Apologies for the delay – FF decided to go down just as I was getting ready to post...

Day 7

Tag Team

(Sophie/Wales)

If you asked her, Sophie would always say that she would never take a British boy to be her boyfriend, her lover, her husband. She was French, after all.

But a tag-team? She'd hesitated on hearing that it was a British man she was meant to be paired with for the European team, but apparently he did have a Cetus bey like hers, and that was something at least. There was a very specific technique to using Cetus, and a pair of them in the dish would surely be an impressive sight.

"Of course, he'll only speak English," she muttered to herself as she stood waiting in the airport with Konzern. She had been chosen for the team after passing through the Festival of Warriors, just as Konzern and Klaus had. But this boy hadn't. He'd won some national competition in his home country, which was apparently enough for him to be made a part of Excalibur.

"There he is," Konzern said quietly. "Red hair. Black suitcase."

The newcomer had spotted them too, it seemed. Of course, Konzern was unmistakable. After his absolute domination of the Festival of Warriors and the Gladiator's Challenge, he was a household name even before the influence of his family came into play. No self-respecting blader in the EU would have been unable to recognise him on the spot.

"Konzern," the red-haired boy called as he strode over. "There you are."

"Wales." Konzern held out his hand. "Welcome to Italy. This is the blader who will be your tag-team partner, Sophie."

He turned to her with a faint smile, but there was nothing but wariness in his eyes. "My lady."

"I'm no-one's lady," she snapped. "And certainly not yours."

He raised one eyebrow, a trait she would come to envy him for. "I apologise. I had not been told that my tag-team partner was such a firecracker."

She wasn't quite sure if he was praising her or insulting her, and decided that as he was English it was probably the latter.

"So… you're called Wales?" She grinned wolfishly, the smile definitely not reaching her eyes. "Do you have any brothers?"

His eyes flicked to hers. "Yes, one."

"Oh," she said, forcing every ounce of disdain into her voice. "I was certain you'd have three. England, Ireland and Scotland."

Something like fire flashed in his blue eyes and he went very still. "With all due respect, his name is John. He's in the Army right now. I haven't heard from him in four months."

She didn't really know what to say to that, so she fell silent.

.

He was arrogant and proud, and every inch the English gentleman. His blood was as blue as the shirt that he wore. He held his head high no matter where he stood, and those who angered him quickly discovered that the edge of his tongue was viciously sharp.

As it turned out, though, she was wrong about one thing. He spoke English, French, Italian, German and enough Japanese to pass, though his French accent in particular was awful. She ignored it for as long as possible, but finally snapped "Do you even know how to pronounce that word?"

To her utter shock, he laughed. "Of course I do," he said in French with a perfect Parisian accent. "I was wondering how long it would take for you to snap." He looked rather pleased with himself. "Ten days. Not bad."

She rolled her eyes and launched White Cetus into the practice dish. "You're ridiculous. Why did you bother keeping that horrid accent if you could speak like that?"

"Fun," he shrugged as Blue Cetus joined its white partner in the dish. "Your expression was one of the funnier ones I've seen."

"You do that to lots of people?"

"Only to the ones who assume that because I am English I am incapable of appreciating their culture and language."

That was definitely an insult. Probably. British people confused her.

.

The days passed by so very quickly, dragging them with relentless intent towards the opening of the World Championship and the next Festival of Warriors. Sophie and Wales spent almost every day together – they had to, in order to get their beys completely in sync. The paired Cetus blades were gradually becoming stronger and stronger, and soon they would be ready to enter their first tournament as a pair. Not a team – Excalibur was exclusively for the World Championships – but just them.

Excalibur itself finally had its fourth member. Klaus, a mountain of a man, had arrived from Germany two weeks after Wales had turned up. The whole group were gradually pulling together, and whilst Konzern was still distant and aloof a lot of the time, Sophie had found that both Wales and Klaus had a sense of humour that she could actually appreciate. If she had remained with Wales alone, she knew there would have been fights. Feathers were mostly smoothed now, but they could be ruffled by a single word. But with Klaus, it was strangely easy to get along with not only him but her British counterpart as well. They had started going out to concerts together, wandering through the streets and chattering aimlessly about everything except blading.

She found out that his brother John was nearly ten years older than he was, and that this was his last tour of duty. John was the one who had taught Wales to blade, but when Wales had quickly outclassed him, he had suggested to their parents that they find a proper coach for the boy who was quickly becoming the most powerful blader in their city.

In turn, she told him about the big house she had grown up in, and about the day when she had watched her mother fight off a man attempting to kidnap her and her daughter with her beyblade. Sophie had hidden behind her mother's legs and watched as the man tried to escape the rising wall of water that had held him until the police arrived. She told him about the recipes she liked to cook, and he taught her how to make tea the way he liked it. In return, she taught him how to draw human figures (with a fashion-designer mother, there was no way that Sophie would have made it through her childhood without picking up some lessons along the way.)

"Do you think we're friends?" she asked one day. "I know you're English and I'm French, but we've been tag-team partners for six months now."

"I think you're friends," Klaus put in. "Have you ever noticed that when you're talking to each other you don't talk in English or French specifically? You sort of slip between the two. I've tried to follow the conversations and I really can't."

