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"Raleigh, have you seen my scarf?" Yancy called out from the partition door in their duplex.

"You're not wearing a scarf to the football game, old man," Raleigh replied, head poking out from his bedroom door, pulling on a sweater in the school's colors.

"Says the man whose wardrobe consists of like thirty different sweaters."

"Touché," Raleigh replied. "I'm still not telling you."

Yancy sighed, but they were running out of time. They arrived late to the football game, grabbing a far out parking spot, all the others taken up by the other spectators. The metal stands were packed, on both sides of the football field, Breach Academy on one side and Pacific Rim High on the other. Their mascot, Jaeger, was dancing along the sidelines, plastic bits and pieces clacking together. Raleigh had always loved the story of how they had put the choice of mascot to the students in the 70s and they all decided on a strange transformer-like robot.

The brothers parted ways at the entrance, Yancy heading down to the field where one of the Wei Tang brothers was sitting on a gurney, waiting in case his expertise as a physical trainer was needed. Both Hansens, father and son, stood with the team around them in a huddle. Max was shaking with excitement, wearing a football jersey with MAX on the back; a gift from the football team last year that Chuck had actually smiled at, meaning that he was happy beyond words at receiving it.

Raleigh was walking in front of the bleachers, looking for somewhere to sit, and was flagged down loudly. "BECKET!"

Newt stood up, waving his arms frantically over his head. His normal sleeve tattoos were actually covered in a leather jacket, but he had compensated by painting his face the school colors. Dr. Gottlieb was sitting next to him, looking like he wanted nothing better than to be struck by lightning and taken out of his misery. He was drowning in a large army-grade parka that Raleigh knew for a fact was a gift from Newt that they never talked about.

Raleigh decided to humor the short scientist and joined them, sitting next to Newt on the hard, cold metal bench. They couldn't talk over the loud cheers and screams as the two teams met on the field. He wasn't too interested in football—or really, sports in general. Too many years getting kicked off of teams and chosen last. He let his mind wander.

The past two weeks had been hectic. A few students switched in and out of classes and class blocks, making it hard to start any large projects. He had gotten in a brief essay for his lowerclassmen, asking them to go through their expectations for high school and the year. Plenty of them were full of stars and hearts when they mentioned how happily surprised they were with their Japanese class and teacher, the incredibly kind Ms. Mori. It took all of Raleigh's self-control not to bump them up a few extra points when she was mentioned.

She would drop by the classroom sometimes during nutrition break and chat with him about upcoming school functions, Tendo's announcements… one time she talked to him during their free seventh block for a whole thirty minutes about scheduling tests on different days so not to swamp their shared students. Yancy rolled his eyes while Raleigh recounted it to him during the drive home.

Now Yancy was down on the field, playing games of numb-fingered roshambo with the Wei Tang brother on the gurney and Raleigh had no one to talk to; Hermann and Newt were engaged in another one of their old quarrels that Raleigh paid no mind to. It was just another level of background noise as he occupied himself thinking about Mako and class schedules, eyes casting around the bleachers and the field. Something happened and the crowd went wild. Raleigh cheered alongside, not really knowing what was going on.

He turned his chin around, attempting to crack his sore neck, and looked over Newt's head, back along the bleachers. His head then snapped straight ahead, trying to look as casual as possible and coming across instead like someone had shoved a live wire up his ass.

Yancy looked over his shoulder at him and did a double take, which Raleigh ignored.

Mako was sitting next to Sasha and Aleksis, chatting amicably to Sasha, who was more or less sitting in her husband's lap as they watched the game. She was wearing a long black coat with her collar turned up around a scarf of the school colors. It made the blue streaks in her hair stand out like beacons. Raleigh ignored the urge to turn back around and look at her, keeping his eyes straight ahead as something happened on the field again and everyone was booing; Chuck was being physically restrained by his father to keep him from going at the referee. Which actually was quite common. However, he had never done it before with such a look of rage clear on his face.

"That's not a high schooler!" his voice carried to the bleachers, faintly, "That's the goddamn spawn of Godzilla!" Herc was switching between yelling at him and yelling excuses at the referee, who was actually used to Chuck's antics by now and gestured for the next kickoff.

Newt nudged Raleigh's arm. "Dude, are you okay? You look like you're about to have an aneurism."

