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❊ISAGI❊
It isn’t that unusual for Bachira to disappear for several hours at a time whenever he visits Germany. Isagi isn’t his only friend residing here, and his old teammate has always been far more outgoing and friendly, easily connecting with even the most coldhearted individuals of Blue Lock. You could argue that the project had helped Bachira flourish not only career-wise, but in other, more meaningful areas of his life too, greatly expanding the dribbler’s social circle in ways that he never would’ve imagined upon receiving his royal-blue invitation letter.
The disappearances themselves aren't a big issue—after all, Isagi gave him a copy of his house keys a long time ago—but the radio silence is. Phone pressed against his ear, the worrywart that he is, Isagi gnaws at his lower lip and taps his foot to fight back the overwhelming urge to pace around the eerily quiet living room, wishing for Bachira to pick up already.
No such thing occurs. For the third time that night, the automatic voice of his phone service provider asks him to try again later.
Yes, it’s true that the disappearances themselves aren't a big issue, but right now, he has no idea where his friend could be, at nearly 1:00 AM on a Friday night no less. At a semi-familiar city speaking a language that Bachira Meguru doesn’t understand a word of and refuses to learn. It’s too dwarfish, too funny sounding—a conclusion that he’d drawn after hearing Isagi struggle with pronunciation one time too many.
Typically, Bachira would at the very least shoot him a message, letting him know that he’d be back late and that Isagi shouldn’t wait up and, most importantly, shouldn’t worry, but after having checked his social media profiles and message app, Isagi discovered a grand total of 0 new messages, with the last one being dated two days back, informing him of an upcoming hangout with Kurona.
Bachira would always pick up after the third ring, so being subjected to this repetitive beeping was quite odd, and frankly, disconcerting. It was beginning to drive Isagi insane.
What if the other had gotten into an accident? Got jumped? Kidnapped? After all, Bachira was something of a well-known face in the sports world, so what if someone had recognised him and approached him with ill intentions? There were plenty of crazy fans out there. Isagi would know.
Unable to sit still any longer, Isagi gets up from the plush sofa to break in the floorboards of his considerably empty apartment, thinking of what to do next.
Barely fighting back the pangs of dread pulling at his gut, he scrolls through his lengthy list of contacts and decides to start the next step of his search with his and Bachira’s mutual friends.
Thankfully, Kurona picks up almost immediately, his slightly flat, nasally voice somewhat soothing Isagi’s building panic. “Hello, hello,” he greets, a hint of surprise audible in his tone. “It’s unusual for you to call this late, Isagi.”
“I know you’re not asleep around this time of night,” Isagi replies in lieu of a hello, nervously rubbing at his wrist. He can nearly visualise his teammate’s confused frown—Ranze has always been able to pick up on the slightest changes in Isagi’s moods. At times, it was almost unsettling, but at least it made them the perfect match on the field. He awkwardly clears his throat and runs a tongue over his dry lips. Kurona remains silent, waiting. “I-I, uh, sorry if I’m inconveniencing you, but I’m actually looking for Bachira—”
He quickly explains the situation at hand to his friend, who only hums in response. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s a little strange,” he agrees, worried. “He’s not the type to ignore someone, especially you. I can help you look. It’ll be quicker with the two of us.”
“Thank you so much,” Isagi nearly deflates, sniffling. His heartbeat pulsates in his ears as his gut churns from the horrible mental imagery that his anxious mind keeps bombarding him with. “Let me know in case you find anything out.”
Together, they decide to continue going through BM players’ phone numbers. Thankfully, their investigation yields quick results—no more than fifteen minutes later, Ranze calls Isagi back to inform him that he’d discovered a promising lead.
Their informant turns out to be Raichi, who sounds extremely annoyed at being woken up at such an ungodly hour, but still reluctantly agrees to hop into a group call. “Yeah, you didn’t know? Checked the calendar lately? It’s the 15th of January.”
Isagi’s and Kurona’s slightly dumbfounded silence must be extremely telling. Raichi groans, long-suffering. “Kaiser’s seasonal party? Hello? Didn’t you read the group chat or hear that shithead going on and on about it at our last hangout?”
“To be fair, to be completely fair,” Kurona starts, “I haven’t been listening to a single word coming out of his mouth for the last two years.”
Isagi can only nod in mute agreement. While the two of them were no longer at odds, not nearly as much as they were back in Blue Lock, he and Kaiser never truly managed to bury the hatchet or actually get along. They were simply far too different as individuals and Isagi never felt the need to know the Michael Kaiser on a more personal level, put off by the older man’s arrogance. Still, they were teammates now, so open conflict was no longer an option. At the very least, they were capable of acting civil.
Kaiser might’ve mentioned something about a party, extended an invitation perhaps, but Isagi thoroughly ignored it, automatically turning it down. Huge crowds, scantily-clad women and cocaine simply weren’t his scene.
When Isagi was still a doe-eyed, innocent eighteen-year-old who didn’t know any better, his persistent teammates talked him into attending one of these glamorous “parties”, only for Isagi to end up leaving Kaiser’s too-expensive mansion two hours later, deeply traumatised by the things that he had seen. The final straw was one of Kaiser’s many model friends trying to feel him up in the middle of the pool—Isagi bolted so fast that he didn’t have the time to properly towel off.
He cannot begin to imagine Bachira in one of these events. It was a disaster bound to happen.
As though reading his innermost thoughts, Raichi continues. “I overheard the smurf asking your dumb boyfriend to attend. I thought the dude was going to piss himself from excitement, so I’m pretty damn sure he’s toking up at Kaiser’s fuckfest right now. Yukki was with him, too. Fat chance he’ll pick up if he’s busy sucking face with some rando, but it’s worth a shot. If that’s all that you woke me up for, I’m fucking off now.”
❊RAICHI❊
The promised ‘now’ never comes.
Twenty-five minutes later, Raichi finds himself driving all the way to Kaiser’s slut mansion, located bumfuck nowhere, at least a good thirty-five minutes away via car. The road ahead is filled with holes that were either left behind by fallen bombshells of decades long past or meteorites. The vehicle is boxed in by a wall of looming, shapeless trees on all sides, sucking out the nonexistent light from their eerie surroundings. Raichi wouldn’t be surprised to see a cryptid or two caught in the headlights of his car, barely reaching twenty metres ahead. Or a murderer.
Hunched over the steering wheel, Raichi feels as though he’s operating a fucking tank. He’d hoped that the uncomfortable pose would allow him to see more clearly and focus better, but all that he’d gotten from it thus far has been a tense neck and shoulder pain.
A positively fuming Isagi occupies the shotgun seat, trembling like a fucking Chihuahua that’s been kicked out into the rain, carefully observed by Kurona’s creepily intense stare, the reflection of his pale, deadpan face ghost-like in the rearview mirror.
For the nth time, Raichi grumbles that he isn’t a fucking taxi driver, but Isagi is far too deep in the trenches of rage to hear him and Kurona has seemingly gotten tired of responding with “you’re the only one who has a driver’s license”.
The radio blares some ungodly, incomprehensible pop music—for fuck’s sake, why did this language sound like someone trying to speak with a hot potato in their mouth—which Raichi quickly switches to a classical music station that is only a fraction better. It sounds a whole lot like an after-midnight-Christian-church-choir type of deal. A single pointed glare from a pair of icy-blue eyes is enough for Raichi to turn it off, his teammate’s grip turning white-knuckled on his phone. Any more pressure and the poor device might crack.
It’s either that or Isagi is readying himself to bash it against the side of Raichi’s head.
Seeing the dude angry like this is a rare sight to behold—in fact, Raichi is pretty certain that in all of the years of their not-friendship, he’s never once seen Isagi Yoichi this peeved. A muscle jumps in his tightly clenched jaw as he blatantly tries to hold back from letting out a howl of rage and then chucking his periodically beeping phone out the window.
“Dude, can you shut the fuck up,” Isagi hisses through grit teeth after Raichi opens his big fat mouth to complain for the nth plus one time. He tacks on a defeated “please” at the very end of it, as though attempting to soften the blow of his uncharacteristic lashing out.
Unwilling to fuck around with the living, breathing embodiment of wrath, Raichi, even more so uncharacteristically, does as he’s told.
The next few minutes of the ride are incredibly tense and awkward, the silence between them only disturbed by the hum of the engine and the occasional car passing by.
It started off with a phone call to Yukimiya Kenyu. It was obvious that the man wasn't in the right state of mind as he struggled to collect his fallen phone to hold it close to his ear, barely audible over the heavy thumping of the bass. “Bachira?” he clarified, tongue-tied. “Haven’t seen him since we got the goods. I think Kaiser took him outside, but I’m not sure where. Dude, that pole is really closing in on me.”
