GreenR: hey guys. I was thinking of removing the X readers from behind the shots now on. Since it's the only kind I have been writing.
Law: and still none for me. I am getting impatient.
GreenR: boo-hoo, you big baby. Get over it. Nobody has asked for you so I'm writing whatever the heck I want. And it is not about you.
Law: I am burning your Christmas skeletons.
GreenR: *holds a match over his hat* I dare you
Law: *slowly puts down a bearded Santaleton* you win this round...
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You looked up to the tall oak tree that was growing on the edge of the park near your home. There was nothing really different about the tree. It had lots of bark and no bite. Bunch of orange and red leaves clinging to the branches with surprising stubornness. Nothing special. Except for one thing.
Cat.
Large black cat was clinging to one of the upper branches and meowed sadly. You just couldn't leave a poor fella up there like this. You took off your backpack and left it on the ground and started to climb. The bark was wet and slimy so you slipped quite a few times. But luckily the park-keepers had left the tree by itself by quite a long time small twigs were growing all over and you had plenty of foothold.
Finally you were up in the place where the tree separated to three larger branches and you had to start to crawl towards the cat by one of them, holding on to it with you dear life. Cat meowed loudly once again and you looked up, distracted, and lost the hold. You fell.
Two minutes later someone passed by the tree on his morning run (who even runs in mornings? Only crazy people. Wait. I do too, nevermind) and saw you clinging to the branch with both hands. And one leg. Cat had walked over to you and was interestedly patting your hands with it's paws, tickling you.
"Let go you adorable beast," you hissed, sweat beading on your forehead. Your arms were tired and palms were slipping on the branch. You had managed to throw one foot over the branch so it was hurting your knee, but at least you weren't falling yet. "L't go," you said again to cat and tried to wave it away, but had to hold on at once. You that someone under the tree, looking up, slightly confused.
"Hey buddy," you looked down. Bad idea. "How's your catching?"
".........."
"Please answer me before next century," you said, joking despite the hurt of splinters in your palms and knee. "Nevermind. I need your help. Can you come down here and catch the cat?"
Instead of answering he took few steps closer and you took a slight breath in. Strenghtening the grip on one hand you pushed cat with other so it fell on you lap, claws digging into your skin and uniform. Then you let go.
Falling.
Falling.
Falling.
And then you were caught by two arms. Arms were of course still attached to the weird boy and you appreciated it. It would have been truly weird if there were just arms. And you know, maybe a little traumatizing too. Floating arms. Heh. Florms.
"Thanks," you muttered when you got the breath back into you. Cat kicked you in the face and left behind pinkish marks of claws, so you let it go and it ran off. Dammit. "I mean, thanks," you repeated a little louder and grinned when he put you down.
"Sorry I didn't really warn ya. But you're good at catching people falling from sky. Basketball?" You guessed but he shook his head a bit. "Oh okay, I'm Y/-oh fuck," while introducing yourself you had stretched out your arm and accidentally taken a look at the watch.
"I am very very very late," you grabbed your schoolbag from the ground and sprinted off. Ugh. Sport. But still, running was better than being late. Which you eventually were, by the way. School wouldn't begin until and hour later, but you had to go to headmaster's office because of your transfer papers. Needless to say, he wasn't very happy when you burst in a quarter late, sweaty and messy.
Nevertheless, you got all your papers finally filled out, just some detail work, rest had been done before. And then you were ready for the first day. Yay.
Classes were alright, you guessed. It was already October, and that meant everyone were doing their best to study for second-term exams. You had wanted to transfer by the beginning of the schoolyear, but your mother hadn't been too happy about letting you come to Japan alone, so you had had to wait until they were ready to move.
You scribbled absentmindedly on your notebook, half-listening to the teacher talking about past tenses of English. You had already studied those, so you were taking this class a little easier. Before you noticed, class had passed, and on your notebook posed a big black cat with sharp hat on it's head. Cute.
You got up to go and get some lunch. Alone. Because you hadn't really talked to anyone in your class except for that short guy with glasses who needed to borrow a pen. That hadn't been very long conversation. About three sentences, if even that much. You were beginning to worry that you would forget how to speak at all if that went on.
