the finals of Koshien the minute Kuramochi’s foot touches home plate, brought there by Miyuki’s hit.
Everything about it is simultaneously a blur yet all burned into his memory, never to be forgotten. The crowd’s screams. The rest of the team running from the dugout, jumping on each other, slapping each other’s hands and backs, screaming, cheering, crying. Kuramochi meets Miyuki in the middle ground between third and home, his hug to his captain half a tackle, half a sweep off his feet. He’d kiss Miyuki right here, but Miyuki’s fingers curled in his jersey, the laughter mixed with tears, every bit of this is enough.
(Later, on the bus that’ll take them back home, Kuramochi's holding Miyuki’s face in his hands, kissing him harder than he’s ever kissed him before. There are a few (obnoxious) cheers from the back of the bus, Zono’s presumed to be done tears back full force again, Shirasu’s look of only Mild disgust at the scene taking place in the aisle and blocking his entryway into the Free World.
But Kuramochi doesn’t give a shit about any of that. Not when Miyuki is right here, not when Miyuki is his and they’ve done everything they said they would at Seido. Koshien champions has an unbelievable ring to it, and Miyuki looks damn good in gold.)
“Got yours?”
Miyuki waves the envelope in front of Kuramochi’s face as he sits down next to him. “I do.”
“Yeah. Got mine too.” Kuramochi clutches his own envelope tightly in his hands, like the paper will bend if he holds it any tighter.
“I’d hope so. This was your suggestion, after all.”
(Kuramochi had been the one to suggest they open their college acceptance letters together. More accurately, he had breathed it out between long and slow kisses one night, like he’d had the idea built up in his mind and blurted it out when he felt comfortable enough to do so. Even if it brought up the idea that soon they’d be done here, would move on from Seido. Brought up the fear that things would be different, the future would be before them. It was something he wanted—needed—to say.
Miyuki had splayed himself across Kuramochi’s chest, had leaned down for another kiss, had panted an affirmative into his mouth as Kuramochi’s fingers curled in his hair. They'd do this. They'd do it together. )
“Shut up.” He bumps his shoulder against Miyuki’s.
This gesture is just a formality, in a way. It really only serves as the way to make everything official. Koshien champions? Check. High school graduates? Mere months away. Miyuki and Kuramochi’s unstoppable duo soon to split due to different colleges with miles and miles of distance between them? Well, they’ve known that was coming for a while.
Still, he rips the letter addressed to him open, with the selfish dream that maybe this isn’t the end to their time as classmates, as teammates, as friends who live a few rooms apart rather than a few hundred miles.
Preemptively, they’ve known they weren’t scouted by the same schools, didn’t even apply to the same ones.
Still, even with that knowledge, looking at the large typeset of two different schools’ letterheads at the top of each separate page stings a little bit. Reading what is essentially the same opener of Congratulations! We’re pleased to inform you that you’ve been accepted to… but with separate and distinct destinations in each piece really cements what they’ve known all this time.
They only have a few months left before graduation. Before everything changes.
“What will I do without you constantly breathing down my neck?” Miyuki jokes, folding his own paper back up as Kuramochi still clutches his own. “How will I manage?”
“Miyuki…”
But Miyuki stretches back, lips curved in what’s likely supposed to be a grin, but falls as more of a grimace that tries to mask itself as a promise.
“We’ve got time, right?”
They’ve got time.
He looks over at Miyuki, murmurs a quiet, a questioning “Hey…”
“Yeah?”
“You scared?”
Miyuki looks down at his legs, hesitates for a moment before brushing his hand against Kuramochi’s arm.
“Something like that.”
Kuramochi scoffs. “Would it kill you to say what you’re thinking?”
“It might.” He leans in closer, dramatic whisper, over exaggerated gestures. “If I told you, I might have to kill you.”
“Why the hell do I even put up with you?”
Miyuki’s laughter is enough of an answer.