Upon hearing this, Isagi turned pale as a sheet, eyes widening significantly. “What did he give you?” he asked, voice quivering the slightest bit. Raichi should’ve picked up on the early warning signs right then and there, apparent in Isagi’s tense body language. It was like watching a creaking dam about to burst, about to flood and destroy everything in its path.
“Shit, I don’t remember. Last one we took was definitely acid.”
“That’s not so—” Raichi spoke up, only to be shushed by a hovering finger shoved in front of his mouth as Isagi leaned into the speaker. That was when the shivering started.
“How much did he take?”
“I took 1/4th of the dose.”
“I’m asking you how much did he give Bachira,” Isagi urged, expression turning stone-like. Kurona’s red, cat-like eyes widened in the rearview mirror, slightly taken aback by the heaviness weighing down the black-haired man’s tone.
“The rest.”
“The—”
“Shit, dude,” Raichi hissed with sympathy. Yes, he may be a bitch, but he isn’t a heartless one. “Your boyfriend must be traversing the higher plane of existence right now.”
Isagi ignored him, gaping at his phone in mute shock, mixed with hints of horror. He then proceeded to thank Yukki for the information and swiftly hung up, a dark look glazing over his unseeing eyes.
For a while, he appeared to be lost in thought, just like whenever he was on the field, coming up with the most inane football strategies imaginable that somehow always worked.
He was quiet as he was processing this newfound data. Perhaps alarmingly so.
“Isagi—” Kurona began, tentatively, only to be cut off by the muffled thump of the other’s fist roughly connecting with the car’s dashboard.
“Hey, hey, hey, stop that shit right now! This is a rental!” Raichi cried out, an eyebrow twitching wildly. “You break anything, you’re covering it.”
Apparently, his teammate was no longer listening, quick to unlock his phone and scroll down his lengthy list of contacts—and gee, wasn’t he Mr. Popular—stopping at the letter ‘K’.
“He’s dead,” was all that Isagi managed to utter after taking in a supposedly steadying, deep breath. It was doing jack shit to soothe the guy’s righteous and understandable anger—in fact, it seemed to have had the opposite effect. “He’s fucking dead.”
Which left them where they were now, with Isagi desperately trying to get a hold of Michael Kaiser, who carelessly popped a generous amount of hard drugs into Bachira Meguru’s unsuspecting, untainted hands—hands that have never held a joint, no less anything stronger. To give the first-timer a near full dose was unthinkable.
There’s valid reasoning to Isagi’s ensuing insanity, somewhat clouding his judgement, so Raichi cannot help but hold his breath when the smurf-looking menace finally, finally picks up. Equal parts awed, curious, and anxious, in the backseat, Kurona leans in closer to listen in on what was already shaping up to be the phone call of the century.
Isagi’s smile is thin and mirthless when he coos a forcefully cheerful “Michael” into the speaker. Kurona lets out a gentle gasp while Raichi soaks in the drama.
Isagi has never called Kaiser by his first name before.
It appears that the aforementioned man is too far gone to notice this. “Yoichi, love,” he croons in acknowledgment, positively delighted. Completely unaware of what’s to come. The corner of Isagi’s mouth twitches violently at that. “Have you changed your mind? The night’s still young. Are you coming over?”
“Oh, I’m coming over alright,” Isagi says. Raichi barely holds back the urge to let out a hoot—a prolonged “ooo!”. The only reason why he doesn’t give into it is because he doesn’t want to miss a single second of this, alright? Seeing Isagi going off like that is something else entirely. It's peak entertainment, like watching the fuse of a lit bomb turning shorter by the second. “Bachira’s with you? Where are you right now?”
“We’re running some errands. Your friend needed to go outside for some fresh air.” Raichi can swear that he hears the phone creak under the pressure applied by Isagi’s vice-like grip. The latter man’s lower lip disappears inside his mouth, and oh boy, if only someone could take a photo of his grave expression, immortalise it somehow—it was a once in a lifetime event. Kurona’s fingers twitch anxiously on the back of Isagi’s headrest, as though he isn’t entirely sure where to place them, whether he should risk reaching out—it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to assume that one could easily lose a limb if they attempted to touch Isagi right about now.
“Where are you right now, Kaiser?” Despite Isagi’s calm tone, Raichi can already hear the first cracks starting to appear, creating fissures in his pretentiously chill demeanour. The terms “cool” and “collected” simply don't exist in that madman’s vocabulary right now—not when Bachira’s safety has been brought into question. His voice tightens with every word to leave his mouth, acidic. “Is Bachira with you?”
Sensing an opportunity to poke at the sleeping bear, Kaiser quickly latches onto it. “Perhaps. What’s the urgency? You’ll be reunited once you come to the party. So romantic I could puke. You’ve been apart for, what now, five hours?”
The bear rises to the challenge, brandishing its claws. And what a bear it is. Raichi can pinpoint the exact moment Isagi snaps, dropping the goody-two-shoes act altogether. “Perhaps I wasn’t being clear enough.” His voice is arctic cold and desert heat all at once, sharp enough to cause serious damage. “So I’ll repeat myself for the third time because your blitzed ass is clearly having difficulty comprehending my words: tell me, where the fuck are you right now?”
Kaiser has the gal to laugh. Raichi knows that in these circumstances, even he would hesitate. Perhaps it’s the influence. Perhaps Kaiser has no self-preservation instinct, unafraid in the face of his impending death, with Raichi delivering the grim reaper himself to his currently undisclosed location. Isagi does look downright murderous, and he quickly confirms the fact with his next few sentences, voice rising in volume. “Brother, if Bachira’s not back at your fucking whorehouse by the time I’m there, I’m going to set the goddamn place on fire. I’m dead serious. I don’t give two shits how you’re going to get there in the next ten minutes, teleport for all I care, but make it happen.”
There’s a beat of stunned silence. Understandably so. Isagi’s breathing gradually turns haggard, as though he’s just ran a marathon.
Predictably, it doesn’t last long. “Ooh, scary,” Kaiser goads, slurring a little. His cackling is awful, Raichi decides, and wishes that he had a bowl of popcorn. Rager Isagi has just become his favourite version of Isagi—the monologue alone is Oscar-worthy. It certainly beats the “people-pleasing-wuss" Isagi and the “bloated-ego-off-the-charts” Isagi. “Gets me real hot and bothered when the old Yoichi comes out to play,” the smurf-looking motherfucker simpers, sounding awfully pleased.
To date, everyone at Bastard München, Raichi included, doesn’t know what these two have going on, akin to a terrible trainwreck that they couldn’t seem to look away from. More than half of the team were certain the two rivals had boned at some point. Having witnessed first hand—against his will, of course—the gradual progression of Isagi and Bachira’s relationship back in ye olde Blue Lock days, Raichi is a firm non-believer.
Isagi remains unbothered in the face of adversity—as unbothered as one can appear with steam practically coming out of their flaring nostrils. “Dude, I'm going to kill you. I’m serious. I’m going to break both of your fucking legs, so you can kiss your subpar football career goodbye. You have ten minutes to cry about it.”
“So will you murder me or break my legs? Make up your mind, sweetheart, you’re starting to confuse me. And gee, you know that I can’t cry in front of an audience, so you might as well hang up and let me mourn in peace while I still have the time to do so.”
And here comes the final proverbial straw breaking the camel’s back. Phone held up in front of his mouth, Isagi practically yells into the speaker, as though hoping to make the smug menace’s ears bleed, composure gone with the wind. His effort surely works on the occupants of the car, who are left wincing at the sudden increase in decibels. “You’re fucking dead, Kaiser, you hear me? Dead! Ten fucking minutes,” Isagi bellows and promptly hangs up, letting out a frustrated groan. Raichi’s surprised to see that the screen of his phone isn’t cracked.
His fuming, black-haired teammate turns to face him, shoulders tense, cheeks flushed red with boiling anger. “Drive faster,” he barks in command, his fringe a complete mess from how much he’s been running his fingers through it. With his hair standing up like this, he looks even more menacing. Huh, perhaps the increase in hair volume truly does add to intimidation tactics? It would definitely explain Barou’s ridiculous rooster do—overcompensating much?
Raichi is left tragically unimpressed. “Don’t boss me around,” he says, fingers drumming against the wheel. He keeps both hands on it at all times because he isn’t a plebian with a death wish—so unlike a certain someone, who now has ten whole minutes to make Bachira Meguru incomparably worse just to mess with his valiant, overprotective knight in shining armour. A kill-starved one with pure madness swirling in their eyes, but a knight nonetheless. Would that make Raichi a noble steed? Fuck that. He’d be like a cool wizard or something, paving the path for the hero—and of course Isagi is the fucking protagonist in every story ever—to save his zonked princess locked away in a whore-and-cocaine filled tower, guarded by an ugly dragon with too much red eyeliner and a tacky ass haircut. God, Raichi wants to shave those little rat tails clean off.
