Chapter Text
Nagi was now aware of his sins. He had made Reo cry. He had made Reo feel worthless. He had even made Reo want to die, which was the worst, because Reo wasn’t allowed to die before him.
He decided that the first part of his plan should be to deal with the internet haters first, since he knew that if he wanted to completely make up for what he should start by making sure that Reo didn’t try and split up with him. He brought up the document of his army of alt accounts and resolved to start now-
“Treasure! Time for dinner!“
Or maybe he would start tomorrow, that all nighter wasn’t doing him any favors.
It was 2 days after the start of Nagi’s campaign to Make the Internet Love and Appreciate Reo (but not too much), and it wasn’t going nearly as well as the first time doing this.
Perhaps the reason was that he was going after a significantly larger number of people who held clearly wrong ideas about the worth of his partner, but 7 of his alt accounts had been banned and he had made barely any progress in changing the general public opinion. He was also pretty sure Ego had caught on to what he was doing, but if Isagi could yell slurs at people online, and Shidou could have the world’s horniest Twitter account (seriously, even Nagi wasn’t that bad), then he could run a sock puppet hate campaign against Reo haters. Or, at least try to.
He was considering asking for help before realizing the general morally dubious stance of this entire plan, so Nagi put that idea on the back burner for now, choosing to make more alts for now. No one online had figured out that he was behind most of the accounts, but he suspected that some people were starting to figure it out which wasn’t good.
So far, Nagi had figured out three things: 1) anyone who called him their goat probably hated Reo, 2) almost no one had any clue of how high level Reo’s copying ability was, and 3) a lot of people did actually think Reo and him were in a relationship and had concluded that homophobia was the answer to everything. Mostly directed at Reo, for some reason. There was also a very loud minority who claimed that he hated Reo.
Off the BLTV app, it was even more chaotic due to the lack of Mikage-sponsored moderation which had apparently managed to filter out the worst of the hate, mostly against Reo specifically, along with some very nice fics which Nagi had found on Ao3 after going down a Twitter rabbit hole. Twitter itself was probably the worst offender, with most people claiming that Reo was a useless leech who rode off and sucked away all of Nagi’s talent.
Personally Nagi would like Reo to-
Hm, maybe he shouldn’t finish that thought. Anyways Twitter was pretty bad, TikTok was actually decent, and the actual Blue Lock (unofficial) Reddit seemed to have descended into a mix between power scaling fights, an okbuddy subreddit and, for some reason, a place for people talk about how much they wanted teenagers. Ew.
Nagi turned his attention to one of the arguments that he was in on his main alt account, against a person claiming that Reo wasn’t as good as he thinks he is and that Reo was manipulating him into achieving his World Cup dream for him. Which was so aggressively wrong on all accounts.
Without Reo, Nagi knew he would be living his life without any sort of color or emotion, just a hassle to live from one day to the next, to simply follow a bland routine with as little work as possible until he died. Now that he had Reo, even if something was a hassle he could do it, just to see his partner smile. Reo had helped him to find something fun in his life that wasn’t just video games or sleeping.
He sighed, turning his attention back to the online argument, and immediately started resisting the urge to just tell the other person to kill themselves. They were now claiming that Reo was just a spoiled rich kid who probably bought his way into the ranking that he has now. Yikes.
Nagi just wishes that he could tweet on his main account about how much he loves Reo, but that account was locked after an incident involving him accidentally posting a Reo thirst tweet that was supposed to be for his Reo daily fan page. Oops. He still stands by that tweet though. Now he was stuck defending Reo through a horde of alt accounts in a desperate attempt to make sure Reo didn’t leave him (A voice that sounded suspiciously like Manshine’s resident princess chided Nagi to just talk to Reo instead but he shook it off). He needed to do this first. Plus, if Hiori was allowed to post “kaisagi headcanons” on his well known alt account, then he should be able to wax poetic about the shape of his partner’s fingers and feet and waist etc. etc. (Note: Shidou is allowed to post thirst for Sae on main but that’s because no one can control him. He isn’t allowed to post nudes anymore though.)
Switching to another alt account, this one a BLLK analysis page, he quickly pastes his thread on defending Reo before switching to another account. Rinse and repeat for about 50 accounts. One good thing that Nagi had found on Twitter is a decently sized community of Reo supporters. Because of a majority of the events that had happened in the first three selections being leaked due to the Wildcard lawsuit (turns out Ego had been violating quite a few laws) and by disgruntled eliminated players, the internet being the internet had pieced together a surprisingly and somewhat disturbingly accurate timeline of events. Including him and Reo’s “breakup” as it was pretty much universally referred to as by the community.