“Problem?” Kuramochi’s breath hits the back of Miyuki’s neck, his arms a gentle squeeze around his waist as they lay on the bed of the still unfamiliar dorm room they’ve been given post-Koshien, post-Seido baseball. The early spring rain hits the roof hard, thunder following every so often.
They had long since thrown their books laid open to study for final exams aside, moved to the bed instead.
“Why would you think that?”
There’re so many things he could say—your back is tense / you’re staring / you’re not saying anything / this isn’t comfortable like it usually is / what’s wrong—but he settles on saying none of them, settles on burying his face in Miyuki’s shoulder, pressing a kiss against it. He’s learned over time that Miyuki’ll say what he wants to when he’s ready to. Maybe in the past Kuramochi would’ve pushed for a concrete answer that would’ve ended in Miyuki completely diverting from the topic, would’ve ended in them bickering and sometimes saying words they didn’t really mean.
He doesn’t want that now, not when these moments are no longer something at their constant disposal. Graduation will be here soon. The future—their future—will be here soon, high school just a thing of the past. They haven’t got any more time to waste.
Miyuki turns, finally, rolls over in Kuramochi’s arms, lays there, still silent, but traces his fingers over his cheek.
“What now?” Miyuki finally asks in a voice that tries to mask the fear, in a way that implies the question they’ve both been thinking of as of late: what’s next?
If this is their future, then they've got every right to make it their own, to make it everything they've wanted.
Kuramochi doesn’t even mean to play it as a weird turn back to baseball, but at their very core, that’s what resonates with both of them. That’s what’s part of both of them. That’s what’s brought them together, enabled them to be this. To have this rhythm that’s become a natural part of them, something Kuramochi can’t imagine being without now.
“Your call.”
“This is really the end, huh?” he asks Miyuki, looking away from the baseball field they’ve made their home, leaning back against the familiar chain-link fence that blocked out the rest of the world, that made it theirs.
“Considering that you’ve got your diploma, this does in fact, seem like the end.”
Kuramochi groans, but even then it’s more of a fond sigh that it is an annoyed gesture—more of an I like this; I’ll miss this. “You’re such a smart ass.”
“That you love.” Miyuki grins.
He’s watched Miyuki for three years. As a catcher, as a player, as a playmaker. Beautiful, incredible.
And he’s watched Miyuki as a person too, has grown with him, has become part of him. Miyuki’s beautiful, incredible here, too. Rough around the edges, maybe. Difficult to get to know, maybe. But once past that hurdle? Equally as mesmerizing.
Miyuki keeps goals in sight and knows how to reach them, works until he does, fights until he can’t. Kuramochi knows this better than anybody after their trek to Koshien, their three year long journey to become champions.
Those are just a few of the things that make Miyuki Kazuya really fucking great.
But there's more, too. Things Kuramochi hadn't noticed when they first met, had only grown lucky enough to see with the passage of time. Miyuki's funny and never boring to be around. He's loyal and determined and a good friend. Kuramochi's best friend. And he has a big heart—a damn good one—even if he just shows slivers and quick glimpses of it to everyone else. He's got a heap of insecurities and things he doesn't want to talk about hidden behind and grin and a laugh. He's human. Flawed, frustrating, but beautiful. Kuramochi can't imagine what any of this would have been without Miyuki.
Kuramochi thinks, in retrospect, that he wouldn’t have done any of it differently. Not Seido, not baseball, not Miyuki.
“That I love,” he repeats, half deadpan—easy to play off as a joke—half a test of the words on his lips. Aloud, the thought doesn’t sound so unreachable anymore, so unobtainable now that they’re here.
“You haven’t denied it.” Miyuki steps closer.
“What if I wasn’t planning to?” He pushes himself off the fence, straightforward, proud, toe-to-toe with Miyuki. is this your call? he wants to ask.
Miyuki’s fingers curl in the front of his jacket, pull Kuramochi closer as the smile, bright as the sun, stretches across his lips. is this yours? he imagines Miyuki firing back before their lips meet in confirmation.
yeah. yeah, it is.