Wales looked at him. "Really?" he asked. "Oh. I'd never noticed."

Klaus laughed. "You're doing it now."

.

"Konzern's Twin Jewels, they're calling us," she reported, throwing a newspaper down in front of him. "Seems we made quite the impression."

Their victory at the All-European Tag-Team Tournament had been resounding and unsurprising. There were very few beys there that could have stood up to either of the Cetus beys alone, let alone the two in perfect sync. Buoyed up by their success, Wales had suggested that they practice even more to create a joint special move. If they could master such an advanced move, the World Championship would be theirs for the taking with no problem.

"Hmmm... let's see. 'The tag-team from the newly created European team will be heading for the World Championships in July... Its captain Julian Konzern was unavailable for comment... clear that all the members are prodigious in strength... no news so far on the members of the teams from other countries.'. I'm surprised they're not complaining about the fact that we've got the whole European Union to draw on for our team whilst everywhere else is drawing on single countries. Japan has its own team, India, Russia, China..."

"They're saying that there's going to be a continent-wide search for Africa's bladers," she said. "It doesn't matter. In terms of power, only the Americans can match us, and we've got a weapon none of them have."

"What's that?"

"Your sarcasm."

He stared at her. "Sophie, I think you just made a joke," he marvelled. "Who are you, and what have you done with my friend?"

She rolled up the newspaper and hit him over the head with it.

.

"This is starting to get ridiculous."

They were all together in the kitchen of Julian's house (yes, they called him Julian now. It was quite an honour, Sophie had decided, to call the heir to the Konzern family by his first name, especially when he was your friend), eating breakfast. It was two days since Hades City had fallen, and the first proper details had started to make their way into the newspapers – along with some pictures. It seemed that the favoured one, at least in the European newspapers, was of Sophie and Wales walking out of the wreck of the city, Julian beside them. To the delight of all the tabloids, the angle of the photograph made it appear that Sophie and Wales were holding hands.

Wales glanced at Sophie over the rim of his tea cup as she dropped the newspaper. "I can't see the problem with it."

"You can't?" She threw her hands up in despair. "They're implying that we're together!"

"No they're not," he sighed, and put his cup down. "That's the sports newspaper. They are surprisingly lacking in gossip pertaining to romance."

"Still," she fumed. "I'm fed up of people assuming that we're romantically involved just because we're in a tag-team with each other."

"Wait, you're not together?" Klaus asked from his seat at the table. "Oi! Konzern! You owe me twenty euros!"

Wales and Sophie turned to stare at their team-mates in absolute horror. "You were betting on us getting together?" Sophie asked.

"Of course we were," Julian said, leaning against the counter. "Whyever not?"

"Because we are not and never will be together," they said in perfect unison. Klaus burst out laughing.

"You two really need to work on that act if you want people to actually believe it, you know..."

.

"You know," Wales said three weeks later, lying on his back on the beach that was deserted apart from the four members of Excalibur, "I love Julian. At least, I love what his family name can do to a gorgeous beach like this one."

"I agree completely," Sophie sighed happily, stretching. "Who else could clear the best beach in the area and keep all the paparazzi away on the nicest weekend of the year?"

"Enjoy it whilst you can," Klaus called as he wandered past them, a surfboard tucked under his arm. "Konzern's talking about getting us to do beach training here because it's harder to run on sand."

Wales flapped a hand at him. "It's fine. There's no tournaments for ages. He can tell us to train all he likes, I'm taking today off."

"Hmm. Me too."

They lay there in silence for a while, listening to Klaus falling off his surfboard, and the soft thudthud-thudthud of Antonius' hooves as Julian galloped him up and down the hard sand at the water's edge. It was nice just to be able to relax for once. Being in the public eye all the time was fun, but exhausting, and after the stress and worry of the events at Hades City there had been more press interviews than ever. All of them wanted to know about the picture and what it might – or might not – imply for the progression of Europe's favourite tag-team. Sophie was growing tired of insisting that it was a case of camera angles, not reality. It hadn't stopped the rumours, of course. Nothing ever would.

"Maybe we should try it."

She sat up with a jolt and looked down at him. "What?"

He opened one eye, then the other. "Well, everyone else seems to think we're together. Is there any particular reason why we shouldn't give it a go?"

"Wh-" she spluttered. "I... I thought you didn't like French girls."

"I don't." He sat up. "Not in general." He suddenly reddened and looked away. "I mean, it's... I don't... it's not like I think you're ugly. You're... um... it's nice. Battling with you. Um. Damn, this is all coming out wrong. Sorry."

She stared at him. "Are... is that your way of saying that you like me?"

He squared his shoulders and looked her straight in the face. "Shall we?" he asked.

He hadn't actually stated what, but she knew him well enough to understand exactly what he was asking. "You are the most ridiculously British and equally most ridiculously unromantic man in the world," she sighed. "At least ask me in French next time."

His face split into a smile that was just the right side of a smirk. "There's going to be a next time?"

.

If you asked her, Sophie would always say that she would never take a British boy to be her boyfriend, her lover, her husband.

She would also say that sometimes she was wrong.