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Nagi misses being a nobody.
He has never been wanted by anyone other than Reo before and he decides, with half a dozen cameras clicking in his face and a microphone pressed a dangerous two centimeters from his mouth, that he absolutely hates it. It's a hassle to give them anything other than a blank stare but Prince pinches him any time he attempts to avoid their questions, so he gives in after a few minutes and does his best to fend them off.
"Are you nervous, kiddo?" Prince asks as he clams up in front of yet another reporter. Nagi shakes his head, and Prince laughs loudly. "Don't be! This is no big deal. It's just like talking to a friend."
This isn't like talking to Reo at all, and it's not like Reo has any reason to be asking any of these obvious questions, but Nagi can't say no to Prince's beaming smile, so he just shrugs noncommittally. "Can we go home yet?"
Prince guffaws some more (he really needs to stop doing that, Nagi thinks, with both hands over his ears). "We're only in the parking lot!" he booms. "We've still got a long way to go, Nagi!"
Nagi stares around at the crowd of people around them and asks, "What is this, then?"
"Paparazzi!"
Nagi adds paparazzi to his growing list of troublesome things and follows Prince as he bustles his way toward the towering building ahead of them, glassy and glittering in the afternoon sun. "Are you excited?" Prince asks as he holds the doors open for Nagi. "This is the opportunity of a lifetime, you know! Well, until you get as famous as me, then you'll be dealing with this every day, haha..."
"What?" Nagi asks, absentminded. The building is nice and cool inside but his legs still hurt, but he figures it's probably not appropriate to ask for a piggyback ride from a world-renowned professional athlete. "Opportunity?"
"An interview!"
Nagi's distaste must show on his face, because Chris ushers him into the elevator and jams his thumb into the buttons as quickly as possible, as if trying to keep him from escaping. "Don't worry, it's easy," Prince says. "Just be yourself! The fans will love it!"
Nagi sags against the wall and slides onto the ground. Prince laughs again, but he sounds a little nervous this time. He grabs the back of Nagi's shirt and hauls him back onto his feet. "Let's go back," Nagi says. "I don't feel like doing this."
"We'll be in and out! It'll take a couple of hours at most!"
Nagi glares at Prince with as much irritation as he can muster, which isn't much at all. The doors slide open and Prince tugs Nagi into the hallway. An exhausted young man in a tweed suit finds them about halfway down the corridor and leads them the rest of the way, speaking to Prince in English. He tries talking to Nagi, too, and Nagi just stares back at him blankly, so Prince ushers him off to a waiting room with a firm pat on the back and brief instructions; "Just stay here, and I'll come and get you when it's time."
Nagi is excellent at waiting. He throws himself into the nearest chair and sinks into it with a weary sigh. His dress shirt is a little too tight and his scalp is prickling uncomfortably from the copious amount of gel Prince had rubbed into his head before they left the facility despite his protests. He'd been hasty with it, dragging his fingers carelessly through the knots in Nagi's hair, nothing like Reo at all. There's a cold clump of it above his left ear but his arm is too heavy to lift, so he dismisses the idea of trying to comb it away.
Reo is gentle with Nagi. At least, he used to be—he is now, too, but there'd been the time between those moments where Nagi had existed without Reo by his side, and they'd been the worst days of his life. Nagi missed him then and he misses him now, and there's something aching subtly in his chest at the thought of the other boy.
They are still a little distant now, in almost every way. Reo sits across from him at the cafeteria table instead of at his side. They still place their phones, their alarm clocks on the same nightstand, but Reo separates them meticulously into halves, his belongings by his bed and Nagi's next to his own. They don't cuddle anymore, either. Instead, Reo rests a careful few meters away and Nagi stares at the ceiling from under his blankets until three hours past midnight, unable to doze off without the warm press of Reo's body against his own.
Thinking about Reo is painful, sometimes. Nagi has learned the hard way that it's worth it.
He wishes Reo had come here with him, but when he'd suggested it Prince had just laughed him off. "He's not the one who scored," he said, patting Nagi's shoulder. "Maybe next time!"
Nagi has been to school just long enough to know that whenever adults say "maybe," they mean never, and he comes to dislike Prince accordingly. He's missing out if he can't see how great Reo is. Everyone is, really, but Nagi's a little grateful at the same time, because it means he doesn't have to fight anyone for Reo's attention.
His scalp is going numb. Nagi wonders what exactly Prince put in his hair. He's just stirring to go and try to wash it off when Prince pops his head back into the room. "Let's go, Nagi!" he says cheerfully. He does a lot of things cheerfully. Nagi isn't sure where he gets the energy. "Stand up! You're about to have your first interview, aren't you excited?"
