Title: Raimon Tarou is Almost Invincible
Rating: G
Pairing/Character/s: lightly, vaguely MontaxTaka (with appearances by Yamato and mentions of Shin, Sena, Sakuraba, and Hiruma)
Word Count: 620
Warning/s: Spoilers up to 320-ish, to be safe.
Summary: Monta grows taller. Taka doesn’t worry.
Dedication: Ahaha I don’t know,
sw-inku. Love this pairing with me mmmkay.
A/N: I need to think of something to write that involves GaouxAgon OTP. Because YES. But for now, have this.
It finally happens during the middle of Monta’s second year playing football, the sudden and miraculous growth spurt that shoots him up so that the rest of him is finally in proportion to his ridiculously large hands and feet.
He is ecstatic when they have to change his stats in the player guidebook and babbles to Taka about it over the phone at least five times during the course of their long-distance correspondence; now when he opens it up to his page it reads, “Raimon Tarou: WR, 188cm.”
“Shit,” his past and future opponents think, when they see him again at the beginning of the fall season, during an exhibition match between Deimon and Ojou that they happen to all be in the area for, no scouting intended. In either case they know from watching old footage of Deimon games that it had already been near impossible to stop Raimon’s catches before, but now it’s just completely unfair.
Their theories are proven right when Monta takes a running leap for a high ball and sails in an arc over Sakuraba, before landing on his feet behind the blond, right inside the endzone.
He still screams that ridiculous “Catch MAX!” of his whenever he comes up victorious, and strikes a pose while the Deimon half of the audience cheers and most of his potential opponents bury their faces in their hands and wonder how badly they are going to be beaten during the regular season if it looks like Sakuraba can’t even counter attack.
Taka however, doesn’t bury his face in his hands like the others; he just glances up from the book he is reading every so often and watches the game with a kind of warm appreciation, with the kind of anticipation that he’d never once felt for football until he’d met Raimon Tarou in the Christmas Bowl last year.
“You seem relatively calm all things considered, Taka,” Yamato points out wryly from beside the receiver, and can’t help but look slightly pained himself when Sena shows off the brand new Kobe Bryant-esque fake left, fake right, hesitate, spin, duck, and then dash forward combination that he must have learned during that top-secret training camp Hiruma had taken all of Deimon to in Los Angeles during the winter holidays.
Taka just blinks and looks back at his teammate. “Why wouldn’t I be calm?”
As if to answer, on the field, Monta intercepts a long pass by Ojou’s new rookie quarterback and flips it underhanded to Sena across the field, in another oddly basketball reminiscent combo play.
They get to mid-field before Shin manages to steamroll Sena out of the sideline by sheer force of will.
Yamato sighs. “Monta’s your rival, isn’t he?” he presses, and is already absently formulating potential counter-attacks to Sena’s new moves in his head. “I know you and your father invited him to your private conditioning camp during the summer, but aren’t you the least bit worried now that he’s gained an enormous physical advantage also?”
Taka shrugs. “I know his weak points already,” he states, quite plainly.
Yamato stares. “After seeing that just now, you already know how you’re going to beat him??”
Taka allows a ghost of a smile, and the mere sight of it makes Yamato wonder if he is suddenly in a different dimension, courtesy of Sena’s last time-smashing run. “Yes,” the long-haired receiver replies. “I do.”
He goes back to his book and doesn’t say anything else after that, because he thinks it’s funny when the mighty emperor himself is too boggled to respond.
Besides, Taka isn’t sure Yamato would believe him if he said he’d spent most of his summer holidays carefully discovering all of Monta’s ticklish spots anyway.
END