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palmettoes · 5 years

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Aaron/Katelyn 61

(hehe this has only been sitting in my inbox for uhh 6 months i am so sorry! anyway !!!! never written aaron/katelyn before !!! also haven’t written m/f fanfiction since i was 13 but i love these kids thanks for giving me a reason to make up katelyn’s whole backstory)

disclaimer: if ur pro inc*st u are legally not allowed to touch anything i write

read it on ao3! | prompts are closed :(

61. “I told you not to fall in love with me.”

Katelyn, eight years old, loses her mother to white lights and hospital beds. It’s preventable, low mortality rate, chance of survival looks hopeful. Katelyn knows this because she looks it up on her dad’s old box computer when he’s working late one night, her older brother playing outdated records too loudly to notice her disappearing into their father’s private study. Katelyn knows this because the doctors tell her so—not in so many words, because she’s eight, but enough that she knows they are optimistic about the results.

Katelyn, eight years old, wonders why doctors can juggle something so fragile as a life playfully among them and lie through their teeth when they catch the corner of an eye.

Katelyn, eighteen years old, is determined not to be like other doctors. Getting into biochemistry at university feels like winning the sprint but losing the marathon. Her professors crack down on the workload immediately, adamant that medicine is not for those who do not want to be there. And Katelyn wants to be there, maybe more than anyone else, but life has already dealt her so much weight and Katelyn is fast running out of strength to lift these stooped shoulders.

She tries out for the Vixens, Palmetto’s cheerleading team, mostly because her roommate, Marissa, waxes poetic about the nights she’ll spend huddled between football players in one of the downtown bars, and Katelyn figures she could do with the extracurricular.

(The exy team does not factor into her decision, but gossip travels far and fast and the idea of standing in close quarters to them puts her on edge for reasons that can only be explained through hollow whispers and stolen glances behind their backs.)

The Vixens are a rough and tumble team, from the figure eight pattern of cigarette burns on Marissa’s forearm, to the handful of Zoloft Anaïs throws up in her dorm toilet during Freshers’ Week, to the way Billie sleeps with their chin tucked over their shoulder so they can watch their own back. Katelyn is just scraping this side of nineteen, knows the weight of Prozac on her tongue better than that of a meal, and cannot remember the last time her father looked at her without looking right through her. Inexorably, Palmetto State University feels like home.

“How about that backliner though? He’s a tall, dark stranger I’d welcome into my crystal ball,” Marissa says, shaking her pom pom in Anaïs’ face as they stumble towards the bus the night after Palmetto’s first exy game of the season. Anaïs bats Marissa’s arm away, switching her duffel to her other shoulder to put an extra distance between them.

“Didn’t notice. It’s their offensive dealer that I was paying attention to.”

“Their captain.” (It sounds like an innuendo but almost everything does coming out of Marissa’s mouth.) “Anyway, I heard from Mick on the football team that Ainsley told Prati that Mia sits with two of the exy players at lunch on Tuesdays and apparently Mr Tall and Dark is hitting it with the captain. Isn’t that a sandwich you’d love to get between?”

“Not particularly.”

“Boo, you whore.”

Marissa shakes her pom pom again and Anaïs’ shove gains force.

“Don’t boo me because I’m gay.”

Billie taps Katelyn’s elbow and rolls their eyes at the other two, sweeping an arm out to offer Katelyn to climb ahead of them onto the bus. Katelyn hitches her duffel a little higher and climbs the steps. Anaïs likes the seat over the wheel so Katelyn chooses the row in front, tucking her bag under her seat so Billie can settle next to her. Anaïs and Marissa scramble in behind them, still bickering over the attraction of various exy players. Katelyn glances out the window and catches sight of an orange and white gaggle making their way to the other PSU bus parked outside Breckenridge stadium. Mr Tall and Dark backliner is holding hands with the captain but chatting to a lanky boy with a frown too many shades short of pleasant. Most of the Foxes move as a unit, a crowd collected behind their coach, but several steps and a whole chasm behind them trails the remainder of the team.

Katelyn recognises assistant coach Kevin Day because, as strong as her distaste for the sport, she grew up this side of the turn of the century. She doesn’t think she could miss Kevin Day if she tried. He is flanked by two identical blond men and an emphatic, dark-skinned man a head or so above the other two. Katelyn had watched one of the twins block the goal all night with a ferocity like he was exercising a personal vendetta against the ball, seen the other punch an opposing striker square in the jaw seemingly unprovoked. She shudders, remembering the rumours she’d heard whispered about the exy team and, for the first time, believing them. She turns away from the window and bumps Billie’s shoulder with her own, pushing blond hair and murderous glares from her mind.

The thing is, Katelyn has no reason to engage with the exy team. She cheers at their games and catches glimpses of them between stadium and parking lot, but she doesn’t learn their names or dance with them at college parties the way she does with the football team.

The thing is, Katelyn’s hands are full enough already. She is unofficially deemed in charge of the first year Vixens—some combination of the fact that Marissa listens when Katelyn tells her to shut up, and Anaïs trusts her enough to press a pill bottle into her hand after her second overdose in as many weeks, and Billie talks to her more than anyone because Katelyn is the only one who speaks ASL. Katelyn finds she doesn’t mind it. The constant demand for attention makes a welcome difference to the stony silence of her family home. With homework, cheerleading, and three new best friends keeping her busy, Katelyn barely has time to dwell on the hollow feeling that has been cutting her chest open for the past decade.

