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Itoshi Rin is sitting on a pier the day after the U-20 game, scrolling through a series of shitty articles until the words become a blur.
The taste of victory is sullied by the knowledge that the win wasn’t his alone. The hero on the field that day was Isagi Yoichi, as acknowledged by his own genius, I-hate-Japan brother himself.
Fuck Isagi. Fuck Nii-chan. Fuck-
“Rin-chan!” someone sing-songs and Rin swivels his head to see a sadly familiar antennae mass of hair bobbing towards him. Fuck this guy too. “It actually is you!”
“Fuck off,” Rin says. Just when he thought this day couldn’t get any worse, this insect decides to come crawling out of the woodworks. Rin shoots him the middle finger in the hopes that it’ll ward him off.
It doesn’t. Shidou gets closer and then he latches onto Rin’s back like some sort of wayward koala.
“Missed you too, Rin-Rin!” he calls out, even though they saw each other less than 24 hours ago and they never missed each other in the first place. Rin tries to shake him off but Shidou mistakes it for role-playing an angry bull and he clings on like his life depends on it. His fingernails dig into Rin’s shoulders and he’s sure that they’ll leave imprints in the morning.
Shidou’s starting to piss him off. Actually, scratch that. They passed the starting line ages ago and now Shidou’s bordering dangerously on getting-socked-in-the-face territory.
“Fuck off,” Rin says again. Because yeah, he’s creative.
“What’s got your panties in a twist?” Shidou leers and why the fuck is his tongue so close to Rin’s face. Sure, he’s a heathen that probably just crawled out of the jungle one day but didn’t someone at least teach him basic manners?
Apparently not, given the way he’s practically licking Rin’s eyeball.
“The game?” Shidou spits.
“ We won,” Rin scoffs because he’s way too cheery for someone who just got his ass handed to him.
“Actually, I scored two goals and you only got one,” he laughs. Rin’s about to remind him how basic arithmetic works but he clamps one of his sweaty hands over Rin’s mouth before he can speak. “But that’s neither here nor there. Is it… Isagi?”
Isagi Yoichi… the guy gets under his skin like one of those bugs that hatch their eggs beneath the surface and then chew their way out. But no, he’s not the reason Rin’s blood is boiling to the point of explosion.
“Not him then,” Shidou says and Rin wonders when the fuck he’ll get the hint and leave him alone. Maybe when hell freezes over. “Underlashes Senior?”
Rin flinches. Shidou laughs.
“Bingo!” he shouts, making little finger guns like he’s five years old. (He’d fit right in with the toddlers. Rin should go dump him at a daycare and call it quits.) “So Brother Dearest left you in the dust and now you’re sulking?”
Rin’s not sulking. He’s just… processing. He swats at Shidou’s extended hand like it’s a persistent fly.
“Sulking is pretty lame, Rin-Rin,” Shidou says and he snaps. He finally pries the guy’s finger loose and whips around to face him.
“Oh yeah? And what do you think I should do?” he shouts, venom laced in his words. Rin only realizes the insanity in asking Prime Idiot #1 of Blue Lock for advice when it’s too late.
“Go apeshit,” Shidou says and he’s grinning like a feral animal.
“Go apeshit,” Rin echoes dully but the words are starting to sound a little less unreasonable then they did a few moments prior.
“Aren’t you tired of being nice?” Shidou asks, whispering in his ear like he’s some damn demon on his shoulder. “Don’t you just wanna go apeshit?”
Rin’s blood is boiling. He’s delusional from the rush. His head got slammed a little too hard on the field yesterday and Shidou’s kick to the fucking face knocked his common sense loose. It’s the only plausible explanation for why he’s actually listening to this insect’s ideas.
“What do you propose I do?” he grinds out, like each word physically pains him.
“Never thought you’d ask, Rin-Rin!” Shidou’s grinning. That’s sign #1 that he’s royally fucked. “Do you know where he lives?”
He gets an address and a spare key from his parents because they’re as gullible as always and can’t sense the budding four-year-long rivalry sitting right under their noses. Or maybe that’s just how all sibling relationships work.
Shidou whistles when the car dumps them on the sidewalk.
“This place is pretty nice!” he shouts. The lights are off as Rin slips the key into the knob and turns. “Are you loaded too?”
Rin actually stops to stare at him. He’s a 16-year-old with no current offers for a pro team. He blinks his stupidly long eyelashes that Aryu would kill to have.
“No,” he says simply and tries to slam the door in his face but Shidou pushes back and wriggles his body through.
“First stop is the kitchen!” Shidou announces and because today is a non-stop string of bad decisions, Rin closes the door behind him and follows.
“Now we eat all his leftovers!” he yells as he wrenches open the fridge. He goes to town on some fancy-looking sushi in a plastic container and then starts guzzling milk from the carton.
This is such a fucking dumb idea. Shidou doesn’t even want revenge, he’s just hungry. He’s an animal moving according to his instincts. He also doesn’t know how to use a utensil, given the way that he’s clawing at the food with his bare hands.
