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BLUE LOCK FACILITY, THE DAY OF THE INTERVIEW, 1:30 PM
"I'm the top of Blue Lock!"
Isagi Yoichi didn't realize what he said until he felt, actually shivered from the intimidating aura Rin was emitting. Even during the U20 game, Rin had only been this mindlessly furious in his flow state.
Another indicator that Isagi had fucked up was when he heard Reo start screaming at the cameramen to cut the live, cut it now, don't you motherfuckers know what cut means? Nagi had to place a hand on Reo's shoulder to calm him down.
Isagi knew that he was in trouble for something, but keep in mind that Isagi, first of all, didn't know the error in his speech or else he wouldn't have said it. Furthermore, even if Isagi did know English, this sweet summer child didn't know what a top was and, if forced to guess, would say that the term is a compliment for being superior to all others.
Unsurprisingly, Shidou immediately knew what was happening, because he had famously memorized the English lexicon of slang terms. Why? Because he's Shidou, and it's the only way Ego could get him to learn English at all.
Out of the twenty three survivors of the Neo Egoist League, only three - no, four knew that Isagi had declared himself as a "dominant partner in sexual activities." (Aiku was stifling laughter into his hand, and doing nothing to help the situation), and the other nineteen players had no idea what was happening.
Oh, silly you, though, to think that Ego would have smoothed over the interview, because lest we forget that Ego neither knows nor cares about Blue Lock's public reputation other than how skilled the players are (even though he is the director). So to set the scene, once again: Isagi has stated that he's the pegger as opposed to the pegged, the dom over the sub, or whichever terms you prefer.
Bachira leaps into action as Isagi's number one fan, and knocked over a cameraman before trying to pull Isagi out of the chair, but failed miserably due to the difference in stature.
"Bachira, what the fuck are you doing."
"I'm saving you!"
Poor Yoichi, who should've let Bachira drag him away, because in the minute of tug and war they were playing with Isagi as the rope, Rin had started to cuss out the newscaster in fluent English, insulting his mother, grandmother, and future children for being relating to the dunce that the newscaster is for asking the question in the first place.
Ever since the NEL, Hiori, Kurona, and Yukimiya had joined Isagi's so-called "harem", so of course they tackled Bachira and took the more civilized route of coaxing Yoichi out with their words.
"Isagi-kun, I would advise that you don't repeat your statement." Hiori looked panicked for once, and Kurona nodded along. Yukimiya had taken advantage of his good looks that had secured him a career as a model, was 'convincing' the news crew to back away, pointing out Rin and explaining his tendency to, ahem, lash out at unsuspecting strangers.
"Hiori, what the hell is going on? I don't know what I said wrong, but it looks like Rin's about to go into flow state during an interview, even though we're not playing soccer. Please try to calm him down, guys - "
"No, dumbass." Now there was Barou, with the worst timing. "Only you can calm down eyelashes, and when he's like this, I don't think even I can take him." Barou looked deeply pained to admit it, and Isagi mourned the fact that he would've relished this moment in any other situation - the Shouei Barou admitting he was inferior to someone? Again, though. This is not a normal scenario.
Isagi would've taken anyone normal at that point. Chigiri, Nanase, even Kunigami, who was still undergoing his emo phase. Anyone but Barou, whose life work seemed to be annoying Yoichi. On the field, it was amazing for creating chemical reactions, but most of the players that flourished under Jinpachi Ego's tyrannical reign were as woefully bad at social interactions as the man himself.
For example, Barou. If that determination he had could be channeled into something productive - farming, perhaps, could be used to vent his energy and redirect it from Isagi, he predicted that everyone's lives would greatly improve. It was peaceful to visualize Barou planting seeds and Rin pounding mochi, somewhere far, far away from Isagi. This was nice to think about, honestly. He really was thinking about his Soccer Theory most of the time, so everyone had learned not to interrupt him, but what he had never told them was that sometimes he was thinking about clouds and puppies, alternate universes in which he led a peaceful life with the normal people from Blue Lock. He could have had a herb garden with Kurona, a mortgage with Hiori. Ah, sweet, childish dreams such as these were not meant for the light of day, however, and so Isagi's stream of thought was broken by Barou.
"Isagi."
The person in question looked up to see that the over six-foot man was looming over him.
"Barou, why are you standing over me like a prison guard?"
