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Nagi’s on course to clear his high score in his shooting game when he gets a nudge on the shoulder. He ignores the nudge for a few moments, continuing to tap on his phone, but when it’s clear that he’s getting overpowered in the game and the nudging on his shoulder persists, he lets his phone drop from his hands with a sigh.
“What?”
Reo, who was previously on the other side of Nagi’s bed, has now scooted closer to him, sports magazine in hand. Reo always likes scouring such magazines for mentions of the two of them. Even though Nagi thinks it’s a waste of time, he still indulges Reo’s enthusiasm whenever he has an article to show, so when he spots the excitement sparkling in Reo’s wide eyes, Nagi figures that Reo must have found a particularly flattering article about them.
“Look,” Reo says, thrusting the paper in front of Nagi’s face.
Nagi squints at the page, expecting to see their names splashed in large kanji on the front, but it’s an entirely different name that he finds. He glances at Reo, who easily picks up on the confusion swimming in Nagi’s eyes. Reo moves even closer, until his shoulder presses against Nagi’s, and his grip on the magazine shifts. When his hand moves, Nagi spots a smaller sub-article with their names in the title, but Reo’s hand covers it again before Nagi can properly read it. Reluctantly, Nagi’s gaze shifts back to the main article. The picture at the top is of two players Nagi’s never seen before, the shorter one with black hair being blocked by a taller one with lighter hair. Nagi’s uninterested gaze dips over the rest of the article, but it’s too many words for him to bother reading properly.
“They did a feature on Ryosuke Kira,” Reo begins, tapping at the unfamiliar name in the headline. “Actually, I’ve been meaning to show you clips from his matches—maybe not this one, because it was too easy of a win against Ichinan, so there’s nothing really to see other than—”
Maybe Nagi should be paying attention, but it’s late, Nagi’s eyelids are beginning to droop, and it’s too easy to let his eyes slip closed and focus on the warmth of Reo’s shoulder against his. He’s almost slipped entirely into unconsciousness when he feels Reo shift against him again, and he reluctantly opens his eyes again. Reo’s still talking, but once again, his eyes are drawn to the smaller article in the corner of the same page—this time, Reo’s hand doesn’t cover it, so Nagi can properly read the title.
Reo Mikage & Seishiro Nagi: Partners on the Field, Lovers off the Field?!
Huh, Nagi thinks.
He keeps reading.
Reo Mikage and Seishiro Nagi are undoubtedly formidable foes on the field—their in-game coordination is one that players in the prefecture envy like no other! But does it go further than that??? Recent observers speculate that the relationship between the two may go more than friendship, and one anonymous source from Hakuho High even mentioned that they have a clandestine meeting spot on the roof of the school!! Are they planning their plays on the field up there… or trading kisses?!??!?!?!
The article continues for another paragraph below, but it’s covered by Reo’s wrist. Nagi frowns as his eyes trail over the last sentence again.
Are they planning their plays on the field up there… or trading kisses?!??!?!?!
It’s almost always the former. Nagi kind of wishes it was the latter.
Nagi wonders if he should be more surprised by the content of the short article, but he’s more surprised by the fact that Reo hadn’t mentioned it. Reo saves every article that even has their name mentioned in passing, whether it’s praise or critique. Nagi’s pretty sure Reo has a scrapbook of them all somewhere, and knowing his meticulous nature, this doesn’t seem like something he’d miss. Maybe he didn’t save it because it didn’t mention much relating to their playing? It was strange—Nagi thinks Reo would rather like the phrase “formidable foes on the field.”
Of course, there was always the chance Reo hadn’t spotted the article since it was so short. Maybe Nagi could point it out to him after Reo was done talking.
And Reo was still talking, actually. Nagi begins listening again just in time to hear—
“—you know, they call him the treasure of Japanese soccer—”
“Treasure?” Nagi interrupts, all thoughts of the shorter article leaving his mind. He frowns, finally glancing back at the main picture. “This chibi?” he asks, and he can't help the hint of derision slipping in his tone as he eyes the black-haired player in the picture.
