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"You still eat those?" Noa reaches over, and before Ego can stop him, he plucks the lollipop out of the other's spindly hand.
"I was still eating that one," Ego replies, casting a glance at the stolen candy. "Now give that back, asshole."
It's more fondly than he's spoken to Noa in decades, but now the blonde can't help but want to push at the boundary that Ego has set; step just an inch over the line to see how far he can go before being pushed back.
"Asshole? I remember that you used to call me something nicer than that." Noa taps his chin.
Ego stays silent, looking even more like a petulant child now than when he is lording his power over the players of Blue Lock.
"Right, Jin?"
There is a dense silence that Ego has to wade through to find his voice again, but when he does, it is cool and collected.
"It is insufferable," Ego says, "How you insist on calling me by that name. We're not children anymore, Noa."
"You said my name."
The self-satisfied smile that Noa wears now is a reminder of everything that Ego has tried to forget.
"What, I can't say your name without you interpreting it as something more?" Ego adopts a mockery of a pout, but it only looks unnatural on his bony face. Noa is scared, he thinks, for Ego or of him. It's hard to tell where the line between the two lays.
"You've gotten soft, old man." Ego shakes his head disapprovingly.
"We're the same age, Jin." Noa raises an eyebrow. "Thirty-one isn't very old."
Ego doesn't even flinch this time. He takes the correction in stride, walking over to Noa with those long, skinny legs (too thin, Noa thinks), plucking the candy out of Noa's hand.
"You're a pro player, and yet the resident psycho of Blue Lock can steal a little lollipop? What happened to your reflexes?" Ego then repeats his earlier words, with the old snark in his voice that has become something more like venom in the days since they've last been together. "You're getting soft."
He shakes his head in disapproval, as if Noa should've known to pull away; as if the instinct to retreat should be ingrained within him.
"You, too." Noa glances at the room, at the detritus of plates and wrappers that Anri hasn't yet managed to clean up. "You barely eat anything." He clucks his tongue. "You still need someone to cook for you, and you're still a slob."
"You never minded, anyways."
Noa stares, shocked at the mere mention of their past, and Ego clamps his mouth shut. It's the kind of offhand remark that has become foreign to them now, and the casual care with which the exchange was spoken is foreign to them now.
"I don't." Noa waits for it, but the inquiry fails to materialize; the question: Why did you say that in the present-tense? (Why do you still care?)
Instead, Ego scoffs, picking his way through the trash to type a command on his keyboard, and the monitor switches to a replay of a Bastard München practice. Or, not so current, they both realize, because neither Noa nor the rest of the team are in the room.
The pitch is mostly empty, but two figures - blond and dark-haired; one taller and more muscular, and the other with a distinctive sprout on his head that has become the target for many nicknames.
"Isagi - " Noa points out, at the same time as Ego does.
The two men glare at each other, daring the other to speak.
Ego starts it off, of course. "Stop looking at my protege."
Noa coughs, trying to hide a laugh, and then he remembers that Ego could always tell when he was amused.
"Stop laughing, Noel," Ego says elbowing him. "Coach was having a serious talk with us."
It's a game they like to play - pretending to take their coach's advice when they already know that the strategy will revolve around them no matter who they're playing against, making it up as they go along, the rest of the team struggling to keep up with who are later considered to be the greatest duo of their generation, to those who remember them.
"Not laughing," Noa responds, elbowing the bespectacled boy in return. "You are, though."
He was, and soon, both of them were cackling in the locker room, the sound reverberating like bird chimes.
"Stop looking at my protege," Noa argues.
Kaiser is his original successor, but Isagi Yoichi is something else entirely. An egoist genius that only Jinpachi Ego could've brought into existence, and now, he's under Noa's guidance.
"Fuck off," Ego says, but it's a tired reprimand. He knows that Noa is right.
"Why?"
"Why what?" Ego circles back in his chair to sit face-to-face with the blonde. In the background, Isagi and Kaiser are glaring each other down; Kaiser, holding Isagi by the collar and Isagi pulling at his hair in response.
Why?
There are the obvious questions - Why would you look at my protege? Why is my protege flirting with yours? Why do they resemble us?
Why did you leave?
"Be more specific, Noel."
"Don't call me that," Noa says automatically, because it's a reflex that he has grown into. He's adjusted to having no one in his life who can call him by his first name, his familiar name, and now he cannot seem to remember that there is one person who can and does.
Ego flinches, actually flinches at the reprimand.
Another question: When did you forget that I existed? That I am here?
"Jesus, Jin, I'm sorry." Noa reflexively reaches for Ego, but he isn't sure what to do. Pat him on the back? Hug him? (Kiss him?)