“And we’re not actually murdering the asshole or our upcoming season’s gonna look pretty fucking bleak,” he adds, only because he’s older and wiser now. An adult. Besides, he’s not going to bash Kaiser’s head in for the LSD-snorting runt’s sake—he doesn’t care enough about Bachira to take action. To Raichi, he is nothing more than an annoying, buzzing pest that was exceptionally hard to get rid of.
If he were Isagi, he’d welcome the one night’s worth of actual breathing space with open arms, but the dude’s downright insane and has serious attachment issues on top of that, so who is Raichi to judge? Different folks, different strokes and all that. The pair of lovebirds have been super-glued at the hip for half a decade now.
“Let’s not get the police involved, right? Right,” Kurona agrees, albeit somewhat hesitantly. He seems to be entirely onboard with some good old fashioned murder. “Our careers might be over if they see what happens behind closed doors.”
Isagi’s stubborn, deafening silence speaks volumes—it’s an answer in and of itself.
❊KURONA❊
Kurona hadn’t been planning on leaving his flat this fine Friday night—Saturday now. Saturday. Right. In fact, he had a fresh bowl of popcorn, a mug of green tea and a crime show waiting for him when he received Isagi’s call.
It was an emergency, so naturally, he’d dropped everything to help his distressed friend out. It had taken him an impressive thirty seconds to dress up and make himself presentable, even if his socks were mismatched and his hair wasn’t braided, limply hanging off the side of his face in loose curls.
Kurona hates it. The strands make his cheek itch.
His overpriced sneakers stick to the parqueted floor of Kaiser’s mansion, stained with a mixture of colourful… fluids of unknown origin that he’d rather not ponder about. A single disgusted glance at his feet is nearly enough for Kurona to lose sight of Isagi entirely, who braves on ahead, shoulders squared in order to pave the way for his friends, bulldozing every stoned soul unfortunate enough to cross his path.
It earns him some nasty glares, but no one dares to pick a fight, warily eyeing this strange, overdressed newcomer beelining towards the crowded terrace, unsettled by Isagi’s suffocating aura and icy stare. The intimidating man—as intimidating as one can be at a whopping 175 centimetres, in Germany no less—doesn’t spare his fallen victims a second look, so Kurona automatically takes over the role of the humble apology issuer, because it’s always better to be safe than sorry with non-sober people involved.
Raichi trails behind him, ruining Kurona’s hard work with his everything. Tsk.
Their designated driver reaches for a beer, so to stop him Kurona swiftly kicks him in the shin. They don’t need a second accident—god knows that they already have enough stuff to deal with.
He receives a petty kick in return, but it doesn’t matter. He’ll take it for everyone’s safe, hopefully police-free return home. If they settle this matter fast, perhaps he’ll be able to sneak in one episode of his TV show right before bedtime.
The three musketeers making up Bachira Meguru’s extraction team never manage to reach their destination, with the leader of the pack coming to a swift halt ahead, his tense body unwinding so fast that he looks about to turn into a puddle of mush on the carpeted ground.
Their target is truly a pathetic, sad sight to behold. There are no words in Japanese, English or German to properly describe just how bad Bachira Meguru looks. Shivering in his casual clothes, he stands out in the sea of almost nude people grinding against each other, head tilted up to look at the colourful lights reflected in the glass ornaments of an intricate, impressive chandelier.
It looks like it’s taking him everything just to stand up on his own two legs and keep balance, knees bent awkwardly, continuously noodling out beneath him, as though Bachira has simply forgotten how to hold his body weight. It isn’t entirely clear how he hasn’t fallen over yet, with the pull of gravity seemingly having increased tenfold on his poor, quivering body.
Kurona supposes that his only saving grace are his sculpted thighs, their hard muscles chiseled to perfection all thanks to the two decades-worth of running around, chasing after a ball.
Isagi’s relieved, yet stricken “Oh, Bachira…” is audible even over the thump of the bass as he quickly closes the distance between them, shaky hands gingerly reaching out to hold his friend’s shoulders.
By the time Kurona finally fights his way through the dense crowd, he’s already checking Bachira’s temperature.
Red eyes clinically scan over the druggie’s haggard appearance. Up close, it’s even worse. Despite having two incredibly worried people in front of him, Bachira fails to acknowledge them, mouth slightly gaping as he continues looking up at the crystal fragments of the chandelier. His face is ashen, riddled with sweat, and the suspicious stains on the hoodie are extremely telling.
There’s a glimmering sheen glossing over Isagi’s eyes that Kurona recognizes to be frightened tears, as the former man carefully jostles his friend in hopes of bringing him back down from whatever dimension that he was currently stuck in. “Bachira, it’s us. We came here to pick you up, alright?” Predictably, there is no response. Isagi’s fingers tighten around Bachira's shoulders. “Hey, c’mon, say something? You’re scaring me.”
Kurona gently pries away Isagi’s grabby hands, firmly shaking his head. Unfortunately, this isn’t his first time seeing someone in this state, as well as being pushed into the carer role. “Don’t. Don’t do that. You might make him sick,” he says, frowning, as he inspects Bachira’s empty, electric yellow eyes—well, mostly black with the way his pupils are dilated, eclipsing most of the iris. “It’s for the best if we take him outside for now and give him some water. This environment isn’t good or safe.” Kurona glares over his defenseless friend’s shoulder, unrelenting stare turning sharp around the edges to fend off a couple of strange individuals curiously peering at Bachira’s swaying form.
Thankfully, Isagi doesn’t notice the shady looks. They don’t need a bloodbath on top of everything else, and speaking of that…
“Kaiser,” Isagi grinds out through grit teeth as he seethes. If he were a cat, right about now he’d be hissing and baring his fangs, sleek fur standing on end. Kurona was really hoping that the other man had already forgotten all about his grudge for the night, especially upon seeing Bachira in this state, but unfortunately, he was dead wrong. Isagi cracks his knuckles, all rationality shoved aside in favour of exacting swift revenge. Bringing about much needed justice. “He won’t get away with this. I won’t let him.”
Right as Kurona is about to suggest rescheduling the inevitable beatdown to some other, less busy day, Raichi pops up before them, spewing chip crumbs everywhere as he pours even more gasoline into the raging fire of Isagi’s, well, rage, by stating that he just saw Kaiser step outside and into the pool area.
Kurona swears that this time he really can see Isagi’s hair standing up on end, eyes gleaming dangerously as he takes off running, leaving his friends behind—confused and uncertain how to proceed.
Great job, great job.
Unbothered, Raichi stands rooted in his spot, dumb and useless as ever, so Kurona makes sure to eyeball his meaty frame extra hard, eyebrows knit together and voice grave when he prompts, “You’re just going to let him do this alone? Go after him. Go, go.” He impatiently motions with one hand, the other braced firmly against Bachira’s waist to lessen the burden on his jelly-like knees.
For a second, Raichi glares, defiant, but it’s Kurona who emerges victorious from the impromptu staredown. “You fucking owe me,” Raichi spits, lip curling back with faint disgust once he regards Bachira. It’s pretty obvious that between holding Isagi back from committing manslaughter and taking care of a sick person stained with puke, he prefers the former. “If this turd vomits in the car, you’re scrubbing it clean.”
“Less talking, more doing,” Kurona cuts in, tightening his hold around Bachira once he feels the other hiccup as though trying to prove Raichi’s point.
❊RAICHI❊
When they finally step outside, Isagi is already throwing himself at Kaiser—a full-body tackle that nearly sends the pair hurtling over the edge of the pool and straight into the water. The latter man appears to be caught off guard, almost as though he hadn’t heard the ear-splitting battle cry that his attacker had let out upon locating his ombre-dyed head in the sparse groups of weed smokers occupying the area.
The heavy sway of Kaiser’s body as he attempts to pick himself off the ground explains the slow reaction—it appears that Bachira isn’t the only one under the influence.
Kurona sits the aforementioned man down by the entrance, still blank-faced and high off his ass while Raichi enjoys the SS-tier view of Isagi going batshit crazy on Michael fucking Kaiser, his angry yelling so fast-paced that it comes out garbled, nonsensical. Raichi can still clearly make out the words of “How could you do this to him, you asshole!?” right before Isagi cleanly socks Kaiser in the jaw, and isn’t that unfair, beating down on someone vertically-challenged who cannot defend themselves.