"I'm fine," Raleigh managed, carefully talked to Newt without turning his head enough to see Mako.

"… Right," Newt replied in an odd tone of voice. Then, in a move that he had perfected to almost an art, he turned to Dr. Gottlieb and engaged him in an entirely different string of conversation, which reached a zenith at an impossible speed, sticking Raleigh on the edge of a battle zone as the game was temporarily forgotten. Chuck looked like he was close to ripping out his own hair, pacing on the edge of the field. Even Herc was beginning to show signs of cracking. A wave of cheers from Breach Academy's bleachers across the field punctuated Dr. Gottlieb and Newt's argument.

"You imbecile, you utter and complete wanker-!"

"You were thinking it, I just said it man, don't throw a fit-!"

"I can't believe you, you're a child-!"

"And you were never a child-!"

Raleigh could feel the tension, like the taste of ozone on his tongue, spreading. Any second now he would be pulled in against his will, and although he wasn't interested in football, he definitely did not want that pile of snakes dropped into his lap, thank you. He began to discretely slide away but was trapped by bodies. Newt began to gesture over his shoulder at Raleigh with one hand and he felt a sense of dread fill his stomach.

Then, the touch of a hand on his shoulder. He looked and his breath caught in his throat, Mako sitting on the bench behind him, her face close to his so she could mutter in his ear, "Come on." She got up and moved, and he scrambled after her as quickly as possible, making half-goodbyes in the arguing doctor's direction. They paid him no mind.

Together, Raleigh and Mako snaked their way through the crowds until they were sitting on an empty stretch of bench, back by Sasha and Aleksis, who were busy adding their voices to the displeased yelling of the school as Breach Academy scored another touchdown.

"Thank you," Raleigh said honestly.

"You did say that you would ask for my help the next time you were in trouble with them," she reminded him coyly, and he flashed back to her first day of school at lunch, watching her get caught in, and escape from, a Gottlieb-Newt argument like a pro. The memory brought a smile to his face.

"My hero," he laughed, voice far more sincere that he intended. Mako was glowing and Raleigh felt his heart give out a misshapen beat. He had sat down next to her, but there was still a respectable distance between them on the bench, which yawned at him. Without any close contact the night was getting colder, and he could see Mako rubbing her hands together inside her coat sleeves. He shifted his weight slightly, unconsciously thinking of sliding closer, until they were pressed arm-to-arm and thigh-to-thigh.

Mako was still looking at him, and he was still smiling at her. At the same time they became all too aware of how long it had stretched and their faces grew hot. Sasha and her husband were muttering to each other in Russian, looking at them from the corner of their eyes.

The moment broke, like glass, and they both looked away, smiling brightly with cheeks reddened, not from the cold. Raleigh's smile was gone in a second as he noticed Yancy doing a strange dance on the field. His brother, seeing him, began to gesture wildly. Raleigh shrugged, holding his hands up. Together, Yancy and the Wei Tang brother, who was standing on the gurney for better viewing purposes, began to gesture together for him to move to his left—closer to Mako. Raleigh made a face and considered the problems that would arise if he stormed onto the field and punched Yancy in the gut.

Nevertheless, slowly, and shifted his weight around until he was closing in the distance between himself and Mako, trying to make it look natural and failing utterly and completely.

Down on the field, Yancy brought his hand into contact with his forehead.

Raleigh was getting close, very close, when suddenly the bench creaked and someone breathed "Hello, Mr. Becket," into his ear and he flinched. A young girl, one of Chuck's shop class students, had slipped into the space between him and Mako and was now looking at him from underneath a thick layer of mascara-heavy eyelashes. She was joined by several other girls, circling around him like a pack of lionesses and he was a wounded zebra. Mako could be seen looking at them with wide eyes, mouth open in surprise, and Raleigh regretted everything he had ever done in his life up until that point.

Before it could get any worse—and Raleigh had faith in his lucky ability to make any bad situation worse—he stood up and left, leaving the bleachers with his hands shoved deep in his pockets just as another round of booing went up from their side of the bleachers; he could dimly hear Chuck shouting profanity over it all, which was quite a feat.

He shivered alone in the car for the next forty minutes until Yancy came, gave him a long, cold look, and drove them both home silently.

