A/N: One thing. American footballers are idiots.

Published: 22 Dec 13

Edited:

Following Sena's panicked wail, a full-scale brawl had taken place in the cramped and narrow hallway… but Kakei seemed to be winning it against all odds, managing to keep a tight hold of Sena, even when hands were grabbing for his shirt, clawing at his arms and legs, anything to stop Kakei from escaping his punishment and to rescue Sena from his tainted and obviously perverted grip.

However the raven-haired man was unrelenting as he forced his way through, determined to keep his hold on the small brunet, not even a millimetre of space between Sena's side and his chest from how tightly he was gripping onto him.

"Don't worry Sena, I'm getting you out of here," Kakei promised, grunting softly in pain as Yamato did something to his back, a terrifyingly calm smile on his handsome face.

Sena was too terrified to respond. Though he had initially fought Kakei's hold on his body, he was now gripping onto him for dear life.

He didn't want to die!

Only the heavens knew what was going to happen if he got mixed up in this, though he had a few good ideas of what his body was going to look like at the end: trampled flat, with footprint-shaped bruises and wounds all over his body. He was going to be flattened by their superior bulk and power!

Sena whimpered in fear, hiding his face into Kakei's increasingly diminished shirt.

And that sight only threw the men into a greater frenzy.

Suddenly, Sena was tossed out of Kakei's hold, screeching in terrified surprise as he tumbled onto the floor, rolling several times as he got quite a few accidental kicks to the side. However, he soon came to a stop, somehow managing to avoid getting trampled on.

Quickly scrambling to his feet, Sena let instinct take over, and he got the fuck out of there, sprinting his way out of the confusing and chaotic mass, eyes teary from pain.

Rushing out of the hallway, where Kakei was now being thoroughly punished for copping a feel of Sena's body (Sena could feel a thrill of vindication running through him at the thought—serve that pervert right!), Sena managed to get outside of the stadium before his legs and ribs forced him to stop, gasping desperately for air.

Collapsing onto his knees, he buried his face into his hands, trying to compose himself.

He… he hadn't ran like that for years, since high school if he recalled correctly!

Too distracted by the way his heartbeat throbbed in his ears, heat flashing through his body, he didn't notice the person standing in front of him until they crouched down to force his chin up.

Sena's eyes widened when Shin's face came into view, the linebacker's fingers holding his chin gently.

"… You're sweating." Shin noted absently, his other hand moving to wipe his damp locks from his face. "You were running. Away from something. Why?" He questioned, frowning slightly.

Sena shook his head mutely, still panting heavily as he tried to regain strength. He couldn't explain anything to Shin—not how a brawl had occurred because Kakei had touched his… his butt, and not how he had ran away from it all; the proof of which were the bruises in his side.

Shin paused, mulling something over.

"… Since you seem to be exhausted, I will carry you to a place of your choosing," Shin stated, not even giving Sena the chance to deny his offer. "For now, however, I will take you to a café. Sakuraba had informed me that that is a place people frequent when they require a calming atmosphere."

Sena couldn't protest as Shin scooped him up in a manner that was not unlike Kakei's… though he was just as quickly tossed over Shin's shoulder. His breath was knocked out of him when Shin's broad shoulder connected with his stomach, and he let out a breathy groan of pain, his forehead pressed against Shin's extremely muscular back.

What was with American footballers and their apparent need to humiliate, touch, hurt, or carry him!?

Sena tried to struggle, but his pitifully weak arms didn't even budge Shin's honed and toned muscles. Not for the first time, Sena swore vehemently under his breath, resolving to improve his physique. (Spoiler alert, nothing would work, not matter what he did; slurp down protein shakes like a baby would drink milk, benchpress like nobody's business, jog day in and day out… Hiruma would end up looking at him, and laughing at his face, ha, ha, bloody ha.)

Despite how fast they were moving, Sena unwillingly noting how long Shin's strides were compared to his, their journey seemed to last a millennia with the millions of pairs of eyes on them.

Sena wanted to die of embarrassment.

"Shin-san!" He whined, dropping the formal honorific as he tried to repress his dark blush. "Let me down! I can walk perfectly fine!"

His legs were still tired, yes, but he was a man dammit, and he didn't appreciate it being carried like this! Besides, with every step Shin took, the shift in centre of gravity all but thrust his extremely bony shoulder into his stomach—and Sena was sure he was going to get a shoulder-sized bruise on his skin by the end of the hour.

However, Shin didn't reply, making Sena sag limply against his shoulder, giving up on all hope that his masculine pride could be salvaged. Sena fixed despairing eyes on the rapidly disappearing stadium, feeling a strange sense of—something when they rounded a corner.