Isagi appears to be entirely unburdened by meaningless things, such as fighting etiquette—in fact, he doesn’t seem to be interested in keeping any of this fair and square as he winds back to hit Kaiser again, and thank fuck that Alexis Ness isn’t around because this would be getting ugly. That simp never looked above pulling a knife on someone threatening his narcissist queen.
Everyone seems to be either too out of it or too invested in the ensuing brawl to step in. Even Raichi finds himself fascinated by the powerful display of Isagi’s raw, hidden strength as he attempts to beat the living shit out of his teammate, who is now a little bit more wary of his surroundings all thanks to the sharp sting of his face.
Angered, slightly sobered up by the brutal pummeling, Kaiser grabs his attacker by the hair to throw him off, grip tight, but Isagi fights back against the rough pull at his scalp, against what must be some insane pain, to the point where Raichi almost finds himself laughing, incredulous—the enraged dude looks like he wouldn’t mind walking around looking like a monk landed straight from the Middle Ages if only that would result in him knocking out at least a few of Kaiser’s pearly whites.
There’s no grace to it. Isagi aims his fists and knees wherever he can reach, inexperienced but certainly not lacking in fervour. He bears down on Kaiser like it’s a matter of survival rather than pride and misplaced protectiveness, hardly giving the other enough time or space to fight back, to the point where most that he is able to do is defend himself from the barrage of random hits.
Between watching Itoshi Rin running around the football field with his damn tongue hanging out and seeing Isagi Yoichi trying his hardest to break someone’s face in, completely zeroed in on his victim and looking like he’s been possessed by a demon or some shit, Raichi isn’t sure which one is more unsettling.
What he’s certain of is that if this beatdown keeps up, Isagi is really going to kill Kaiser, and they do not need police or an ambulance to show up on top of everything that’s been going on, so Raichi finally decides to interfere, making sure to approach the pair as slowly as possible—he’d be lying if he said that he didn’t want to drag this out. Watching the untouchable Kaiser bleed was a pleasure in and of itself.
Isagi’s split lower lip gushes blood, but it’s nothing in comparison to Kaiser’s bloody nose and mouth. Raichi wouldn’t be surprised if Isagi had cracked something, knuckles bruised and smudged red.
One hand is enough to peel Isagi off Kaiser’s tattered body. When he tries to fight back against Raichi’s hold, he yanks him back by the hood of his puffer jacket.
“I’m not done!” Isagi yells passionately, red-faced and breathing heavily. His eyes flash something fierce, as though there’s lightning trapped in their midnight-blue depths or some gay shit like that, but Raichi isn’t about to wax poetic about the short demon’s hateful glares, instead raising an amused eyebrow once Isagi scoffs. “If you want to help out, then hold the fucker down so that I can kill him!” At that, his short legs wildly shoot out in a poor attempt to kick at his hunched over enemy, curled up just out of reach with a hand clamped tight over his leaking nose.
The considerably one-sided fight has left Kaiser looking severely concussed. A few other people have finally dared to step in and approach the host of the party now that Isagi was no longer within range, threatening to send them to the hospital as well—a leashed, muzzled dog trying his damndest to fight back against the tungsten chains that were Raichi’s jacked arms.
Persistent little shit. Raichi was already starting to hear the strained groans produced by the seams of Isagi’s outdoor clothes.
Right as he’s about to hit the struggling brat with something snappy, he gets interrupted by Kaiser’s pained, spiteful hissing. Raichi can understand—getting your ass beat at your own party, your own home no less, was a serious blow to one’s pride. Especially if there were spectators around, and boy, there were several. “Now you’ve done it, Yoichi…” the asshole growls in warning, words muffled by the fingers pressed to his mouth, but no less malevolent, with a matching glower to boot.
The sound of his rough voice seemingly sets Isagi off yet again. The struggle resumes, even more intense than before. If Raichi lets his guard down just for one moment, one insignificant millisecond, Isagi is sure to slip out of his grasp like a slick bar of soap. “What was that!?” Raichi’s prisoner hollers, enraged. “You want another elbow to the face!? Is that it!? If so, I can deliver it!”
Kaiser ignores his attacker’s school-level taunts, standing up with some difficulty. He is quick to dislodge himself from the weak grasps of his acquaintances trying to keep him steady, a deep, offended frown pulling at his wound-riddled lips. Frightened by Kaiser’s defiant glares, his loyal subjects scurry away, granting their tyrant some much-needed space to brush himself off. “This isn’t over, you fucking clown, I can promise you that,” he slurs, swaying still.
It’s not very… intimidating, Raichi thinks.
Isagi seemingly agrees, baring his teeth.
“I’m not fucking scared of you, king.”
“You should be.”
Raichi audibly snorts at that. It wouldn’t be a typical, funny girlie fight without the usual superhero-slash-supervillain dialogue exchange between these two.
Latching onto the derisive sound, Kaiser’s vicious blue eyes regard its source. Their whites are tinged red with blood, shiny with moisture—an aftereffect of burst vessels and the hard drugs still thrumming in his system. “Collect your oafish bodyguard, Yoichi, and get the fuck out of my sight,” the smurf orders and spits out a mouthful of blood, carefully touching one of the nastier bruises blooming on his jaw.
Raichi’s fingers turn loose around Isagi’s hood.
❊KURONA❊
More than once, Kurona Ranze had found himself questioning his career—and life—choices. Perhaps his true calling lay in becoming a professional babysitter for a bunch of manchildren who did not have enough brain cells left to spare for their self-preservation instincts to kick in.
Perhaps all of this could’ve been avoided if only he had taken up PXG’s offer, like any other sane, normal person would have.
Kurona considers their team’s current line-up and pauses.
Maybe not. After all, he’d much rather be here, babysitting Isagi and holding him back from murdering someone once every blue moon, than caught between Itoshi Rin’s and Shidou Ryuusei’s daily attempts at strangling each other during practice.
He knows that it took Nanase a few stray elbows to the face and a severely bruised eye to finally give up on trying to interfere with whatever the hell those two had going on.
The rituals were intricate. Some chose to follow the object of their affections halfway across the globe just for a chance to make them shine on the field, while others preferred killing them in a weak attempt to rid themselves of the insurmountable burden that was their potentially unrequited feelings.
Predictably, their quartet ended up forcibly escorted out of Kaiser’s mansion right after Raichi had foolishly decided to join Isagi’s party in his quest to break the German football star’s legs, Raichi’s booming voice easily overpowering Isagi’s as he roughly shoved the shorter man aside, lunging forward to throw hands. Eager to inflict some serious and lasting damage.
Just by witnessing this, Kurona was mentally transported back to the Blue Lock days. Back to when his teammates were still young and stupid, and clearly not much smarter than they were now.
Thankfully this time around the cowards bracing the mansion's walls actually stepped in to help, which saved Kurona the trouble of leaving Bachira’s side. The other man was slowly coming back to the world of the living, muttering something inaudible as he attempted to shield his eyes from the lights dancing on the pool’s rippling surface.
Kurona Ranze hadn't been planning on leaving his flat, nor was he planning on shoving his fingers down Bachira Meguru's throat to help him throw up all over Kaiser’s tiled poolside, but things didn't always go the way he wanted them to.
At least it was mostly water and foamy bile.
Face smeared red with blood that was questionably his, Isagi practically materialised by Bachira’s side, concern creasing his brow as he sank to his knees to gently rub his best friend’s back, shooting a nasty glare over his shoulder at Kaiser’s retreating form, surrounded by a protective, practically impenetrable wall of meaty bodies flexing their massive, bulging muscles at Raichi’s burgundy-red, fuming face. The short-tempered menace just wouldn’t relent, so with a weary sigh, Kurona abandoned his babysitter duties to attend to his other child, a muscle jumping in his jaw.
“Enough, enough!” he grouched, pulling at the sleeve of the man’s leather jacket. Predictably, he was thoroughly ignored, with Raichi gnashing his sharp teeth. “Let’s just wait for the security to arrive and not cause an even bigger scene.”
“Fuck!” was all that the blond said, kicking at a nearby table. Empty cans and paper cups flew everywhere, their rattling making Bachira wince as his hands flew up to guard his sensitive ears. Isagi’s mean, dark stare switched target. “I didn’t even get to pop a kneecap. This sucks.”
Hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans, Raichi approached the huddled pair of friends. None-too-gently, he nudged Bachira’s lower back with the tip of his boot, which earned him a reflexive, hard punch to the shin from Isagi, who looked ready to bite at his ankles if he didn’t stop, appalled by the mistreatment of his sick friend. Raichi only rolled his eyes, bending over to inspect Bachira’s chalk-white visage. “Oi, freak, you alive?”
