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It was a widely known fact that Mikage Reo was tall. Well over six feet, lean and sculpted, he looked like the type of person who could model for luxury menswear and also bench press a car if he really wanted to. People gawked at him when he walked into a room—until they saw Nagi Seishiro behind him.
Then, they gawked for a different reason.
Because Nagi was massive.
He wasn’t just tall. He was large. Broad-shouldered, long-limbed, towering nearly half a head above Reo with soft white hair that curled gently over his eyes and sleepy lashes. He looked like a sheepdog who had wandered into a modeling agency by accident and decided to stay. And when he leaned down over Reo with a whine—“Reooo, carry me, I’m tired”—no one could believe it when Reo huffed and crouched for a piggyback like this was a normal thing to do.
“Is he not breaking your spine?” Bachira asked once, looking horrified as Reo marched past with a six-foot-plus Nagi hanging off his back like a sleepy toddler.
Reo rolled his eyes. “He’s not that heavy.”
Everyone stared.
Nagi peeked at them over Reo’s shoulder and stuck his tongue out. Bachira flinched.
The thing about Nagi was…he had a personality like wet cotton. To Reo, at least.
In reality?
He was a menace.
He stared down new recruits until they dropped the ball. He’d “accidentally” bump into people in narrow hallways, knocking them against lockers with a deadpan, “Oops.” He unplugged Isagi’s charger during team meetings and acted like he didn’t notice. He used Chigiri’s fancy hair products. When Karasu flirted too obviously with Reo, Nagi “accidentally” stepped on his shoe. Hard.
But when Reo looked?
He was all innocent slouch and puppy eyes.
“What?” Reo blinked. “Nagi’s a sweetheart.”
Kunigami looked like he might actually burst a blood vessel. “That thing just erased my training data from the monitor.”
“He was probably just confused!” Reo beamed and reached up to pat Nagi’s cheek. “He wouldn’t do it on purpose.”
Nagi nuzzled into his hand like a spoiled cat. “Didn’t do anything.”
Chigiri deadpanned, “He’s evil.”
Reo: “He’s a baby.”
Reo patted Nagi’s hair like he was holding a bunny and not a chaos gremlin disguised as a living marshmallow.
One day, Nagi walked onto the field with bite marks on his cheek and a rip in his jersey.
“What happened?” Reo gasped, rushing up to him.
“Don’t know,” Nagi mumbled, eyes downcast. “Everyone hates me.”
Reo cupped his face gently, looking ready to cry. “They’re just intimidated by you. You’re too soft for them to understand.”
From across the field, Otoya screamed, “HE BIT ME FIRST!”
Nagi looked over, slowly.
Otoya paled and hid behind Rin.
Reo turned, concerned. “What was that?”
“Nothing,” Nagi said softly, wrapping his arms around Reo from behind and dropping his chin on Reo’s head. “Let’s go home.”
Later that night, Nagi sprawled across Reo’s bed like a sleepy dog and let Reo detangle his hair with gentle fingers. Reo was grumbling about his teammates “bullying his poor, sensitive Sei-chan” while Nagi yawned and cuddled closer, smug and warm.
“You’re too nice,” Nagi said, voice thick with sleep.
Reo scoffed. “They’re just jealous.”
Nagi didn’t say anything. Just smiled.
Let them know the truth?
Never.
He was winning.
“This is stupid,” Rin muttered, tucked behind a stack of cones with a GoPro in hand.
“No, this is justice,” Bachira whispered back, eyes gleaming like he was planning a heist. “Reo needs to know.”
“I’m leaving in ten minutes.”
“We just need proof,” Isagi hissed from his hiding spot behind the benches. “One video of Nagi pushing someone. One audio clip of him calling Karasu a ‘bird-looking homewrecker’ again.”
“He is a bird-looking homewrecker,” Rin said.
“Not the point.”
They huddled in silence, watching as Nagi wandered out of the locker room, slow and lumbering, scanning the field.