You bumped into someone and map of papers fell on ground. You quickly grabbed the shoulders of a young girl to keep her from falling over and smiled apologetically.
"Sorry," when she had her balance back you crouched down and started to pick up the papers. She helped as well, efficiently stacking them. "I wasn't really watching where I was going."
"It's alright," girl had a tight sporty ponytail that had not a one loose strand, and her school uniform was neat and pressed. Class prez or something, you guessed. "Oh, you've got somethin' on," she tapped her cheek to show where. You touched it and saw a small droplet of blood on your fingers. Damn cat.
"Oh it'll heal," you waved it off and got up. "It's from a cat. We didn't get along very well."
"I can clean it up if you want me to," she offered, putting the papers inside the map she was carrying. Probably to prevent even bigger mess when another clumsy person runs into her.
"That would be great," you grinned. "Or you can just show me where the nurse's office is so I don't bother you too much."
"It's no bother," you walked after her down the hall and then left to a small office, that had two hospital beds at one wall. "Team injures themselves all the time, so I gotta run around with meds often," she explained while taking some cotton and a bottle of something that smelled like alcohol.
"Team?" You flinched in pain when the alcohol-thing touched your face. Bloody frick frack fruk in the ballroom they fuck. This thing stings a lot.
"Yeah. I'm the manager for american football team. They're a riot," she finished cleaning small scratches and then taped a band-aid over your cheek and chin.
"Thanks," you poked at the bandage and winced when it hurt. What a surprise. Who would have guessed that it would hurt when you touch a wound on your face? "It's so cool that you know how to do this stuff. I mean, the only thing I know to do is to make a cold compress."
She looked a little embarrased, as if it was something so trivial it didn't need to be talked about. Maybe it was for her.
"So now that I'm all cured," you said with a big smile. "Can I make it up to you somehow? I mean, it was my fault that all your papers got messed up. And now you had to spend extra time on patching me up."
"It's okay," she hesitated. "But if you're sure you wanna help...."
"Of course I do," who cares that you should be having lunch and then going back to classes.
"Then you have seven classes today, right?" You nodded. "Why don't you come by the gyms then? We're doing the tests today and we could get it done much faster with your help."
"Of course," you nodded eagerly, happy to help. She was the second person that had been nice to you. Well, first, because the guy on the morning didn't really count. He had been nice involuntarily. "I'll see you then. Oh, and I'm Y/n."
"Matsuda Saku."
You opened the door and let her out in front of you, waving a quick goodbye before sprinting to cafeteria. Good, they were serving macaroni today. You got yourself a plateful and proved your abilities as master eater by gobbling it all down in three minutes and thirty five seconds. After that you had to run like a demon to get to the next class before bell.
Rest of the day went by like a flash. Finally you had a reason to wait for the end of the schoolday. Well, reason other than the end of classes. You had made a sort-of-friend. An acquaintance. And all on your own. You were so proud of yourself.
After the last class, Latin, you found the gym by asking directions from few quite grumpy teachers and using your own sense of direction. Which was about as good as Roronoa Zoro's. Just kidding. Yours is better. That boy is in a league of his own..and not in a good way.
"Hiya Matsuda-san," you waved slightly when you noticed manager's sporty pony tail coming out from a small office near the training areas. "How can I help now?"
"Y/n-san," she smiled back. (Am I the only one who is feeling that she is getting more spotlight here than the main character?) "Here," she handed you some notes. "I divided the list to two for us. Here are the names and last year's results for tests."
You let your eyes quickly over the paper. 60 yard dash, weights and so on.
"And I'll just write down this year's ones?"
"Yeah," she gave a little nod, her dark ponytail doing a small jump. "But," she looked at your uniform. "Do you want the sweats? I think we have some old ones there." Now that you looked at her closely you could see that she had changed her neat uniform for a pair of blue sweatpants and jacket.
"If we're not late," you hesitated a bit. You did want to change into something comfier, but you also didn't want to bother her more than you already had.