He received no response aside from a muffled hiccup, followed by a loud gurgle and even more stomach content—a yellow creek that was inching closer and closer to the edge of the pool.
“Yeah, I’m not letting this thing anywhere near my car,” Raichi concluded, barely having managed to dodge the brunt of the projectile vomit. Unfortunately, Isagi wasn’t as lucky, nose scrunched up and gaze hopeless as he regarded his stained lap. “I did my part. Good luck sobering him up, losers. I’ll be going now.”
Shocked by the rather insensitive choice of words and the lack of basic human empathy, Kurona took a firm step forward, ready to physically block Raichi if need be, dig his heels into the vomit-stained ground in order to stubbornly hold him back from leaving, but he was beaten to it. Before Raichi had the chance to turn on his heel, a trembling, pale hand reached out to weakly grasp at the loudmouthed man’s jeans.
Simultaneously, the three teammates froze up and held their breath, straining their ears to listen to their drugged comrade’s words. Anxious silence set between them as they waited. Isagi’s arm looped protectively around his best friend’s lower back.
“Please,” Bachira eventually forced out, eyes squeezed shut, voice quiet and shaky. He took a shallow breath as Raichi regarded him, cold and stone-faced, yet he made no move to pull away. “Could you—” Another gurgle. “P-Please take me home to Isagi, I—”
❊BACHIRA❊
Everything was spinning.
He wasn’t entirely sure where he was, as nothing made sense anymore. It felt as though he was phasing out of existence and dreaming all at once. One Bachira stood before him—a silent observer, looking down on him with a blank look on his distorted face. He was seeing himself from a third-person perspective, judging his pathetically curled up form.
Another Bachira sat by his side, obscured by a myriad of white, yellow and blue flashes of light burning his retinas. This Bachira could see each droplet of sweat rolling down his—theirs?—cheek. His skin felt feverish and wrong and his left side was in flames.
Something was touching him, firmly boxing him in. It felt equal parts soothing and terrible, a sensation that left the three figures’ spines crawling and their skin sticky with anxious, cold sweat.
The three of them were their own separate entities with their own personalities that shared a hivemind, shapeless shadows hidden in the fog of Bachira’s mind, in persistent white flashes and cerulean blue. Together, they glitched out of planet earth, listening to alien words that were muted in their ears, nonsensical. It felt as though someone was talking backwards.
And they were so, so ill.
The more they thought about the possibility of dying here, stuck between dimensions, the worse Bachira felt, panic rising up his throat, like a burning, suffocating itch rolling over his goosebump-riddled skin. The worse he felt, the more his surroundings changed, coming closer and then retreating again, blue, blue, white, blue again.
His panic was a transparent film enveloping their being. They felt it rub over their endless bodies, impossible to peel off, which made everything at least three times worse. It was an odd sensation, feeling everything three times more intensely, more acutely, seeing things that Bachira couldn’t give a name to, visions of pretty, warping colours splashing in his periphery.
He heard his name called out in a nervous, saddened tone, playing on repeat. Muted at first, but then loud and clear, much like a church bell going off directly inside his brain.
Bachira, Bachira, Bachira.
It sounded a whole lot like Isagi, which was funny considering the fact that he had left Isagi behind aeons ago, stranded on a mortal plane that Bachira could no longer access, unable to find his way back, lost in time and space. All he could do was drift along, further and further away.
He was starting to feel lonely. It was a horrible sensation that made him feel like drowning and left his lungs tight, fuelling his fear.
He was so sick, everything hurt so much. His head was splitting open and his stomach was rolling with nausea so intense he was about to pass out.
His counterparts were slowly losing their way back home, back to Isagi, undoubtedly waiting for him somewhere out there. How long had he been waiting for Bachira’s return? Was he worried? Bachira didn’t like it when Isagi was worried and upset—he always preferred to see him smile.
How long was he willing to wait before inevitably giving up?
One of Bachira’s bodies cast an anchor of stars into the flashing, bottomless blue ocean. The other one reeled it in, watching the water’s surface come closer and closer, contained in odd, turbulent squares. He wasn’t entirely sure if he was above it or under it—all he knew was that he had to focus on breaching the surface and finally clearing this shimmering fog. Surely, Isagi would be waiting for him on the other side.
He couldn’t afford to blink. If he blinked now, he would sink.
Bachira reached out one disembodied hand to pry open his eyelids, immediately meeting resistance.
There was a slight pressure squeezing down on his fingers—a mute reassurance. Gentle hands cradled his face, making Bachira’s unfocused eyes gloss over with a fresh sheen of tears. They felt good, safe. Just like whenever his mother would brush her paint-stained fingers over his cheeks, cooing softly.
These hands didn’t feel particularly soft, their skin slightly rough to touch. Hypersensitive, Bachira could distinctively feel each and every grove of those fingertips, every imperfection imprinting on his heated face. Could feel this mysterious entity’s thumbs rubbing soothing circles over the fragile skin right beneath the bottom row of his eyelashes.
The third person-perspective-beholding Bachira squinted against the flashing white lights to make out the form of the person currently reaching out to him. He was uncertain whether what he was seeing was real or just another figment of his imagination, another beautiful, fleeting image created by his mind’s eye to quell the loneliness gnawing at his gut.
He could make out dark hair—or, at least, Bachira thought it was hair. Shiny and pitch black, darker than a cloudy night, a black hole, darker than—
Bachira weakly shook his head, careening on the edge of the pit, close to falling into it. He stepped back before he could collapse into that wonderful void, succumbing to its powerful pull.
The strands looked silky-smooth. Nice to touch. If only he could, he would try to test that hypothesis; unfortunately, he could no longer locate his hands.
Bachira.
It was that voice again, persistently reminding him of its existence.
I’m right here, it’s me. Focus. Bachira, focus. It’s me.
“But I’m me,” Bachira thought, pouting. “How can you be me, if I’m me?”
I got you, the disembodied voice spoke in Isagi’s voice yet again, momentarily breaching the heavy fog settled over his brain. We’re going home now, it’s alright.
A shapeless mouth moved in the distance. Bachira saw its chapped lips, surrounded by gleaming drops of moisture. The mouth laughed and grinned, and this time, he heard his own voice coming out of it. “I must be hallucinating pretty badly if I’m hearing Isagi.”
One thumb probed at his slick skin. Three times the sensation, three times the love, three times the tenderness, three shivers down Bachira Meguru’s spine.
“No,” the voice spoke up, this time sounding closer. Clearer. More real. Bachira squeezed his eyes shut, but all he saw was blue, midnight blue, familiar and loving. It left him shuddering. He wanted to dive into it. “You’re not hallucinating.”
Bachira laughed at that—a short, raspy giggle that left his heart squeezing pleasantly inside his chest, fluttering like the wings of an exotic butterfly. In his mind, he observed the neon-green insect taking flight, eager to tear apart the moths eating away at his twisting insides, leaving behind nothing but anxiety in their wake. “That’s nice. At least one thing is nice about this.”
Merciless, the butterfly began pulling at the many wings of the moths. It pulled and pulled and pulled and pulled, right until Bachira could no longer contain their maimed corpses inside his body and opened his mouth to expel them.
❊ISAGI❊
Huddled in the backseat of Raichi’s rental, Isagi Yoichi prays to all deities above and beyond for less bumps in the road ahead.
They’re not going fast enough for his liking, but at the same time, it isn’t possible for Raichi to speed up—each jostle of the car leaves Bachira crying out in Isagi’s arms, puppy-like yowls that pierce Isagi’s empathy-filled, uneasy heart.
Thankfully, he’s no longer puking all over the place. Once he deemed it safe, Isagi had carefully peeled off his best friend’s stained hoodie to exchange it with his own, slightly too big on Bachira’s lithe frame. Isagi was left shuddering in his too-thin T-shirt—Kurona strongly advised against turning up the heater—but it was fine as long as Bachira was toasty and safe, far away from that horrible place.
For the nth time, Isagi worriedly brushes away his sick friend’s sweat-slicked bangs, saddened to see him like this—trembling, pale, and deeply unwell, pulse hammering a little bit too fast beneath Isagi’s twitchy fingertips whenever they settled on the side of Bachira’s moist neck, checking if the other was still alive.
There is a good reason why Isagi avoids fucking around with hard drugs, and that reason is, unfortunately, currently draped over his stained lap—a grim reminder and an eerie warning, personified by the one man that he cares for the most in the world.
He doesn’t know what he’ll do with himself if Bachira gets worse, if there are any complications to this little bender. Who knows what else he’d taken that night? Who knows what kind of shit Kaiser supplied to his partygoers?