"It's fine."
"Really?" Noa doesn't know what to do, so he does what he is comfortable with doing; slipping into his old skin easier than a snake ever could. He starts sweeping up the wrappers, carrying them to the trash can, and then pauses when he notices a protein bar wrapper. Ego, who is tracking Noa's movements without meaning to, catches the pause.
"Protein bars aren't yours exclusively, Noa."
Noa feels ashamed, then, at thinking that Ego had attached some significance. Then, a faint warmth in his chest, because the fact that Ego had pointed it out had meant that he had remembered.
"I didn't think so, Jin."
Ego snaps, all his rage and misdirected resentment that he's been steeping in for the last twenty years rising up to the surface.
"Stop fucking calling me that."
He senses a faint pressure building up behind his eyes, and wonders if he is bleeding; if the blood vessels in his eyes have burst and he's just slowly dying: right there, perched in front of his computer monitor, watching his experiment turn into a goddamn repeat of his and Noa's rise to the top.
Ego is sure he is gone, impaled by his self-made sphere, withering away in the prison he's made.
He sees that Isagi has pushed Kaiser away, and the blonde has made sure that Isagi comes down with him by sweeping the blue-haired boy's leg. They're both cursing, struggling to get up off of the grass and just barely hesitating in their movements to see if the other will help them up.
Ego is ninety-nine percent confident that he's not fine. The throbbing in his temple has grown more intense, and it beats - a steady, aching pulse that he thinks he knows the rhythm of better than his heart by now.
Noa places a hand on his shoulder, but Ego can't bring himself to push it away, not when their successors are duking it out on-screen.
Kaiser and Isagi are wrestling, and it's strangely reminiscent of a scene from long ago, the gray ceiling of the facility replaced by open air.
"Noa!" Ego is standing over him, triumphant, one arm pressed against his windpipe and straddling Noa's waist with both legs. "I got you." His tone is disbelieving, and with Noa soaking wet and pale in the moonlight, Ego thinks that he looks a little like an angel.
"Yeah, you got me, Jin." Noa is suppressing a smile, but Ego can't tell, high on his victory. "You got me."
"I got you," he repeats dumbly, before breaking into a grin. "Told you I would."
"You did."
They're suddenly aware that no one else is there with them. It's just the two of them, alone on an otherwise empty pitch.
Noa must be an angel, Ego realizes, to put up with him - Ego's general incompetence in every realm except for the field; his maniacal fixation with soccer that more than exceeds his teammates'. Except for Noa's, he supposes, and perhaps that is the only reason why Noa puts up with him.
He's fine with that.
Jin tastes like lollipops and sugar about to turn sour. Noa thinks he likes it a little too much.
Kaiser pushes Isagi away, and this time he pushes a little too hard, because Isagi seems to be dazed when getting up. Kaiser holds out a hand to him, and Isagi lifts up his tentatively.
Neither Noa nor Ego say anything, just lean in closer. Noa grips Ego's shoulder so tightly that Ego is sure there'll be bruises later.
Ego can see it - how Isagi Yoichi is about to take the blonde's hand; the tensing of his arm that is about to reach out - but it must take just a second too long, because Kaiser pulls back, sure that he's been rebuffed.
"Kaiser - " Isagi says, but Kaiser's already running, out the door and through the hallways. Everyone, Noa and Ego and Isagi, knows how it feels to run from rejection, imagined or otherwise.
Ego shuts off the monitor, but not before they see Kaiser kick a loose ball into the wall and start to scream.
"Were we better than that?" Noa asks, long past after the screen's gone dark.
"You tell me."
Noa gazes at the desk, cleared of wrappers; at the computer, Kaiser and Isagi's faces wiped clear off; then, at Ego, face free of any emotion.
"There's no risk of us being found out."
"That is true."
Ego's voice is steady, and he prides himself on the lack of tremors.
"We're clean, now."
"Were we dirty earlier?"
Noa levels his eyes with Ego's - shoots him a stare that had felled countless opponents, but Ego holds his gaze.
"They thought we were." Noa's voice cracks; glitches and then evens out. "Was this worth it?"
"It must have been."
Later, Ego examines each item in his office and its scars.
This pair of glasses, he remembers, he had crushed in his hand when Noa had arrived, and Isagi had chosen him as his coach.
A wine glass, left abandoned and tipped over, congealed grape juice clinging to the rim. He had drank this after the Manshine City vs Bastard München game.
He wonders, then, at the uselessness of trying to escape Noel when he would always come back, see golden hair and taste sugar on his tongue.
"This was worth it," he says. There is no response, except for an increase in that throbbing, pulsing pain.