#iwannapitch

Eijun was unusually hot. He normally ran warm, and he rather enjoyed being hot and sweaty. It meant he was out doing something. But this was a sluggish hot; the kind of hot that made his limbs feel heavy and made his eyelids droop. He dragged his feet through the streets as he head home from another late day at the school, surely anyone that passed him would barely recognize him without his usual brisk and peppy pace.

It wasn’t like he was doing anything extra strenuous to put his body in a bad position. Practice as Seidou had been much more extensive than his hack-jobbed attempt of a practice schedule; pitch into the net in the morning, jog to school, harass students as they came into school, harass students as they came out of school, then whatever he could do with Furuya, Harucchi, Chris and Miyuki. Of course, maybe that was the difference, what had made him susceptible to a virus. The lack of a team, of any coach or trainer or anything that would make Koshien a reality was a heavy amount of stress constantly nagging him in the back of his mind. 

Somehow he managed to make it back to the apartment without simply collapsing on the sidewalk and taking a nap there. He dropped his bags in the doorway, as well as his shoes and his pants and his shirt. It was way too damn hot. 

Eijun took one step into the hall before falling face first to the ground. He groaned, but made no effort to move. The linoleum floor was cool against his skin and felt simply wonderful. No one would mind if he just took a nap in his boxers in the front hall, right? Right.

Unfortunately for him (or perhaps fortunately), the apartment was not empty. The resulting noise and vibrations of his collision with the ground made its way to Furuya’s room. The stoic teen glanced up from his homework and debated simply ignoring the commotion. There was no doubt it was Sawamura and ignoring him was what Furuya did best. But the following groan, then silence was enough to concern even him. With an annoyed sigh, Furuya left his desk to investigate.

To say the least an undressed Sawamura sprawled across the floor was not what he had been expecting. Furuya sighed once more as he nudged the idiot with his toes. Sawamura barely reacted, just whined and returned to his original position. Looking around, Furuya hoped that maybe someone else would magically appear to deal with this situation. When no such thing happened, his shoulders sagged at the annoying task thrust upon him. Why did he have to deal with Sawamura?

Furuya crouched down to poke at Sawamura’s face, on the outside chance he would just wake up and move himself. The reaction was no different than when he had nudged him with his foot, but Furuya did take note of the warmth of Sawamura’s skin. He frowned and placed his palm on the idiot’s forehead, then quickly jerked it back in surprise. Was it even possible for someone to be so hot to the touch?

The nagging beginning of dread began to prick at the edges of Furuya’s poise as he lifted Sawamura’s arm over his shoulder and hauled him to the couch. He had never dealt with a sick person before, especially not someone that was probably dying. That was the only explanation for a silent and unresponsive Sawamura, right? 

His first move was to call Haruichi, not quite frantic, but definitely on the concerned side. Or so he told himself. The other male was out of town for the weekend, having left earlier that afternoon, to visit his family back home. He managed to get out of Furuya was exactly Sawamura’s symptoms were, then calmly gave him instructions of what to do. Take his temperature, if it was higher that 101ºF then it would be wise to take him to a doctor. If not, put cooling strips across his forehead and despite Sawamura’s body temperature, get him bundled up in a lot of blankets so he could sweat out the fever.

Thankfully Sawamura’s temperature was not in the danger zone Haruichi had defined. Furuya set to work following the rest of the steps and finally stood over his handiwork, rather proud of himself. Sawamura was wrapped up in two thick comforters and had an ice cold cooling pack on his forehead. Now he could go back to his homework and- A violent shiver shook Sawamura’s body suddenly, making Furuya jump back in surprise. Haruichi had said that he would start to get chills, but Furuya hadn’t expected it to be so soon.

He frowned as he watched Sawamura shiver and try to curl deeper into the blankets. While it was an option to just get more blankets, Furuya also did not feel like returning to his homework just yet. And Sawamura looked really cold now. The kind of cold that blankets just didn’t cut it. He was almost cute when his stupid trap wasn’t open.