A/N: A small idea that got slightly out of proportion, and as a consequence of which I can now make a paper crane. Abe/Mihashi, light slash or pre-slash. Please enjoy.

Smile

Abe preferred studying at Mihashi's. There were some serious advantages to following his pitcher home after practice, even if the big bedroom on the second floor was a permanent mosh pit of dirty clothes, ditched textbooks, and baseballs lurking like landmines under every pile of debris, which Abe had learned to check very carefully before he sat down. Still, he liked that Mihashi's parents were basically never home in the afternoon, which meant they could kick off their shoes in the front hall, raid the fridge, and retreat upstairs without anyone's mom (namely, his) getting in the way of what they were there to do. Mihashi's house was closer to the school, too, which was convenient on days like today, when they had to sprint through a torrential rainstorm and arrived only half drowned—Abe had a feeling the only way he was going to make it home tonight was if he spontaneously sprouted gills. And then there was Mihashi's enormous backyard, which gave them the option, on nicer days, of spending their study breaks on a game of catch instead of wasting a grating fifteen minutes watching Mihashi make stuttering small talk with his busybody mom.

But more than anything, Abe just found it easier to focus when he was with Mihashi. He liked to think he owed that to the absence of his pesky younger brother and not at all to the little jolt of adrenaline he got whenever he glanced up and found big amber-brown eyes blinking hopefully at him across the table. It wasn't like he got a rush every time he explained something and Mihashi looked up at him like he had the answer keys pasted inside his skull—or if he did, it was probably just because he'd never been a great student himself and it was exhilarating to be on this side of it for once.

Abe wasn't an expert tutor, but he was good enough to help Mihashi through most of his homework without getting hopelessly quagmired. Or at least that had always been the case before. Today, though, he'd stumbled across one area in which he was all thumbs.

"This is impossible."

On the other side of the table, Mihashi jerked the pencil he'd been chewing on out of his mouth and looked up at Abe guiltily over his half-finished geometry worksheet, probably wondering if the comment was aimed at him. Out the window over his shoulder, Abe could see the storm was still in full force, the early spring buds on rain-dark branches whipping in the wind. Mihashi looked even more slapdash than usual in a wrinkled, oversized shirt he'd scrounged up from his floor, copper hair flopping around his head like a fichus—though admittedly that was mostly Abe's fault, since he'd kind of gone to town with a towel once they finally made it out of the rain. Abe was borrowing a dark green sweater, a present from one of Mihashi's father's many business trips—not a bad fit on him, but it would have been at least a size and a half too big for Mihashi, flat-out dripping from his bony shoulders. It made Abe wonder if Mihashi's dad had done his souvenir shopping last minute in the airport, or if maybe he'd been away so long he'd forgotten his only child was built like a twig.

Mihashi lowered his pencil. "Is it…no good?" he asked, his expression already crumbling like he'd expected as much. Abe felt a little guilty that he hadn't even glanced at Mihashi's work in at least ten minutes—a bad call on his part, judging by the never-ending proof meandering around the margins of page.

"Not you, sorry," Abe said, though impossible might have been a good word for the mess Mihashi was making of his geometry homework, too. "I'm talking about this." He held out the abused piece of blue origami paper that had been baffling him for the last ten minutes. It bore a passing resemblance to a chrysanthemum, but only because a chrysanthemum was what happened when he'd lost his temper with the jumble of angles and folds and crushed it in his fist. Abe sighed and leaned back on his free hand. "There is no way I'm going to be able to make a hundred cranes by Monday."

At practice three days before, the coach, apparently convinced that her usual sadism was no longer enough, had given them an assignment: folding one thousand paper cranes as a good-luck gesture for the girls' softball team, who had passed the preliminaries for their spring tournament and were headed to district. Ten players on the Nishiura baseball team meant one hundred cranes apiece—and to prevent shirking, Momoe had given them each a different color of paper so they'd be absolutely accountable. Abe had chosen blue in the hope that screw-ups wouldn't be as obvious on the darker cranes as Hanai's silver or Mizutani's sickening maroon, but he was pretty sure that wouldn't save him if he showed up Monday morning with a hundred crumpled wads. Abe dropped the aggravating sheet onto the table and sent it skittering toward Mihashi with a flick of his fingers. If the point was sentiment, he didn't understand why he couldn't just buy the softball players a card or salute the team bus as it rolled out, tournament bound. He had a feeling his half-dead crane wasn't getting the point across anyway.

