Summary:
Yuno's Saturday
(Also if you haven't already, please go check out oviostron's story on Ao3 "endurance, change, hope, life," which took inspiration from the idea of mute Asta. It's a lovely story thus far. It's got spoilers for the manga, but it's a great and fascinating AU)
Chapter 6: Yuno
Watching basketball practice from the sidelines was torture. After conditioning training (running, etc.), Yuno was put on scorekeeping duty by the Coaches. Yuno's wrist was almost better, but "almost" wasn't good enough for William and Dorothy, who didn't want him to strain himself. At least, his temporary replacement as the small forward on the Junior Varsity (JV) team was decent enough and meshed well with his teammates. Kiato was normally the small forward on the freshmen team. Jokingly, the freshmen team was called the Junior, Junior Varsity.
The freshmen team had constantly changing team members, as Yuno, Leo, Luck and Langris had proven in their freshmen year. It was the first time in the history of the school that four freshmen did well enough to become starting members of the JV team. It was really the JV and the Varsity teams that really mattered when it came to Championships and tournaments.
If Yuno was lucky, he'd get Kirsch's position as point guard (the position he actually wanted on the JV squad but that had gone to Langris) once Kirsch "retired" from the season early since the jerk was actually graduating early in January.
He had to admit that he missed playing with his JV team. Sure, Langris can be kind of a dictator as the point guard, but Leo was a great power forward, Luck was a scary precise shooting guard and Magna was a solid center player. With Kiato as small forward, they were still easily beating the backup JV team in their practice match.
Yuno kept up with the three ongoing practice matches simultaneously, but while he knew that his JV team was going to win, he was more interested in the Varsity match. The starting (first-string) Varsity team, the team who was a National Championship team, was dominating the second-string Varsity team. Kirsch, for all his arrogance and faults, was the top point guard in high school basketball in the Kingdom. Klaus made the top five list of high school basketball power forwards in the Kingdom. David Swallow put all other small forwards to shame—Yuno's learned a lot from him. Even Xerx, who was a classist asshole, and Solid, who was a downright sneering bully, made a great shooting guard and center, respectively. But it was Kirsch who made it all work as Team Captain.
Yuno would never admit to Mimosa but Kirsch was sorta cool.
But only when he was playing basketball.
"Yuno, why don't you head home," suggested Coach Zara Ideale, smiling at him. Coach Zara was the nicest guy, which was weird since his son was a menacing chemistry nerd. He knew so much about basketball, even if he never went pro like he had wanted due to a knee injury in college. William spoke highly of Coach Zara. "I can take over scorekeeping."
Yuno looked over at William, who had been his ride there for Saturday practice. William noticed he was staring and just nodded at him, which to Yuno was all he needed to gather his things and head out the door. Walking home wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, besides, it gave him time to think of how he was gonna get attention to his basketball skills to get Kirsch's position once the older teen left.
Being benched because of his injury bothered him. He didn't want to lose his chance at playing point guard in his Senior Year because he accidentally hurt his wrist doing something stupid. (Okay, so helping Dorothy wasn't stupid, he was just mad that he slipped on the ladder. He was glad it was him that got hurt and not Dorothy).
On his way out, he saw a crowd of people outside of the gym.
Yuno made a note to warn all his teammates that the Basketball Team Fan Club was being weird again. They thought that the team didn't know that there were subsets of the BTFC, dedicated to specific members of the team, but they all knew. Kirsch was a favorite. So was Leo. Yuno suspected that it also had to do with the fact that they were both Vermillion and they were one of the Three Royal Houses of Clover and therefore, filthy rich. And Yuno did everything in his power to not encourage them when it came to himself. He knew that there was probably one for him and the thought made him very annoyed.
Walking by the group of the giggling students of all genders, he heard them whisper about how dreamy Leo was and how beautiful Kirsch was when they played.
Rolling his eyes, he pulled out his phone and sent a text to the basketball team's group chat to warn them that the fan club was on the prowl again.
He got a text from Dorothy.
"Please pick up these things at the grocery: milk, sugar, tea, and those fancy German cookies. K, thanks, love you, you're the best, Yuno ^_^"
Yuno rolled his eyes. William must have texted her that Yuno was leaving practice early. Sighing, Yuno walked off the school grounds and into the city. There was a grocery store on the way home. The Vangeance-Unsworth house was a good half-hour walk from the school. They only drove every day because William and Dorothy often had to lug assignments to grade, amongst other things. The other things being because they are both history teachers, they tended to have dioramas of scenes from history, extra books, copies of documentaries, the occasional historical sword, and an entire set-up with little army men and everything for explanations of battles.
His parents were history nerds, what can you do?
It took him a bit to get to the grocery store. When he arrived, he entered and grabbed a handbasket since he only needed a few things. He went straight to the back of the store where the milk was located. He never understood why the most basic thing that everyone usually needed (milk) was all the way in the back.
And there he saw Asta standing in front of the milk doors.
Yuno's heart skipped a beat and then he immediately mentally berated himself. Cool it, heart.
Asta looked to be struggling and making a face at the different kinds of milk. Was he having a hard time deciding? Was he okay?
"Asta?"
~to be continued
As always let me know what you think.
Next month there will only be one chapter update. December is always a hard month for me, so I changed my story update plans in antcipation of it. Please stay safe out there.
