Chapter Text
HolyfuckholyfuckholyFUCK—
People are definitely staring. But for the first time, Haruka can wholeheartedly say that he doesn't give a shit.
Not that he would say it. He has better things to say. Better people to say them to.
He's hugging Yoichi, after all.
"Seven years—" Yoichi is choking out, and he's stronger than Haruka remembers, solid with muscle now, but there are little tremours going through him that make him feel nine years old again. Haruka probably isn't any better. "Seven years."
"Apparently ya haven't learnt any more words in those seven years," Haruka snarks, and is immediately embarrassed by the hoarseness of his voice. Yoichi squeezes him tighter when he hears it.
"Shut the hell up," his brother laughs shakily. "Oh my god, oh my god. What— where have you— how have you been?"
He pulls back, and then cups Haruka's face between his hands, squinting at him like it'll give any answers.
"I've been fuckin' fine," Haruka snaps, face burning at the attention and affection, and— okay, yeah, maybe he does care that people are staring. "You're the one that ended up in some weirdass football cult MMPH—?!"
"Ohmygod you still blush like that," Yoichi says giddily, squishing his cheeks again.
Haruka yanks Yoichi's hands off him.
And Yoichi tries to pull away but joke's on him, no amount of football strength training is gonna one-up Haruka, clearly Yoichi still doesn't know that to get out of this hold he's just gotta twist his wrists inward and pull. Dumbass.
"Fuck off."
"Not a chance," Yoichi replies seriously.
And it's so sincere it sticks to the roof of Haruka's mouth. He feels the blush spread from his nose to his ears, but worse than that is the growing lump in his throat.
"…yeah, whatever," he gets out finally, and can't really look Yoichi in the eye, so he looks a little past his jaw instead. "Same to you, I guess."
"You guess?"
And just like that, he's back to being annoying.
"—so are we ever going to be introduced, or do we just keep watching this extremely heartwarming reunion?" someone interrupts, and Haruka remembers, again, that they have an audience. His face goes hot.
"No," Yoichi returns, "you get to wait until I'm done."
Haruka is gonna need ice to cool off his face at this point.
"Nah, we're done," he says, and forces himself to step back, to roll his eyes. "Clearly you still like attention, but I'm not a fan."
Yoichi splutters. "What— that's not—"
But people are snickering around them, and Yoichi has made fun of Haruka's blushes since they were toddlers but he blushes just as hard, too, just not as often. So he gives it up as the losing battle it is in favour of struggling to get his wrists free again.
—Haruka lets go without warning.
Sure enough, Yoichi goes stumbling back a few steps— and Haruka couldn't stop the smirk that spreads across his face if he tried.
And he isn't trying. It serves Yoichi right.
"Anyway," Yoichi huffs, tugging at his sleeves. "For introductions, ah… remember how I mentioned a brother?"
"No way," says the first person that'd spoken— the red-haired runner— and his eyes are wide, his tone mocking but not cruel. (Haruka knows how to tell the difference, these days.) "Really? That's your brother? You don't look anything alike."
—not cruel, but Haruka's hackles rise anyway.
"He's being sarcastic," the pale-blue striker cuts in gently, obviously for Haruka's benefit. "The resemblance is a little uncanny, actually."
Then the guy smiles at Haruka, all soft and kind and things Haruka still doesn't know what to do with (—not just for being there. For being related to someone this guy knows. For being someone's brother).
(Haruka hasn't been anyone's brother in so, so long.)
"It's nice to meet you— ah, I'm sorry, what's your name?"
…right.
"Sakura," he says stiffly. "Sakura Haruka."
He doesn't miss the surprised looks on the Blue Lock guys' faces, though some of them are quicker to hide it than others.
"Oh, you're not an Isagi?" a guy with one strip of green hair asks, then curses under his breath when he gets elbowed for it. "Dude, fuck you."
"Ya can't just ask things like that, dumbass!"
"It's just a question…" the seaweed-head sulks.
Haruka tries, and fails, to stop his fingers curling into a fist.