"No, no," Reo corrects, tapping his finger on the second figure in the picture. "The good-looking one."
Nagi blinks slowly. "Good-looking," he repeats, and Reo's eyes dart to him before darting away back to the picture.
"Err, yeah," Reo starts. "You know, handsome. Kind of in foreign-looking way, right?"
Nagi doesn't see it. He bites his tongue before he can say as much, but he can't help but prod for more information anyway. "Is it the hair?"
Reo's fingers fidget on the page. His thumb covers the article on the side that the two of them headline again. "The hair...?" Reo repeats faintly. Once again, his eyes dart to Nagi, before shifting back to the page, before shifting away altogether. "Yeah, I guess that's part of it."
Nagi stares at the picture again. “Hm,” he says noncommittally. Reo fidgets again, revealing the smaller article again, and Nagi opens his mouth to point it out to Reo, but before he can, Reo snaps the magazine closed with a high-pitched laugh.
“Ah… it’s late, isn’t it?” Reo says, pulling away from Nagi. Suddenly, Nagi’s shoulder feels terribly cold. “I should be leaving.”
You can stay over, Nagi wants to say, but Reo’s frenetic nature is unusual, and Nagi doesn’t think the offer would be well received.
“See you, Reo,” he says instead, shuffling off of his bed to see Reo to the door. A wave and a goodbye later, Reo’s gone.
Nagi slumps backwards on his bed once Reo leaves and stares at his ceiling.
Handsome, huh?
The next day, Nagi wakes up early.
“Morning, Choki,” he mumbles out before the customary pricking of his finger on his cactus. He finishes his daily challenge on his phone, reluctantly eats a fruit jelly, takes a shower, brushes his teeth, and gets dressed—when his usual routine is complete, he takes out his phone.
ryosuke kira, he types into the search bar, and then navigates to the photo results. Once he finds a satisfactory enough photo, he goes back to his bathroom and rummages around into the depths of his cabinet until he finds a tub of hair wax. Reo had bought it for him one time—for what reason, Nagi couldn’t remember—but Nagi had never bothered to take it out again after opening it back when Reo had first given it to him to peek at the substance inside. He stares at the tub for a while, then stares at his reflection in the mirror, then stares at the picture on the phone.
Here goes nothing, Nagi thinks, and he cracks open the tub of hair wax. He scoops out a bit on his finger, rubbing the strange substance between his fingers. It’s thick like sludge, and when he tries putting it on the lock of hair between his eyes, it clumps awkwardly. Nagi tugs his fingers out of his hair and wonders if he should have found a tutorial first. He’s already got the substance on his fingers now, though, so he can’t exactly tap at his screen to search for one. Plus, finding a tutorial sounds like a pain.
Actually, this entire thing is a bit of pain. As Nagi takes a larger scoop of hair wax from the tub and tries to spread it on his hair to mimic the swoop of Kira’s bangs, he wonders why exactly he’s doing all this in the first place.
You know, handsome. Kind of in a foreign-looking way, right?
Nagi untangles his fingers from his hair again and stares at his reflection in the mirror.
Foreign-looking, sure. Handsome, though, is not a word he would use for the sight he sees. His hair is now sticking up and out in every which way, almost like he’d stuck his finger in an electrical socket. When he pats a hand against his hair to flatten it, he ends up having to pull his hand back quickly. The edges of his hair are now sharp, and they dig awkwardly into the pads of his fingers when he gives one of them an experimental poke.
I look like Choki, Nagi thinks in mild dismay.
He’s ready to turn the tap on, dunk his head in the sink, and rinse it all off, but even as his hand moves, he hears a series of knocks on the door. One, one-two. It’s the rhythm with which Reo always knocks on his door in the morning if Nagi’s ever late.
“Shit,” Nagi mutters, quickly closing the tub of hair wax. He stares at it for a few minutes before throwing the entire thing in the trash. He closes the bathroom door behind him and gingerly prods at his hair again, only to pull back again with a wince.
Knock. Knock-knock.
It’s Reo, again. Nagi wonders if he can get away with staying under the covers for the day, but then he remembers that Reo has a key to his apartment and realizes there’s no point in trying to hide.
