01 Walk
With Asakawa racing ahead to send the neatly raked leaves scattering in all directions, and Sato beside him watching with open adoration, Misaki sometimes wishes the trip to school would be a lot longer.

02 Beauty
"Don't," Misaki catches Asakawa's hand and draws him back from disturbing Tachiki, out cold on the ledge of the roof, mouth open and magazine rising and falling on his chest, one hand trailing down so that his fingers are brushing the concrete, the shadows under his eyes hidden by long lashes.

03 Catch
Asakawa's face lights up so brilliantly when he realizes the ball is swinging in the pocket of his crosse rather than rolling across the field for the first time ever that Sato has to bend down and pretend he's tying his shoelace for a good minute and a half.

04 Speak
Harada claps his hands in delight the first time he makes it the whole way through the song from the South Park movie, and Marty-san can barely make his voice work in the face of how cute "Uncaru Fuka" is when it spills over Harada's lips.

05 Lack
"Don't you have any dignity at all, Shiyouji?" Kichida demands, and Kazuhiro just grins wider and tells Kichida to call him Kazuhiro, and squeezes him around the neck tighter with the arm that isn't using his athletic cup as an elbow pad.

06 Mine
When the fog lifts a little from Kobayashi's brain, there's a beret clenched in his fist and Drama Club girls scattering in all directions, and Kazuhiro is covering his mouth to hold in laughter, eyes wide and shocked and happy.

07 Laugh
The noise startles all of them, sharp and strange, and when they turn they find Harada's pet freshman practically doubled over on the bench, clutching his stomach, while Harada clenches the 'kick me' sign in a fist and howls that it's not funny.

08 While
"I'm not stupid, you know," he'd snapped at Kobayashi, and he wasn't, but it was just easier to forget when Asakawa smiled at him like that and slid their fingers together, dragged him into the second floor bathroom and pressed his cheek against Sato's skin.

09 Youth
"You're too young to need naps!" Asakawa informs him derisively, but Sato begs to differ since his body is running on nothing but toast and natto and Asakawa only let him sleep for about three hours the night before, and he's starting to think that this threesome idea of Asakawa's is maybe not such a bad idea after all.

10 Stay
Misaki can already feel the burn along his muscles after the third time that means he might have to skip practice tomorrow, but he feels that the end justifies the means when Tachiki's face goes slack with sleep in the blue of his alarm clock glowing '3:25 AM.'

11 Fill
"I've had enough!" Kinsho shouts, flinging the bat to the ground with a clatter, and Yutaka sets the crosse down more carefully and hugs his brother until he stops shaking, tracing his fingers over the stitching of their name in the back of the baseball jersey over and over.

12 Distraction
"Hunh?" Tachiki asks when the teacher yells his name for the third time, jerking his eyes away from Kichida idly chewing on the back of his pen and in the confusion of the class breaking into giggles at his expense and sensei whacking the back of his head, he completely misses Kichida's smirk.

13 Fear
"Are you fucking MORONS, fighting up here?!" Tsukada yells, his heart pounding against Tachiki's back and arms wrapped tightly around his chest, and Tachiki's eyes meet Asakawa's, wide and scared even with Sato's hands gripping him tightly, and the corner of the roof ledge is still pressing sharply into Tachiki's hip.

14 Crash
It's definitely Kichida's back sauntering away when Kobayashi manages to pick himself up off the floor and starts gathering his books back up again, and the thing that burns him up the most is the fact that Kichida has the gall to stare at him with surprised hurt when Kobayashi yells at him about it before practice.

15 Look
Switching from contacts back to glasses too quickly gives Kobayashi a headache, makes him squeeze his eyes shut and grab the edge of the sink for support as he sways a little, and when strong hands grab his shoulders, he opens his eyes to find Kazuhiro's grin obscuring his entire field of view.

16 Begin
Tsukada looks from Asakawa's bright eyes to Sato's nervous smile to Tachiki's tight-lipped scowl, and wonders exactly what he's getting himself into and where they're going to find six more people anyway, but just then is distracted by someone yanking on his shirt, and looks down to find a tiny freshmen grinning broadly at him.

17 Second
"But think of it like this, we only came in second place!" Asakawa offers, patting Sato's shoulder, and Tachiki calls him a moron and points out that only two teams can play at a time.

18 Violet
"Aren't they the coolest sneakers ever?" Kazuhiro chirps, pivoting his feet back and forth on their heels, grin huge and unassailable, and Tsukada shouts that, god, could he at least put a towel down, he's going to get splinters in his ass from the bench.

19 Candy
When Asakawa saunters back into class from the bathroom blowing a huge bubble with bright purple gum, Misaki and Sato's eyes meet for a long second; Sato drops his eyes first and proceeds to fail his English test heinously with dark, angry strokes of his pen.

20 Nothing
"Fine then, don't tell me!" Sato shouts, storming out of the bedroom, and a few minutes later the front door slams, and Misaki rubs idly at the fingermarks bruised into his forearm as he watches Sato stomp across the street out his bedroom window.

21 Familiar
There's no reason for the baseball bat to be less comfortable in his hands than his stick, but it is, and the jersey itches his shoulders and the cap makes sweat run into his eyes, and when he swings hard and connects with nothing but air, Kichida thinks of his brother running over spring grass and grits his teeth.

22 Show
Tachiki rarely says anything once he starts stripping Misaki's clothes off, and the things that he does say could hardly be called terms of endearment, but when he's clutching Misaki's hips too hard and the only light in the room is the Secret Dragon Hero explosions, Misaki thinks he understands just fine.

23 Day
It's completely obscene how early Kazuhiro wants him to be up, but after a few minutes of sensory confusion and cold air across sensitive skin, Kobayashi finally realizes that Kazuhiro doesn’t mean that they should get out of bed exactly.

24 Ask
"Geez, I was just wondering," Kichida says dismissively, turning his back and heading out of the bathroom like nothing had happened, but Tsukada has to stay for another five minutes before he feels like his face is cool enough to go back to class, and even then he throws the toothbrush away as irredeemable.

25 Think
"You plan too much," Kazuhiro says fondly, but Kobayashi's the one laughing fifteen minutes later when his overplanning means that neither one of them has to leave classroom 11 or even get off the lab table to retrieve the lube.

26 Hair
They're both laughing as Asakawa hitches himself up onto the counter, pulling Kazuhiro closer by the drawstring of his sweatpants and ignoring the way the faucet is digging into his back, and the clatter of the bottle hitting the floor, bleach speckling his mother's bathmat and stinging their nostrils.

27 Home
Even if he understands everything the TV is saying now, Marty-san sighs because it's a lot less fun here, where there's no squirming kouhai in his lap explaining all the major plot points of the soap opera over the last two decades, and the smooth lilt of the French just seems slurred and lazy after the precise Japanese syllables.

28 Loud
Tsukada silently takes back everything he ever said about Harada's voice when the purse snatcher falls over like he's having a heart attack at Harada's air-raid siren scream, and the owner of the purse bows to them tearfully about a thousand times while the police officer looks back and forth from the freshman to the thief begging him to just put him in the car, please.

29 Travel
The long bus ride back from training camp is filled with poker games and over-shaken sodas, but when dark finally falls, it's Sato's thigh Asakawa's head is pillowed against, and Sato buries his fingers in Asakawa's hair to keep from stroking the sunburnt shoulder Asakawa's shirt is slipping down over.

30 Damage
"But I hate it this way!" Asakawa pouts, trying to cover up the two inches of dark roots with his hands, but Misaki pries his fingers away and tells him there's no point in giving his hair a break so it won't fall out if he's going to just yank it all off anyway.

31 Strength
"I don't want to talk about it," Tachiki drops the weight immediately and stalks off, and Asakawa bends to read the numbers on the weights with wide eyes, but Misaki doesn't look very surprised.

32 Together
Bowling is not a success as a team activity, or at least that's what Tsukada thinks until Harada breaks the silence of their defeat by comparing Kichida shooting in the wrong goal to Sato rolling a strike in the wrong lane, and even Tachiki laughs until his eyeslashes are damp.

33 Push
"Higher!" Harada demands, and Asakawa gives his swing a shove that makes the chains twist wildly and Harada shriek with laughter, and Asakawa doesn't mind that this is way too childish for junior high students because he is a good senpai and because the other freshman is tilting his head back from his much more sedate swinging and watching him with adoring eyes.

34 Safe
"It was just a dream," Sato murmurs, voice thick with sleep, and Asakawa lets himself be pulled against Sato's chest, Sato's hands smoothing over his back and brushing off the memory of the third years' rough touch and the crack of his head against the floor, and eventually Sato's warmth seeps into Asakawa and the shaking stops.