"—technically I'm a Sakura," comes Yoichi's voice. Because he always used to speak when Haruka didn't know how to, and he always looked just as awkward about it, and at age seventeen Haruka—
Just doesn't want to think about this.
Names, and family, and all that shit.
There's only so many old bruises he wants to press on in a day, and being separated from Yoichi is a wound that's bled for the past five months. Haruka's fucking exhausted.
But then some guy, the tall one who ripped his shirt off in the middle of the field, shoulders through the crowd and glares down at Yoichi. "No-one gives a shit about your family drama," he sneers, and Haruka bares his teeth right back but the guy isn't even looking away from Yoichi— "you can stay here and starve for all I care."
Then he marches off, probably in the direction of the exit.
Yoichi blinks after him.
"I can beat him up," Haruka says in an undertone, glaring after the asshole. He's big but he doesn't carry himself like a fighter— barely any of the guys here do. Their strength and speed might be difficult to deal with, but in terms of technique, Nirei probably has them beat.
But Yoichi just laughs. "Ah, no, Barou is— always like that," and his smile doesn't have that tremulous edge it used to, in the foster homes. "I can deal with him."
Haruka gives him a dubious look.
"I get back at him on the field," Yoichi clarifies, sounding half-annoyed half-fond, and, yeah, Haruka can believe that.
"Still," he says, scanning the crowd around them— getting loud again, some of them following the Barou guy out the exit— with a new eye. "If you need any of them beat up, just tell me. It’ll be fun."
"You're so strange."
"Says the egoist striker."
"—Isagi, Sakura," the red-haired guy interrupts. "As entertaining as this is, and as much as I hate to agree with Barou, you're being abandoned for food. Hurry up and figure out your plans, yeah?"
Yoichi visibly startles at this, because the dumbass still doesn't have any situational awareness when he's not on a football field. Haruka rolls his eyes.
—or he tries, at least. But the room is emptier in a way that sinks into his skin, and he feels his friends' eyes on his back, feels how close he's standing to Yoichi, feels how much air there is in here, like the walls are trying to pull them apart.
Like Haruka should be standing farther away.
Real familiar, isn't it?
That old feeling. Something wrong with him, something tainted— some type of shame. Haruka thought he was fucking done with this.
"Our plans…"
Haruka startles, at Yoichi's hand on his shoulder. Finds his brother grinning.
"I don't know your friends," his brother says, with a giddy spark in his eye that makes Haruka's face hot because of-fuckin'-course Yoichi reacts like that to seeing Haruka in a group of people for the first time. "And you don't know mine, we could do introductions on the way— have you gotten dinner?"
"No," Haruka grumbles, "we've been walkin' around this fuckass facility tryin' to find you—"
"Great!" Yoichi beams. "You should all come along, then! We found a place nearby, Reo rented it out for the night, so there'll be enough space for the— seven? Six? Of you?"
“So ya still can't fuckin' count," Haruka scoffs.
Yoichi elbows him in the side, which is probably supposed to hurt. "You’re acting if I didn't get all the braincells in the womb."
"Seems like there’s only footballs bouncin’ around in there now,” Haruka shoots back.
"Bold of you to assume there was ever anything else."
Haruka rolls his eyes. "Right."
A throat clears.
Haruka remembers their audience, again, and his face burns.
"—food," he blurts, glaring at all of them, Yoichi's little band of football nerds included, "I'm fuckin' hungry, let’s get food, let's move."
His friends are snickering even as they surround him and Yoichi, a loud, chattering group. Yoichi is snickering. Even Yoichi's friends look like they're hiding smiles.
And it's embarrassing as hell, but Haruka's been learning to live with that, been growing thicker skin, been figuring out how to live without Yoichi at his side. And maybe he can but maybe he doesn't have to— no, fuck that, he doesn't have to. And fuck anyone that says otherwise.
His brother at his side, his friends, Yoichi standing tall and strong, Haruka without a single bruise from a fight he didn't choose. It's more than Haruka ever knew to dream of.
Looking at the tentative spark in Yoichi's eyes that's been there since he first saw Haruka— maybe it's the same for Yoichi, too. Maybe he couldn't have imagined this, either.
But they have it now.
They have it all.