he loves her! ⋆˚୨♡୧˚⋆ rin itoshi x you
if there was one thing all the teenage boys at blue lock were able to collectively share (besides their obsession for soccer) it would be the fact that none of them had a girlfriend. as talented as they were with soccer, their dating life wasn't exactly...on par.
at least, that's what they thought. it's late one night after practice when isagi is coming back from the showers, a towel wrapped around his hips and another thrown over his shoulders. he's yawning loudly—expecting to return to an empty room all to himself. but as he's shuffling around in the dark to find a shirt to slip into, he hears it.
the sound is soft and muffled, so quiet he almost misses it completely at first. he's not sure if his ears are playing some sort of a trick on him or what—but then he hears it again
albeit a little scared, isagi turns towards the direction of the sound. rin's bed is tucked into the corner of the room, and his back is facing isagi as he lays curled up under his blankets. they were draped loosely over his shoulders, and there's a dim light shining on the other side of him. isagi realizes he's on a call a second later when he hears rin speak
isagi freezes, his body rigid with horror as he hears rin's tone—one he has never heard before. it was so sweet and so soft that he wondered if maybe it was someone else laying in rin's bed instead. perhaps an alien pretending to be his stoic teammate? that had to be it, right? since when did rin itoshi sound so sappy?
"i miss you too, rinnie. i still can't believe they won't let me visit you! maybe it's because they know you won't have enough space for all the gifts i want to bring you."
rin's response is quiet enough where isagi can't hear from his spot across the room—but he hears you laugh again. you have a pretty laugh, and isagi's lips twitch at the sound of it.
huh. out of all the people he deemed able to score a girlfriend, the last person he actually expected it to be was rin. the boy seemed more emotionally constipated than everyone else at blue lock combined—but you sound happy talking to him, and rin's back is relaxed from where isagi can see. curiously, he takes a step closer to rin's bed.
"soo! tell me about your new roommates! and the new guys on your team—i can't keep up with them now. anyone you like?" he hears you ask, and rin scoffs. isagi can't see rin's face, but he can imagine he's rolling his eyes. he doesn't want to admit it, but he does want to hear rin's response. praying he doesn't accidentally make a sound, isagi takes a tentative step closer to rin's bed.
"no. everyone is pissing me off—especially isagi. he has such a kickable face, y/n. you'll understand what i mean when you see him at the u-20 match." rin grumbles, and isagi doesn't even have the time to be offended by rin's words before he mistakingly perks up
"you're inviting her to the u-20 match?!"
isagi's eyes widen, and he slaps a hand over his mouth—mortified—as if he could pluck the words out of the air and quickly push them back down his throat. rin's back has gone absolutely stiff now, every muscle tensing up within a split second. he looked about a moment away from turning around before he hears your curious voice speak up
"rinnie, who is that?!" you question, and isagi can hear rin counting under his breath—a tactic he uses to calm himself down whenever shidou tries picking a fight with him—before he gently bid you goodbye.
"i have to go, y/n. i'll call you later, okay?" rin says, his voice scarily calm as you hum in response
"promise? i won't go to sleep until you do, rinnie! that bowl headed guy said i got at least an hour a day with you! who knew spamming him with so many emails a day would—"
"i love you. please hang up."
"...i'll be waiting patiently for your next call! please don't kill the guy who interrupted you. bye bye, rinnie!"
isagi hears the gentle ping! of the facetime call ending. rin sits up slowly from where he was once comfortably laying down, and he turns off the ipad before placing it on his bedside table. he turns to meet his teammate's gaze, and isagi swallows the lump in his throat at the sight of rin's face—holy shit he's so dead.
isagi most definitely wasn't supposed to interrupt rin's call with you—but he'd clearly intruded. honestly, he felt bad, but it was an honest mistake!
maybe it was just the sound of rin's voice that threw him off so much—isagi's never heard him talk like that. rin sounded....sad, saying he missed you. it was a moment of vulnerability for him, and the light pink dusting rin's cheekbones gave isagi a clear indicator that he was embarrassed.