Desperately, Isagi tries not to think about that menace. It makes his blood boil whenever he slips up, leaving his bruises aching and his torn knuckles itching, craving more violence. He should’ve hit Kaiser more, should’ve destroyed him for offering that crap to a complete drug virgin and then leaving him unsupervised.
Bachira’s grip is white-knuckled on the front of Isagi’s shirt, refusing to let go no matter what. If possible, it tightens even more each time the car’s wheels catch over a shingle-filled hole, leaving Raichi cursing under his breath.
A particularly nasty shake leaves Bachira curling into Isagi’s front, face pressed against his torso, breathing shallowly, yet exceptionally fast. Carefully, Isagi attempts to put some space between himself and Bachira’s head so that the other doesn’t suffocate, but the latter man refuses to budge, whining softly, distressed.
It doesn’t help that it starts raining, the ice-cold shower chilling the car even further. Isagi can see the puffs of his breath linger in the air, as Bachira continues moaning against his shirt, its flimsy material turning moist with condensation. He can acutely feel each inhale and exhale prickling his skin.
Every now and then, he hears some variation of his name escaping Bachira’s parched mouth.
“I’m here,” he says yet again despite knowing that Bachira cannot hear it or fully comprehend him, smoothing a sweaty hand over his bleached tufts of hair. Worrying at his lower lip, he continues, this time addressing the people in the front seats. “This isn't good. I think we should take him to the emergency room.”
Raichi is the first one to criticise this admittedly terrible idea. “Huh!?” he exclaims, to which Isagi replies with an annoyed hiss, shushing the noisy driver. Can’t he lower his voice every now and then at least a little? “Are you out of your fucking mind!? What about the whole “keeping it hush” thing? Our careers and all that shit.” One of his hands leaves the steering wheel, which Kurona immediately steadies—that’s how affected Raichi is by this mind-boggling suggestion. Isagi frowns, annoyed, but chooses to stay silent. “I can already see the headlines: BM's stars bring FC Barcha's beloved forward to the local hospital for drug overdose! Click here to find out what happens next!” Raichi’s freed hand sweeps over the air and then pauses for dramatic effect. “Spoiler alert: their careers are fucking dust.”
“If I have to choose between my career and my best friend dying, I think it's pretty obvious which one I'm picking!” Isagi exclaims passionately, cradling Bachira’s fragile form close. He may or may not have looked up Bachira’s symptoms online and none of them looked like they were describing a mild case of overdosing. He probably shouldn’t have done this, as it had only fueled his paranoia.
“He's not dying, dude! He's tripping balls! No one has ever died from a bad acid trip before!”
“Technically, you can still die from the—” Kurona butts in, but is swiftly cut off by Raichi’s impatient roar.
“Shut the fuck up, shrimp, no one asked!”
For a long moment, the redhead mutely stares at his fuming companion, stiff expression settled into something unreadable, while Isagi stews in secondhand embarrassment. Eventually, he sighs, his hands swiftly fishing out Raichi’s discarded, puke-stained leather jacket and sliding in to ransack it. Their driver had ended up shucking it off the second Bachira threw up all over his broad back—perhaps letting Raichi carry Bachira back to the car wasn’t the brightest idea, but despite his deceptively lean frame, Bachira was built like a brick shithouse and weighed about just as much and Isagi wasn’t as physically strong as he seemed. It was better to be safe than sorry, even if that meant entrusting Bachira’s safety to someone who immediately tossed him over one shoulder like a sack of potatoes.
Raichi isn’t too pleased to find his pockets raided by someone he just rudely cut off mid-sentence. “Oi, stop that! Get your dirty paws off my shit, bastard,” he threatens.
Kurona retrieves three items—a crinkled pack of cigarettes, a lighter with a naked woman with a comically huge rack pasted on its side and a packet containing several pills.
Isagi stares at it, shell-shocked.
Yes, leave it to Raichi fucking Jingo to have someone lowkey dying from drug overdose on the backseat of their car and still have molly in his pockets.
“Give me that,” Raichi growls in command, attempting to retrieve his stash at the same time Kurona rolls down the window and wordlessly tosses it outside. No hesitation. “No, what the fuck! You just threw out 30 Euros, asshole! I hate you! What the fuck was even the point of going there if you’re not picking up anything!? I should stop this car and kick you fucks out.”
Disturbed by the increase in decibels, Bachira lets out another wheezy whine. Frown deepening, Isagi holds him up and keeps him steady all so that he can comfortably kick at the driver’s seat. “Are you for real? For real?” Another kick, this one angrier. “And keep your voice down, damn it.”
Raichi thoroughly ignores his considerably simple request. “Just because your dumb fucking boyfriend can’t feel any boundaries, doesn’t mean you should go on some anti-drug crusade, dipshit! Not all of us are straight-edge pussies.”
Isagi feels his temple pulsate at that—a downgraded version of the blackout that he had experienced upon seeing Kaiser’s underdressed ass toking up by the poolside. Murderous rage simmers at the very bottom of his gut, threatening to boil over at a moment’s notice. The only thing keeping him in check is Bachira’s delicate state—if it weren’t for that, he’d be lunging forward to strangle the fucker.
It’s an unfamiliar sensation, this strange bloodlust. Isagi has never thought of himself as a violent, impulsive person before, has only ever involved himself in fights whenever there was no other way out and the people involved weren’t willing to resolve it with words, or were otherwise threatening him, so today has been quite surprising to say the least. It’s not his first time feeling angry like this, but it may be the very first one that was triggered purely out of concern for someone else’s well being.
For himself, Isagi would take the high road. For Bachira, though, he would overturn mountains.
Their petty little argument is interrupted by the faint click of the lighter and a dragged out inhale.
Wisps of smoke fill the car, stinking up the air with burnt paper and tobacco. In the rearview mirror, Isagi watches Kurona rub at his temples, visibly exhausted. “You’re both children,” the redhead mutters, shocking the other man into a stunned silence. Even Raichi appears to be taken aback. Kurona wasn’t known for, well… speaking out against someone? Speaking negatively? “Both of you. Seriously. You,” he points at the driver with the ridiculous boobie lighter, the motion of it somewhat lazy, “zip it. Zip it.”
Kurona’s intense gaze seeks out Isagi, reflected in the mirror. He calls for his teammate’s undivided attention, the flash of those feline-like eyes sharp enough to make Isagi’s spine crawl, grow rigid. “Chill. Chill, alright? Keep giving him water. He’s going to be alright. The detox can look ugly, I know. If he gets worse in the next few hours, you can think about calling the ambulance. Just monitor Bachira for now, okay? Cool? Cool.”
The smoke curls around Kurona’s face as he brings the filter of the cigarette back to his mouth, mumbling a disheartened, “Should’ve stayed home.”
Afterwards, it’s deadly quiet.
❊BACHIRA❊
Bachira wakes up to a blinding light, an extremely dry mouth and a massive headache.
It takes a solid minute for him to get his bearings, to realise that he was finally back where he was supposed to be—in his own physical body, located in Isagi’s apartment, and, for some odd reason stretched out on Isagi’s comfortable, queen-sized bed.
His vision is still blurry around the edges, but Bachira knows that at the very least this streak of light isn’t hostile—it’s only the sun filtering in through the gap between the blackout blinds. Considering the position of the building and the fact that its rays have landed right over his eyes indicates that it’s already late afternoon.
He gingerly flexes his slightly stiff fingers, relieved to find them fully functional. All of his limbs seem to be in the right places, no longer split into three separate entities located on entirely different planes of existence.
Bachira thinks that at some point last night he had discovered the meaning of life, had reached nirvana after having lived through a million different lifetimes, but he has long since forgotten everything. And who even cares about the meaning of life, anyways? There was no such thing as one universal way to exist, and besides, life is way more fun with at least some mystery to it.
He doesn’t recall much of the party— in fact, he isn’t entirely sure how he’d managed to get back to Isagi’s. How he ended up in Isagi’s bed, when he was typically crashing on the living room’s sofa.
Trying to pick up his arm to shield his eyes against the light ends up being a Sisyphean task, so Bachira eventually gives up on it, slowly turning his head to face the other side of the huge bed. His breath catches in his lungs at the unexpected sight that greets him.
Stretched out on his side, Isagi is fast asleep, curled protectively around Bachira’s stiff form, but still leaving enough space for the latter to comfortably move around if needed. The gentle lighting illuminating Isagi’s relaxed profile softens his considerably sharp features—and oh, his face has changed so much over the years, Bachira notes, cheeks tinged pink, warm to touch. Isagi has lost the lingering traces of baby fat, giving way to a nicely-shaped jawline, slightly more prominent cheekbones. He seems more balanced now.
More handsome, one might say, but to Bachira, Isagi Yoichi has always been one of the prettiest boys he’s ever seen.