Mihashi uncurled the offending square and smoothed it gently out again, easing his thumbnail along every misplaced crease. "It's because…for the fall tournament…" He stammered to a halt, glancing at Abe like he was afraid of calling him out.

Abe sighed, annoyed with himself more than anything. "Yeah, I know. They made one for us." He still remembered the ride home, tucked in next to Mihashi after taking a hard-fought second place, watching that mobile of colorful cranes sway at the front of the bus and listening absently to Tajima and the rest fight over which girl's cranes they wanted for a souvenir. Abe grimaced as his gaze returned to his own first attempt, just a wilted sheet of paper now under Mihashi's soft hand. Not going to be in high demand, souvenir-wise. "I'm just saying, I couldn't turn that into a crane with a pair of scissors and a whole roll of scotch tape."

He'd intended to leave it at that, was already reaching across the table to grab Mihashi's worksheet and get them back on track. But it was hard to ignore the way Mihashi jerked up in his seat like someone had shoved a pole down his shirt, staring at Abe with wide, eager eyes. Abe blinked.

"What?" he asked, really not sure what part of his sour-grapes diatribe had piqued Mihashi's interest.

Mihashi wiggled in place. "I could help—with yours," he offered, the suggestion broken in the middle by an excited little hiccup. Abe felt a small smile worming across his face. It was sort of endearing that Mihashi was still this enthusiastic about earning brownie points even after they'd been partners for so long. Still, Abe kind of had a rule against using that for his own gain. He shook his head, waving the offer away.

"Don't worry about it. I mean, you still have all yours to do, right? I'll just…" Abe trailed off without finishing the thought, his eyes narrowed as Mihashi's fidgeting escalated to stratospheric levels. Six months ago, he might have missed that, but Abe had spent a lot of time studying Mihashi's bizarre little tics, and the teeth sunk into his bottom lip were a dead giveaway. Abe dropped his chin into his hand. "Okay, what?" he demanded, exasperated in spite of himself.

Mihashi stammered through a few things that weren't words—then he popped up from the table and ran to his nightstand, shuffling back to Abe with a large golden bag in his hands. No, Abe realized, not a golden bag—it was a gallon Ziploc filled with rows and rows of yellow-gold cranes, their upraised wings forming a chain of shining Vs. They were so completely identical it took Abe a second to remember that Mihashi had chosen the yellow origami paper and realize that somehow his spastic, scatterbrained pitcher and his eternally twitchy hands were responsible for a hundred perfect cranes. Part of him wanted to be irritated, but he was too damn impressed.

"You made these?" he couldn't stop himself from asking, turning the bag gently over. Mihashi nodded so hard Abe worried he'd give himself whiplash. He dropped to his knees next to Abe and dragged the tortured piece of paper back to their side of the table, sneaking quick glances at his partner as his hands whipped through the first few folds.

"You start, um…like this, and then, once there's the legs—"

"Wait, wait," Abe broke in, dropping a hand onto Mihashi's wrist and sort of wishing that small touch wasn't so startling the other boy banged his knee into the table. "Slow down. Let me get another piece of paper…"

Abe wasn't really a visual learner, but there was no way Mihashi, who still couldn't verbalize what he wanted for dinner half the time, was going to talk him through the process—so Abe just did his best to follow along, guessing at the folds when he fell behind. He lost a few important steps staring at his pitcher's face, marveling at how peaceful he seemed like this, the hands that always jerked and fidgeted at his side suddenly calm, focused into smooth, practiced motions. It reminded him of how Mihashi looked standing on the mound, every muscle and sinew in his body tuned, for once, to the same frequency. He always thought it was kind of amazing to watch, and so was this, a little smile crossing Mihashi's face like a sliver of sun through the storm as he held up the finished crane, peering at Abe over the midnight-blue wings.

"See?"

Abe looked down at his own crane, which looked almost like Mihashi's except it had two tails and no head. Apparently his wandering attention had caused a genetic mutation. He held it up anyway, if only for the pleasure of watching Mihashi squirm in his seat as he tried to swallow a laugh.

"Um! That's…I can fix it!"