“Nagi?” he hears Reo call, muffled through the door. “I’m coming in.”
“No,” Nagi blurts out in response, and he quickly tugs his hood over his head to cover the worst of his hair. It doesn’t do anything to hide the disaster that is Nagi’s bangs, but Nagi figures it’s good enough as he speed-walks to the door. “I’m ready,” he announces when he opens the door, and he doesn’t let Reo’s surprised gaze linger on him for long as he quickly walks towards the limousine waiting for them.
He doesn’t get far before Reo stops him with a tug on his sleeve.
“Woah, woah,” Reo says with a surprised laugh. “I’ve never seen you so excited… to…” Reo’s words slowly trail off. “Nagi…?”
Nagi glances away.
“...what the fuck did you do to your hair?”
Nagi mumbles something unintelligible as a response. Reo tugs him closer, peering at the bits of hair poking out of Nagi’s hood. He slowly pulls the hood away, then gives an experimental tap against one of the skewed spikes of hair.
“Ouch,” Reo says, his eyes wide. His gaze flits over Nagi’s face and hair. “Um,” he starts, “maybe… we should put this back on.” He carefully moves Nagi’s hood back over his hair, and then quickly tugs Nagi towards the limousine. Once inside the car, he pulls the hood back off, staring at Nagi’s hair with some sort of look of horrified rapture. Through the mirror in the front, Nagi can even spot a flicker of surprise on Ba-Ya’s typically impassive face, although she quickly shifts her gaze away.
“Can I skip practice today,” Nagi tries. Reo blinks out of his stupor and quickly shakes his head.
“No way,” he responds immediately. “We can fix… this,” Reo continues, poking at Nagi’s hair again, “before practice.” He shakes his head. “Seriously, Nagi, what did you even do?”
“Hair wax,” Nagi mumbles.
Reo blinks. “You mean—that one I bought you a few months ago?” He lets out an incredulous laugh. “How much of it did you use?”
Nagi coughs. “Half, I think.”
“Half,” Reo repeats weakly. “Half of the tub?” At Nagi’s silence, Reo laughs again. “Ah… I’m sure we can fix it, though.” He glances out the window. “See, we’ve arrived,” he remarks, and as the car rolls to a stop, he quickly tugs Nagi’s hood back over his hair. “See you, Ba-Ya!”
Nagi lets himself get dragged out of the limousine without much resistance, and a few furtive glances around his shoulder later, Reo pushes Nagi into the bathroom and peers around. After determining it to be empty, Reo holds up a hand.
“Wait here,” he tells Nagi, and Nagi, with nothing else to do, continues to stand awkwardly by the sink. He catches sight of his shocked hair in the mirror and wrinkles his nose. Somehow, during the car ride, it’s gotten even worse. When Reo comes back, he’s dragging a chair with him.
“Where did you get that?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Reo dismisses. He places the chair so that the back hits the front of the sink. “Come on, sit. I’ll wash it out.”
Nagi does as ordered to, sitting in the chair, leaning his head back, and closing his eyes. After a few moments, he can hear the sound of water rushing out of the tap.
“Tell me if it’s too hot,” he hears Reo murmur, and Nagi hums in response.
Soon, Nagi can feel hot water sinking through his scalp. He can feel the pressure making his hair droop, but it’s only for a few seconds before the pressure dissipates in favor of a light brush of fingers against his hair. Reo’s always liked brushing his fingers through Nagi’s hair, but this feels different. Usually, Reo’s fingers are only absently trailing through the locks of his hair, but this time, Reo’s fingers push and prod in a more deliberate fashion, and Nagi finds that he likes the added pressure.
Ah, Nagi thinks. Reo should do this more often.
It's nice, with Reo's fingers combing through Nagi's hair like this, and Nagi can almost imagine himself drifting off to sleep just like this, but he hasn't completely slipped out of consciousness before hearing Reo murmur quietly under his breath.
"I hope no one walks in," Reo says, and he's talking in that distant sort of way Nagi knows he talks in when he thinks he's alone. "This wouldn't help the rumors."