"No biggie, the team's not even fully here," she dragged you to the office with her and dug up an old jersey from the seemingly bottomless closet. And when I say bottomless, I mean bottomless. It was big enough to fit Narnia, Dean Winchester and possibly Halloweentown in it.
"So, how is it?" you said while rolling up the sleeves that dragged up to almost your knees. Whoever owned this thing before must have been a really well-built. It was like wearing funny TARDIS-blue dress.
"fine," Matsuda was already picking up some other stuff she needed and then the two of you went off. You knew you were little overly extatic about the whole thing, but you just couldn't help it, really. It really was the first time you had managed to talk to people more than five seconds. Also, you had never had a real friend. Or stuff to do after school except Tumblr and Netflix. You were also little afraid about saying anything, in case you said anything wrong. It may come off a little funny to some of you, but it's actually really hard to make friend when you try to think everything through at least five times so youn't make any mistakes and drive everyone away and then be all alone and nobody likes you and then-
"okay take a deep breath," you blinked slowly, coming back to this world. Matsuda's face was in front of you and she was smiling reassuringly. Had you said all that stuff out loud? No, she had just thought you looked nervous. After all, you had reached in front of the gym. "It may be the last breath you ever take in your life."
"wait what," you were confused confused for a second, but then she had already opened the gym doors and you got what she meant. Oh dear god, or whatever deity you prefer. Or none, if you're and atheist. But that place could really use some air freshener. And it's habitatnts few liters of deodorant, and a long trip to showers. What I am trying to say here was thatthat it really stank in there.
You did your best not to grimace and followed Matsuda to the old guy with a beard who was yelling at someone. You decided in your head that he was the coach. He gave off that sort of a vibe that if he wanted he could murder you with a football if he wanted. Or make you a top-class player, whatever sounded better that day.
"And who's that?" He turned to Matsuda and she quickly explained the thing, leaving out the embarrasing part, like your reason to be here, which still made your brain cringe at the very memory of your clumsiness.
Coach didn't bother to sayanything else to you, just grumbled something about it to his team, who then formed to groups according to the neat lists Matsuda had made before. Wow, that girl was really a one good planner. They started up with the weights and stuff, and you hurried up to write down the numbers they kept telling you. At the same time you tried to keep your eye open for any familiar faces. Maybe there was someone that had the same classes as you, so you could think about going to talk to them, but never really do it. Just panic a little about it and what you would do or say when the were the ones who recognised you and talked to you.
"120," you heard the next one and scribbled it quickly down, before looking up again, just to make sure you had written it behind right name. Oh hey, you know that guy. Of course you, that face was really fucking familiar. But who was he? He wasn't in any of your classes, you were quite sure about it. But where then.... Of course! The guy from the park who had helped you on your Avenger - mission. What was his name again?
Oh great Bo Burnham, Matsuda had written every name in the list with perfect kanji, which you still couldn't read very well, despite your mum's best efforts in coaching you. You just listened a little closer, thinking that maybe you could hear some names during that, but they didn't use names much, and there were some words you couldn't understand, which could have very well have been names.
Oh okay, you forgot that for a moment and concentrated again. That football team was a one bunch of crazy-strong people. Or fast. Depending on whatever test you did. But even then, most of them had a thing they were good at, and nobody was good at everything. You tried to remember whatever you knew about American football, while the test's went on, but without much luck. You had never had much interest in sports and so you knew only few facts your father often talked about when he had come home and watched matches.
Finally it was over and Matsuda called you back to the office so she could collect and staple together the results, giving a small whistle when she saw your handwriting. You had done your best to make it readable, but at some places it was still pretty smudgy.
"sorry," you were a little ashamed.
"No, it wasn't anything to do with you," she laughed, understanding why you felt a little bad. "I just thought they had gotten much better since spring. All of them are training hard now, since season it's season again." You pretended you got what she meant by that and started changing out of the jersey. It had actually helped a lot when you had went out for the 60 yards. It was really friggin cold already, since it was October and Halloween was behind every door. You were really glad you had warm clothes then.
"You wanna come back tomorrow?"
"What?" you looked up from your shoelaces that were little tangled up now.