The thing is, the short blond boy from the exy team is hard to miss. (Well, one of them is anyway.) Katelyn figures out he’s the backliner, the one she saw punching that striker from Breckenridge, and not the one that sticks to Kevin Day like glue, or a prickly burr. He crops up in her biochem lectures, at her favourite campus café, tucked behind a bookshelf at the library across from her and Billie’s usual study spot. He is always accompanied by at least one of his little posse, usually the noisy one, except during their shared lectures. Katelyn finds herself seeking him out when she enters the room and, more often than not, she catches him blinking back at her.

They’re two thirds through their first quarter by the time she learns his name. He stops by her desk on the way out of the lecture hall, causing her notebook to slip out of her hand in surprise. He kneels to pick it up for her and doesn’t smile, but there’s a friendliness to his eyes that Katelyn has never seen before.

“Katelyn, right?” he asks. Katelyn has no idea how he knows this but she nods instead of questioning it. “Aaron. Did you get notes on Voltolini’s lecture this week? I missed it.”

She’s so caught out by the disruption to their routine, by the brittle edge to his voice that she hadn’t expected, by the abrupt introduction to the quarter-long suspense of wondering his name, that she almost forgets to answer. When she realises she’s been staring at him for coming on ten seconds, she shakes it out of her system and finishes zipping up her backpack.

“Oh. Yeah, did you want to borrow them? Or,” she swings the strap of her backpack over her shoulder and steps towards the door, Aaron falling into pace beside her, “we could go over them together?”

He is quiet for a moment, as if the question requires extensive thought. Katelyn wonders briefly if she should be offended by his lack of immediate interest, but decides she finds it endearing that the authenticity of his response matters so much to him.

“At the library?” he offers. “I have a study period now.”

“Sure,” she says. She’d been headed that way to meet Billie anyway and doesn’t suppose they’ll mind the small intrusion.

“So how come you missed the lecture?” she asks when it becomes apparent their trek to the library will remain otherwise silent.

“Andrew,” Aaron says vaguely, waving his hand as though this is sufficient enough an explanation. When Katelyn doesn’t look convinced, he adds, “My brother. You’ve seen him?”

She nods, not totally understanding but realising it’s personal enough that she doesn’t want to pry.

Billie is already sitting at their table when Katelyn arrives, Aaron in tow. They have printouts of various articles spread across the desk and a focused frown on their face, but they look up when Katelyn and Aaron stop in front of them.

“Aaron, this is Billie. Billie, Aaron. From the exy team.”

Billie waves at Aaron, then pierces Katelyn with their gaze, tilting their head slightly in Aaron’s direction.

“Do you speak ASL?” Katelyn asks him as she pulls out a chair and begins unpacking her bag. Aaron settles into the seat next to her, tapping the tabletop anxiously.

“No. Was that in the lecture?”

“No, no, of course not. Don’t worry about it.” Katelyn laughs lightly and makes eye contact with Billie.

“Since when do we hang out with exy players?” they sign, eyes flicking to Aaron.

“He’s borrowing some notes. What’s wrong with being friendly?” she signs back. Billie shrugs and turns back to their articles. Katelyn flicks open her notebook and grins at Aaron.

“Let’s do this,” she says. His responding smile is small and fleeting but Katelyn catches the hard upturn of his lips and her skin tingles all over.

Aaron falls easily into place among Katelyn’s friends. He becomes a regular at their study sessions, reading notes over Katelyn’s shoulder or catching her eye across the table with that same smile like a secret that hurts his throat on the way up. He never brings any of his teammates, but Katelyn can’t complain. Study Aaron and Exy Aaron, she decides, are two sides of the same coin. He’s softer around her and her friends, all secret smiles and nervous tapping. She can’t imagine Study Aaron punching anyone in the face.

He spills into her other routines intrinsically. She stops making excuses to invite him out for coffee or to lunch or on a walk around the campus green when she’s feeling antsy. She struggles to remember a time when the sight of him intimidated her, when she believed the rumours turning the air sour at his heels wherever he walked.

Katie he calls her from across the hall to grab her attention, and Kate when he talks about her to her friends, and K (intimate and familiar and warm in her chest) over text. Katie-Lyn he teases when they’re alone on one of their walks and he relaxes enough that his smile stops looking like barbed wire. She laughs and elbows him and writes Double-A-Ron on the back of folded notes they pass between them during lectures.

Katelyn doesn’t engage with the exy team, but every rule has its exceptions and Aaron is hers. Brilliant, beautiful Aaron, who keeps his smiles a secret and his family a mystery and who holds her gaze across a crowded hallway like it is the most fragile of things.

They never call it dating, though Katelyn suspects that might be what it is. She hardly qualifies as an expert but the shared lunches and secret notes and blushing eye contact feel too reminiscent of her high school girlfriend to be anything else. (She asks Billie, once, if they think Aaron thinks they’re a couple and they roll their eyes and wave her off. She cannot bring herself to put up with Marissa’s crowing long enough to ask for another opinion.) So it’s hard to say where he falls in the categories of her relationships, but when she invites him out for dinner he doesn’t say no and, though she doesn’t call it a date, it doesn’t feel platonic.