The next morning was benign enough, with the normal run to school, shower and change, and two normal morning classes of freshmen who were all disappointed in the poor show the football team had put on the night before. They had been smashed, losing by almost forty points. Chuck had to be bodily removed from the field in the third quarter.

But, an impromptu school-wide assembly was called and Raleigh resigned himself to boredly leaning against the wall, trying not to dwell on the bombing disaster that had been last night. He couldn't even get up the courage to sit next to her. It hung heavy on his shoulders as the students chattered aimlessly, and the assembly began with Principal Pentecost approaching a microphone set up.

"Why aren't you standing next to her?!"

Raleigh jumped, heart pounding. Yancy appeared out of nowhere and stood at his shoulder, face screwed up into a look of casual fury. "Jesus," Raleigh said, one hand on his chest, trying to convince his heart that he wasn't about to be murdered in the middle of a school assembly.

"Not quite," Yancy replied, easing up his stance a bit to lean against the wall next to Raleigh. All of the teachers stood off to one side of the gym while their students took up the wall-to-wall bleacher seating. "You should go stand next to her."

Against his will, Raleigh craned his head around and spotted Mako standing at attention against the wall with Sasha on one side, occasionally elbowing her in the ribs and speaking into her ear. Mako didn't respond, too focused on Stacker's speech to the student body about the importance of the upcoming school year and the Payload Award—with the football team's loss the night before, which still had Chuck in a fuming rage, standing next to his father with Max laying down at his feet, his face a bright shade of red, the entire school would need to chip in to ensure victory—to respond to her neighbor's jabs.

"I'm already standing here," Raleigh said stiffly, hoping against hope that his brother would drop it.

"Yeah, but you want to go stand over there," Yancy pressed.

"Yancy, I am already standing here!" Raleigh hissed back.

"Raleigh, I am your older brother and I command you to go stand next to her-!" Both bickering brothers fell silent and cold as Stacker looked straight at them while flawlessly continuing the flow of his speech. A drop of cold sweat passed between Raleigh's shoulder blades, and Yancy went visibly pale. They remained silent for the rest of the speech, although they barely paid attention, occasionally shoving each other to one side and communicating silently.

The speech wrapped up: "at the edge of our hope, at the end of our funding, we have chosen to believe in each other. Today, we face the challenges that are at our door. Today, we are canceling the apocalypse of this school!" It was met with loud cheers from the students, who were standing up and applauding. Raleigh almost wished he had paid more attention to the speech.

Students began to file outside, chatting excitedly with each other as they took their time heading back to class. Raleigh and Yancy had a stare-down, wondering who was going to budge first from their station on the wall. It was petty and childish but they were petty and childish brothers. If Raleigh moved first then he gave Yancy permission to run his life. If Yancy moved then he would be giving up all claims on Raleigh's life.

Before either could break, Tendo sidled up to them with a look in his eye that Raleigh decided he didn't like.

"Hey, player," he greeted, and Raleigh knew that he had made the correct conclusion, "I heard about yesterday… so, what's the haps on you and Ms. Mori?" he wiggled his eyebrows.

"What do you know about it?" Raleigh asked suspiciously, crossing his arms over his chest to cover the fact that it wasn't a real answer.

Tendo looked back and forth between the brothers. Yancy tried to communicate something with his eyes that Tendo missed.

"… I follow Yancy on twitter," he explained simply, and Yancy brought his hand into contact with his own forehead. If looks could kill, Raleigh would be an only child.

His face melted into a smile, however, when Mako went past him, Sasha on one side, walking so close that Mako brushed against Raleigh's arm in the crowd, which carried them outside of the gym and into the hall.

"Sorry," she said, looking up at him through thick lashes.

"No problem," he responded. "I'll see you at lunch?"

She nodded quickly and freed herself of the Sasha-Raleigh sandwich and hurried off to her class. A few of her students latched onto her and began talking with her in Japanese, and Raleigh felt a strange glow of pride take over his face. Then he snapped out of it.

Tendo and Yancy were looking at him. They looked at each other.

"It's pathetic," Yancy said with a sigh.

"Absolutely twitterpated," Tendo agreed. As one they turned and headed back to the faculty offices, talking avidly with their hands.

Raleigh made a mental note to get himself a twitter account.

Heh. Yancy's twitter is such a thing.

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