"You know, tomorrow is practice again and you did pretty good today. I could use help again," wait, she thought you were okay!? Hallelujah! You didn't really know if you wangted to start helping with the club, but it was better than to be alone all the time, and you had actually liked it. so you already found yourself nodding.
"Sure, I have nothing else on line," Matsuda grinned widely and when you started to give her the jersey back she shook her head.
"keep it, it's already dark and cold outside, and you look like you don't have a coat with you," you smiled slightly, she was right. You had been in hurry in the morning and it had slipped your mind to take along anything else but your bag. And then it had been that cat and you had even been late.
"Plus we have a bunch over here," she shrugged while tying the belt on her black woollen coat. "boys either forget them here in the end of the year or grom out of them so we just stuff them in the back of there. Sometimes theatre kids take them to make them costumes or so and next year we still have a pile of them ."
"Okay," you picked little on the school logo on the sleeve. Heh, it was nicer than your actual uniform. You walked together to outside, and you felt your stomach getting cold. you had lost the track of time while there so it was dark and you had barely some knowledge about where you had to go.
"Bye then," Matsuda had already gotten her bike and was driving away, her black hair shining under the streetlights for a second before you lost sight of her. Okay, that was just you then. Younn sucked in a quick breath and started marching down the street, trying to look as scary and big as possible, but your heart kept thumping inside you like mad.
Like the irony of fate it was just now that students were still either in their clubs or had gone home so the street was almost empty and except little light from lanterns, it was also dark. Your hand reached into your pocket for your keys and you pressed them in your fist, ready for attack.
"Hello," you heard from behind you and you had been so nervous that your first reaction was to squeak a little and kick whoever had said it. It was the cat-guy whose knee you had probably bruised up. But it seemed it had hurt your foor more than him, because he didn't even flinch whilst you could feel your foot throbbing with dull pain.
"Jesus, Mary, pixie dust and queen Elizabeth," you curled into a small ball. It was so scary. You wrapped your hands around you for comfort and looked up.
"sorry, I didn't mean to do that. But honestly, are you Batman or some shit, because that was some good sneaking," you tried to joke about it, hoping he wouldn't mind your deathkick. That attack wasn't named that because you could kill someone with it. More like because it was so weak that one day when would actually need to use it, it wouldn't work and then you would die.
"No," he was waiting for you to get up to get going. "You don't kick very well."
"I know," you sighed and straighetened up. "Are you going the same way?" you kind of hoped he did, because he if he did, you would feel a little safer. Also you could actually find your home.
"I think so," you walked in silence for few moments. He didn't seem to be a person who talked much, and your brain was slowly highwiring itself, trying to come up with something to talk about, so you wouldn't look like some sort of an antisocial weirdo. (Who am I kidding, right? We're all antisocial weirdos here. At least I am)
"Thanks for the morning by the way," you tried to smile. "I don't remember if I said that cuz I had to run off." he just kind of shrugged, so you took it you guys were okay now.
"Sebastian," he finally said, and you looked at him questioningly. "That was my neighbour's cat. It always runs off and gets stuck somewhere," it sounded like he himself had climbed more than one tree in past to help the little rascal.
"Oh, nice name," you smiled a bit. When you looked around you could see that you were in that park again, and now you could find your way again. "By the way, I'm Y/N." you didn't bother with full name most of the time since most of the people didn't talk to you long enough to need it.
"Shin," okay, that wasn't exactly a friendship you had here, but at least it seemed like you could count on him to be the bodyguard from now on. Since you had the same way home anyways. But how to ask it? Hm, nevermind, maybe you can do it tomorrow.
"Nice to meet ya then," no answer. He's not much of a talker.
"That's me then," you stop in front of your apartment building and he does as well. "You live here?" Nod. "Great, at least I know one of my neighbours then. It was a bit scary at first," you kept talking while opening the door. "Here are what, a thousand people per house? And I knew only my family," you were already huffing because of the stairs, so you shut up until you reach you apartment.
"Thanks by the way," you said, stopping at you door. He didn't seem to get why. "I was really scared to walk home alone. I know it was just on your way but still, thanks." You grinned happily and got another tiny nod for it. Oookay, guess that was it.
"See ya tomorrow?"
".....sure."