“Goodbye,” Rin says and leaves him abandoned in the kitchen.
“WAIT RIN-RIN!” Shidou shouts after him but his mouth is full of food so it sounds more like “WAIF RID-RID”. Rin walks out regardless.
Well… now that Shidou’s roped him into this half-baked plan, he might as well wreak some havoc of his own.
It’s the middle of winter so Rin cranks the temperature up to the highest setting to fuck up his heating bill. He also leaves the light in every room on because he might as well fuck up the electric bill while he’s at it.
Rin goes to the bathroom and uses an extra bucket lying around to swap the shampoo and the body wash. He takes the special face wash that Sae gets imported from Japan when he’s overseas and stashes it in some corner of the closet where he’ll never find it.
He flips the toilet roll from under to over on his way out because he’s feeling extra petty. The heater is really kicking into gear now and his shirt is sticky with perspiration. When Rin goes to the kitchen to grab a soda from his fridge, Shidou has disappeared.
Rin’s halfway through the can when he hears whooping and spots Shidou outside, running around with a roll of toilet paper. Fine by him.
He throws the empty can into the recycling–he hates his brother, not the environment–and cracks his knuckles to get back to work.
Rin pulls the little protective coverings off the bottoms of all the furniture and stacks all the chairs on the dining room table, upside-down. There’s a mess of wires behind Sae’s giant flatscreen TV and he picks two at random and swaps them.
Rin steps on the end of a phone charger and lets out a string of curses. But wait–misfortune can be construed into luck, defeat into opportunity with a single action. He collects all the chargers in the house and shoves them into the freezer. (He puts them underneath an expired box of pizza. Why the hell is that even in there? )
There’s a crash by the door as Shidou walks back in with an empty cardboard roll. He knocks over half the shoes there and that gives Rin an idea.
He switches all the shoes so that they each have a different pair. Slippers go with sneakers and fancy-ass dress shoes go with boots. Shidou laughs (his tongue goes flying) when he realizes what Rin’s doing and helps him.
There’s a laptop sitting on the couch. Rin logs into it on the second try because Sae hasn’t had the common sense to change his password in the last ten years. He logs him out of his Netflix account because he knows they changed the password two months ago and Sae doesn’t know the new one.
“Why stop at Netflix?” Shidou asks from over his shoulder and shit, he might actually have more than two brain cells after all. Rin clears all the cookies to log him out of all his accounts and then sets his background to a giant American football.
Shidou flips all the couch cushions upside-down as Rin unplugs all the lamps. He leaves the wire near the outlet so at a quick glance, it looks like it’s still plugged in. The thought of Sae repeatedly pulling the chain of a lamp with no success makes his heart full.
They barge into the bedroom and Rin pulls off all the sheets to put them back in the reverse order. Comforter, then loose fitting sheet, then tight-fitting sheet and then–holy shit, is this a waterproof cover?
Rin flips all the books on his shelves upside down and takes one of the manga for himself. Shidou’s drawing dicks on all his trophies in permanent marker because his brain never hit puberty.
They go back downstairs because Shidou’s hungry and if he’s being honest, Rin is too. He’s sitting on the counter, swapping all the silverware when the front door suddenly bangs open.
Itoshi Sae is standing in the entrance, looking somewhere between bored out of his mind and annoyed.
“What the fuck,” he says eloquently and Rin relishes in the two seconds he looks absolutely shell-shocked before he sees them and wipes his expression.
“Demon,” Sae nods, by way of greeting. And then he glances over at Rin with about the same interest as a pile of dirt. “Rin.”
“‘Sup, Sae-chan,” Shidou says, still munching on a chicken wing because he has no shame at all.
“What is this?” Sae asks and the way he’s calm in the face of the Apocalypse itself pisses Rin off to no end. He pushes himself off the counter and stomps up to him until they’re face-to-face. (Rin knows he’s taller but the way Sae glances at him–like he’s a fly buzzing by his head–doesn’t make him feel like it.)
“DO IT!” Shidou hollers from the kitchen. Sae raises one eyebrow in an unspoken challenge.
“FUCK YOU!” Rin shouts and slugs him in the face, putting four years of built-up resentment behind his fist. He’s nearly doubled-over, panting when he’s done and he feels like a dam in his chest has been unblocked.
“Well, that was anticlimactic,” Sae says. There’s barely a bruise on his cheek and he looks just as bored as before. “Now I’m-”
“DON’T WORRY, I GOTCHA RIN-RIN!” Shidou shouts and Rin turns just in time to see his foot collide straight-on with Sae’s face. There’s blood spurting from his nose and Rin winces reflexively because he’s been on the receiving end of that kick before.
“WHAT THE FUCK?!” Sae shouts and oh shit, this is the first time Rin’s heard that much emotion in his voice.
“GO GO GO!” Shidou yells and then he and Rin take off like the hounds of hell are on their heels.