Their moment came fast—Chigiri walked past him, said something snide about “crybaby bodyguards,” and Nagi stuck his foot out.
Chigiri tripped, flailed, landed in a pile of discarded bibs.
“YES—YES—WE GOT IT—” Bachira whispered, fumbling with the camera.
But then Reo came jogging up, just in time to see Chigiri on the ground and Nagi blankly blinking down at him.
“What happened?” Reo gasped.
“I fell,” Chigiri said through gritted teeth.
Rin hissed, “Don’t fold!”
But Chigiri was already deflating under Nagi’s blank, soul-draining stare.
“I fell,” he repeated. “Clumsy me.”
Reo rushed to Nagi’s side. “Poor baby! Are you okay?”
Nagi nodded and leaned dramatically on Reo’s shoulder.
Bachira sobbed quietly into the GoPro. “We’re never gonna win.”
Nagi had never liked people. They were loud. Too fast. Always trying to change him, fix him, make him move when he didn’t want to.
Then there was Reo.
Reo who never asked him to change. Reo who took him as he was—quiet, lazy, blunt—and still looked at him like he’d hung the stars just by showing up to practice.
That’s why Nagi didn’t like when others got too close.
He could be good. Kind, even. But not to them. Not to the guys who flirted too loud, or challenged him too hard, or talked about Reo like he wasn’t in the room.
They didn’t deserve it.
Reo did.
Reo deserved all the softness Nagi had ever hidden—sleepy kisses into his collarbone, warm arms wrapping around his waist during team dinners, soft “missed you” murmured when Reo came home after just three hours away.
And when Reo laughed and called him his “gentle giant”? When he said things like “you’re too sweet to ever hurt a fly”?
Nagi would just smile.
Because for Reo?
It was true.
No one else had to know how not sweet he could be. How petty, how smug, how easily he’d knock someone over or delete a file or snap a towel at someone’s thigh in the locker room for looking at Reo wrong.
That part of him didn’t exist for Reo.
Only warmth. Only softness.
Only love.
And if that made him evil everywhere else?
Fine.
He’d just climb onto Reo’s back, bury his face in his shoulder, and pretend he’d never done a single thing wrong in his life.
Because Reo would believe him.
Always.
It was supposed to be a normal day.
Just a quiet, sweet little trip to IKEA for a new couch—because their old one had a suspicious noodle stain from Nagi’s ill-fated ramen balancing act.
Reo had shown up in a linen button-up and clear glasses, all composed elegance and softly tousled lavender hair. Nagi, as usual, looked like he’d rolled out of bed five minutes ago and grown three more inches in his sleep.
They held hands the whole time. Well—Reo held one of Nagi’s fingers like it was a leash and he was dragging a sleepy Great Dane through a maze of Swedish modernism.
“Do we want the one that reclines or the one with cup holders?” Reo asked, examining a sleek black sectional.
Nagi yawned. “Whichever lets me lie on you better.”
Reo flushed. “Nagi—don’t say things like that in public.”
Nagi blinked at him, utterly unrepentant.
Then came him.
A store associate with tragically tight pants, highlighted hair, and a flirtatious smirk that dropped a few degrees too low when he caught sight of Reo.
“Looking for a couch?” he asked, smile toothy. “I can help you pick something comfortable. You strike me as someone with refined taste.”
Nagi’s eyes opened. Slowly.
Reo, oblivious, smiled politely. “Thank you. We’re just browsing.”
The guy winked. “Well, if you need anything, I’m around. Or—if you just want to try out the beds—”
CRASH.
There was a soft, terrible sound as a fully built display shelf tipped sideways and collapsed onto a cart of dining chairs.
The guy yelped and jumped back, narrowly avoiding a wooden leg to the shin.
Reo gasped. “Oh no!”
Nagi just stood there with his hand resting gently on the shelf’s edge.
The shelf he had definitely leaned on too hard.
“I think it was loose,” Nagi said flatly, blinking slowly at the guy like a predator who had all the time in the world.