Abe leaned into his empty hand, studying his pitcher's thoughtful expression for a moment before he leaned in a few inches and bumped their shoulders together. "You're incredible. How are you so good at this?"

Mihashi's cheeks got a little pink, the way they always did when Abe threw him a compliment. He ducked his head over the poor mutilated crane, soft bangs falling into his eyes. "Mm…well…that's 'cause…before…" Abe just looked at him, trying not to smile at Mihashi's darkening flush as he took a deep breath and tried again. "Um…when I was little, my dad—well, he still travels a lot, but then it was mostly planes. I used to be scared about him, like…crashing. So Mom showed me…we made good-luck cranes to fly with him—because, ah, you know…the wings…"

"Oh," Abe said.

He meant to say more than that, but he was a little stunned—not because that was like a nine-hour filibuster compared to how much Mihashi usually talked, but because he was sort of bowled over by the mental picture of a tiny Mihashi bent over this same low table, anxious little fingers churning out dozens and dozens of cranes. There was an odd feeling in his stomach, like he wanted to comfort whatever part of Mihashi was still that little boy, promise him his father was going to make it home—which he obviously had, made it back to leave again, to buy a gigantic green sweater at some discount kiosk. Abe tried to shove the image out of his head, rooted around for something else to say.

"That's…that's really sweet, Mihashi," he finally managed, hoping after the fact that Mihashi wouldn't feel too weird about it. Abe didn't know that many people that sweet really worked for, but with Mihashi, it just seemed to fit.

The tips of his pitcher's ears went red, but he didn't look mad.

"H-here." Mihashi set the restored crane down and pushed it gingerly forward until it rested next to his, two sets of dusky wings lifted in salute. Abe picked it up and ran his thumb along one of the seams as he offered Mihashi a little smile.

"Thanks. I'm not sure how I'll get through the rest without you, but at least there'll be two good ones in the flock."

"I could help!" Mihashi blurted out, shrinking down in his seat as if embarrassed by his own outburst. "More, I mean. I could help more."

Abe shook his head. "I appreciate it, seriously. But I can't make you do that. If they're too perfect, Momoe will know something's up. Besides, we're supposed to be doing geometry, remember?"

Mihashi's shoulders slumped—because he was that bummed about geometry or because he was really that gung-ho to work on the cranes, Abe couldn't decide. The pitcher braced one gentle finger on the tail of his first crane and steered it in a small circle, peering up at Abe through his disheveled bangs.

"But I could just…help you get started," he tried after a long moment of silence, sounding halfway between hopeful and miserable—and somehow, even though slacking was against his nature and he knew they'd both suffer for it tomorrow, as he stared back into those wide, eager eyes all Abe could do was fold like a lawn chair, or maybe an imperfect paper crane.

He sighed, nudging the stack of origami paper in between them. "Yeah…I guess that'd be okay. Just a couple, though. Thanks," he added as an afterthought.

Mihashi's smile was so bright for a second Abe thought the light bulb had burst.

Two more cranes in, Abe decided he had no future as a decorative paper engineer. His new creations were basically crane-shaped, but they remained undeniably lumpy and off-kilter, like they'd been squashed in somebody's pocket. Mihashi, on the other hand, was six deep in museum-quality specimens, his fingers absolutely flying. Since Mihashi was leaving him in the dust anyway, Abe set his half-finished crane down and just watched his partner for a minute, sort of spellbound by the rapt concentration on Mihashi's face, the way he threw himself into even this mundane activity like…like he was still trying to prove himself, like he was still worried all this could be taken away from him.

Abe frowned, annoyed with the sour turn that thought had taken. Mihashi had to know him better than that by now—had to know Abe wouldn't trade him for Nolan Ryan, that Mihashi was the only person he could ever imagine sitting shoulder to shoulder with while the rain lashed the windows, lethargic and perfectly content to spend the afternoon right here, feeling the eleventh crane take shape in the soft movement of Mihashi's elbow brushing his. Even off the field, in the little moments, sometimes Abe got the feeling he could spend the rest of his life like this and not regret it. And then, since he felt a little weird about that, he flipped his unfinished crane over and set about lightening his mood transforming it into the bogart of all elementary-school classrooms, a snub-nosed paper airplane.