His black, silken hair is a mess of tangles—an impressive bedhead, made more apparent by the lighting of the perfect winter afternoon. Illuminated dust particles swirl in the air between them, standing out against the somewhat bleak, dark grey tones of their surroundings.
Bachira has always disliked this room. On many occasions, he’d told Isagi that if the two of them were to share it, he would at the very least bring out his colourful, patterned bedsheets.
Isagi promised that he would allow Bachira to have a go at decorating his future home—a place that would actually belong to him, that wasn’t just another overpriced apartment that he’d ended up renting in a foreign country, a temporary abode set for the duration of his contract with Bastard München.
Isagi’s mouth is open as he breathes through it, in and out, slow and steady. His eyelashes are long and thick, barely fluttering as he dreams, eyelids twitching slightly. Bachira hopes that it’s a pleasant one.
With some difficulty, he carefully maneuvers to face his sleeping friend, yellow eyes flicking over the other’s face, mapping out each and every freckle, however, his eyebrows furrow once they settle on the pale pink curve of Isagi’s parted lips, noting the swell and the irritated flush of the lower one, marked with a scabbed over wound that wasn’t there yesterday. In fact, there’s another bruise blooming on one of his cheekbones, splotched purple around the edges. The bridge of his straight nose has a shallow abrasion on it, so without thinking much into it, Bachira reaches out to inspect it, a worried frown pulling at his mouth.
Just what the hell happened last night?
Dimly, he recalls hearing Isagi’s voice during his bad acid trip, but he’d mostly brushed it off at the time, assuming that it was his zoned out brain attempting to play tricks on him, messing with Bachira by poking at his repressed, years’-old feelings towards his best friend.
It was Isagi’s voice that had grounded him at his worst, and it was all thanks to it that Bachira had managed to forcefully pull himself out of his stupor, as brief as that moment had been, succumbed to his overwhelming anxiety.
He thought that he had simply imagined Isagi stroking over his face, his gaze soft and swimming with concern. Bachira recalls it in flashes, in blinding whites and breathtaking blues obstructing his memory of the night, and it was as nice as it was hollow and meaningless, especially knowing that none of it was real—but now, he wasn’t so sure about that.
It would explain how he’d managed to teleport to Isagi’s bed with its slumbering owner looking as though he’d wound up in a fistfight just to get him there.
Bachira’s stomach churns, uneasy. He hopes that it wasn’t him who dealt the blows, too high off his ass to know what’s real anymore, mistaking Isagi for yet another hostile entity trying to whisk him away.
He doesn’t get to trace his slightly damp fingertips over Isagi’s nose. Somehow aware of the hovering digits—of Bachira’s presence—the other man’s eyes snap open, silently regarding his bedmate’s startled expression.
For a while, they stare at each other, faces no more than a handful of centimetres apart. Feeling strangely pulled apart at the seams—Isagi’s drilling stare is nothing short of intense when he wants it to be, peering into the very depths of his friend’s soul—Bachira forces a smile to his lips. Once it’s there, it feels far more natural—Isagi just has that effect on him. Smiling around him comes as easy as breathing, as existing. “Hey,” Bachira greets, endeared. At the sound of Bachira’s tired and, most importantly, sober voice, his best friend drops the needle-sharp focus. Something close to relief flits by those pretty blue eyes, somewhat softening Isagi’s frowny features. “Sorry if I woke you up, sleepyhead.”
Normally, Bachira would probe at the spot between Isagi’s furrowed eyebrows to smooth out the worried crease located there, boop him on the nose for good measure, but right now, none of these options seem plausible. A little nervously, he tucks his hand under his exhaustion-warmed cheek, gnawing on his lower lip when Isagi slowly lifts himself off the pillow to take a look at the time—“Already 2:20 PM,” he mumbles to himself—and then a closer look at Bachira’s face, his coal-black hair facing all of the directions of the world.
“Are you feeling alright?” is all that Isagi asks. There’s no usual greeting, no nothing, and Bachira simply knows without actually knowing it that the other man is currently upset with him. The sinking sensation is a whole lot like alarm bells going off inside his head, leaving his already unsettled gut collapsing in on itself.
He hates it, oh, he hates it so much. Guilt and unease creep up his tense spine at Isagi’s clinical onceover, followed by a weary sigh.
There’s no worse feeling in this universe or the next than disappointing the ones you love the most.
Bachira hadn’t thought too deeply into it before signing up to go to Kaiser’s party. Naturally, he had an idea or two on what he could expect—being a football star, a celebrity, he wasn’t living under a rock—but he hadn’t quite expected the drugs to hit him as hard as they did. Too little too late, a horrified-looking Yukki informed him that he simply had to wait longer for their effects to kick in. An impatient sensation chaser that he was, by then, Bachira had already scarfed down at least three different pills, washing them down with a yellow-tinted concoction that didn’t quite taste like alcohol, but wasn’t mere juice.
He meant to go out, have a little fun and then return at a respectable hour of 2:00 AM.
What ended up happening was entirely different than what he had initially planned, so perhaps it was a good thing that most of his memory had been wiped clean.
He has to admit that this one is entirely on him. He knows that he messed up big time—aware of Isagi’s ongoing beef with Michael Kaiser and afraid of judgement, Bachira hadn’t bothered to fill him in on where he’d be going.
Isagi has every right to be mad, to give him the cold shoulder. It’s apparent in his closed-off body language, the awkward stiffness of his muscles. The displeased, obvious downturn of his bruised lips. The barrier that Isagi erects between them, a wall that Bachira, in good conscience, cannot bear to see, nor has the ability to climb over.
To ease the tension, Bachira hums in affirmation, nodding stiffly, undeniably afraid. Unused to being perceived in such a negative light by the one person in his life who appeared to be entirely incapable of holding a grudge against Bachira’s more impulsive, occasionally unorthodox life decisions.
It seemed that even the most lenient people out there eventually ran out of patience.
Taking notice of Bachira’s wide-eyed, deer-caught-in-the-headlights look, Isagi visibly caves in, revealing a thin crack in his mask of carefully-crafted indifference. “You were very unwell,” he constitutes a fact—the understatement of the year if his current physical condition is anything to judge by—voice tight with distress. “For a few hours, I wasn’t sure if I should call the ambulance. You had me extremely worried, Bachira,” Isagi huffs, running a hand through his tangled locks, making them stand up even more. Suddenly, the ‘bedhead’ makes a whole lot more sense—it seems that in his panicked state, Isagi has spent long hours messing with his hair.
There isn’t much that Bachira can say to defend himself—in fact, there’s nothing. “I know,” he whispers, barely audible. Meeting those piercing, midnight-blue eyes becomes a task too difficult for him to handle, so he averts his gaze, flushing with shame. His own burning eyes feel itchy and weird, as though someone has poured hot sand directly into their sockets. “I—I’m sorry for everything. I should’ve—”
Isagi’s hand is warm on his shoulder, even through the thin layer of Bachira’s pyjama shirt. He doesn’t recall changing into it. “Hey,” his best friend calls out, tender. The word is followed up by an assuring squeeze. “It’s okay—well, not okay, but I’m just happy that you’re better now. Just…” Drained of his measly strength, Isagi collapses back into the bed and by Bachira’s side, his exhale dragged out and relieved all at once. Last night must’ve been just as rough on him, albeit in different ways. “Just please don’t act so carelessly in the future. Don’t do this again. I don’t think my heart can take it.” From his periphery, Bachira sees Isagi’s hand move to settle over his ribcage, counting down the steady beats of the aforementioned poor, overworked organ.
The answer is obvious. He’d rather die than repeat this again, put his dearest friend through the same misery for a second time. “I promise,” Bachira says, and means it from the very bottom of his soul. He swears it on his mother’s life. On the love and respect that he has for Isagi Yoichi, who has spent at least half a day nursing him back to health.
The aforementioned man smiles, subtle. “Good.”
Comfortable silence settles between them with Isagi finally unwinding, his eyes gradually falling closed. Before he can drift off, though, Bachira speaks up, wanting answers to his many, many questions. Starting with the obvious. “Your face… Did something happen while I was out? I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“Oh, this?” his friend asks, words slightly slurred, laden with hints of sleepiness. He picks at the fresh scab on his lower lip, hissing at the sharp sting. Immediately, Bachira seizes his wrist, pulling it away before Isagi can reopen the nasty-looking cut. Thankfully, his best friend doesn’t fight back like he normally does, either too worn out or too mindful of Bachira’s current, less-than-stellar state.