35 Private
"I know that's what it says on the door!" Asakawa exclaims in exasperation, hands already tugging open Sato's uniform buttons and sliding over the thin T-shirt, "that's the whole point so nobody will bother us!" and Sato closes his eyes and gives up.

36 Light
The flood lights came on hours ago, but neither Tachiki nor Misaki will say stop, their knees burning from dashing the length of the field and their wrists stinging as they snap the ball back and forth, the sweat in their eyes haloing the lamps with rainbows and making the ball seem to leave trails through the air like a comet.

37 Big
"I'm not compensating for anything, I'm the goalie!" Sato shrieks, and Tachiki and Kichida just go on laughing, while Misaki shakes his head at Sato for letting them wind him up like that all the time over the difference in his stick.

38 Want
It takes all three of them confessing their unease in embarrassed voices to finally figure out that the raw want in Tsukada's eyes is for nobody in particular, but just for the sport itself; Sato and Misaki sigh in relief, and Asakawa chews his lower lip a little.

39 Law
"Beacause I said so!" Tsukada growls, and Tachiki is halfway down the stairs before he remembers to stick his hands in his pockets and scowl and vow that he'll figure out how Captain Tsukada does that thing with his voice anyway.

40 Canine
"I think you chipped it," Asakawa says apologetically, and Marty-san rubs his tongue gingerly over the sharp edge, but his worries about calling his mother with this information are forgotten completely when Harada leans down to see and exclaims "Oh coooool!"

41 Truth
"They were really very good," Misaki says earnestly, and hopes that the wide eyes that Natsumi-chan is making at him means that she has not seen Asakawa and Sato's chocolate-sticky fingers and thus believes him, and that she is not going to beat him to death with his own crosse.

42 Smoke
Tsukada snatches the cigarette out of Tachiki's hand and inhales deeply, blows a perfect smoke ring that crashes into Tachiki's amorphous smoke blobs, then drops the cigarette back into Tachiki's palm and tells him practices start tomorrow, and Tachiki is still staring at his new captain's retreating back when he realizes the cigarette is burning his palm and drops it with a curse.

43 Order
"But why can't he be a Regular?" Marty-san asks, and the others can't explain exactly, but Harada grins at him and says it's all right, which means Marty just has to accept it as one of those Japanese things, and then he says something about initiation that Marty can't quite understand but makes Asakawa sigh nostalgically.

44 Feel
The fingers drawing soft circles over the small of Asakawa's back feel so good, and the hand smoothing his hair back from his forehead, and the thumb stroking the back of his lightly, and the rise and fall of the chest underneath his cheek, and the warm palm over the bumps of his spine, and Asakawa keeps his eyes closed in case this is just that dream again.

45 Finish
Pain lances up his calf from his ankle, but Tsukada grits his teeth and keeps going, has to keep going another dozen yards until he can pass the ball to Asakawa, and even then refuses to fall until he's seen with his own eyes Kazuhiro's smooth switch of stick from hand to hand and the flip of the ball into the net past the wide eyes of the goalie.

46 Through
"Good job, Kinsho," Tsukada-captain says and claps him on the shoulder, and pleasure that Kinsho can't even begin to explain shoots down his spine and lights up all his nerve endings, making his fingers tingle and his head go light.

47 Race
"Come on!" Asakawa shouts, and Kazuhiro and Harada take off immediately; Sato and Misaki shrug at each other, then drag Marty-san along, because there's no stopping the others anyway and it doesn't really do them any good to fall behind.

48 Need
"Please," Kobayashi growls, cheeks bright red and voice angry, and Kazuhiro laughs and mouths Kobayashi's neck and tells him he can do anything he wants, any time he wants.

49 Splash
Kazuhiro's cannonball soaks all of them anyway, so Misaki doesn’t protest when Asakawa drags him into the pool, even though the water is still too cold, but he does stop to grab the swim trunks floating by and toss them up onto the ledge before following Asakawa's smooth strokes towards the deep end.

50 Thrill
"It's the best thing ever, right?" Asakawa asks, and if there is anybody stupid enough on the team to try and argue with Asakawa's love of lacrosse, they aren't quick enough to say anything before Tsukada puts an arm over Asakawa's shoulders and says "Yes."