Disclaimer: Do. Not. Own.
Warnings: Fem!Sena.
Additionally: Based on the 30 Moments Themes from the 30_moments lj. Not official, not posted there.
7. fight or flight
"Tell the butterball to call me when they play someone interesting," said Don, and turned to walk away.
Karin was vaguely aware of Clifford's voice lifting into the air as he called down the hill, of how both he and Panther immediately followed Don, like bodyguards or retainers. She felt him passing her as if he were a lodestone and they but fragments of iron pulled in his wake. Don paid no attention to the silence or the stares—he moved as if he inhabited his own slice of the universe, as if he exerted his own gravity on the things and space around him and nothing else mattered even enough to notice.
Except.
As Don passed Sena, his hand went out.
To the small of her back.
"I want to see these apartments," he said.
Karin was an experienced QB, and an artist. She was intimately familiar with every movement and muscle of the human arm, of every way in which it could reasonably bend or flex or motion, and of some ways in which it could not. She was watching Don's arm now, a huge, menacing thing of muscle and bone and grasping intent.
And she saw, very clearly, how Don didn't even need to touch Sena for her to turn to him and be pulled into the curve of that hungry arm.
"Of course," said Sena. She didn't even look back at the field, at the bench where the team was gathered.
But her eyes flicked to Karin. "Coming, Koizumi-san?"
They looked at her. All of them—Don, Clifford, Panther. The other Enma football players. All the spectators, gathered on the hill. Takeru and Taka, sitting with the rest of their lineup from Saikyoudai.
Sena.
Some part of Karin trembled under those eyes. Some part of Karin recognized this for what it was: the past behind her, all of her old friends and new opponents and the safety of the regular bench, and, in front of her, something that was neither present nor past but couldn't possibly be the future—four of the most naturally talented football players in the world, world-class athletes all, looking at her as if waiting for her to make a decision.
Some part of Karin shook under the weight of those eyes, and wanted nothing more than to run away now and save herself.
The rest of her couldn't take her eyes off of Sena.
"Of course," said Karin, and followed the four of them into the quad, leaving behind them that awful silence.