The store worker paled. “I—I’ll call maintenance.”
And he ran.
Reo sighed and turned to Nagi. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” Nagi leaned down, arms snaking around Reo’s waist. “He was annoying.”
Reo blinked. “Huh?”
“Too loud.”
Reo rolled his eyes and pulled him into a hug anyway. “You’re ridiculous.”
Nagi smiled against his shoulder.
Later, Reo picked the reclining sectional. Nagi approved because it was wide enough for both of them to lie down side by side—and more importantly, Reo could fit under his arm like a favorite pillow.
On the way out, they passed the guy from earlier, now pretending to inspect a lamp. He flinched at the sight of Nagi.
Reo waved cheerfully. “Thanks again for your help!”
The guy nodded weakly.
Nagi didn’t say a word. Just smiled faintly.
Reo leaned into him, oblivious and affectionate, already planning throw pillows and blanket colors.
Nagi looked down at him, full of fondness and smug, terrifying victory.
The new couch arrived on a rainy Wednesday.
It was massive and obscenely soft. Dark gray and reclinable with enough space for a full team of soccer players, but Reo quickly realized that wouldn’t matter.
Because Nagi immediately took over the whole thing.
Or, more specifically—he took over Reo.
“Nagi, this couch is not a bed,” Reo mumbled, trying and failing to shove Nagi off him.
Nagi grunted from his position sprawled over Reo’s lap like a sleepy housecat—if housecats were six-foot-plus piles of muscle with limbs that stretched forever. His head rested against Reo’s chest, hair tickling his neck, and his hand was firmly hooked around Reo’s thigh like a seatbelt.
“M’not moving,” Nagi muttered. “This is the best spot.”
“You’re crushing my leg.”
“You love it.”
Reo flushed. “That’s not the point.”
Nagi whined and nuzzled in harder.
Reo groaned dramatically and leaned back into the couch, resigned. “You're worse than a weighted blanket.”
Nagi hummed happily. “Warm.”
They stayed like that for hours.
Movie playing. Rain tapping the windows. Reo absently playing with Nagi’s hair, still grumbling every few minutes about “space-hogging giants” but never actually pushing him away.
Then, during a quiet scene in the film, Nagi suddenly murmured, “You smell like that guy from IKEA.”
Reo blinked. “Huh? You mean the store guy? The one with the tight pants?”
Nagi was silent.
Reo chuckled. “Are you jealous?”
Nagi didn’t answer.
He just tightened his grip on Reo’s thigh.
Reo tilted his head and studied him—really studied him. The long lashes. The innocent pout. The lazy affection that somehow felt possessive when you looked closely.
And then he remembered the shelf.
The conveniently timed shelf collapse.
He remembered how Isagi flinched when Nagi entered a room. How Karasu changed treadmills at the gym whenever Nagi got too close. The mysterious “glue in the shoelaces” incident that no one could prove.
Reo slowly narrowed his eyes. “Wait a second—”
Nagi yawned. “Tired.”
“You’re mean to everyone else.”
“Only when they deserve it.”
“Nagi!”
Nagi finally looked up, completely unfazed. “But I’m good to you.”
Reo stared at him in disbelief.
And Nagi…smiled.
Not the sleepy one. Not the innocent one.
But the smug little smirk that meant he knew exactly what he was doing.
Reo covered his face with his hands. “You’re evil.”
Nagi leaned up and kissed the edge of Reo’s jaw. “Only for you.”
And just like that, Reo’s heart did the traitorous thing and fluttered anyway.
Because yeah—maybe his giant puppy was a little evil.
But he was his.
And no one else got to see the way Nagi melted under his hands, or curled into him like he was the only safe place in the world.
So he sighed, flicked Nagi’s forehead lightly, and muttered, “Fine. But if you knock over another shelf, I’m reporting you to customer service.”
Nagi grinned against his neck. “You’d never.”
“Ugh. I wouldn’t.”