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Yui isn’t ashamed to admit that he came to Seido for Furuya.
And also for Sawamura, but Furuya’s mostly the one who took his breath away when he saw the tall, lithe figure pitch with a sound that thundered through his heart. Yui’s met and played with lots of pitchers—he’s dealt with the best of the best in his age bracket having led the Japan’s representative team in the Little League World Series—and he can’t believe he hadn’t heard of ‘Furuya Satoru’ until just a year ago when the first year pitcher started gaining attention for his ridiculously fast balls.
Seeing it live for the first time was nothing short of incredible. It was fast, hard and dead center into the strike zone. Yui had imagined himself in the catcher’s position, poised and ready to receive that beautiful pitch; god, the rush and the thrill and his hand would hurt but it would hurt so good.
It’s really a no brainer that he comes to Seido, and with what amazing luck, he gets sorted into a room with the very said person he’d been waiting to meet.
And Furuya is…
Well.
Furuya-san is everything Yui hoped he’d be, and also kind of not.
Furuya is a remarkable pitcher. Of course, Furuya’s ball control and stamina sometimes still gets nagged at by their captain, but no one matches his pitches’ speed and power. It’s undeniable. Yui finds himself having trouble catching it with ease although he’s skilled—of course he is—and takes it hard when Furuya refuses his offer to catch and instead, looks for their captain.
Okay, fine, their captain has a whole load of experience being a battery with Furuya so he’s clearly at a disadvantage. That’s fine. He’ll work hard and he’ll be Furuya’s number one option to catch for him in a couple of months, he’s sure of it. Yui never thought Furuya would be kind about refusing him; not that Furuya is mean per se, but he did think Furuya was a more stoic type of character—ever blunt, even if the truth hurts. The super cool elusive senpai who speaks little, the reliable ace, someone he really respects.
It’s great that he’s able to share a room with someone like that, someone he admires so much.
And then there’s also the other side of Furuya, the part that…he didn’t expect.
It’s nothing horrible. It’s just, two weeks into their rooming arrangement, he finds Furuya staring at the wall in their room when he comes back from the baths. At first he thinks Furuya is just zoning out; sometimes the pitcher does that, especially when he’s tired or when it’s too hot. But then after a couple of minutes wherein he’s already kept his toiletries, Furuya is still looking intently at their white wall with a black speck on it.
The black speck, Yui realises, is a beetle.
“…Furuya-san?” he ventures after another silent minute. “What are you doing?”
Furuya blinks like he’s just noticed Yui in the room, glancing at him for a brief moment before turning his attention to the insect again. “There’s a bug crawling,” he states.
I can see that, Yui raises an eyebrow, but he refuses to let himself sound rude. Thankfully Furuya continues before he opens his mouth.
“It fell off and tried to climb again. It’s been trying for half an hour now,” Furuya offers.
“…You’ve been watching it for half an hour?” is all Yui really takes away from this, his voice edging into incredulity.
Furuya visibly pauses, and then finally tears his blue eyes away to rest on Yui. “Oh.”
“Furuya-san,” Yui begins after a while. “Maybe you should take a bath? It’s getting late.”
Furuya seems to take his suggestion very seriously and nods after some thought. Yui watches his senior disappear out of the door with a towel and his toiletries while he climbs up the double decker to get to his bed. He stares at the ceiling after he slips his feet under the covers, the white expanse reminding him of the wall Furuya was just staring at earlier for half an hour.
All because of a bug.
Yui can’t help the chuckle that slips out of his lips. It’s ridiculous, but Furuya seemed so…into it. Huh. He’d never thought Furuya was so…well, spacey.
But maybe the odd behaviour is just tiredness from training, or something. Yui doesn’t give it too much thought, though he falls asleep with a grin on his lips.
Turns out the air headedness is definitely not tiredness, but pretty much a Furuya personality trait.
Furuya is so focused on field with a hunger to pitch that leaves Yui’s blood wanting for more, and yet when it’s in their downtime he’d find the pitcher sitting at a corner staring off into the distance. At first Yui thinks that it’s just Furuya being his cool elusive self—such as the dislike for social contact, which is typical for such personality types—but then he notices that Furuya doesn’t mind company all that much. Rather Furuya actually likes company, as long as it’s not noisy Sawamura-senpai, though that could be debatable, even. So if Furuya isn’t isolating himself on purpose, there’s another reason why his senior is always staring into space, and the reason is really just this: Furuya is looking at something, and is somehow genuinely very fascinated by it.