They go to an Italian restaurant on campus, partly because Katelyn figures everyone likes pizza and partly because Marissa says the sundae for two is a date-saver. (Not that Katelyn likes to think their sort-of-date will need saving, but it’s always nice to be prepared.) And she’s right, because Aaron does like pizza and the sundae is delicious and the date doesn’t need saving. Until it does.

“I had to beg Nicky to cover for me tonight,” Aaron is saying, no trace of the curl Katelyn has come to search for at the corner of his lips. “He doesn’t like disrupting the balance.”

Katelyn isn’t sure she follows but she doesn’t have to ask to know the only explanation she’ll get is Andrew. His name is the answer to every question, no matter how she phrases it. His name is the flat line of Aaron’s mouth and the fierce swing of his uppercut. His name is the undeniable truth behind the rumours that tail Aaron wherever he goes.

“We can’t do this,” Aaron says and the ice cream turns to dust in Katelyn’s mouth. She thinks bitterly that at least she can prove Marissa wrong; no sundae for two is saving this date.

“Do what?” she asks and her voice is too small for her mouth. She is eight years old and Aaron is the doctor dangling hope too far out of her reach.

“You, me, us,” he says, frustrated and lonely and scared all at once. “You can’t fall in love with me.”

It aches in more ways than she could have known it would. Because how do you predict the outcome when you’re missing the beginning? How do you prepare for the fallout when you aren’t part of the equation? When you’re just collateral damage?

“Says who?” Katelyn asks, and then, “Andrew” in unison with Aaron because, of course. Because, who else?

Aaron’s cheek dimples between his teeth and he lets his spoon clang against the rim of their shared bowl. Katelyn pushes hers through the half-melted ice cream, appetite fast disappearing. She wants to demand answers or argue the absurdity of their situation or maybe just cry. Instead, she folds.

“Okay,” she says.

“Okay?”

“I get it. It’s okay.”

She doesn’t get it, but Aaron looks at her like she’s handing him the moon so she breathes through her nose, counts to five, and offers him a shaky smile. Moulding herself into the shapes other people need her to be is Katelyn’s specialty. She grew up a chameleon in order to survive. This is no different to her father looking at her like he needed a clinically detached housemaid more than he needed a daughter mourning the loss of her mother.

“Ready to call it a night?” she says, because there is something irreparable in the air between them.

“I’ll walk you back,” Aaron agrees.

They say goodnight outside Katelyn’s dorm building, but what they mean is goodbye. What they mean is this is it. What they mean is we had a good thing and neither of us are good enough people to deserve that.

Katelyn, nineteen-and-three-quarter years old, watches hope shatter in all too familiar shards.

They never called it dating, so they don’t call it a break up, but that’s what it feels like. It is broken where Katelyn can’t reach to fix it because she does not know what fractured it to begin with. There is a week between Katelyn’s return home for the holidays and her brother’s scheduled time off, during which the silence of her childhood home sits heavy on her shoulders. She passes the time under a mound of blankets, drowning out her father’s refusal to acknowledge her with television static.

When Antoni returns, so does the life slowly trickling out of the air. He wields noise like a blade to the abrasive reticence of their home, and goads Katelyn out of bed to help him make potato fritters.

“Chiquita, college has made you so mopey,” he says, watching her instead of the eggs he’s whisking. Katelyn slices onions and pretends they are the only reason her eyes sting.

“More like being in this house makes me mopey. College keeps me too busy for that.”

Antoni hums, and watches her, and whisks his eggs.

“And how is college? Top of your class yet?”

Katelyn rolls her eyes but tells him about her lectures and her friends and her cheer practice. She finishes with the onions and starts combining the second bowl of mixture while Antoni scoops the first into misshapen ovals. When the fritters are under the grill and Katelyn’s eyes have stopped stinging altogether, Antoni pours them each a glass of iced tea and leans across the kitchen island to smile at her.

“So has the little Vixen caught a Fox yet?” He pauses to consider her a moment. “Or another Vixen perhaps?”

Katelyn sucks in a breath but doesn’t answer the question, and the silence rings deafening in her ears. She tells her brother everything but she cannot tell him this. (They never called it dating. There is nothing to tell anyway.)

“Oh, Kitty-Kat. Come here,” Antoni says. He doesn’t wait for her to move, instead rounding the island to wrap his arms around her from behind. She leans her head against his bicep, turning so her face is mashed into his woolen jumper, and closes her eyes. They stay like that, his chest to her back and his chin against her crown, for as long as it takes her to stop holding air in her chest until she’s gasping and shaky. She doesn’t cry, but her throat feels raw enough that she could have.

“Ant,” Katelyn whispers, her voice shaking on the vowel, “do you think I’m broken?”

“Of course you’re not.” His arms tighten a fraction around her shoulders. “Why would you think that?”

“It feels like everything I touch shatters.”

She thinks of her mother’s life splintering to pieces in Katelyn’s eight year old hands, of her father’s voice splitting in two and washing away whenever he tried to speak to her, of Aaron’s face contorting as their date cracked and caved around them. She feels like a fractured bone, cleft down the middle, never whole as she is.

Antoni lets out a soft breath against her hair and presses a kiss to the curve of her skull.

“No, chiquita,” he says, “you’re not broken. The world is.”

Returning to Palmetto is easier than Katelyn expects it to be. Antoni only has three weeks leave, so Katelyn spends the last month of vacation alone with her father. She is almost ready to welcome the noise and clutter of her college dorm.