Why did he feel a sudden chill down his spine? And why was he suddenly so anxious of jumping out of Shin's grip, and running the hell out of the country?

Sena shivered, ignorant of the frown that briefly flashed by Shin's face.

Blink, blink.

Was that…?

Yes it was. But who was that beside him?

Blink, blink.

Oh. Oh.

This bore a lot of thought.

Quite a lot, since it was him, and he was sought out by them…

Hm… Very curious… very curious indeed.

A widening grin.

"Oh yes, you've been quite a naughty boy, Sena-sensei…"

Sat down on a chair, across the table from a startled looking Sena, Shin stared at him with a phlegmatic expression.

Shin was not an oblivious man. He may, admittedly, have a one-track mind when it came to training, but he was not oblivious to the world around him, as much as Sakuraba may have thought.

He knew that Sena was a much-coveted man, wanted by many people; if not for his hands, then for his ability to put people at ease with merely a glance and a smile. But the latter was not as renowned as the former, and that was something that Shin… was thankful for. He was sure that, otherwise, it would be much more hard to get one-on-one time with the brunet, and Shin would regret the loss of his presence as he had gotten used to making time for the brunet in between his training sessions.

Glancing up when a waitress came over, Shin merely ordered a glass of water for himself, ordering a sweetened iced milk tea for Sena, knowing that he preferred that over any other drink on the menu here. Unless Sena had an unspoken penchant for the Pink Paradise specialty drink, comprised of strawberry, peaches, a dash of brandy, and freshly squeezed oranges, that is.

Shin blinked slowly at Sena when he thanked him with a stuttered voice, nodding his head once to show that he was acknowledging his thankfulness. However, in Shin's opinion, there was no need to be thanked, in all honesty: it was natural for Shin to endeavour to find out more about the people he found interesting, or people whom were his rivals.

He knew that Sena had a sweet tooth, and had a sprinter's body—those legs, while not properly trained, were shaped perfectly for sprinting, and he knew just how fast Sena could get at times. He also knew that the other preferred the colour orange, though not the garishly neon shades, but rather, the toned-down shades of said colour.

And he also knew that Sena often jogged during the night, and Shin often let him join him on his daily runs, if only to make sure that Sena didn't get himself mugged, or anything that was just as dangerous. It was because of this last fact that Shin knew where Sena lived, as he was often invited to sleep over because it was past midnight, and Shin couldn't possibly go home at this time. Shin appreciated the gesture, though he had never informed Sena of where he lived – just a building away from Sena's apartment block.

"Shin-san…" Sena mumbled a moment later, once their drinks arrived, and time had passed.

Shin noted that all traces of his exhaustion were gone, making him nod in satisfaction—and in response to his call.

"What is it?" He asked bluntly, sipping at his glass of water. It was mineral, he realised belatedly, frowning slightly as he tried to calculate whether that would affect his food regimen for the day. He would have to change his dinner to compensate for the intake of minerals… However, he quickly focused on Sena again when he continued to speak, letting his frown dissipate from his features.

"You're not going to ask?" Sena questioned, his body tense with nervousness under Shin's scrutiny.

"Ask about what?" Shin was slightly confused at Sena's line of thought, wondering what he was referring to. There was nothing that Shin needed to be clarified, and there wasn't anything that Shin was particularly curious about knowing… other than why Sena wasn't an athlete, but he'd reasoned that Sena had his own secrets.

"You know… about why I was so exhausted back there…" Sena shifted back, distancing his body away from Shin's. The linebacker wondered whether it had a psychological reason to it, that he didn't want Shin to actually question him on it.

But he ignored it quickly. Sakuraba had mentioned that one of Shin's more annoyingly Shin-like quality was his lack of understanding of social situations, and that while it could be a detriment to his relationships outside of the field, it was something that he couldn't imagine Shin not having. So, he decided that his line of thought wasn't something worth following, as it was likely that he was going to come up with a wrong answer to the problem Sena was posing with his body language.

"You were running, or rather, sprinting from something." Shin stated, ignoring the surprise that now lined Sena's body language. "There is no need to question you about that… Though I wonder how you got your bruises."

Sena's eyes widened. "H-how?!" He squeaked out.

As cute as that was – he sounded like a little hamster, all soft and high-pitched and small – Shin didn't understand how Sena didn't seem to realise how obvious it was. He flinched every so often when something nudged at his ribs, implying that he had gotten hurt doing something; and when he had carried Sena to the café, he'd spotted the yellowing bruises at his sides when Sena's shirt rode up slightly. And Shin didn't like it when the brunet got hurt – not only was it detrimental to his training schedule, but Sena wasn't meant to get hurt, especially when he hadn't been placed in a situation where getting hurt was likely.