Everyone turned around, dumbstruck. Everyone, as in everyone in the Blue Lock facility had started causing mayhem while Isagi had been zoning out. Raichi was cackling and stomping on someone's equipment; Kunigami and Chigiri were flirting in the corner, which wouldn't be that bad if the news crew hadn't kept hitting on Chigiri and subsequently been knocked out by Kunigami; and Bachira. Bachira was using the fallen camera sticks as batons and swinging them around - "Bachira, you're going to give someone brain damage and Ego-san already spent the budget!" - and Anri, the one sane person here and sole member of Blue Lock's PR team was attempting to simultaneously fix the wires and apologize to every employee in the room.
Amidst the chaos, no one had thrown, broken, or stomped on anything or anyone within a six foot radius of Isagi, knowing that they would be immediately persecuted by everyone else in the room.
Isagi, the sole voice of reason:
"What the fuck happened?"
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BLUE LOCK FACILITY, THE DAY OF THE INTERVIEW, 5:40 PM
Thanks to Isagi's intervention, the crew had barely escaped with their lives.
Now, there was a small caveat that no one had accounted for; that would've allowed the players and Ego to get away with this one-sided bloodbath, the massacre of the news crew, and that was if the cameramen had actually stopped filming when Reo ordered them to. Somehow, the film reel hadn't been crushed by the teens, and hadn't confiscated by the director (who couldn't seem to care less, for his part).
Still, they had the choice to not release the footage. Isagi, the only person being interviewed, had seemed innocent enough and escorted them out without any casualties. As soon as he snapped out of his daze, the players had turned into angels.
"No, Isagi-kun, I would never take this dear man's stick!"
"Bachira," Isagi had asked, as he was shoving the camera holder into the man's hands. "This has literally been ripped from the floor and you were waving it around like a maniac."
"Never!"
The bee-like boy hadn't been the real problem, as much of a terror as he was. No, it had been the little Itoshi. Sae's cold demeanor had nothing on his brother's. As soon as Isagi had zoned out, and they had seen that no amount of poking and prodding would shake him awake, Rin had interviewed (read: threatened) every single member of the crew, and the little rich boy who was in line to inherit Mikage Corporations had to bribe everyone to keep quiet about it after. They could, if only out of fear of repercussions from the players, hide the reel in a drawer and save it for when all of the dangers were dead from antagonizing too many people.
But that wouldn't be nearly as entertaining, would it? No, everyone wanted to see the sweet Isagi Yoichi announce his sexual position, typo or not.
They did feel bad about it! Kind of.
"Boss," one of the cameramen had protested. "This kid seems sweet - and he's not even eighteen years old. All I'm thinking is that maybe we should add on some extra content - visit the players again so they can explain."
Suffice to say, no one agreed. "Did you see that Itoshi brother?" "The fucker broke my pinky!" "There was a man with a sperm phone case who told me that I should consider making his merch because his style of soccer playing would be sexy one day!" "Don't get me started on that shark's "sexy soccer" tagline."
The man was outvoted nine to one. He looked towards the boss hopefully
"You think I care about those fucks? We have medical bills to pay."
The interview went up an hour later.
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GERMANY, THE DAY OF THE INTERVIEW: 6:41 PM
Ness, the ever-loyal dog had set his google alerts to notify him at any mention of Isagi Yoichi or Blue Lock, and checked each of the thousands of notifications that constantly popped up. Mostly, they were edits of pairings that fans liked, compilations of funny moments from the NEL or the U20 match out of context that were trending as of then.
Once Ness saw the interview, he sent it to Kaiser along with six other texts. Kaiser did check his texts from Ness, as the latter organized most of his schedule and routine, so Kaiser expected to see a brief summary of events for the week. Instead, it was a video, along with four other unintelligible texts and one saying "CALL ME ONCE YOU WATCH IT." Kaiser watched the video, and wanted immediately to bleach his eyes from the latter half of the clip, but Yoichi. Saying that he was a top. A top. Kaiser thought there was a possibility that Yoichi had made a mistake, but Yoichi doesn't make mistakes. And even if it had been a tragic misunderstanding, no one had come out with an official statement denying it, which would be the obvious move .
Kaiser drank many, many cans of cola that night, crushing them in his fist and throwing them over the balcony into his neighbor's fig plants. Fuck her fig plants. Isagi Yoichi was a top.
Before passing out, Kaiser sent the video to Itoshi Sae after spamming him random letters, captioning it "looks like I awoke something in Yoichi during the nel huh".
Kaiser now had another detail to add to his psychoanalysis of Yoichi, and even better, he could piss off Sae by flirting with Yoichi in the comment section - maybe even Yoichi himself as well.
Michael Kaiser went to sleep satisfied that night, and for many more, believing that he had been Isagi Yoichi's sexual awakening.
