"Aah, that was a great movie!" Momoshiro linked his hands behind his head and beamed up at the sky. Even with the overhead lights, the stars were very bright.
"It was scary, nya." Eiji-senpai peered back over his shoulder, eyes still wide under his cat-ear hat. "When that green thing jumped out at the girl � and when they took over that guy�"
"I'm surprised you noticed, Eiji." Fuji-senpai said softly; his voice carried back over the snow.
"Fuji!" Oishi-senpai sounded like he was blushing, but all Momo could see was his hat and scarf disappearing into the collar of his coat. They'd been sitting behind him in the cinema� heh. Nothing new there, nothing new at all.
"Should've stayed at the lodge," Mamushi was muttering on the other side of Inui-senpai. He'd screamed like a girl when the green things had first appeared, and Momo was going to treasure that memory for the rest of his life.
"Scared, Mamushi?" The bastard still seemed kind of jumpy, and he'd probably have gone for Momo if Inui-senpai hadn't been in the way.
"You-!"
"I suggest we return to the lodge as soon as possible. The air temperature is below zero and falling rapidly." Probably Inui-senpai wanted to write up all his new data, too, Momo thought with a grin. Everyone but Fuji-senpai had jumped a foot off their seats at least once. Pity Echizen hadn't come along, because that would've been funny to watch. Then again, he'd probably just have slept through it; he'd been nodding off in the onsen earlier.
Their lodge was the third along the road from the ski centre, backing onto the path to the springs. Momo could feel the welcome heat as soon as Oishi-senpai opened the door, and crowded forward into the vestibule with everyone else, stamping snow off his boots and fumbling at the fastenings of his coat with gloved, half-numb fingers. There was little enough space that he was shoved right up against Mamushi, who looked like he'd been sucking lemons. Nothing new there either. Bastard.
"Fujiii, what are you doing?" Eiji-senpai's loud complaint made him abandon his half-formed plan to manoeuvre an elbow into the stupid snake's gut.
"Shh."
Momo frowned; Fuji-senpai had the inner door cracked open and was peering around it with a secretive smirk.
"What's the hold-up?" Oishi-senpai didn�t sound particularly happy; he was squashed against the other wall. "Let's all get back into the warm."
"Hmm. Interesting." Somehow, Inui-senpai had managed to squirm through to the front, and was looking over Fuji's head.
"What? Hoi, somebody move! I want to see too!"
"Hush, or you'll wake him."
"Wake who?" Momo began, curious now, but Fuji-senpai had slid the door open and stepped silently into the main room. Momo sighed in relief as Mamushi stepped away, then choked on it. Tezuka-buchou was sitting on the couch in front of the fire, nose in a book as usual, and still wearing his yukata from the onsen. The fact that Echizen was leaning against his shoulder, fast asleep and in his pyjamas, didn't appear to be bothering him at all.
"Whoa." That was new, that was definitely new. Heh� Momo felt his face split into a wide grin; he was going to tease Echizen about this for weeks. The little brat still denied having fallen asleep on Momo on the way back from Nationals in middle school.
"Maybe Tezuka got taken over by aliens, nya," Eiji-senpai whispered, looking more than a little freaked out.
"Eiji," Oishi-senpai protested, just as Tezuka-buchou looked up from his book.
"What?" His voice was as bland as ever, but Momo could feel in his bones that a lack of courts would not be an impediment to laps. From the looks on their faces, everyone else was thinking the same thing. Well, except Fuji-senpai, anyway, who was wearing his usual expression of happy innocence, and why was Momo feeling like he was the one who'd been caught out at something?
"Ah, nothing." Oishi-senpai rubbed the back of his head, looking embarrassed as the rest of the team seemed to suddenly realise that they had urgent business elsewhere. "He must have been really sleepy from the onsen�"
"Aa." Tezuka-buchou looked down at the sleeping Echizen for a moment, as inscrutable as ever, then went back to his book as though nothing was out of the ordinary. Momo hesitated in the kitchen doorway as Oishi-senpai sighed and wandered off to the room he shared with his partner, torn between the call of his stomach and the amusement factor of watching Echizen wake up and realise who he was using for a pillow. They'd had pizza before the movie, but that was hours ago�
His stomach won out. He was fixing himself an omelette under Eiji-senpai's enthusiastic directions when Echizen padded barefoot and bleary-eyed into the kitchen in search of tea.
"Senpai. When did everyone get back?"
"Just now, just now." Eiji-senpai hopped down from the countertop, exchanging grins with Momo. "We saaaaw, you, nya�"
"Huh?" Echizen shook the kettle, then peered inside. "What are you talking about, senpai?"
"You were sleeping on buchou." Momo sprinkled some mushrooms onto his omelette, then a few more for luck� and then the rest since there were only a few left.
"Oh." Echizen rubbed his eyes with one hand, carrying the kettle over to the sink. "So?"
Momo blinked. That wasn't right, that wasn't right at all. Echizen was usually even more fun to embarrass than the snake bastard.
"Bah, Ochibi, you're boring." Eiji-senpai pouted, coming over to poke at Momo's omelette with a spatula. "That's almost done, nya."
"Maybe he got abducted by aliens too," Momo whispered behind his hand, snickering as Echizen turned and blinked at him.
"Momo-senpai, you're weird." Echizen yawned, poking at the kettle in search off the on switch. But he was smirking, too, in a way that Momo couldn't read. "And your food's burning."