"I saw them." He replied simply, frowning as he leaned forward. He could see the increase in proximity made Sena even more nervous, and he wondered vaguely why that was. "Did you get into a fight?" Shin asked, silently placing his fists on the table; a quiet statement that he would get back at those who had hurt Sena.

"N-no! I didn't—I just placed myself into a… a chaotic situation by accident!" Sena denied, shaking his hands in front of him as he tried to placate Shin's sudden need for protecting Sena. "It was my own fault- and I didn't mean to get involved in such things!"

Shin's frown deepened, and Sena's eyes widened, the volume at which he denied only getting louder in correspondence with the outlandish nature of his excuses.

"I mean—I was the one who instigated it all, because I opened my big mouth, and I made them all mad, and I-I wasn't supposed to do such things, and Kakei-sama must be so mad at me because of everything that happened because of me!" He half-wailed, looking distraught as he thought about the state at which Kakei-sama had been left in.

Though inwardly amused by the sudden rush of excuses, Shin's respect for Sena grew ever so slightly after having witnessed Sena's ability to say that all with one single breath, and at such a volume. He really did have to train more in order to become the best—and Sena obviously had him beat in this particular area of expertise.

"What do you mean?" Shin asked, wondering what incident Sena was referring to as he ignored the slight flare of annoyance at the mention of the other linebacker. In his opinion, Kakei monopolised the masseur a little too much, preventing Shin from enjoying the brunet's presence more often than he wanted.

Shin, while stoic at the best of times, was not unaware of his emotions and what they meant. He was not the emotionally stunted training-machine that people liked to say that he was, no matter how much he seemed it.

"Kakei… how is he involved?" He demanded, eyes narrowed.

"W-w-well… he's just—you know, uh," Sena stammered, stalling for time as he grew increasingly nervous under Shin's almost-glare. "Um… he was trying to- uh, help me, you know, try and… try and get me—!"

He was cut off when someone bumped into the back of his chair, jolting him forward and pressing the table's edge against his multiple bruises, making him hiss with surprise and not a little pain.

"Oh- whoops! I'm so sorry! Are you alright? I didn't mean to bump into you like that—Sena-sensei."

A light and fluty voice entered their ears, and the two men looked up at the stranger who had so rudely interrupted Sena. Well, not so stranger, actually.

Sena's eyes widened, and he choked on the air he was breathing, coughing and spluttering as he looked up at Kisaragi Hiromi beaming at him. He was too stunned to protest as Kisaragi grabbed a chair from a different table, dragging it over and pulling it up next to Sena, sitting down on it without even a by-your-leave.

Shin narrowed his eyes on the effeminate man, who seemed undisturbed by the almost murderous glare.

"Sena-sensei, it really has been a while! I'm rather jealous that you have enough time to be hanging around this man, yet can't make enough time to meet up with me!" Kisaragi chirped in an entirely unmalicious way, placing a hand on top of the brunet's, patting it once, twice, and then leaving it resting over his, his larger hand covering Sena's.

Shin didn't miss the possessive tone to his touch. Sena did, however.

"Ah… yeah," Sena agreed, having gotten too used to the blond's affectionate touches to react outwardly anymore, giving Shin a helpless smile, silently asking him to forgive Kisaragi for inviting himself into their—well, it wasn't a date, but tea time together. He really didn't want Shin to be mad at him; it made him feel guilty and all too frantic that he ruined the fragile relationship he had with the quiet man.

Shin merely crossed his arms in response, making Sena's smile wider, and a touch more happy, before the brunet turned to chat with the blond, even as slender fingers slid up and down the soft skin on the back of Sena's hand. Shin wasn't being petulant about Sena's attention being diverted towards Kisaragi, or how touchy-feely Kisaragi was towards Sena, even if he really disliked it. He wasn't a child after all...

Though his eyes narrowed as Kisaragi's hand flipped Sena's over, trailing up the pale shadows of his veins.

Nope, he wasn't petulant in the slightest.

Not at all.

Really.

A/N: And secondly, I need to focus down the group of men to around three to four. Right now, I'm seriously gunning for Kakei as one of the group because he's a babe… And for some reason, Kisaragi too… Uh. Yeah.

Hiruma, in this story, is more of an amorous cousin, who flirts a lot but isn't going to cross the line, so he's not going to be considered one of the main pairings. And Agon… well, he's a line I'm not willing to cross, either. (As much as I ship them together, I can't find a feasible way of getting them together in this story.)