Returning to the Vixens is more of a homecoming than entering her family house. As sophomores, they’re expected to throw themselves both into their own practice and that of the freshmen, and Katelyn and Marissa’s room becomes something of a communal ground for the first and second years. Katelyn doesn’t mind so much, because it takes her thoughts off the scowl she hasn’t seen leave Aaron’s face since they returned from break.

She watches the exy team walk to and from the stadium on game nights, their divide in half somehow having become thirds, until she realises the centre group is actually a solitary affair: a dark-haired, rabbit-eyed boy curled in on himself, alone in the rift between his teammates. She focuses on him because it stops her gaze from betraying her resolve and straying to where Aaron walks several paces behind.

And it almost lasts; this painstaking stalemate, this mutual ignorance. Katelyn sits with her back to his table in the library and Aaron walks past her without pausing on the way out of their lecture theatre. It almost stops feeling like a bruise underneath her skin.

But somehow he trickles back into her life as easily as he did once before. Katelyn finds she can smile at him when they pass each other on campus and she can make eye contact when she waves his teammates onto the court during games. She remembers the way he cupped her name in the curl of his tongue as if it were reverent and fragile as glass. She remembers how he held her gaze like he was trying to keep her afloat, and how he saved his smiles to share in the privacy of her company. She remembers he did not build the wall between them, only said he wouldn’t climb it, and she can’t blame him for resting his weary hands.

So when she misses her morning lecture because Marissa woke with a bad taste in her mouth and a tremor in her hands, Katelyn catches Aaron on his way to the library, a hand in his path and a question in her eyes.

“I had to skip this morning. Do you mind sharing notes?” It’s a surrender of sorts, an end to their face-off. Aaron made the first move all those months ago, so this time Katelyn dresses in white armour and guides her pawn forward. They have come full circle.

Aaron’s smile is slow, a tentative curl that crawls quietly up his face, and Katelyn realises for the first time how much she has missed seeing it bloom for her.

“I’m headed to the library now if you’ve got time,” he says. The words are marrow filling the cracks of Katelyn’s broken bone and she feels herself coming together as their steps line up with one another.

It’s easier, after their not-breakup, to build their routine around honesty. Andrew is still an answer, but this time one that comes served with an explanation. Katelyn still doesn’t get it, doesn’t understand the chokehold that Aaron calls family, but she respects it. After all, she isn’t in a position to point fingers at dysfunctional.

They confine their dates to the library café and the medicine building, avoiding places that Aaron’s family are likely to haunt. And it isn’t perfect, it isn’t textbook romance, but for the first time it is something whole that Katelyn cradles to her chest and it does not shatter on impact.

When Aaron leaves for a weekend and comes home a broken man—brotherless, breathless, hands a bruised and bloodied mess—Katelyn does what she has always done best and builds him back together with her own chipped pieces. She fights his nightmares with nothing but her fists and takes his hands in her own when he cannot look at them without seeing blood beneath his fingernails. She does what she can but she is still just collateral, she is still on the outside looking in on a rupture that happened long before she became a spectator. There is still a tear that Katelyn does not know how to stitch up.

(The dark-haired, rabbit-eyed boy is called Neil and his hair isn’t actually quite so dark and he is fixing the broken parts Katelyn can’t reach and when he says Andrew’s name it sounds like a question, not an answer.)

Getting Aaron back is the gift Katelyn doesn’t think she deserves. Cutting him off feels like shattering her own hope. She watches the pieces slide between her fingers, shoves the remnants deep where she can’t cut herself on their serrated edges, and tries not to think of the way Aaron’s face split apart when she told him Andrew was the answer to a question he did not ask.

She tells Billie, late one night as they pass a bottle of Marissa’s claret between them from opposite ends of the couch, that she doesn’t know if she’ll be whole again. It is a vulnerability that no one but Antoni ever sees, but Katelyn is wine-drunk and fractured, too disheartened to care that her misery has an audience.

“Why not?” Billie says, holding the bottle between their knees to free up their hands. “You were whole before him. He didn’t take anything you can’t replace.”

“He was the first thing I had that I thought I could hold on to.” Katelyn’s hands falter as the weight of her honesty hits her. She doesn’t know who she is when she isn’t fixing other people and Aaron is a fissure that is out of her hands. “What’s the point if I can’t keep anything without breaking it?”

“You have us. You have the team. You have a career path you’re good at and a hobby you love. You have a brother who adores you and you have Marissa and Anaïs and me. You are whole on your own but you’re part of bigger things too. He’ll come back to you or he won’t and either way you’ll still be the person you always have been.”

It doesn’t seem appropriate to cry, but Katelyn is wine-drunk and fractured, so she does anyway. Billie hooks their ankle around hers on the couch between them and knocks the claret bottle against her knee. Katelyn alternates between drinking and sobbing, and loses the rest of the night to the breaking of her heart.

Aaron comes back to her piece by broken piece. He shows up at her dorm with his pain a palpable weight in his hands and tells her he’s trying, he’s breaking faster than he can put himself together but he’s trying. And Katelyn knows a thing or two about falling apart.

They pour their fragments into one another in Katelyn’s bed because Marissa is out with some of the older Vixens and they both know better than to waste an empty dorm room. Later, with his back to Katelyn’s chest and his legs slid between either of hers, Aaron finds the parts of his voice he has been missing.

