A/N: I recently had the pleasure of watching Oofuri; I've always had kind of a soft spot for sports anime, but this one hit me in a particular way. I found I really liked the dynamics between the main two characters, and was interested in exploring the way that relationship might develop as they each grew up and into themselves, and each other. I'm hoping to post at least a few one-shots for the Abe/Mihashi pairing, of which this is the first. As is usually the case for me, they're likely to be generally soft stories and walk the line between friendship and love. Please enjoy.
Pairing: Abe/Mihashi, pre-slash.
Maybe
Abe wasn't one of those people who could sleep easy on long drives. It hadn't been a problem until he came to Nishiura—in Seniors, his team was well-known enough to play home games most of the time, but Nishiura still basically had no rep, so most of their preseason practice games were bookended by an uncomfortably long ride. Trying to sleep on the team bus was like trying to sleep in an empty Coke can being kicked around a cul-de-sac. But for once it wasn't the rattle of old screws or the shudder as the bus lurched through a pothole or even the outfielders' jabbering three seats back that had woken him out of an irritable doze. It was the soft blaze of heat where Mihashi's head had fallen against his shoulder.
Abe blinked against his grainy exhaustion. He had pulled his hat down low over his eyes to fight the glare of oncoming headlights, regular enough beyond the dark, pockmarked Plexiglas of the window to give him a seizure—but now he pushed it up with his thumb, turned his head to look down at his battery partner. Mihashi's lips were slightly open, his soft features half hidden under erratic strands of his pale hair, a complete bird's nest at this point. Abe couldn't help smiling a little at the memory of Mihashi pulling his cap on and off on the mound, just one more of his pitcher's nervous habits, and then Tajima's victorious headlock as the team converged on the mound, Mihashi still somehow shocked, after all this time, that they were running to him. Abe hadn't been able to resist mussing his fingers through it either, high off the win. He thought about tucking it out of Mihashi's face now, but opted not to risk it. After a game, Mihashi could sleep through whatever—thunderstorms, Tajima and the back row singing in a round, bouncing along in this rattletrap with the vibration of the wheels humming in their bones—unless that whatever had something to do with Abe. He tried not to let that bother him too much. Abe dropped his head back against the seat and stared at the dark curve of the roof, watching the spray of headlights pick out the bolts on the baggage rack like dull, misshapen stars.
The smart move was obviously trying to get back to sleep, but Abe knew without even closing his eyes that it would never happen. He was too conscious now of the strange position in which he'd been dozing, his knees torqued to the side so his legs just fit in the shallow gap between the seats, and of the delicate weight on his shoulder. Even asleep, Mihashi felt like a bird that could arise at any second, startled by the slightest move. Abe glanced down at him and back up at the ceiling, just long enough to take in the scrunch of his nose, the pale eyelashes trembling against his cheeks. They always rode together after a game, but this was the first time Mihashi had ever leaned into him. Abe took a slow breath and let it out again just as carefully.
Maybe it was just because he'd played that hard. They'd had the home team pretty soundly outmatched four innings in, but Mihashi wasn't the type to fall back on his B game, no matter what was on the scoreboard. Maybe it was the long slide he'd taken into second, misjudging the distance and having to wiggle forward the last few inches on his elbows—a guaranteed out if the catcher hadn't overthrown so badly Mihashi probably could've crawled on to third. Abe glanced down at the dirt smudged across his white pants, reminded himself to check Mihashi's knees before practice the next day; it had been a clean slide, but Abe had no B game either, at least not when it came to his pitcher. He wanted to believe that Mihashi had let his guard down because things were changing between them, because counting to ten in his head had been working and he didn't make the shorter boy jump out of his skin anymore, but with Mihashi, it was hard to tell.