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SPAIN, THE DAY AFTER THE INTERVIEW: 1:41 AM
Sae was in bed, scrolling on his phone (yes, God forbid the Itoshi Sae relax for once. He could never let Rin know about his habit of doom scrolling.), and saw a text from Kaiser.
Normally, Sae would've ignored the text as he did from any other NG11 players. Lorenzo was a creep, Hugo was...admittedly, also a creep, and Loki was a creep for liking Hugo. Freaks, all of them, and he wasn't even counting Bunny. He had all of them on hide alerts mode.
However. Kaiser occasionally offered useful feedback, so Sae had to sort through all the shitposts about Re Al, Sae, Rin, and all of Japan in general. So, Sae scrolled through the texts that looked as if the man had smashed his head on his keyboard, and found a link to a video. Strangely enough, the preview was not a list of reasons why Germany was a superior country, in all senses, or a critique of the U20 game and Sae's errors in it. No, this was titled..."Isagi Yoichi's declaration", and captioned "looks like I awoke something in Yoichi during the nel huh".
Sae did have a soft spot for Isagi (he had done what had been thought impossible), and Isagi was objectively attractive, with dark blue eyes and hair. The juxtaposition of his cute features with the demonic side that emerged on the field was admittedly interesting. Like Kaiser; he watched the video.
How the fuck had Rin been so fucking stupid?
He was on the pitch, training, practicing with Isagi, and still, Rin was painful to watch when interacting with Isagi. You would think that having Isagi trail after Rin for a year, then vice versa, would help Rin build some sort of banter. No. No, it was all horrible.
Rin had threatened Isagi - you could tell that he was trying to be helpful, or at least cared about Isagi, but to any outside observer it looked as though Rin was genuinely going to kill Isagi in his sleep.
Now, if Sae was there. There was only a one to two year age gap between him and Isagi, and he was sure that their connection would overcome that. Imagine it! His "beautiful destruction" playstyle and Isagi's metavision - it would be a sight to see.
Itoshi Sae screamed into his pillow and cursed Kaiser for sending him this link. He didn't sleep for the rest of the night, and texted his brother for the first time in years.
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BLUE LOCK FACILITY (again), THE DAY AFTER THE INTERVIEW: 6:30 AM
Itoshi Rin was one of the only players in the facility that could "buy" his phone from Ego. He was secretly addicted to his socials, and spent every waking minute not practicing, scrolling on TikTok and the like for edits of Sae and Isagi. Perhaps the feed really could see into the depths of his soul, because as of a few months ago, his for you page was populated mainly by "Rinsagi" edits and Isagi scoring goals. He chose to ignore what this showed about his inner psyche.
A text message popped up on Rin's phone, and he almost ignored it, before seeing that it was Sae who had texted.
Sae.
Rin dropped the phone and then fumbled to pick it up, trembling so badly that the phone fell twice more. Cursing, Rin opened the line app and saw a single text of a link, captioned simply "If you won't date him, I will."
What is that supposed to mean?
Rin did, in fact, find out exactly what that meant.
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BLUE LOCK FACILITY (again), THE DAY AFTER THE INTERVIEW: 12:30 PM
The sun was shining, the birds were chirping, and Isagi could witness none of it through the prison-like facility that is Blue Lock. Today wasn't all bad, though. After the disastrous interview, Anri had given Isagi time to recover from what she called "emotional trauma". Isagi had almost forgotten about the incident, and wondered why none of what Rin, or Barou, or what anyone had said to him during his time there had constituted as traumatic enough to allow him to skip a day of training.
Isagi wouldn't skip, although he had decided to sleep in for a couple hours and skip the chaotic breakfast. Little did he know, though, that he had not woken up at 8:30 and rather at 12:30, meaning that the cafeteria he had thought was unpopulated was currently inhabited by his teammates eating lunch.
He walked in, and the room went dead silent.
"Guys?"
His teammates were never silent. This had been a source of major discontent that lasted for the entire program, so Isagi knew that something was very, very wrong. Ironically enough, the silence was similar to that of when he had made that mistranslation - How was he supposed to know what a top was? Wasn't it a red flag that it was one of the only words that Shidou knew in English?
After the interview, Rin had grumbled at him for a while, and then left an an electrolytes drink and a bowl of rice and natto by his door after hours, muttering something about "stupid lukewarm sprout-heads" when he thought that Isagi hadn't heard him behind the door. It was sort of sweet, and Isagi had been up for hours guessing at the meaning of this small act of kindness.
Despite how icy Rin seemed, he was surprisingly thoughtful to Isagi; passing him towels and teaching him stretches when they had free time. It could have been an over-generous recompensation for the time that Isagi had reminded him to hydrate before the U20 match, but Rin didn't seem like he would be the type of guy to overpay debts. Then, it was Rin's fault for making Isagi nervous whenever he saw him. Stupid Itoshi model genes.