“You were the first beautiful thing I ever called mine,” he says and Katelyn remembers midnight with Billie, remembers the saccharine claret slipping down her throat, remembers thinking Aaron was the first thing she could ever keep whole. “I won’t lose you for him.”

Katelyn slides her hand across the bare expanse of his stomach, presses her face into the base of his neck, and breathes and breathes and breathes.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she says, and means it.

They patch themselves up in tandem—Aaron knits one, Katelyn purls two—and they are old hands at this now. Katelyn watches their healing overlap in familiar stitches and she waits and she hopes and she breathes. Because this thing between them is chipped and bruised but it is whole. It is theirs.

When Andrew comes for her, Katelyn wonders if she should be surprised. She has heard his name in response to too many questions to be shocked when he treats his words like an arrow and her the target. He and Aaron are identical twins but when Katelyn looks at him up close for the first time, all she sees are the differences. He carries none of the regret that bleeds through Aaron’s teeth and too much of the horror that feeds behind his eyes.

“You won,” rabbit-eyed Neil says, gaze already chasing after Andrew like he might not be just any answer but the answer. “Aaron’s not in class now, if you want to call him.”

Aaron, Aaron, Aaron, her brain says and her fingers, though numb with fear, respond on reflex. He picks up while Katelyn is halfway through a choked sob and she hears his breath sharpen like a dagger.

“Katelyn?” His voice is a rush of concern, a spear and shield readying itself in her defence. “What happened?”

“Andrew,” is all she can say between broken breaths, and it is the answer to every question. After all this time, she gets it.

In the time it takes Aaron to get from his dorm to the library, Katelyn has found her breath but not her strength. She is still curled in on herself behind the bookshelf in the far corner and she knows her friends will be wondering but she doesn’t yet trust her legs to support her. Aaron sinks down next to her, an anchor holding her steady in the aftermath of Andrew’s storm.

“Did he hurt you?” he asks quietly and Katelyn doesn’t know how to answer. She thinks if she opens her mouth she might not know how to do anything but cry.

It’s enough of an answer though. Aaron vibrates with an anger that he almost never wears around her and Katelyn thinks of the Breckenridge striker who took Aaron’s fist to the face. He looks more like the other side of the coin, more like Exy Aaron, than she has seen him in a while.

“I told you not to fall in love with me,” he says. It is frustrated and lonely and scared, and Katelyn has heard him sound like that once before and she will do anything before she lets him shatter again.

“I didn’t listen.”

He falls into her at that, half straddling her lap, arms around her waist and face pressed hard to her shoulder. Katelyn raises her arms to cradle his body against her, rests her cheek in the nest of his hair, and thinks this is it. Thinks he is the answer. Thinks we won.

“My Katie,” Aaron whispers into her skin and it is the glue drawing her broken shards together.

#if u sent in a prompt ages ago it's still happening dw !!!!! im uhh slowly slowly getting thru them #this is the last thing im posting before rbb tho bc i Have to focus on that fic for now #maz.dox #katelyn #amm #kaaron #fic #anon #answered

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ganba-ray · 7 years

Text

Sakura Strikers - Chapter 1

Chapter Directory [1 - Here] [2]

Okay, I know what you’re thinking but- This is an idea made from @theworstk-onblog , and you can see why, considering the entire fic is about the Keions being on a soccer team, instead of being in a light music club. Considering that I don’t know a single lick of soccer, and he’s basically very knowledgable in it. Tiny edits were made by @redlerred7, pointing out the things I couldn’t...

Anyway, without further ado...

It was around the 65th minute when Ritsu Tainaka received that injury.

Center-back Mio Akiyama took possession of the ball from the opposing team’s striker. Before she could take aim, the whistle blew, slowing the game to a halt. Mio turned her head towards the referee, at his feet was Ritsu, laying there clutching the back of her thigh. Her leg was stiff - Ritsu wasn’t able to move it. A stiff leg meant that their star midfielder could be out for a while.

Coach Yamanaka signaled to three other players, bringing them onto the field to be swapped with Azusa Nakano, and Nodoka Manabe, alongside Ritsu herself. The girls lifted Ritsu off from the ground, carrying her to the benches. After the substitutions went by smoothly, the game continued from before.

After the two of them laid Ritsu down on the bench, Nodoka stood up and addressed Azusa. “I’m going to get some ice for her. I’ll be right back.”

“Don’t take too long,” Azusa said, still fussing over Ritsu’s injury. “Senpai, are you going to be alright?”

Ritsu kept her eyes on the field, with an intense look on her face. “Don’t worry about me. Worry about the game. We’re doing great, but a draw isn’t enough to get us to the top of the regional table. We need to keep pushing.”

Azusa frowned. “But, Ritsu-senpai-”

“I don’t care about my well-being, Azusa!” Ritsu snapped. “What I do care about is if we’re going to win this game.”

Azusa shot Ritsu a disapproving frown, but said nothing. If Ritsu was going to be that stubborn, then she wasn’t going to bother anymore. Azusa shuffled away and sat herself on the other end of the bench.

The 86th minute came around when Yui took a shot at the goal. Everyone was in awe at the goalkeeper’s save. Although the ball flew right over the net, the Sakura High soccer team was given a corner kick. Mugi sent the ball into the box, giving Mio the opportunity to score a goal. She pushed her legs off from the ground to hit the ball with her head. The angle of the ball made it easy to slip past the goalkeeper and into the net, having no chance of saving it.

