[a/n: I almost chickened out and decided to not put this up, since the concept is kind of odd, and Sentaro's thought process is sort of all over the place, but... oh well. This is my first fanfic, and you can't be perfect on your first try, or even several tries after that, now can you? All that aside... please enjoy! And review! Or don't enjoy and review anyway!

EDIT: I had to go through and fix some names. The subs I watched apparently spelled Kaoru's name wrong, so I spelled it wrong here too. Whoops! But it's fixed now.]

Sentaro was fascinated with Kaoru's hands.

They were hands that never had to work a day in their life, other than holding a pencil or a school book; indeed, there was a callous in the exact spot where Kaoru would always hold his pencil, as Sentaro knew from many long nights of supposed studying. Kaoru was always diligent in helping him, but Sentaro could never seem to focus. Nights spent studying in his room were almost worse than the days spent in school, and only marginally more helpful. Not because he was bored out of his mind - he could never be bored with Bon-chan around - but because he was with Kaoru, and nothing ever made sense when he was with him. When he was with Kaoru, everything baffled him, from quadratic equations, to the way he moved his hands, so lithe and graceful, as if he were playing the piano even with a pencil placed between his fingers. And everything distracted him, from the sound of that same pencil scratching, to the rise and fall of Kaoru's chest as he breathed.

And Kaoru's hands. Long, graceful fingers, effortlessly sinuous, a perfection born of practice, yet somehow seemed entirely natural, a part of Kaoru's very being. His were hands that bore hours of strain. The strain of study, of the many hours gone into teaching his scholastically impaired friend, and many more on top of that for Kaoru's own studies. His were hands that bore the strain of music; a strain that pushed and pulled, wringing Kaoru's hands out until the fingers were long and feeble... delicate and beautiful.

Of course, Kaoru's hands weren't really shaped by their hours and hours of piano. But who could blame Sentaro for thinking it? Music was such a part of him, such a part of Kaoru, the very basis of their friendship. It was the music Kaoru's hands could create that initially drew him towards the man. It was the music he fell in love with. Then it was his hands, and then…

Then…

"Sentaro?" Kaoru asked, breaking the silence on their walk home from school. He didn't mind the silence, really. But Sentaro had a strange look on his face; a dreamy look. "What's on your mind?" Last year, he never would have dreamed of asking anyone something so personal, but a lot changed in a year.

The man in question gave a small jump at the sudden question, as if his thoughts were far, far off, and he'd only just returned to the moment at hand. He looked so ridiculous, with his shocked-wide eyes and surprised face, Kaoru just had to laugh.

The noise sent a thrill down Sentaro's spine. Better than any jazz he'd ever heard.

Once he got over the thrill of hearing Kaoru laugh, and over the shock of being pulled from his thoughts, Sentaro could focus enough to answer. "I was just..." Okay, so maybe he wasn't quite that focused yet. But he was getting there. His mind wandered back to what he had just been thinking about, skimming over his thoughts, searching for a figment that he might be able to explain. Sentaro didn't understand much of it himself... Why was he so enthralled with someone's hands, of all things? There were much more logical things to obsess over. Kaoru had a nice face, especially when he smiled... and Kaoru had a nice body, especially when his uniform was soaked from the rain...

Wait, what?

Sentaro shook his head. He hadn't meant for his thoughts to go that far. Wasn't he trying to give Kaoru an answer? What was he trying to say again? He better come up with something soon. Sentaro realized with a blushing face that the time he spent searching for an answer to why he was spacing out was almost as long as the time he spent spacing out to begin with.

"I really like your hands." He said, before he could even pause to consider the words, not to mention if his response made any sense, or the implications his words might carry.

No, no, no! That wasn't what he meant to say! It was true, he did like Kaoru's hands, but it still wasn't what he meant. He liked more than just his hands. It was the music he made with them, it was the man who possessed them... it was Kaoru.

He liked Kaoru.

The man occupying his thoughts cast a puzzled look down at his hands, but saw nothing special. His skin was slightly dry from the autumn air. Other than that, he saw nothing even remotely remarkable about them. But then again, Sentaro wasn't exactly one for conventionality. "My hands?" he repeated, and Sentaro could hear in Kaoru's tone just how stupid he must have sounded. I like your hands. Honestly! Why couldn't he think of anything better to say?

"I mean-" he sucked in breath, giving Kaoru a blushing side-long glance. "You make music with your hands, we play jazz together. I really love playing jazz together," Still not what he meant to say. All true, but still not the sentiment he wanted to get across. Why was it so hard to say? "And I..." he swallowed hard, his face redder than ever, his mind moving at a million miles a second but getting nowhere coherent. Why, why, why, why was this so hard? Out of everything he's done, fighting with his peers, fighting with his dad, dealing with school and his complex home life, this, this stupid, incoherent, impossible, inarticulate notion... explaining it, sharing it, was the hardest thing he'd ever attempted in his life.

"I really..." Kaoru could hear the stress in Sentaro's voice, the strain, and the confusion. He stopped, just at the bottom of their slope down from school, and turned towards Sentaro, waiting patiently, curiously, for what he had to say. He knew Sentaro wasn't always the most... articulate, but then again, neither was he. In fact, unless it came to articulating music (which was more composition than anything else), he was even worse than Sentaro.

"Really like you." he finished at last, and this time Kaoru was the one being pulled from his thoughts.

There was a moment of silence; a long, restless, uncomfortable, long, anxious, long moment of silence (though in actuality, it was only a few seconds), as Kaoru tried to process. He thought about what Sentaro said before this, the strange but at the same time not-so-strange comment about his hands, about their music, and it sort of made sense. They played music together, and music was the beginning of their friendship, the basis of everything they were. Those feelings could easily lead to love, and that love, in Sentaro's mind, could easily trace back to his hands, to the source, the co-creator of their music.

As this dawned on him, all Kaoru could do was laugh. His hands. What an incredibly complex, yet incredibly simple way of confessing; so very like Sentaro. "Yours too," he responded, and slipped his hand into Sentaro's. "I love you too."