Isagi had seen pictures of Sae and Rin Itoshi online, always separate from each other, but he was shocked at how attractive they were. Observations, of course, on how Sae had contracted as a model. In his defense, it was research - alternate careers for soccer players, or side jobs to make rent while playing games to be recruited for clubs, in spite of the fact that Isagi had not once considered himself pretty or handsome enough to model. Not like Chigiri or Yukimiya, who could sell out stadiums easily even if they didn't play soccer.
When he saw Itoshi Sae, after, at the U20 match, he was identical to whom the photos made him out to be; all porcelain skin and standoffish demeanor. He was pretty, of course. Sae was good looking from every angle.
But when he saw Rin. When he saw Rin, not only the mask he put up, but mid-motion in a game, eyes flashing like jewels and reflecting the artificial light, he thought, He doesn't even need the sun to shine. Isagi then mentally slapped himself for thinking so - not only was it cringy, but thinking that about a teammate - but he didn't think the statement was false. Rin could glow in any atmosphere, and Isagi would seek him out.
Isagi was sure he was hallucinating when Rin walked up to him, steps thudding in sync to his heartbeat. He was conflating the image of Rin onto some random person walking up to him, and they were probably going to ask him why he hadn't come to practice. Definitely.
That didn't explain why Rin kissed him.
Rin kissed him, and it felt like good soccer, like scoring a goal to beat Kaiser during the PxG match, like the first sip of water after a day's long practice. It was relieving and electric, and God forbid he sound like Shidou, but Isagi's cells were fizzing and sparking against Rin's skin, and it was just -
"Sorry," Rin said sheepishly, and Rin's cheeks had turned pink.
"For what?"
"I didn't let you breathe."
Isagi was breathless and stupid from kissing, but he at least had the sense to grab Rin by the collar and pull him down to meet Isagi's eyes.
"Don't apologize for kissing me, dumbass. Apologize for ignoring every single sign I've been sending you up until now."
"Huh?"
Wow, so Isagi was actually going to kill Rin. Everyone had noticed, how Isagi trailed after Rin like a lost puppy, complimented his kicks, and practiced with him early in the morning. Did Rin think he wanted to learn yoga? Fuck, even Ego had noticed, and God knows that that man only had eyes for Noel Noa.
"I like you!"
"Not Sae?"
Rin could hear the gears grinding in Isagi's head as he tried to put the pieces together.
"You think I like your brother?"
"He likes you!"
Isagi's face scrunched up in astonishment.
"You notice that, and you don't notice that I like you? Rin, I met him once, and he didn't even speak directly to me!"
"Well, he told me that if I didn't make a move, he would take you!"
Isagi reeled at this revelation, and damn near sprinted out the door. Rin chased after him, pulling him back by the slack of his jersey while Isagi practically tried to claw his way out of the shirt.
"Shit, Isagi. I like you because I like you."
Goddammit, Isagi didn't want to be here listening to Rin's vague proclamations of love, but the older teen clearly wasn't letting up, so Isagi had to stay until Rin was done talking. Then, he would slap the fucker and make a mark on his unfairly attractive face.
"I liked you before Sae."
This gives Isagi pause. Rin's grip loosened, but Isagi didn't run; just stared up at him.
"I thought you were interesting during the second selection. No one had ever challenged me before, and it was fun. You're the first person to intrigue me since Sae-"
Isagi poises himself to run - he doesn't want to be compared to his crush's brother during a love confession. A bigger red flag than the drooling, honestly.
"But you were more than that."
Rin braces himself to have to, for once, be honest about what he feels.
"You're my other half. You're the reason I play soccer - no. You awakened me, and I want to grow with you. I want to be able to care for you and be depended on in turn when you feel hurt or threatened, because I want to know that you'll be side by side, motivating me to go on."
"What a fucking proposal, man," Raichi yells, but Bachira throws a cup at him.
"You're oblivious."
"You, too."
And all is as it should be in Blue Lock.
In Europe, Sae and Kaiser wake up with raging headaches and immediately attribute it to Isagi Yoichi.
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sorry guys i posted this right before going to sleep and being the idiot that i am, did not read it before posting it for edits. so i reread it the next morning and changed eleven (yes, eleven, an atrocious amount) errors & added one more line to the one barou already had. thank you, also, to DawnofHypocrisy for editing this fic and the last one and making it so much better than it would've been!
if you liked this work...don't check out my other one and look at the warnings.