Mugi ran over to Mio who was still staring at the goal, as if not quite believing the turn of events. “Good job, Mio-chan!”

That snapped Mio out of her daze and she immediately turned to Mugi and hugged her. “Couldn’t have done it without your assist, Mugi! Thank you!”

Mugi looked surprised for a moment before hugging back.

Mio went wide eyed. “Mugi...” she gasped, tapping furiously on Mugi’s shoulders. “Too tight. You’re hugging too tight!”

“Oh!” Mugi immediately let go cupping her hands over her mouth. “I’m sorry about that.”

Mio clutched her sides for a moment before gesturing that it’s fine.

The score was now 2-1. Their team was winning by one point. The following last four minutes of the game saw little to no action. Compared to how fast the rest of the game flew by, the end felt sluggish. The final whistle blew at the 90th minute, leaving the game a 2-1 win for Sakura High, allowing them to advance to the top of the regional table.

They ignored the celebrations and headed into the lockers. There, they found a short-haired brunette quietly sitting on one of the benches. Mio ran up to the girl, tapping her shoulder. The girl looked up, tears in her eyes.

“Ritsu, are you going to be okay?”

“Ricchan, how long is it going to be?” Mugi asked her.

The room fell silent for a moment.

“Three months.” She choked. “It might even be four.”

The whole team was in shock. Their most skilled and most important player – their captain and midfielder, forced to spend the middle of the season recovering from her injury.

“How bad is it?” Mio asked.

“It’s a grade three – it completely tore up my hamstring. But I’ll be fine, guys. Don’t worry.”

Ritsu attempted to push herself off the bench, but she flinched as she applied the slightest pressure to her feet.

“Ritsu, you aren’t even able to walk.” Mio pointed out.

“Of course I can. Just give me a second.” Ritsu flinched once more.

Mio slung Ritsu’s right arm across her shoulder. “Look, Ritsu, you’re not going to walk with a broken leg. C’mon, let’s get you out of here. I’m sure an ambulance has shown up by now. Hey Mugi, give me a hand here.”

The blonde nodded as she grabbed Ritsu’s uninjured leg. She hoisted Ritsu’s left arm across her own shoulder. At the count of three, they lifted Ritsu up, careful to keep her injured hamstring off the ground.

Yui looked on at the three as she ran up to Nodoka. She adjusted her own pace to match hers.

“Nodoka-chan? Is Ricchan going to be alright?”

“I hope so – we need her for the nationals. Without her, we might need to change up our game plan, at least until she gets back. I can’t just hold the midfield by myself.”

“How did it happen, anyway?” Yui asked.

Nodoka shrugged. “I don’t know, Yui. She wouldn’t say anything about it. What we all do know is that she fell and got hurt. I guess I was too focused on the game, since I didn’t see how she fell. A red card wasn’t issued to the other team, so it can’t be them.. It must be something Ritsu did on her own.”

“So what do we do until she gets back?”

“Well, we have to find someone else to be our midfielder.”

At the stadium entrance, the two girls were helping Ritsu onto an ambulance stretcher.

Mio looked at Ritsu’s thigh - while the injury wasn’t obvious at first glance – the fact that it was stiff meant it was straining for Ritsu to move it. She hated the sight of an injury, the ambulance that was parked adjacent to her team’s bus, less so.

Mugi tapped her on the shoulder. “Mio-chan, I’m going to head over to the bus. I’ll ask Sawa-chan to give you a few minutes with Ricchan.”

Mio nodded. “Uh, yeah, sure. Thanks, Mugi.”

Ritsu waved to her. “Um, Mio? Are you just gonna stand there, or are you going to get in?”

“I… I don’t know yet, but, Ritsu… just please, get better soon.”

“Don’t worry, it’s me. I’ll be up and about before you even know it. But for now, though, I gotta lay low a bit. You guys can carry on without me. You can get them to where they need to be. You can do that, right, playmaker?”

Mio stayed silent.

“Hey, come on, don’t be like that. Just think of it as another goal to score. Please, Mio, do this for me, okay?”

Mio hesitated. “A-alright. I’ll do this for you, Captain.”

“Good, that’s what I like to hear. Now, for my final request as the captain of Sakura High, I command you to go back and see to the rest. I think you’ve spent enough time here.”

Mio closed the doors to the ambulance and made her way back to her bus. It was strange to not have Ritsu be on the bus, sitting beside her. She became startled at having found all 17 of the other passengers, including her teammates and her coach, staring at her as she walked up the stairs of the bus.

“Deep breaths, Mio.” She told herself. “Deep breaths.”

“So, Mio,” Nodoka asked her. “What’s going to happen now?”

“I-I don’t know yet. Since Ritsu’s going to be out of commission for about three months, I’ve been asked to take over, for now.” Mio hesitated to speak, but refused to stutter throughout. “Give me some time to think it over. I don’t- I don’t know what to do about all of this yet. We shouldn’t think about this too much. We should look forward to the next game, even without our captain.”

The bus was only filled with silence.

“If you guys aren’t going to ask any questions, then that’s all I need to say. We’re ready to go.”

Mio walked past the rows of seats, until she found her own. She shuffled into the window seat. The adjacent seat was vacant, formerly occupied by the team captain, Ritsu Tainaka. She looked out the window, as the bus pulled out of the stadium. The surrounding countryside was filled with less color than before she entered that stadium.

She closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep, praying that all of this was just a nightmare.

#fanfiction #houkago strikers #pensreadymusicsteady #endthedrought #fanfic #sakura strikers

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junker-town · 6 years

Text

Arsenal vs. Liverpool almost broke my brain

These are the thoughts of a delirious Arsenal fan during the best game of the Premier League season.

The Man with the Iron Fists is such a weird movie. Japanese characters speaking English in a movie that’s set in Japan and is supposed to be a stereotypical martial arts movie just feels wrong. It should be in Japanese with subtitles. Oh, the Arsenal and Liverpool game is on, I forgot that was today. Probably my brain trying to make sure I missed it after the last few matchups scarred me emotionally. Might as well put it on since it’s my job to put myself through emotional pain and write about it.

40 matches over the next 14 days is absurd. The Premier League definitely needs a winter break, putting players through that schedule is inhumane. Profit rules everything around sports and everything else in this world but there has to be a limit eventually. The games aren’t good because players are tired and everyone else not in England seems to recognize that letting human beings who play almost 60 combined games a season a bit of rest in the middle of the year as a good thing. What the hell are Liverpool wearing? Bold Citrus? That sounds like something a designer says to scam a corporation out of a bunch of money to just company the worst Barcelona kit from a few years ago.

Ainsley Maitland-Niles looks like a concerned citizen who is worried about the crimes of Jack the Ripper. Whys is Mo Salah one on one with him? This won’t turn out well at all.

Why did Mesut Özil send a corner out to Nacho Monreal at the edge of the box? Monreal, of all people. I would rather you just kicked it out of play from the corner. English commentators really hate zonal marking, almost as much as they hate foreign managers. Shut up, Jamie Redknapp. His voice sounds like austerity. I love how Özil lets the ball run across his body, even when he’s not really under any pressure, it gives him a chance to scan the field without having to concentrate on controlling the ball. It’s up there with his Cruyff turns.

Arsenal have the most handsome striker depth. Alexandre Lacazette, Olivier Giroud and Danny Welbeck are better looking than every other team’s strikers. More diverse too.

Jordan Henderson looks like a working class Harry Kane and runs like he’s fighting and losing against the effects of late-stage capitalism. Oh he’s injured. Who’s coming on? James Milner lacks so much sauce that he should be out in the streets begging for a drip of it. He needs every bit he can get. He looks like Major Chip Hazard from Small Soldiers. Or the human form of Hephaestus.

Alex Iwobi runs like his shoes are too small and passes as well as a Nigerian man lies about the second family that he has in another country. Not well. Alexis Sanchez never actually jumps for a header, he just jumps into the defender. Short people. Laurent Koscielny is such a boss, what a clearance to stop that Andrew Robertson. I’m so glad he plays for Arsenal, I remember when people doubted how good he is. Oh to be young again. Feels like just yesterday oh shit Roberto Firmino just dispossessed him. What was Koscielny doing in midfield to begin with? That’s not your job, bro.

Granit Xhaka should definitely not be the supporting midfielder for Maitland-Niles, he doesn’t even pretend to care about defending. He just does that thing where he bends his knees and shifts his body to look like he’s defending without doing anything dynamic. He’s the “yeah I know Excel” of defending.

I’m so glad Arsenal have Petr Cech, that Firmino header would have been a problem with any of the previous keepers. When Firmino smiles, a bird falls out of the sky after being blinded. You can only approach Firmino while holding up the same shield that Perseus used to kill Medusa.

Glad to see Alexis and Lacazette combining. Lacazette is so good with his feet unlike that other guy and oh, another Firmino header. That was close. Maitland-Niles needs to stop thinking about his objections to Edgar Allan Poe’s poems and concentrate on defending that back-post, please.

Oh wow, Coutinho scored.

A lovely looping header from Philippe Coutinho! #ARSLIV #YNWA http://pic.twitter.com/qckAOGS3gU

— NBC Sports Soccer (@NBCSportsSoccer) December 22, 2017

Was that after a throw-in? What the hell was Koscielny doing? Did Salah threaten him with exile if he engaged him outside of the box? What the hell was Xhaka doing? He stayed with Coutinho throughout the entire play and stopped right before he headed the ball? Did Xhaka have an existential crisis in the middle of the box? Screw Kierkegaard, challenge the damn runner. Xhaka always has at least four “what the hell are you doing” moments in a game. Sometimes it’s his defending, sometimes it’s the passes, sometimes both but he always meets the quota.

Oh dear God, that Salah and Mane counterattack is scary. It should be illegal to have both of them in the same team. I hope Liverpool gets investigated and forced to sell one of them.

Alexis loves giving the ball away as much as he loves his dogs. Iwobi loves giving the ball away and passing out of play as much as he likes running like the floor is lava.

How did Monreal go in late on Mane and he’s the one injured? Guess it’s actually serious, he’s still down. Emre Can looks like a Spanish Jordan Henderson, and he’s German which makes it more hilarious.

Xhaka gives the ball away again. Someone please put “Xhaka gives the ball away again” on my gravestone. Arsenal’s midfield is playing like they were all out clubbing last night and had to hide behind the trash can after because Jack Wilshere thinks that works to keep them from having their pictures taken.

Salah is fast as hell. How is anyone that fast? He’s like a mouse when you turn the light on. Hector Bellerin is going to be so good after he finally avenges the death of his father at the hands of Silver Lion and Bronze Lion and can concentrate solely on soccer.