When Furuya’s sitting at one of the benches at the dugout while the rest of the team have cleared out and are on the way back to the dorms as the sun sets, Yui gingerly takes the seat beside his senior and pretends to pack his gear into his bag. The glowing dipping sunlight bathes Furuya beautifully—the pale sharp features, tall, ramrod straight back, the slightly mussed hair—Yui would admit he stares much longer than he should have. Any awareness that his heartbeat is quickening, however, comes to an abrupt stop when Furuya speaks.
“Do you think the sun ever gets tired?”
The question catches Yui off guard; mostly because he didn’t expect Furuya to say anything. He’s really not sure if Furuya’s asking a hypothetical question or he actually wants an answer—god, this suddenly becomes a little stressful.
“Uh, I…”
“It doesn’t get to rest from shinning all day long,” Furuya says, a little thoughtfully. “It just moves from one place to another.”
“…That’s true,” Yui manages finally, trying not to choke in his throat. “Um.”
Furuya glances at him for the briefest of moments, eyes crinkled into one of those pleased expressions he’s come to recognise even without upturned lips.
“Thank you for your hard work, Taiyou-san,” Furuya murmurs just as the sun sets fully, dimming the entire field in front of them.
Yui has no idea what just happened—a Furuya special, maybe, and he’s vaguely aware he’s still just staring at the other with his mouth slightly agape now. Furuya sits for a bit more before standing up, and Yui kicks himself to move after it dawns on him that he’s being left behind. He doesn’t chase to catch up with Furuya though, instead, he hangs back a couple of meters and watches Furuya stride confidently back to their dorms.
The back of his reliable, super cool senpai.
And yet…the way Furuya thanked the sun?
What the hell?
It’s so bizarre, so weird, and yet…
And yet…
It’s…cute.
Yui tosses in his bed that night, thinking of the crinkle around Furuya’s eyes and the beautiful glow of the sun and the ridiculous, ridiculous way his lips won’t stop smiling.
Yui knows he’s the kind of person who’s very aware of himself. And by that he means it barely takes him the night to realise that he kind of likes Furuya in the crush sort of way. It’s nothing major, just, Furuya is cool and cute and definitely very easy on the eyes and who hasn’t had a crush on a senior once or twice in his life?
He’s lucky that he gets to see Furuya a lot more than most people too, having been treated to the way Furuya yawns when he wakes up (cute), the way Furuya rubs his eyes and pretends to be awake during breakfast (cute), the way Furuya stares at a butterfly hovering around the flowers at the bottom of their dormitory (super cute).
Yui watches Furuya for a minute more before he decides to step in.
“Do you think it likes the purple or the blue flower?” he asks, tilting his head in a way that he hopes is innocent enough.
Furuya gives him a slow side glance to acknowledge his words with a glitter of surprise in his eyes, and then turns his attention back to the butterfly. There’s a whole length of silence in which Yui wonders if there was a better question he could’ve gone with—until Furuya simply squats and cups his face between his palms to see the butterfly better.
Yui blinks at the action, quickly squatting down too.
“Blue,” Furuya says with some sort of conviction, although Yui doesn’t see where it’s from.
He’s much too busy observing Furuya to care where the butterfly lands, but he does get the answer when Furuya gives the barest hint of a smile and extends a finger toward the insect which lands on a blue petal. Yui stares at the butterfly clambering on Furuya’s fingertip, and then suddenly finds himself face to face with Furuya’s own blue eyes staring into his own.
“Here,” Furuya says, and it takes a couple of seconds for Yui to realise that Furuya is handing the butterfly over to him.
Yui swallows, quickly cupping his hands for Furuya to place the insect in it—truth be told, he doesn’t want to touch it but he finds himself speechless in the face of his senior who’s apparently a butterfly whisperer and also, somehow, ethereally unreal.
This time, Yui can count how fast his heartbeat is thumping because it’s ringing so loud in his ears; the knowledge that this is a crush doesn’t help either—wow, if he could, he would definitely want to kiss—…
Ah.
Yui inhales, hugging the butterfly close to his chest just so he can turn away and hide his red cheeks.
“…Is something wrong?” Furuya asks from beside him.
“No,” Yui forces himself to smile, a barely there tremble in the edge of his voice. “I…uh…stomach ache,” he blurts, gaze distracted when the butterfly takes flight out of his hands. “See you later, Furuya-san.”
Yui’s by no means the kind of person who ever runs from anything—but for the first time in his life, he skitters the way to the male toilets and locks himself in a cubicle. He raises one hand, just to be sure, and finds it trembling, even as he rests it against the back of the door. He frowns, trying to get his breathing under control.
It’s only been like a week since he acknowledged that he likes Furuya. Isn’t it too fast to feel this much?
And yet when he thinks of Furuya holding the butterfly in his palms and the barest whisper of a smile he finds that it’s an image he wants to keep quietly for himself.
Just.
For himself.
Oh fuck.