Moment

By Yukitsu

Note: This pair needs more fans. TAT First fic I ever wrote for Oofuri.

Shingo is asking you something, you realize as you look up from your coffee. You don't mean to drift, but it has been a long week and the characters on the sheet you have been poring over for the past half and hour are starting to dance across the paper.

"Hm?" The young man across from you on the table slides his notebook over, and you pick it up without a thought. English. Shingo is horrendously bad at foreign languages for someone so chatty. You wonder again why you always agree to tutor him, but then you don't like answering that question so you focus on the task at hand instead.

"That word," Shingo says, leaning forward to point the item out. His hand brushes yours and you raise your eyebrows at him. He shrugs, grins cheekily, and taps at the notebook again. "I don't understand it."

"Vicarious," you eventually read out loud before looking at him. "Learning from the experiences of someone else, basically." He seems satisfied with that, and you hand the notebook back. He's not terribly difficult to please, as you've learned through the past years that you've been his coach.

You watch him resume what he was doing for a moment and you're drifting again, your attention turning from him, to your notes, to his hands, to the window, to your coffee, to his hair, and back to your notes again. You roll your eyes and remind yourself that you need to fix the line-up for next season, and that there's no reason to distract him from studying (he's absentminded enough for the both of you) with your fidgeting.

You wonder how the other third years are doing with their reviews. You think that maybe you should ask them all sometime, when you're not terrorizing the rest of the team and working them harder than ever. You may have lost to Nishiura, but there's next season, and the season after that, and many seasons more that you'll get to watch and train players for. You're old enough and mature enough to know how losing feels like so you understand them (you understand them too well), but that doesn't mean you need to show them softness. It's not something they need. It's not like you're punishing them, either. The loss was no one's fault; it was the fault of the team as a whole.

"Kantoku." Shingo is calling you again, and you give a start upon finding out that he'd somehow managed to scoot over to sit beside you. "Kantokuuuu. You're not paying attention."

"What is it?" You're a little proud that you manage to put a grumble into that, especially when he props his chin on your shoulder and breathes next to your ear. Really, just because you share an intimate something outside of the field does not mean he can be this casual with you. (You vaguely admit that you're torn between being indignant about it and finding it I pleasant /I .)

"This one, I don't understand what it means," he points out, an arm under yours and the other around your neck.

"Bouleversement," you read, wondering what the use of knowing that word is. "Overthrow. No, not the pitching kind of overthrow," you correct yourself when he reacts. "When tables are turned and the order of things are upset."

"Oh, is that so? Thanks." His arms are still around your neck. You point that out to him.

"What, should I stop?" Shingo asks. You recognize that he's amused and it exasperates you just a bit.

"Yes, you should," you tell him. He laughs but does as he's told. You're not about to back down from it, though, even though it makes you feel just a little childish inside. You want to tell him that he's a bright boy, with a bright future both in baseball and other things, but he has to go through the hurdle of high school examinations first. But you're a gruff man and things like that isn't something you can say while sane or sober. "You're supposed to be here to study, Shingo."

"Yeah. Exams and all," he agrees readily. The scolding you were about to give him deflates in you. "Maybe if I finish reviewing early, I can spend more time on the field."

Baseball again. It's nice to know that he's still the same baseball head, though you still vaguely wonder sometimes if he joined the team to play or to pursue you, back when he was a first year. You figure that it's both, given that you had finally let him get his way soon after he became a regular. He worked hard for three seasons; his youngness had hammered down your valiant rejection, and his talent had earned him his position in the team.

You regret it a little that this summer had been cut extremely short for Tosei, mostly because you wanted to give your team another chance to reach the top, and partly because Shingo has to focus on studying now.

You stop the thought. You're old and he's young, but somehow the two of you have a strange sort of togetherness going on. And, anyway, as long as Shingo keeps on failing those subjects, he's stuck with you for a long time more.

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8/4/2007 7:04PM