Holy shit, is Koscielny match-fixing? How do you slip there out of all places, to let in Mo Salah of all people? Of course Mane went for the spectacular. The man has the sauce. When you have the sauce you’re compelled to do the cool thing over the sensible. He couldn’t have brought that down and shot normally if he wanted to. The man doesn’t have a long part in his hair to do boring Milner things.

Xhaka gives the ball away again. This is how I die. Oh now Özil gives it away twice in a row. He’s definitely doing a performance art piece on how Xhaka plays.

Mustafi is coming on? I guess that Monreal injury was serious. I love that he prays before coming on, I should do something on the religious rituals that players have before and during games. Hopefully he prayed for Arsenal’s midfield.

Shut up, Jamie Redknapp.

Goodness Christ that Mane and Salah counterattack is going to kill me before the new year. Please stop Salah from running. Wilshere please. Just foul him. Slide. Do something. No, don’t go to Firmino, follow the guy that’s going towards goal and not the one on the sideline. Why is there three people on Firmino when he’s on the damn sideline. Someone please step onto Salah, don’t give him space, don’t give him space, please don’t give him space and of course he scored you idiots. I told you to not give him space. I hate this team so much. SANCHEZ!

Alexis I love you so much! You beautiful waxed man! The greatest Chilean since Isabel Allende. I’ve always loved you, even when I said that you should be put on both team sheets since you love to give the ball away so much, it was out of love.

Xhaka please don’t shoot this, YOU GORGEOUS MAN! What a cannon!

I’ve never loved another human being as much as I love you. The gods carved you out of marble and gave you a rocket for a left foot. Shoot everything, always. I don’t care. Look at Simon Mignolet flapping at the shot, Liverpool should probably think of getting a keeper who can actually save shots.

Look at Özil leading the resurgence. And they said he disappears in big games. Love to see him and Lacazette combine and OH MY GOD. ÖZIL!

My one and true son! I would sacrifice all of my other sons for your sake. I love no one but you and only you. You wonderful angel. Look at the gang sign. Look at the knee slide. Look at the hair. Everything is perfect.

Coutinho is so good. A damn outside of the boot pass across the field to Mane. Thank goodness for Cech.

Xhaka, what the hell are you doing? You don’t tackle people from behind. Look at Özil again, if Lacazette plays a one-two with him instead of backheeling that pass to Wilshere, they would have recreated the earlier goal. Please don’t pass it to Jack when Özil is open, Lacazette. You have to know these things.

Shut up, Jamie Redknapp. I’m pretty sure the last image I’ll see before I die is Mane and Salah running at the Arsenal defense.

Why is Firmino wide open at the top of the box? Why is Firmino wide open at the top of the box? I’M SORRY, WHY IS FIRMINO WIDE OPEN AT THE TOP OF THE BOX?

The goal that made @Arsenal v. @LFC 3-3 #ARSLIV http://pic.twitter.com/fFuPWNUc1j

— NBC Sports Soccer (@NBCSportsSoccer) December 22, 2017

What is Koscielny doing? Who is he even looking at while Firmino is right next to him? I hope Netflix is paying him good money for this comedic performance. He’s literally looking running to defend time and space instead of the forward right next to him. Oh wow, Cech saved it. What a wonderful keeper. Cech you absolute scrub. You just went full Manuel Almunia huh? How do you save the shot into your own goal? 15 points a season my ass.

This game is not good for my health. I should start going to therapy and bill Arsenal for it. I can’t believe that he saved the ball into the goal. Oh yes cech, kick the ball back to Liverpool. That’s exactly what we need right now.

What a touch by Iwobi. And now he’s coming off for Danny Welbeck, the sixth best black man alive, after me/Idris Elba (same person), Mahershala Ali, Jay Z, Barack Obama and LeBron James.

How happy is Georginio Wijnaldum to have escape Newcastle? Probably as happy as the Arsenal defense is to see that Mane is going off.

How did Özil slip under no pressure there? Is the spirit of Steven Gerrard haunting this field? If we lose because of a slip, I’m never watching soccer again. I swear to Paolo Maldini.

Oh look, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, the man with the name of the Chief Constable who assures Maitland-Niles that he will catch Jack the Ripper in no time. The Judas. Jezebel. The sycophant.

Xhaka, what the hell are you doing? Please stop doing these things.

Wonderful, now that Mane is off, Gini wants to counterattack with Salah. What is Koscielny doing? Why are you running towards Gini when SALAH OF ALL PEOPLE IS RUNNING ACROSS YOU? THERE’S THREE PEOPLE CHASING GINI ALREADY! Who replaced Koscielny with Johan Djourou?

I don’t want to see Theo Walcott do anything. It takes him six touches to do something a good player could do with two. He’s the eternal youth player.

What a wonderful pass from Wilshere to Özil and Özil completely blows the cross. Oh my goodness that almost went in. How did it come down at that angle? That’s wild. I’m sure he meant it. Özil doesn’t make mistakes.

Huh, Firmino and Coutinho have the same tattoo under their ear. That’s pretty cute.

Thank goodness this game is over. I don’t ever want to watch another match like this again. That made no sense. My head hurts. Of course Milner thought Liverpool should be more boring, the man probably thinks paste is seasoning. He’s worse than the boring Milner meme because that’s satire and he’s utterly serious. I hate him so much.

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