What A Girl Wants

Fourteen

The first practice after the sleepover seemed to be business as usual. Which Sae had both been banking on and appreciated. She needed something stable to fall back on. Cheerleading would be that thing. Everything in her personal life had seemed to have exploded entirely.

Because of course Rin wouldn't leave her alone about it, with her disgusted looks and her scoffs whenever Sae walked into the room or passed by her room in the hallway. And Oliver, being Oliver, of course told Shuto, who was not so much a gossip as she was an idiot, who had then told everyone, because nobody had ever told her it was a secret.

Which it wasn't, Sae supposed. It just wasn't anyone else's business.

But she could ignore the looks and the quiet whispers that existed more around her than at her so long as she was at practice. When she had a whistle in one hand and a clipboard in the other, people looked at her as someone to impress and fear rather than someone who snuck off with another teammate at the team building sleepover.

That other teammate was a whole other problem.

Maybe problem wasn't the right way to put it. Ryusei wasn't as much of a problem as she was an event. A walking, talking explosion who either didn't notice or didn't care about how the other girls talked about them and did things like walk right up to Sae in the change room and said, what's cookin, good lookin? I missed you, did you miss me?

To which Sae had effectively shot her a look and ignored how the whispers ramped up while she finished tying her hair up in the scratched change room mirror.

Once Sae got finished going around the room, checking over each stunt group's tricks and progress, marking down her findings, she went back over to her own group, who were stretching and chatting and all smiles. Ryusei and Oliver, Sae understood, the unsufferable human beings they were. Their other base, on the other hand, Sae barely knew, but was annoyed by nonetheless. By association.

"Finally," Ryusei said, resting her face on her fists in her wide straddle, looking at up Sae. "It's nice to see you all up close, though I don't hate watching those legs walk around in that skirt, either."

Sae felt her face immediately heat, and her mouth fell open, but nothing came out. This wasn't even gay panic. This was just not the time.

Oliver, who was lazily stretching at best, snorted a laugh. "Adorable."

The other base, a girl whose name Sae hadn't bothered to learn and barely knew or paid attention to, hid a smile in her hand and refused to meet Sae's eye. That, more than anything else, was salt in the wound.

"Get up," Sae told them all, not bothering to acknowledge the comment.

They did as they were told, and there was nothing else said beyond the talk about which group stunts and dismounts they needed to practice. Which, admittedly, were few. They were pretty good, and as much as Sae didn't want to admit it, they were more in sync then they had been before the weekend. The same as everyone else, according to Sae's clipboard. So, the team building activity had worked. Thanks a lot, Luna. Also, fuck off.

Now that everyone was working with the caliber of a well oiled machine, it was almost time to start thinking about the routine for nationals. Well, thinking about it seriously. More seriously. Sae had been thinking about it. Noting everyone's strengths, skill levels, aesthetics. She thought about it half-heartedly through the rest of practice, because throwing the skills really only needed half of her attention to be done to perfection, and then wholeheartedly once she dismissed everyone.

Including into the locker room.

She was only broken out of her daze when she felt a hand at the side of her face, brushing some loose hair pieces that didn't fit in her ponytail off of her face. She still had her athletic shorts on, sports bra, but her uniform was stuffed into her bag and her street clothes were in her hands. She'd really, really zoned out. She recognized the hand. The bright pink nails with the two shorter ones for a reason she now fully understood.