"What rumors?"
Reo's fingers in his hair still at Nagi's response, almost as if he hadn't expected Nagi to still be awake.
"Oh... nothing," is Reo's unconvincing response after a brief pause. "You know how people talk."
Nagi hums. "Like that article from yesterday about us?" At Reo's silence, Nagi continues. "Lovers off the field?"
Reo's fingers leave Nagi's scalp entirely. Without the contact, Nagi is all too aware of the water still dripping through his hair, so he finally pulls his head out of the sink to peer at Reo through his wet bangs. Reo has pulled his hands closer to himself, and he's taken half a step backward. There's an entirely unfamiliar sort of expression on his face, and it's only when Nagi watches for a moment longer that he can recognize the emotion playing on his features—
—fear. Reo is, as Nagi has never seen before, terrified.
"You... know about that?"
"Yeah," Nagi says. "I saw it yesterday next to that Kira article."
Reo makes a move like he wants to take another step back, but he stays in place. "And?" he asks in a strange voice. "You're not weirded out by it?"
Nagi tilts his head to the side. "No?"
"You're not bothered by it?"
"Should I be?"
Reo's mouth opens once, closes once, opens again, closes again. He isn't taking any more physical moves back yet, but he keeps shrinking into himself. It's wrong, Nagi thinks, the way he's trying to make himself small. It's wrong, and entirely unlike the Reo that Nagi knows.
"Nagi, I'm gay," Reo finally blurts out, and that, Nagi blinks.
A long pause of silence stretches out in the space between them.
"Okay," Nagi says.
"Okay?" Reo repeats after another pause. "That's it?"
Nagi blinks again. He doesn't especially know what else to say to such a declaration, but the way Reo's staring at him makes him think there must be something else to remark. Unbidden, his mind travels back to the magazine page that he can’t seem to forget about.
"Is Kira your type, then?"
Whatever Reo was expecting, Nagi's response clearly wasn't it, if the way he reels back in surprise is anything to go by. "Is... he—what?"
"Kira," Nagi repeats. "Is he your type?" When Reo's bewildered gaze persists, Nagi pushes a wet lock of hair from his forehead and clarifies. "You called him good-looking. And handsome. In a foreign-looking way."
Reo lets out a strangled sort of sound. "Well," he says weakly. "That was just... an observation... I don't really—I mean, he just reminded me of—"
"Ah," Nagi mutters in disappointment. "What a pain. All that work for nothing."
Reo squints at him. "What?"
Nagi pulls at a strand of his own hair. "I was trying to copy his hairstyle," he explains, and Reo's eyes grow wide.
"Why?"
"I wanted you to call me good-looking, too," he says plainly, and Reo's mouth drops open.
"Why?"
Nagi stares at Reo blankly. Was the reason not obvious? "Because I like you."
“Huh,” Reo croaks out. Another strange expression flickers on his face, but a blink later, he’s got a wobbly grin. “Ah, you mean… well, I like you, too, Nagi, you’re my best friend—”
“No,” Nagi interrupts with a frown. Reo’s grin falters.
“...no?”
“No,” Nagi repeats. “I like you, like…” He trails off. “Like kisses on the school rooftop.”
This time when Reo's eyes widen, Nagi can see the pieces clicking into place. He mentally pats himself on the back for finally properly communicating something to Reo, but when Reo continues gawping at him silently, Nagi begins to second-guess himself. Just because Kira wasn't Reo's type didn't mean Nagi necessarily was, and if anything, maybe Reo would be weirded out by Nagi—
—or, at least, that's what Nagi thinks before Reo pulls his face forward with both hands, and with Reo's lips on his, every other thought flies out of his head in favor of a string of Reo, Reo, Reo—
"Oh, god," Reo mutters when he pulls away, his hands still on Nagi's face, his cheeks prettily flushed, "the magazines are going to have a field day with this."
Nagi tugs Reo closer. "Let them," he murmurs, and while Reo feigns a look of disbelief at Nagi's words, Nagi can tell well enough by the smile curving against his lips when he pulls Reo closer again that Reo doesn’t particularly mind, either.