It was a little stunted compared to the ones he remembered, probably lacking in the aerodynamics department, but it definitely had enough lift to cover the twelve inches between his hand and his target, the side of Mihashi's head—and then, unfortunately, to plow into Mihashi's face when he turned at just the wrong moment for the plane to bean him between the eyes. Mihashi squawked and went cross-eyed and flailed at his face, and the plane fell harmlessly to the table, leaving the members of the Nishiura battery staring at each other with shocked eyes. Abe felt his cheeks heating up, suddenly at a complete loss as to what he'd been thinking.

"Ah…sorry…I was just…"

Luckily, he was spared having to figure out just what he was, because before he could even get himself coherent again Mihashi broke into a smile so wide it had to hurt his cheeks, his whole face beaming like he was delighted to have been pegged in the head by a paper airplane. But the smile wasn't half so surprising to Abe as the flurry of motion that followed it—his pitcher's hand closed around the plane and whipped it at him so fast he barely had time to duck, staring after it in shock as the stalwart Blue Angel soared into his pegboard. There was a moment where he and Mihashi stared at each other with their hearts kicking up, confirming that they were actually about to do this—then Abe scrambled for the plane and Mihashi dove at the stack of origami paper, churning out two more before Abe even turned around, missile in hand.

Abe wasn't sure how many airplanes they had in the air by the end of it. At least one got crushed under his heel in the fray, and they lost another when it dove for cover under the bed, lurking amid lost socks and a baker's dozen of dirty baseballs. He hadn't had a paper airplane fight since probably second grade, but he couldn't even remember that to care—all his attention was on Mihashi, the blinding smile he shot at Abe over his shoulder as he swerved around the table, the way he shrieked when his socked feet slipped and Abe's plane got him in the back of the neck. It was probably a good thing Mihashi's mom wasn't home to wonder about the pounding footsteps and wild laughter coming from the upstairs bedroom. They almost screeched to a halt when Mihashi, fumbling for a plane in the ocean of his sheets, grabbed a pillow on accident and nailed Abe in the face with it—but Abe had a younger brother and he was used to shaking things like that off. He tackled Mihashi around the waist before the shimmer in his eyes could turn into tears, taking them both down onto the bed.

Wrestling with Mihashi wasn't quite like he remembered from recess in elementary school. Mihashi gave up fast, faster even than Shun the last time Abe lost his temper and had to take his little brother to the mat, and almost at once Abe's focus switched from pinning to tickling, his callused fingers digging into the soft skin under Mihashi's ribs. He hadn't tickled anybody in like eight years, probably since the last time he made a paper airplane, but it felt so good to stare down at Mihashi and watch him laugh that Abe couldn't help himself, didn't stop until there were tears in the corners of Mihashi's eyes and they were both out of breath, panting into the distant sound of the rain.

Abe braced himself on one elbow and pushed up until he was suspended over his partner, smiling down at the mess of uneven sleeves and tousled strawberry-blond hair that Mihashi had become. He had a feeling he didn't look any better, could feel his damp hair sticking up on one side where he'd been boxed by the pillow. At first he thought that was why Mihashi had one hand pressed over his mouth, muffling a laugh at his expense—but when he peeled back those long, pale fingers, all he found underneath was a shy smile, the kind that always made something in him burn. Abe smiled back, leaned down to bump his forehead against Mihashi's without really wondering why. Then he rolled off and stood, offering the other boy his hand.

"Come on. Let's round up the planes—you can help me fix the one I stepped on, at least. Then we should probably get back to work."

Mihashi didn't protest this time, threading his fingers through Abe's and sliding down from the bed—and yeah, it was a little harder to collect the paper airplanes with their hands wound together, but if Mihashi didn't feel like letting go, Abe wasn't going to, either.

It wasn't until he got home late and cracked open his science textbook that he found the small golden crane snuck inside the front cover, the crisp lines shimmering when he cupped it in the crater of his palm. Abe stared at it for a long time before slipping it into the pocket of his jeans and going back to his homework, fighting a persistent quirk at the corners of his lips.

Whatever flak they'd catch Monday for showing up with a few substitute cranes, it was worth it for this—the memory tucked like a secret into his back pocket, and the knowledge that he had been the one to make Mihashi smile like that, the sun through the eye of the storm.

He fell asleep with the crane on his nightstand and never heard the rain.