He secures their hands between their bodies, slipping in his fingers to fill in the empty spaces of Isagi’s slightly thicker digits. Once their hands are comfortably laced together, Isagi’s thumb mindlessly smooths over Bachira’s tanned skin, bringing up a faded, disjointed memory into the forefront of the other’s brain—a memory of rough palms resting on his melting face, careful fingertips tracing circular patterns into his cheeks.
“It’s… a long story,” Isagi continues with a wince, as though recollecting it causes him cringe so intense that he cannot begin to process it. At his best friend’s confused, wary look, he quickly clarifies, “You definitely didn’t hurt me! Not in the physical way, at least… Besides, this was definitely not my brightest moment, that’s for sure, so I don’t know if I should tell you.”
Bachira gives his hand a light squeeze, only somewhat assured. It’s hard to come to terms with the fact that someone might have hit Isagi in front of him but he was too zoned out to notice it and too useless to step in. The idea doesn’t sit right with him, making him pout. “We have all the time we need.”
It just so happens that years ago, the Blue Lock project has successfully brought together two of the biggest gossips around the block, so naturally, Isagi’s reluctance quickly dwindles as he proceeds to recount the epic tale of Bastard München’s Japanese players uniting against a common enemy in a heroic, anti-drug manifesto which ended up in a whole lot of bloodshed and, thankfully, zero policemen—as far as Isagi was aware, anyways.
Predictably, Bachira fumes and fusses about Isagi’s blooming bruises, inflicted on him by the host of that disastrous party, and while he thinks that Kaiser definitely did not deserve to have his ass tackled to the ground by the feral striker—it was Bachira’s own fault for being so naive; he was the one who willingly, albeit reluctantly, agreed to get high in the first place—he cannot help but agree that the man deserved at least a few elbows to the face for injuring Isagi.
“I don’t think he’ll be inviting me to another one of these parties anytime soon,” Bachira hums. Somewhere down the line, he’d ended up gravitating into Isagi’s personal space, one temple now pressed into the other’s shoulder, their laced hands resting on his chest. “Maybe that’s for the best. I saw a lot of naked ladies.”
Isagi scrunches up his nose at that. “Don’t remind me. He might as well relabel it to a swinger party. At least it’s a little more accurate and the people would know exactly what they’re signing up for. Either way, I’m not letting you go.” As if to prove a point, he squeezes their joined hands, wringing a bubbly giggle out of his friend.
The tip of Bachira’s tongue pokes out as he teases, “Alright, alright, no need to act like such a mother hen, Isagi. I already have a mom.”
“Knowing your penchant for trouble, you might as well have two,” his best friend snorts, good-naturedly.
“Well, I don’t have a father, so…”
“Alright, none of that. We’re stopping right here.”
Bachira laughs, a certain warmth pooling in the pit of his stomach, familiar. Isagi never fails to make him feel as though he’s about to float, drifting among the puffy, cotton-like clouds. “Why? I didn’t even get to call you ‘daddy’ yet!”
At that, Isagi attempts to free his hand to clamp it over Bachira’s grinning mouth, but the latter has just enough physical strength to hold it down. “I see that someone is feeling well-enough to smart-mouth,” Isagi grinds out, still half-assedly fighting for dominance, trying to wrestle Bachira into submission. Unfair because he’s sick. “That’s great—means that you can now do your nasty laundry, you little puke monster. You threw up all over Raichi’s 2k Euro biker jacket by the way, so he wants you to take care of it as well.”
Bachira gently gasps at that, faintly scandalised. “No way.”
“Yes way. It was mad gross. You were like a fountain. Or a river. I think some got into Kaiser’s pool, too. Serves him right,” Isagi huffs, frowning.
“I don’t remember any of it,” Bachira trails off, lost deep in thought as he looks up at Isagi’s ceiling to inspect the low-hanging, artistic lamps. “Not the puking, not the fight. Nothing. My last memory is of Yukki and I sitting on a couch with strangers. That was maybe thirty minutes after I took the pills. The rest is blank and nonsensical.“ Bachira flexes his free hand, vaguely recalls the sensation of travelling through space and time, completely detached from his physical body, located somewhere in Kaiser’s mansion. “I do remember hearing your voice, Isagi. It was scary and really lonely, but then a bit less so once I felt that you were there with me.” He smiles softly, as Isagi goes strangely still beside him, almost as though he’s suddenly forgotten how to breathe. “It grounded me a little.”
Curious to see what the issue might be, with Isagi so mute and unmoving, Bachira cranes his neck to take a good look at the other’s face, only to find it beet-red. Eyes widening significantly, Isagi regards him with quiet wonderment etched into every pore of his face, visibly embarrassed by Bachira’s bold words.
He’s never been much for mincing his most sincere sentiments.
“I—” Isagi starts, a little reluctantly. His tongue swipes over his lower lip to give it some moisture. Naturally, Bachira’s keen eyes don’t miss the nervous reaction. “I’m glad that it helped. You didn’t imagine at least some of it, as I was really calling out to you at the time. A lot, actually. You were constantly nodding off, and that scared me. I was scared that you might pass out or even worse.” He shudders at that, the adorable blush gradually receding from his cheeks. “In all seriousness, you were so sick. I—I didn’t know what to do, I—”
“I’m sorry,” Bachira firmly repeats, if only to smoothly cut off Isagi’s babbling before the other can spiral into a full-blown anxiety attack. He strokes over Isagi’s slightly shaky hand in order to soothe its tremors. It seemingly works. Bachira readjusts their grip. “I’m sorry that I put you through this. I’m fine now, I promise. A bit nauseous, but that’s normal, I think. Nothing that some sleep won’t fix.”
“Do you…” Isagi halts, somewhat flustered. Clearing his parched throat, he continues. “Do you want to sleep? You can stay here for the rest of the day. I can leave, if you want. I kind of want to crash, so I’ll take the sofa this time around.”
It seems that the black-haired striker takes this as his cue to leave as he rises from the bed, only to be stopped by Bachira’s hold, his hand still very much tightly wrapped around his best friend’s, lightly tugging back. A little confused, Isagi halts, looking down at his curled up companion.
An eyebrow raised. A silent question.
“I don’t want you to leave,” Bachira says, gradually growing red-faced. “I want you to stay so that we can sleep here together.”
His shy look must be obvious enough. Isagi’s shoulders drop as he smiles, kind and sweet. Any more of this, and Bachira thinks he might as well ignite from the inside. “Okay,” Isagi says, pushing back those depressing, dark grey covers to settle comfortably next to his friend. Then, to ease the odd, sparking tension between them, he adds, “Just don’t throw up on me this time around.”
“I make no promises!” Bachira hums, scooting closer. His achy head finds home on Isagi’s shoulder as though it’s the most natural thing in the world, and the other readily accommodates it, readjusting the pillows to comfortably slide a hand under Bachira and pull him in closer, securing him against his side.
Sheets pulled all the way up to his chin, wrapped around him tightly enough to make Bachira feel like a burrito, he nuzzles into the welcoming body heat, feeling each and every twitch of Isagi’s considerably hard muscles. Huddled together like this, cosy in his blanket cocoon, it's the safest that Bachira has felt in ages, Kaiser’s nightmarish party no more than an unpleasant tickle at the very back of his brain.
Isagi’s mouth moves against the top of Bachira’s tousled head, his lips catching over the sensitive skin of his scalp as he speaks. “I guess since you already did it, it’s whatever. Still gross, though, so try not to. At least wake me up or something so that I can bring you a bucket.”
“Okie dokie,” Bachira responds, yawning. Now that he has gotten himself comfortable like this, his eyelids are barely open, drooping down and demanding rest. “I know you’ll take care of me, Isagi. I trust you.”
All he gets in return is a tired hum and an inaudible mumble that he cannot even begin to comprehend. Almost too quickly, his best friend’s breathing evens out, the familiar slow and steady in and out indicative of sleep.
Barely hanging on to the last thread of his consciousness, Bachira closes his tired eyes, breathes in the smell of lavender laundry detergent mixed together with the faint traces of Isagi’s pinesap-scented body wash, the earthy undertones of faded cologne and speaks his most truest, honest feelings into existence, words hushed but no less firm, no less assured. “Thank you, I love you.”
❊ISAGI❊
Arm tightening around Bachira Meguru’s sleeping form, heart thundering in his ears, Isagi Yoichi has only one response to give.
“I love you, too.”
❊KURONA❊
“What do you mean they aren’t dating!?” Raichi yells after him as Kurona steps outside. It’s a miracle that the menace had agreed to drive him back home—yes, he was complaining about it the entire time, but hooray to small victories and all that. “Hey, don’t ignore me. I’m talking to you, shark boy! Are you fucking serious!? They’ve been boning since Blue Lock days, no?”
“Night, night,” is all that Kurona says in return because he’s not ready to open this can of worms.