Title: Difference Between Now and Then
Summary: Ryoma is very perceptive.

There's a large Regular's jersey hanging off his scrawny frame. The sleeves engulf his hands and fall down to his thighs, an arm is draped casually around his stiff shoulders, and Tezuka is frowning with discomfort. Ryoma's eyes follow the tanned limb and recognizes the round shades perched on the straight nose belonging to Tezuka's old captain. He can't recall his name. Yamada, Yamaha? Ryoma's brows furrow. Yamamoto? Deeming the name unimportant because he can't recall it properly, Ryoma's gaze flickers back to Tezuka in the photograph.

Though he's extremely short — probably the same height, if not only an inch or two taller than Ryoma at that age — and his eyes eerily bigger, there's no doubt that this is Tezuka the first year staring back at him.

Ryoma can't reconcile the young face looking at him with his tall impressionable captain, not completely anyway. Something isn't quite right.

He twists around on his foot to look into the open kitchen. Standing behind the counter, wearing a gaudy apron while chopping up the carrots, is Tezuka. Ryoma makes a face before he devotes his complete attention to Tezuka's features. His face is longer, fuller, the bones of his cheeks more refined, his eyes narrower and his hair—

Ryoma swivels around on his foot again to look at the photograph.

"You're part's different," Ryoma says.

The rhythmic sound of a blade against wood is disrupted when Tezuka glances up and sees Ryoma staring pointedly at his head from over his shoulder. His eyes move upwards to look at the underside of what he can see of his fringe. Tezuka blinks. Ryoma's talking about his hair then.

His gaze returns to Ryoma and he nods slowly. "Yes."

Ryoma stares at him for a good while, before drifting noticeably down to his arm. Then he says, "Che."

Tezuka feels momentarily self-conscious with Ryoma's dismissal and wonders what's going on through Ryoma's mind. When the younger boy moves onto the next picture on the wall, Tezuka ignores the rising curiosity and continues chopping up the rest of the vegetables.

Tezuka thinks nothing of it until he switches to the plastic chopping board to slice up the meat. A sudden sense of nostalgia sets in and a memory rises to the forefront of his mind too late. He glances quickly to Ryoma who's perusing through a magazine on the coffee table.

"You—" He stops speaking when Ryoma's golden stare lands on him, watching him with disinterest. Tezuka can see something gleaming in his eyes, the understanding, knowing look that says so much of what Ryoma's never willing to say.

"Never mind," he ends instead, focusing his attention back on cooking dinner.

No one has ever picked up on it before. Not Inui or Fuji or Kikumaru — not even Yamato. When he first switched it back Oishi had commented on it, but must have dismissed it from his mind immediately when he thought Tezuka just liked to change his hairstyle just as often as Oishi did.

But Ryoma, with a single glance at his pictures, Tezuka knows he's figured it out.

He smiles when he adds the vegetables to the boiling water, and notices it too when Ryoma smiles back, a small upwards curl at the edge of his lips as he flops down onto the coach and closes his eyes for a short nap.

"Set up the table before you go to sleep."

Ryoma doesn't, and Tezuka finds he doesn't mind.

For pictorial evidence (and uh, clarification) go here: ka0richan(dot)livejournal(dot)com/52007(dot)html#cutid2

Granted, Sinnatious' theory makes much more sense than mine, if you scroll down to her comment.