As if sensing his gaze, Mihashi shifted, and Abe felt his breath catch under his ribs—but Mihashi had just curled in, most of his weight resting now against Abe's right side. Still he was feather-light, more warmth than pressure. Bird bones, Abe thought fondly, watching his partner's features shift between darkness and light as the cars passed one by one. Mihashi had his spindly fingers intertwined in his lap, and Abe wondered absently if he was cold, how those hands would feel if he covered them with one of his larger ones, traced the pad of his thumb over a ridge of bony knuckles. He left his hand where it was, pressed into the sticky plastic of the seat.
There had been one moment, on the field, when he thought maybe they had finally achieved it, that he and Mihashi had shaken off all the miscommunication and misunderstandings and the knee-jerk recoil that he seemed to ignite in the other boy from day one. Standing on the edge of the mound in the seventh inning, panting after a close play at home, Mihashi had looked up from the ball dropped into his worn mitt and smiled, that astonishing summer smile that hit Abe like a solar flare. He barely heard the jumble of strategy coming out of his own mouth, his mind stuck on instant replay of three soft words on his pitcher's lips—Thank you, Abe—and he couldn't help leaning in to bump Mihashi's shoulder with his own, couldn't help raking his fingers through that halo of copper hair. Mihashi choked out a laugh, ducked forward into the touch, and in that second Abe was somewhere else—back in the Nishiura dugout two weeks ago while the rain pounded down on the rattling roof, Momoe taking them into the outfield to practice sliding until they were all drenched and covered in grass and mud and taking a breather on the bench and Mihashi was laughing and Abe had his hand in his hair, pulling him in, and Mihashi squawked but didn't pull away, falling into Abe's shoulder like maybe he was okay with that, like maybe he wanted to be there, and Abe's heart sort of did a double-tap in his chest and probably punctured a lung, because it was hard to breathe after that. And that moment was alive in him again right there on the mound, a torch that burned between his ribs for the rest of the game every time he threw the ball back and Mihashi smiled. It had made him wonder, as they piled onto the bus after the game and Mihashi looked up at him from the fourth seat back, crunched against the window like he'd surrender the whole seat if Abe would just sit next to him, if maybe he wasn't seeing the whole picture on this, if there was something going on here that he couldn't possibly understand yet—
The bus hit a pothole so hard its entire body shuddered, wrenching Abe out of his thoughts and most of his teammates out of stilted sleep, judging from the chorus of groans around him. Abe looked down to find Mihashi's wide eyes locked on his face. Then the pitcher jerked away so hard his back hit the window, his mouth flapping in his already flushing face.
"So—sorry! Ah…ah…ah…"
Abe didn't wait to decipher what Mihashi was trying to say. (Abe? Accident? Or was it just involuntary noise?) He reached across to grab Mihashi's flailing hand, and with a firm tug he pulled the pitcher back against him, winding their fingers together so he couldn't escape. "It's fine," he said, his voice a little gruffer than he meant it to be. "You could use the sleep. Just…chill out."
Mihashi's eyes darted between their joined hands and Abe's face, his brain obviously churning so hard Abe was surprised he couldn't hear the gears turning. At last Mihashi gingerly leaned his cheek against Abe's shoulder again, but Abe could feel the tension in every one of his muscles, the smaller boy vibrating as if holding some part of himself away, separate, ready to fly.
"It's…this…it's okay?" Mihashi asked finally, haltingly, his eyes bright as a solar eclipse in the glare of the headlights.
Abe took a slow breath. Then he pulled off his hat and pressed it down on Mihashi's head far enough to shade his eyes. "Yeah. It's okay," he said, too exhausted to untangle this. Too exhausted to stop himself from slipping sideways to rest his temple against the crown of Mihashi's head in turn, feel the fabric of his own hat pressing its pattern into his skin. It was worth it, thirty seconds of intense fidgeting later, when Mihashi stopped trembling and finally slumped into him, burying his face in Abe's shoulder.
"It's okay," Mihashi whispered back, and Abe couldn't tell if that was just classic Mihashi, parroting back whatever Abe said to him, or if Mihashi wanted him to know that this was okay, too, leaning in. Abe squeezed his hand, figuring that was answer either way.