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Rin doesn’t have to open his eyes to know who the weight on his chest belongs to.
He came home after a long day with a kink in his neck he earned from a move he shouldn’t have made and immediately dropped down onto the couch. Then again, maybe if the players he’s stuck with knew how to pass a ball, he wouldn’t have had to jerk that way.
It was dark out when he left the stadium, and his apartment wasn’t much better. It was unfortunately empty too, but Isagi had an interview with a magazine that afternoon, so Rin didn’t bother to message him to ask where he was.
He thought about ordering food for them both, but when it came down to it, he just couldn’t bother. All he wanted was to lie down, close his eyes, and not think about how infuriating half of his team is.
He thought Isagi was infuriating once, but back then, Rin was an idiot. Isagi had a lot to learn, but he learned fast, and the important thing was that even if Rin refused to admit it, Isagi could keep up with him. His current team, though? Pathetic.
He’d exhaled and pictured himself kicking balls at their heads to make himself feel better, and at some point he fell asleep. A car alarm in the distance is what woke him, not Isagi dropping down on him, which apparently he did not long ago after taking a shower, based on the slightly cold and damp sensation on Rin’s chest.
He hates that. It’s cold and uncomfortable, and it makes him grind his teeth, but still, Isagi getting his chest gross with his stupid wet hair can’t hold a candle to his stupid useless team tanking a season that should have been a landslide.
God, they should have given him a say in the roster. Next year when it’s time to start making trades and negotiating salaries, he’s going to say something.
And he’s going to start with Isagi. In fact, he might threaten to go somewhere else if they don’t make Isagi an offer. A good offer. Not as much as what Rin makes because obviously Rin is leagues ahead of him in both talent and style alone, but they need to be on the same team. It’s stupid to waste the potential, and he’s not even considering what kind of press it would give the team if they were.
Annoying press. Press that would put his relationship under a microscope. Press that would make it obvious that Rin can’t play like he wants to without him.
But it would be press that fills the seats and keeps people paying attention, and what’s the point of winning if no one is looking?
He puts his arm across Isagi’s back and exhales. Yeah, that should fix the problem. Just put them on the same team and let the two of them weed out the weak. It’s what they’re good at.
Seeing he’s awake, Isagi pushes himself up off his chest, and Rin blinks his eyes open to see him looking down at him.
“What are you doing?”
“What are you doing,” Isagi asks.
He raises an eyebrow, and a small droplet of water falls from Isagi’s bangs down to his chest. “Did you even dry off or did you just want me to think of you like a wet dog?”
“Woof woof.”
He closes his eyes and puffs a weak laugh through his nose, but he doesn’t turn away when Isagi lowers himself to kiss him.
“I was tired and didn’t feel like it,” he says. “And you looked comfortable.”
“I was comfortable,” he says. “Now I’m soggy.”
“Oh, yeah, you are,” Isagi says before pressing his fingers against the wet patch above his heart. “My bad.”
“Dry off next time,” he says. Isagi moves to get up, but Rin stops him. “I didn’t order dinner.”
“I brought food home,” he says. “It’s in the kitchen if you’re hungry.”
Rin doesn’t say anything. He just looks up at him as Isagi drips on him, and in a moment he sees them somewhere else, somewhere they used to be when Isagi dripping on him would have sent him in a rage.
It doesn’t anymore. It doesn’t even bother him really. It’s just a little annoying.
He sits up, and Isagi moves off of him to let him off the couch. Rin then walks back through the apartment until he finds the cabinet where they keep the towels. He brings one back and covers his head with it, making sure to fully drape it over his face for good measure.
And then he carefully squeezes out the water so that he doesn’t yank on any of his hair, and then he pushes the towel back to reveal Isagi’s face.
His calm and unconcerned stupid little face.
“Yoichi,” he says, not really looking him in the eye.
“Hm?”
“Do you like your team?”
“They’re alright,” he says, and Rin only hums. “You like yours?”
He pauses and shakes his head that he doesn’t. “But that’s nothing new, is it?”
Isagi pulls the towel off his head and wads it into a ball. “I guess not.”
“They can’t keep up with me,” he says, and Isagi laughs.
“No one can, right?”
“You can,” he says, and Isagi’s eyes widen in surprise. Rin frowns and turns away, suddenly ashamed that he said it out loud, but Isagi doesn’t make it worse.
Well, he does, but it’s… acceptable.
He cups his hand around his face to hold his chin, and he presses a kiss to his cheek without a word, and he presses another until Rin eventually turns back to face him. Isagi pauses to glance at his mouth before he kisses him there too.
Neither of them are big on the words people in their position are supposed to say to each other. I miss you, I love you, I need you, Rin would rather die, but this is easy. This is reserved for them the way those words would be, so when Isagi kisses him, he hears them all loud and clear and he gets to say them back.
He runs his fingers through damp hair and shifts to support him when Isagi climbs into his lap. He can’t just keep to himself like a normal person, he has to give him his all. Every. Single. Time.
Maybe that’s why no one else can measure up.
Rin kisses up to him without any reason to hold back, and Isagi makes a small noise in surprise, like it could be a surprise.
The towel tumbles to the floor, as does everything else Rin had on his mind tonight.
Suddenly they’re both home, there is food in the kitchen, and Rin’s neck doesn’t hurt.
“You gonna read my interview when it comes out?”
“No,” he says.
“Liar,” he says against his mouth, and Rin smiles despite himself.
“What, did you say you’re going to be the greatest player in the world again?”
“No,” he says, a little defensively. “I said you are.”
Rin pulls back and looks at him, admittedly surprised. Isagi laughs and looks off with a wave.
“Yeah, you don’t need to read it, it’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
But Rin doesn’t let it go. “What did you say?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Yoichi.”
“Rin,” he says back, and then he sighs in resignation. “Fine. They just asked me if there were any players worth keeping an eye on next season, and I slipped up and said you, and, welp, you know how that’s gonna go.”
Rin nods. His team’s PR team is probably livid, and so will be his coach and a few dozen other people who invested a lot of money to see Isagi and Company running around in a circle.
But Isagi said him.
“You should transfer,” he blurts out, and Isagi’s eyes widen. “Go to a better team. Play with people up to your level.”
Isagi snorts. “Oh, you mean like yours?”
“No, I mean me,” he says.
Isagi pauses for a moment and chews on his lip without a yes or a no because it’s an answer he can’t just give him. Rin knows that.
And still he puts it on the table, because after all of this, what he knows for sure is that he’s not going to feel right until he plays with him again.
And he knows Isagi feels the same.