In total, the popularity of Isagi and Rin was the highest (the former of which took on his field persona online as well and the latter mostly got into internet fights with Shidou) followed by Shidou (who probably had the most followed account on Twitter) then Barou (who never posted) and then himself even with his terrible performance in the last few games.
Speaking of Isagi, Nagi kind of needed help with convincing the masses of Reo’s perfection. And despite his worries about creativity, it was quickly becoming clear that this wasn’t a one person job like he had hoped. At first he was going to ask Hiori, since the cyan haired midfielder seemed like he was pretty well versed in internet culture, but apparently he was busy ranking in the new season of Valo. Then Nagi had tried to ask a few more people but they were all busy with other things like actually training. So Isagi it was. Maybe he could also ask for advice from him since he had somehow managed to get with Bachira (realistically it was probably because they were both the most soccer obsessed freaks in a facility slash borderline prison slash reality TV show filled with soccer obsessed freaks)
Nagi’s two plans to convince Isagi to help were A) make it about Reo and lean into the pining as a way to annoy him into helping or B) mention that Bachira was getting hit kind of badly with slander as well (even though he was basically carrying his entire team of NPCs). He also knew that Isagi kind of had nothing to do with that side of the community because Nagi may have stalked his reposts and likes. For research. Yeah. Research.
A few hours later, Nagi found himself at the gym, training with Reo. More specificallg, he was half heartedly doing pull ups while he watched Reo on one of the rowing machines. His arms were so nice. And strong. Reo moves on from the rowing machine after a bit and to keep up the (obvious) lie that Nagi was also working out, he switched to bench presses. Reo on the other hand, sat down at the leg press machine and his throat preemptively went dry like some sort of horny Pavlovian response. Because Reo’s thighs.
Mmm. So nice. Nagi bets that Reo could crush a watermelon with his legs. He also thinks that Reo could crush his own head in those- Ok wait. No sexy thoughts at the gym. Too difficult to hide. He knew his own physique was much different from his partners (holy sleeper build, his partner had said after Nagi started playing soccer) but Reo on the other hand had to actually build the right muscle for this sport. Which made it all the more impressive in his opinion but it was somewhat of a sore spot for Reo. Now that Nagi was actually trying to build muscle, he had put on a lot more weight in just that.
Suddenly he got an idea. Maybe he could kill two birds with one stone. He got up off the bench and walked over to Reo who was hard at work in the middle of a frankly impressive set.
“Nagi?” Reo looked up at him, inquisitive tone in his voice, “What is it treasure?”
“Mmm,” replied Nagi, reaching out towards Reo “‘M done for now”
“Let me just finish this last set and we can go clean up” he responded
Before the moment could be ruined (and because the gym cams were weirdly highly watched throughout the day–Nagi needed many witnesses) he blurted out “Have I ever told you how much I appreciate you”
He cringed. That was like something out of an OOC fanfic that he would only read as a last resort. But before he could clarify, Reo smiled–though clearly a bit confused “Thank… you?”
Nagi snapped his mouth shut before he could do anhthing stupid like tell him his feelings now, but decided to get closer and hug Reo. His partner was surprised by this, gasping a bit before leaning into it. He buried his head into the crook of his neck, this time inhaling the smell of Reo’s sweat.
“Gross!” Reo giggled, trying to pry Nagi off gently, “I need to shower!”
“Reo still smells good” he mumbled into his warm skin.
His delusions told him Reo was blushing but whatever, he could think about that later. Right now it was Reo time.
Once he and Reo had finished showering and bathing, they went back to their room. Nagi waited until his partner fell asleep on their shared bed (he was still mentally celebrating that one) before he pulled out his phone to text Isagi. He knew that his partner had issues with him and Isagi’s friendship (although he still didn’t know why, the closest physical interaction between the two of them had been in the second selection where they yanked at each others hair screaming how the other was useless without their respective crush) so he waited until Reo was unable to be aware of him contacting Isagi.
DMs
nagi: isagi can we talk in a bit
nagi: i need help w smthing
isagi: sure?
isagi: meet me in the bm stratum in like 15 minutes
nagi: 👍
Nagi closed the message app and opened some shooter game to pass the time. At his side, Reo mumbled and rolled over.
He was so cute, Nagi thought, before getting the bright idea to take a picture to add to his quickly growing dubiously sourced Reo pics album.
In the dim fluorescent light of the room, his partner still looked ethereal. His lavender hair, untied, spread across the pillow while his face scrunched up a bit and his cute little eyebrows were downturned. His mouth was slightly open as his hands gripped the Blue Lock issued custom covers (for the terribly shaped beds) and even his facility mandated sleep clothes looked designer on his figure.
Nagi shook his head, snapping himself out of his daily Reo appreciation time and snapped a few quick pictures before sitting up and getting ready to head over to the Bastard stratum.