"No," Nagi says.
Prince hurries over to drag him to his feet. "I usually say honesty is the best policy, but try to be pleasant with the guy," he says bracingly as he steers Nagi out of the room again. "Just remember that your goal was all because of your wonderful coach Chris Prince—hey, why are your pants cuffed?"
They're cuffed because they made Nagi's ankles itchy. He's pretty sure they're the kind of pants that aren't supposed to be cuffed. He'd taken off his socks on the car, too. He wiggles his way out of Prince's grasp before he can notice everything else wrong with his appearance and puts some distance between them, and Prince seems to take it as some kind of disjointed motivation, because he lets out a triumphant laugh and nudges Nagi down the hall. "Right out there," he says, and suddenly he's gone, and Nagi's swimming in a sea of strangers.
Someone with a clipboard pokes him sharply and Nagi jolts to attention, and then there's a hand around his wrist and he's being dragged through the crowd. They part around him easily, like fish around a boat. "Seishiro Nagi," someone is calling in the distance—then it's not so distant, and Nagi finds himself in open air with a friendly-looking man sitting in a cushy armchair, and a matching one in front of him. He sits down and takes a moment to blink away the sudden brightness around him, and then he turns to look at the interviewer.
"Nagi, it's nice to finally meet you!" he says, holding out a calloused hand to shake. Nagi tries to meet him halfway, but he's suddenly exhausted and his arm feels like it's glued to the chair. He shrugs and fails in trying not to slouch. "Uh, I've heard a lot about you."
"Cool," Nagi says.
The man lowers his arm awkwardly. Nagi searches his surroundings—Prince is standing behind the camera, shooting him an eager thumbs-up. Let's go home, Nagi mouths at him.
"What are you saying?" the man asks.
"Nothing," Nagi says. He closes his eyes. The lights are too bright, but the chair is nice. He wonders if Reo has any like this at his house.
"Why don't you tell us about your goal?" the man asks. His hand lands on Nagi's forearm and shakes it gently. It's a horrible gesture, nothing like what he's used to, and Nagi flinches away from him with a grumble. "Um..."
Nagi opens his eyes enough to look at the camera. "It's all Reo," he says. "Reo made all the plays. He gave me my final pass."
"Reo?" the interviewer echoes.
"Mikage."
"Ah," he says, and Nagi feels a bitter kind of displeasure at his uninterested tone of voice. "Yes, it was a nice assist. How did it feel for you to score such an amazing goal?"
"It's Reo's goal, really."
Prince is gesturing wildly from behind the camera. It doesn't look particularly encouraging, but Nagi doesn't care enough. "You and Reo are close, then?" the man asks. It's a really pointless question, of course they're close—but Nagi figures there's no harm in saying so again.
"We're best friends," Nagi says. "We went to high school together, and we're going to be together after this program is over, too. We'll win the World Cup one day."
"That's touching," the man says, sounding as if he truly means it. Nagi warms up to him, just a little. "It seemed like you two had a falling out during the game, though."
What a terrible reminder. Nagi struggles to keep a scowl off of his face. "It was a while ago. He hurt my feelings," he says, and he sounds a little ridiculous as he says it. It's annoying. "I hurt his, too. But we don't do that anymore."
"What happened?"
"We made up," Nagi says shortly. "I love him. He knows that now."
There's silence for a few moments, and Nagi stops staring blankly at Prince, shifting his gaze to the man across from him. He’s already staring back, lips parted, and he clears his throat before he leans forward and says, "You love him?"
"Uh," Nagi says. He glances at Prince. Prince is gawking back, rather unhelpfully. "Yes?"
The man's eyebrows raise high enough to leave deep wrinkles in his forehead. "How long have you been together?" he asks, tentative. He, too, looks off-camera. Nagi follows his gaze, but nobody else in the room is giving them any hints about what to say, so Nagi goes on sinking deeper into the cushions. "Since high school? Blue Lock?"
"Since we met," Nagi says. What a ridiculous thing to ask. He doesn't know who hired this guy, but they need someone new. "We're going to be together forever after this, too," he clarifies, just because the man looks more flabbergasted with every word that comes out of his mouth.
Prince lets out some kind of choked noise. Nagi doesn't look at him, because his neck hurts. The man simply scrutinizes him for a long moment, and Nagi busies himself staring at the ground between his feet. They're sweaty. He should have kept the socks.
"So," the man finally says, uneasy, with the vigilant caution of someone dismantling a bomb. "You want to marry Reo?"
Marry? Nagi never said anything of the sort, but now that he thinks about it, it's not too far off. "He's my partner for life," Nagi tells him.
"Your...husband?"
"Is that what they're calling it now?" Nagi says, nonchalant. "I guess so, then."
"Um," someone says quietly. Nagi and the man both look around at the interruption. "Uh, let's...get back on topic. The game?"
"The game," the man repeats loudly, clearly relieved, as if it's some kind of vindication. "Nagi! Tell us about Manshine City. What was your experience like with your new teammates?"
Nagi sighs and sits up a little straighter, lets himself rattle off one of the textbook answers Prince had recited to him during the car ride here. While he talks, he rolls the word around in his mind for a split second—husband, Reo'd be Nagi's husband, and Nagi would be his.
He kind of likes it.
Reo's waiting for Nagi when he gets back.
It's dark out, because Prince is a liar and he dragged Nagi off to a fancy dinner with a lot of old people before finally bringing him back. The clock tells him that it's just ten minutes to midnight—and there Reo is, sitting in the lamplight with his phone in his hand, staring at him. "Reo," Nagi says. "I'm back."
"Nagi," Reo says. There's something sharp, something taut in the way he speaks, and Nagi hones in on the distress in his voice. "I...watched your interview."
"Oh," Nagi says. He kicks his shoes off and sheds his suit jacket onto the ground, and then he stumbles over to collapse next to Reo on his bed. "Yeah, it was a pain. They asked a lot of obvious things."
"Obvious things..."
"I mean, they can search half of these things up themselves." Nagi truly doesn't see the appeal in forcing him to recount things everyone has already watched—if someone wants to see his goal, there are plenty of videos on the internet.
"Not that," Reo mumbles. Nagi looks up at him, and he catches a blush on the other boy's face. Reo's not meeting his gaze, but his hand is just a whisker away from Nagi's, so he reaches out to take it and watches Reo's cheeks redden. "It's—I, um, I heard what you said about...me."
"Oh," Nagi says. "So?"
Reo drops his gaze to Nagi's and stares. Nagi smiles up at him. "Seriously," Reo grumbles, and he's exasperated, but there's a familiar kind of affection in his expression now, too. He falls back onto the mattress and Nagi dares to shuffle closer. "You—I really can't deal with you, Nagi..."
"Why?" Nagi leans his nose into Reo's cheek. For the first time in weeks, Reo doesn't resist. "Did I do something wrong?"
Reo closes his eyes, and Nagi feels his eyelashes flutter off of his skin. "Your interview was horrible," he says thickly.
Nagi sighs. He brushes his fingers across the blankets, searching, and when he finds Reo's hands he holds them tight. "Sorry," he says apologetically.
"Don't apologize..."
"...Okay."
Reo nestles his face into Nagi's neck, and Nagi has missed this warmth, missed it more than anything else—he wraps his arms easily around the other boy and tugs him close, burying his face in Reo's hair. "Did you mean it?" Reo whispers, almost inaudible. "What you said?"
Nagi said a lot of things today, but Reo doesn't seem to feel the need to clarify exactly what he's talking about. "Probably," Nagi says noncommittally. He meant everything he said, after all. He has no reason to lie.
Reo laughs a little, a choppy exhale into the space between them. "I love you," he says quietly, like a confession.
I love you too, Nagi thinks, and then he remembers to say it—"I love you too," and he feels Reo's smile widening. "You should come with me next time."
"Maybe if I'm allowed."
Maybe. It's not good enough of an answer, and Nagi lets Reo know with a brush of his fingers over the other boy's back and a low whisper in his ear. "I'm not going without you, then. We're going to be together forever."
Reo twitches. "Forever?"
Nagi draws back just enough to look into Reo's eyes. "You're mine," he says simply. "And I'm yours."
It's the wrong thing to say—or maybe it's the right one, because Reo turns a satisfying shade of red, and he shoves his face into the crook of Nagi's neck with a sudden flustered violence. "You can't just say things like that," he says, twisting his fingers into the hem of Nagi's shirt.
"I already did," Nagi says. "I told the interview guy, too."
"I know you did."
Nagi doesn't quite register his words for a few moments, stuck on the way Reo's hair tickles his chin. "You watched the interview, then," he realizes.
"I told you that already," Reo mumbles.
"So you did."
They lapse into silence. Reo sags easily against his chest, and Nagi closes his eyes, relishing the comfortable weight of Reo's body next to his own. The facility is quiet this late at night, and Nagi can hear Reo breathing, can feel his heartbeat, steady through their clothes.
"You'll marry me, then?"
Reo groans, but he doesn't draw away. If anything, he curls himself tighter into Nagi's arms. "What kind of question is that?" he mutters, and Nagi knows him well enough to hear his unspoken answer hanging in the air between them.
Yes, of course.