"i'm going to count to five, isagi." rin says calmly, standing up slowly as isagi's eyes widen. as composed as rin was trying to appear, it looked like the vein on his forehead was about to pop with how hard he was clenching his jaw and burning a hole into isagi with nothing but his angry eyes
"h-huh?! wait—what happens when you get to five?!"
"okay—if you're afraid i'm going to tell anyone about her, you're wrong! i won't, your secret's safe with me!" isagi laughs nervously, holding up his hands in surrender as rin blinks owlishly—before picking up the soccerball that had been resting idly by the foot of his bed
"i was counting to five in my head by the way."
the resounding sound of the ball bouncing off of isagi's skull and ricocheting off the walls was near comical. that night, rin doesn't try too hard to hide his ipad from isagi as he recounts the whole story for you, ignoring isagi's chirps in the background of that's not true! and how he took the soccer ball to the head like a champ!
regardless, isagi kept true to his word and kept rin's secret safe. sure, now he'd pop up behind rin every now and then in the middle of your calls, waving enthusiastically before promptly getting shoved out of frame by rin—his cameos were short lived, but pretty funny to you.
"—i'm hiding under my blankets. i wish the utensils in the cafeteria weren't plastic, otherwise i would've stabbed half the lukewarm idiots here already." rin grumbles as you laugh, watching him shuffle around in the dark
"so gory. ah, that reminds me! remember that horror game you were talking about rin-rin? right before you left? it's out! we can play together when you finish your training, okay? we can pull an all nighter on the weekend when you aren't busy—it'll be a blast!"
rin allows the smallest of smiles to grace his face. he pulls the blankets around him closer, thankful bachira had whisked away isagi for the night so he could talk to you freely once again—that idiot really liked popping into his calls, but rin managed to make a bunch more while unsuspecting isagi was out and about the facility.
"okay." rin says softly, blinking back the water building up in his eyes as he turns up the brightness of his ipad in the dark—your face shows up more clearer and brighter on the screen, and he listens to you talk about your day while you get ready for bed.
you're too busy putting on some sort of a face mask to see the hearts for eyes rin has while he watches you—he'll ruin his eyesight and gladly go blind if it means he can watch you through his screen like this. it was one of the reasons he called you on his ipad rather than his phone—so your face could be projected on a bigger screen for him to admire.
rin yawns quietly with a nod, rubbing his eyes with a hum
"yeah. but don't hang up, we can just..."
he nods quietly, rolling onto his side and closing his eyes. he hears you shuffling around before you're all tucked into bed too. you hold your phone close to your face—and rin bites the inside of his cheek at the sight.
no one knew it, but rin had trouble falling asleep at the blue lock facility the first night he arrived. the beds weren't too his liking and he was having trouble finding his way around the hundreds of halls that surrounded him—it was a maze, and his body would be tense with unease just about all the time.
the moment he scored enough goals to get electronic privileges, he ignored the weird stares he got and opted for his ipad rather than his phone—the first night he fell asleep soundly was when he fell asleep on a facetime call with you. while it was purely accidental, it worked out for both of you—and now it was your new mini ritual until he was out of here
"night, rinnie. dream of world domination and me, 'kay?" you whisper, and rin smiles with his eyes closed
isagi wanders back into the shared room an hour later, quietly kicking off his cleats and slipping into his pajamas. he's about to go to sleep when he sees the telltale sign of the dim ipad light glowing from rin's side—he'd fallen asleep on call with you. again.
with a grin, isagi taps the end call button on the dark screen and carefully plugs rin's ipad into the charger, making sure not to wake his sleeping teammate. once that's done, he crawls into his own bed on the other side of the room with a yawn.
isagi was definitely going to tease rin about this in the morning, no doubt. but...it was nice to know his teammate wasn't as heartless as he once thought.
