To Kiara: Gosh, I'm not that good but thank you for the compliment! :D Really happy to hear you liked it. And yeah, Chris and Eijun are just fifty shades of cute, aren't they? :p
"You look like you're about to die, Sawamura. Hurry up and get it over with," Miyuki teases during breakfast, a playful grin on his face, snickering in a way that's only slightly less obnoxious than Kuramochi's laugh. "I'm just joking; don't make that face. Here, you can have my carrots as an apology."
"Stop giving me the food you don't like!" Eijun hisses, though his protest comes out weak in the drone of the conversations around him. He's been in Seidou for a while now but he still hasn't fully grasped just how many members their baseball team has. The dining area might as well be an auditorium.
"It's hard to hear yourself with all the people talking, isn't it?" Miyuki says as if reading his thoughts. "Any one of these guys can take your spot on the first string. Makes you wanna work harder, right? Especially for that guy's sake."
Miyuki gestures with his fork toward a table on the far end of the room, where Chris sits between Tanba and Tetsu, laughing at something the ace pitcher said. Eijun just nods in agreement, his mind caught up in the fact that Chris seems to only show this side to Tanba. Suddenly the distance between their tables becomes an accurate analogy for their relationship, that cheesy "so near yet so far" feeling he thought only happened to people in books and movies.
"And you're not paying attention to me," he hears Miyuki grumble. "You and Furuya are the same."
The catcher puts on a half-baked pout—a childish pursing of his lips that Eijun finds strangely adorable. Shit, if he's thinking Miyuki, of all people, is adorable then he must have not gotten enough sleep last night.
"Well," Miyuki says, his pout dissolving into a grin, bits of rice stuck to his teeth, "you won't have a choice but to pay attention to me today."
"Why's that?"
"Chris-senpai's scheduled for a physical check-up this morning, so I'll be supervising your training today."
"So Miyuki-senpai's going to catch my pitches…"
"Hey, don't say that with such a disappointed face! I bet you're thinking 'But you're not Chris-senpai,' aren't you?"
Eijun averts his eyes but the look on his face is all the answer Miyuki needs. He proceeds to steal some food off of Eijun's plate and the pair bicker until Furuya sits down between them, noting how they behave like an old married couple. The two quickly shift gears and make it a point to annoy Furuya for the rest of the morning.
Somewhere between receiving last-minute reminders about Eijun's training regimen from Chris and seeing him off, Miyuki makes a passing comment about how Eijun keeps forgetting he's older and doesn't treat him with nearly the same respect as the other upperclassmen.
"Aren't you just misunderstanding?" Chris remarks. "There's no lack of respect on Sawamura's part; he just has a different way of showing it. It means he's comfortable around you. And can you honestly tell me you'd rather have him acting all stiff and formal?"
"Well, no. That wouldn't be fun."
Chris smiles and Miyuki notices how he's been doing that more often lately, ever since he played that second-string game. No, ever since he met EIjun. "Sawamura looks up to you as much as any of his other seniors, perhaps even more. He likes you, so don't worry about it too much." Leaving Miyuki to ponder these words, Chris sets off for the hospital.
"Like, huh?" Miyuki mutters to himself, trying to figure out just what, exactly, like means in the context of Sawamura Eijun. "I guess I like him, too. I like messing with him, that is." A mischievous smile can be seen on Miyuki's face as he makes his way back to the field.