— summary; you thought you could handle nagi in bed. spoiler alert: YOU COULDN'T.
— notes; reblogs are appreciated and pls donate to my Ko-Fi if you like my stuff!
❋ Everyone clocks it the second you walk into the training room with Nagi.
❋ Not because he’s acting any differently.
❋ He's still slouched over, posture terrible, casually unbothered, hands shoved in his pockets like he’d rather be in bed.
❋ Which is typical Nagi behaviour.
❋ Fine.
❋ The problem, therein, lies with you.
❋ You’re walking as though your bones are made of glass and your skin is made of paper.
❋ Exhaustion radiates from every pore.
❋ The dead-eyed stare of a traumatised soldier returning from war.
❋ And most tellingly -
❋ You stop to glare at Nagi every few moments, looking for all the world like a kicked puppy.
❋ (Ineffective. He is unbothered. Moisturised. Happy. In his lane. Focused. Flourishing.)
❋ Reo looks at you.
❋ Really looks.
❋ And almost drops his bottle.
❋ “. . . Oh my God.”
❋ Bachira perks up.
❋ “Hey, did you guys finally -”
❋ You flinch as though you’ve just been shot.
❋ Nagi just scratches the back of his head, and, without missing a beat, says, “Mmm. Yeah.”
❋ No shame.
❋ Just casual confirmation for all the Blue Lockers in a five-foot radius.
❋ And that’s when the room goes silent.
❋ DEAD SILENT.
❋ You would throw your clipboard at his face, except . . .
❋ It’s too far away, and you’d have to get up from the bench.
❋ And you . . .
❋ Literally can’t.
❋ Your legs haven’t recovered just yet.
❋ So you settle for glaring at Nagi. Again.
“Don’t say that in public!!”
“Why not? ‘S true . . .”
❋ And then, perhaps to add insult to injury, Nagi adds:
❋ “You said you could take it.”
❋ Somewhere in the distance, you hear someone choke on water.
❋ “. . .”
❋ You have no answer to that, because he’s technically right.
❋ You had been young.
❋ Cocky.
❋ Self-assured.
❋ And stupid.
❋ Because you’d taken one look at Nagi, at 190cm of a professional striker with absurd stamina and body control, and dared to think:
❋ Wow, Nagi's lazy and sleepy all the time. I can do this!
❋ Wrong.
❋ WRONG.
❋ Unfortunately for you, you’ve since learned that once he actually gets interested in something, he commits.
❋ You had to learn that the hard way.
❋ Several times.
❋ And that isn’t even the worst part.
❋ No.
❋ That would be how Nagi keeps wandering over to you in the middle of practice, all warm and clingy like an oversized cat.
❋ Arms looped around your waist.
❋ Fingers curling around your wrist.
❋ Resting his chin on your shoulder from behind while you’re trying to work.
❋ And -
❋ He keeps absentmindedly saying the filthiest things that make it painfully obvious to everyone in the vicinity just how thoroughly he’d managed to ruin your motor functions for 24-48 business hours.
“Did your hips stop hurting yet?”
“Are the bruises gone?”
“You were whining my name louder last night.”
“Wanna come over again later?”
❋ And every single time, the nearby Blue Lockers look like they just got flashbanged.
❋ Isagi especially suffers because he keeps accidentally overhearing things no man should ever have to hear.
❋ All he wants to do is focus on football, and suddenly he's hearing Nagi murmur:
❋ “You looked cute crying, though.”
❋ The poor guy can't catch a break.
❋ Even Rin looks disturbed.
❋ RIN.
❋ Which is saying a lot.
❋ And even though you're still mad at Nagi for temporarily ruining your ability to sit, stand, and bend over...
❋ Unfortunately . . .
❋ You’d absolutely let him fold you like his laundry again.
— summary; you thought you could handle hugo in bed. spoiler alert: YOU COULDN'T.
— notes; im back from the dead and y'all can thank this beautiful french man. im down so bad for him it's not even funny. reblogs are appreciated and pls donate to my Ko-Fi if you like my stuff!
❋ It's almost humiliating, really, how quickly everyone in the French U20 team notices that something is deeply, deeply wrong with you.
❋ Because normally, you'd be bouncing around the sidelines with way too much energy.
❋ But today?
❋ Today, you're walk into practice with the dead-eyed look of a soldier returning from war.
❋ Your movements are slow. Careful. Visibly painful.
❋ Stairs are now your mortal enemy.
❋ So is walking.
❋ And so is breathing.
❋ Meanwhile, beside you, Vivian Hugo looks completely normal.
❋ Same messy burgundy hair.
❋ Cool black eyes.
❋ Holding onto that stupid blank notebook of his.
❋ Which, in your opinion, is terribly unfair considering how worn out you look.
❋ And, as though to put a cherry on top of your ice cream cone of humiliation —
❋ The ENTIRE room goes pin-drop silent when you try to sit, slowly and carefully like an 89-year-old war veteran, and the most miserable, wounded sound leaves your lips as soon as your rear end makes contact with the hardwood bench.
❋ Oh.
❋ OH.
❋ Charles' eyes nearly pop out of his head; he's staring so hard.
❋ “OH MY GOD.”
❋ “Shut UP,” you hiss immediately, face burning.
❋ And he starts laughing, not even the polite kind of laughter that would be socially acceptable.
❋ He's practically hunched over at the waist, tears in his eyes, rolling on the floor laughing because your misery is apparently hilarious and so is the fact that Hugo apparently got laid last night.
❋ “NO, WAY, DID YOU AND —”
❋ And Hugo, calm and unflappable as ever, actually has the nerve to say, “Yes.”
❋ Why.
❋ You can only stare at him in horror as the room EXPLODES.
❋ One: That’s an insane answer.
❋ Two: He says it with absolutely no shame whatsoever while you’re silently praying for the ground to swallow you whole.
❋ You can almost feel the collective wave of sympathy emanating from the team, because now everyone and their mother knows why you’re moving like your bones are made of glass.
❋ The worst part is that you had been SO confident beforehand.
❋ You'd taken one look at this beautiful, 187cm midfielder and actually thought:
❋ How bad could it possibly be?
❋ The answer:
❋ Very.
❋ Because, apparently, Hugo does everything with absurd commitment.
❋ Football.
❋ Training.
❋ And apparently —
❋ That too.
❋ Which also brings you back to the present, and the consequences of your actions:
❋ Glaring absolute murder at Vivian Hugo while he calmly adjusts his gloves like he didn’t personally press you into the mattress twelve hours ago.
❋ “She said she could handle the physical exertion.”
❋ In the distance, someone chokes on water.
❋ “That was before I knew you were a monster, Hugo!”
❋ And that is when the screaming starts.
❋ And even Loki buries his face in his hands because this really wasn't how he pictured his morning going.
❋ “You are NEVER doing that again.”
❋ Hugo looks at you for exactly two seconds before calmly saying, “That statement is untrue."
❋ Charles makes a sound like a dying animal.
❋ And tragically . . .
❋ There's really nothing you can say to dispute him because you would absolutely let that man rail you again in a heartbeat.
Before, you were asking about ‘our daughter’. It’s crazy. But… it really got me thinking… what if… you had come with me all those years ago.
You want to know what would have happened? ‘What if?’ We’d wake up everyday… in a tiny apartment… over a failing laundromat.
EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (2022) dir. Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert
