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Tendou Satori didn’t like using his magic.
He wasn’t scared of it by any means, he just—he’d much rather do something else. Like watching anime, for example. Or playing volleyball with his friends. It just felt wrong, like cheating in the game of life. He’d rather live his life as a human than the monster everyone else claimed he was.
But there were exceptions sometimes.
This time, the exception was Goshiki.
Goshiki, for all of his fluid movement and grace on the court, was currently a walking disaster. He was one of those people who needed eight hours of sleep or he would simply crumble to pieces, which was not fun combined with a recent flare-up of sleeplessness. When asked, he would vaguely mention something about his dorm and change the topic.
He had been running himself haggard lately.
The boy always looked pale and exhausted and Tendou felt like maybe Goshiki wasn’t filling out his clothing as much as he did before and coming from him that was concerning. While he still gave his 110% during practice, everywhere else he might as well have been a zombie. He skipped his lunches to sleep and even passed out in the locker room one time.
Tendou was worried (everyone was worried), but he knew he wasn’t exactly the most approachable. Sure Tendou was the oldest member of the team, but that didn’t translate into maturity. He wasn’t sure how he could help his kouhai, but he did his best to extend the olive branch.
“Tsutomu-chan~!” Tendou crooned, jogging beside him.
Goshiki jumped. “T-Tendou-senpai,”
Tendou smiled. “How many times do I need to tell you? You can drop the honorifics,” Affectionately, he slung an arm over his shoulder. “What are friends for?”
Goshiki tripped and almost sprawled onto the concrete. Tendou just barely caught him by the back of the shirt, almost falling himself. Goshiki pulled himself upright with an embarrassed flush.
“...We’re really friends?” Goshiki was quiet, too quiet. If Tendou was an inch farther away he wouldn’t have heard.
Tendou wasn’t used to this. He wasn’t used to this timid, self-conscious version of their youngest. Where did all that exuberance go? That self-assurance? That energy?
“Goshiki. Of course we’re friends,” Tendou said, uncharacteristically serious. He needed the boy to believe him, to know that he mattered. He pulled Goshiki a little closer and reverted to his cheerful persona. “You know, if you ever need to talk or get some sage advice from your senpai, you can come to me!”
Goshiki nodded, again, silent.
Tendou hummed, wracking his brain for other useful suggestions.
“I know!” He snapped his fingers. “If you ever need to take a nap, you can swing by my room. I’ve got a single and I know those first-year dorms can be kind of loud, eh?”
Goshiki looked at him as if he hung the moon and the stars in the sky. “I-I,” His voice cracked. “Really?”
“Yeah! Just knock! I spend a lot of the day in my room. Benefits of having a single, yeah?” Tendou gave him a toothy grin. “Really, though. Anytime.”
“What do I need to do in return?”
“Tsutomu-chan,” Tendou gasped, mockingly affronted. “How dare you take my kindness as a trick! This isn’t a favor or anything, you don’t need to pay me back.”
Goshiki looked at the ground, uncertain. “Are you sure? I can’t take your offer without doing anything in return. I can do your laundry, or do your clean-up duties, or—”
“How about this,” Tendou poked him in the cheek, nearly giggling at just how squishy he was. Really, he would be a ladykiller (mankiller?) when he shed his baby fat. “I need to get my revenge on Semi for hiding my underwear. Next time I prank him, you’ll help me out.”
Goshiki only hesitated for half a second before nodding eagerly. “Deal!”
Tendou started walking with a little bounce in his step. “Oh, we’re going to have so much fun,”
Knock, knock, knock.
Tendou dropped the spellbook he was perusing. “Who is it?” Tendou called. He was laying in bed and listening to music, looking into water-based transfiguration charms. (Being a mermaid would be sick, okay?)
“Tendou-sen- Tendou?” A meek voice called.
Tendou yanked his headphones out and threw the tome under his bed, quickly replacing it with a volume of Kuroko no Basuke . “Yeah, get in here!”
Goshiki stumbled through the doorway and Tendou had to do a double-take. Goshiki was by no means elegant, but if he was moving like that, something was seriously wrong.
Clad in flannel pajamas and oversized sweatpants, he clutched a pillow with one hand and rubbed his eyes with another. Shit. That’s way too cute. Nervously, he started to ramble. “Uh. Could I. Take a nap here? In your room? Our neighbors are being really noisy, I tried to make them stop but my roommate doesn’t care and I tried to confront them and it just blew up in my face because he didn’t try to help me at all, and now they’re being even louder out of spite—”
“You really do have room problems, huh?” Tendou scooted over and lifted his blanket, cutting Goshiki off effectively and patting the free space on his bed. “Come. Join me.”
Goshiki hesitated.
Tendou raised his hand in surrender, putting the blanket back down. “I don’t bite! I can also sit at my desk if you want to use my bed alone, no worries, I—”
“Can I get on the inside?” He blurted out.
Tendou blinked. He slowly broke out into a grin, scooting over in the other direction and lifting the blanket again.
Goshiki wordlessly crawled over him and into the bed. Tendou, by nature a cuddly person, pulled him close in a bear hug. He squeaked.
Tendou loosened his arms and pet his head gently. “Sorry~! Too much?”
“No-I-just— I wasn’t prepared.”
“You’re not overwhelmed? Overheated? I can crack open the window.”
“...It’s perfect.” Goshiki nuzzled closer to him.
Tendou smiled, rubbing careful circles into his back. Tsutomu twitched, then slowly eased into the touch.
He’s being unusually quiet. Tendou gradually stopped his motions, content to simply hold the younger boy. But now that he was paying attention to the feeling of the fabric underneath his skin, he realized that Goshiki’s heart was hammering away.
“Your heart rate’s through the roof,” Tendou huffed. (He would know, being an athlete and all.) He watched, amused, as Goshiki nodded against his body. “Does being around me make you nervous? I pinky promise I don’t bite.”
Goshiki shook his head ruefully. “When you stay up for too long, your body starts to produce adrenaline. Makes my heart beat too fast.”
“Adrenaline, huh,” Tendou combed his fingers through his hair in a (hopefully) soothing manner. “...when’s the last time you slept?”
Goshiki tensed up. “Uh… what day is it?”
Tendou laughed. “How dramatic! I’m being serious.”
“So am I,” he muttered.
Tendou furrowed his brow in concern. “Really? It’s Thursday.”
As if talking about the weather, he nonchalantly said, “Oh… so that’s… maybe three days? 70 hours.”
Tendou froze.
Took a moment to process.
“What?!” Tendou flinched back, startling Goshiki, and grabbed him by the shoulders. Looking him straight in the eye, he nearly yelled, “Tsutomu, that’s almost 3 full days!”
“Yes, I just said that. I know,” Goshiki averted his gaze. “I’m lucky this time, though—”
He shook him back and forth, horrified. He was going to murder those kids he was living with. “This time? It’s happened more than once?”
He went limp underneath his hands, swaying back and forth like a ragdoll. “I start to hallucinate around the 80-hour mark,”
“Hallucinate?” he wailed. Feeling regretful from the way Goshiki shrunk back, he brought his voice down. “What the hell are your neighbors doing?”
He cringed. “Um… well, they’ve been hiding my stuff for starters… or stealing some things? Calling me names and… uh... touching me in my sleep—”
What. The everloving fuck.
Tendou’s blood pressure shot straight through the stratosphere. His hands tightened their grip on Goshiki’s shoulders, almost painfully so. “They’ve been touching you?!” he shrieked, his voice shrill yet deadly.
“No! Not like that! Not like that, sorry, wasn’t thinking!”
Tendou let out a breath he didn’t even know he was holding. Oh, thank God.
Goshiki’s heart was now beating faster than a hummingbird’s wings. “Just, you know, messing around, drawing stuff on my face? Balancing objects, stacking books on me, taking embarrassing pictures…”
Tendou felt his eye twitch. Forget murder, he was going to hex those assholes into another dimension.
“It’s mostly harmless, it just means I have a hard time falling asleep. Because I’m… you know...” he trailed off. Scared? Stressed? Traumatized? “I can handle it though.”
Tendou felt faint. “We’re going to have to work on your definition of harmless,” He pinched his cheek. “You shouldn’t have to handle this!”
Goshiki blushed. “...Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize! It’s not your fault! Just--Christ. You should’ve told one of us if it was this bad,” First-years were so dumb. This was stressful. Taking care of people was stressful. “Why didn’t you go to the nurse’s office? Tell a residential advisor? Talked to one of the coaches, or Ushijima at least? You can always come to us, I know Semi drilled that into your head by now!”
Goshiki cocked his head to the side like a confused puppy. “But Tendou-senpai, we have a game coming up.”
Holy shit.
Honest-to-God, he had the gall to look confused. Like his reasoning was obvious, like it was logical. “A room switch can take a few weeks to arrange and I didn’t want to bother the team about this. It’s kinda... trivial, you know?”
Goshiki’s words rattled around Tendou’s head like a ball gone haywire in a Pachinko machine.
“I didn’t want to bother the team about this. It’s kinda… trivial, you know?”
Tendou inhaled deeply. Oh, y’know, we have a game coming up so it doesn’t really matter if my body destroys itself from the inside-out. NBD, obviously. “You didn’t want to bother us—!” Tendou made a choked off noise.
“Yes?” Goshiki looked guilty. “Tendou-senpai, I’m sorry,”
He put his face in his hands. “Again, what are you sorry for?”
“I’m sorry for upsetting you. I ended up bothering you anyways,” His heart rate was starting to increase, again, under Tendou’s steady hands.
That was it.
Tendou knew it wasn’t exactly… ethical to cast spells on people without them knowing, but who was going to stop him, the magic police? Besides, this—this was far too much.
Tendou drew him close once again, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. “Sleep,” he uttered, voice steadfast and ethereal. A familiar heat rushed through his veins, and he channeled it into Goshiki.
The effects were immediate. The boy yawned, then looked shocked at the fact he did so. “Huh?” he mumbled, his speech slurred. He promptly started to go limp, eyelashes fluttering with each passing second. Within the next minute, Goshiki fell into a deep sleep.
Tendou gave a satisfied smile at the gentle rise and fall of his chest. He carefully arranged him in a more comfortable position in his bed, thankful for the small blessing that was being a witch.
Then Tendou yawned, stretching like a cat and blinking in fatigue. A drawback of never using said magic: very limited energy reserves. Simple spells were enough to make him feel sleepy. Just looking at his teammate was making him tire out as well.
Accepting his fate, he carefully laid himself back down, an arm slung across Goshiki’s torso protectively. Soon, they were snoozing away, curled up against one another.
Semi banged his fist against the door, slightly annoyed. “Tendou! I know you’re in there, I can see your lights! You better not be ignoring me!” The third-years of the team had a long-standing habit of eating dinner together and it was so ingrained in their schedules that they rarely forgot. “C’mon, just tell me you’re alive at least!”
Tendou hadn’t shown up today, and they took it upon themselves to check on him.
“Here, let me try,” Reon started knocking on the door. “Tendou, if you don’t respond I’m not going to return that volume of Bleach that you lent me.”
Silence.
Semi slumped against the wall and groaned. “Let’s just go. He probably just forgot to turn off his lights and he’s at Kinokuniya reading manga or something.”
Soekawa frowned. “He’d tell us if he did that.”
Ushijima hummed in agreement. “Besides, it is after curfew,” he pointed out, ever the voice of reason.
Reon sighed. “I just want to make sure he’s okay,” After his umpteenth attempt to get a response, he jiggled the doorknob, surprised when it clicked open. “Oh?”
The third years all looked at each other warily. Tendou never forgot to lock his door. Hayato jerked his head forward as if to say, go on.
Tentatively, Reon pushed until the doorway was wide open. He gasped, then let out a gentle giggle, letting himself into the room. He turned to the others and beckoned them forward. “Come in. Quietly,” he cautioned. The others followed suit and crept in.
There, laying on the bed, were Goshiki and Tendou.
Goshiki was curled up in the fetal position, snuggled into Tendou’s side, a tranquil expression on his face and a hand fisted in Tendou’s shirt. Tendou was sprawled across his sheets, drooling on his pillow, an arm hanging off the bed and the other wrapped around Goshiki as if he were shielding him from the world.
Reon was squatting down on the floor, trying to keep himself from cooing out loud. Soekawa let out a startled laugh, Hayato following suit.
Semi broke out into a grin and brought out his phone, but Hayato smacked his hand with a glare. “No pictures. Don’t be rude,” he hissed.
Grumbling, Semi put it back into his pocket, and they all observed the pair.
“Cute….”
Everyone turned to face Ushijima with wide eyes. Did Ushijima just describe something as cute? There was a rare smile on his face, small and warm. He crossed his arms and let out a breathy chuckle. “I suppose we were worried about nothing,” he whispered.
Reon nodded, at a loss for words.
“...Thank God Tendou got him to sleep for once,” Soekawa lamented. “He’s been running on empty for days now. I was worried about him, y’know?”
The others agreed. Semi snickered. “He’ll be able to rest easy with his ‘guardian angel’ watching over him.”
“A mother hen,” Hayato smiled.
“He does seem to be protecting him, doesn’t he?” Ushijima noted, and no one missed just how fond he sounded.
Again, the third years glanced at each other. We’re in the twilight zone.
They stood there quietly for a moment. “...We should go, let Goshiki rest at least,” Reon muttered. They all agreed and started to leave, one-by-one.
Semi paused in the doorway, arching a brow. “You coming, captain?”
“...I will stay a little longer,” Ushijima revealed. “Can you turn off the lights?”
Semi made a puzzled noise but didn’t comment. He left, closing the door and flipping the switch off on his way out.
Ushijima approached the bed, cautiously shaking Tendou awake.
“Hhh? Whazzat?” he groaned. “Who’s there?”
Ushijima chuckled at his garbled speech. “It’s Wakatoshi.”
Tendou squinted at him, vaguely making out his shape in the dark. “‘S too late to be bothering me, Miracle Boy…”
“Tendou, it’s 8 p.m.”
Tendou blinked owlishly, confused. “Oh.” He attempted to shape his hair somewhat reasonably, but it didn’t work. Without fail, the strands springing directly back into its bed-headed position. “If it’s that early, why’re the lights off?”
“I wanted to let Goshiki sleep some more,”
“Oh, so Goshiki can sleep but I can’t? This is my bed!” Tendou complained. He glanced down at the first year and mellowed a bit. “Wait, no, actually. Goshiki definitely needs the sleep more than I do.”
Ushijima agreed. “However, you are a different story. I don’t want to interrupt your nap, but you have a test tomorrow.”
Tendou turned back to Goshiki, waving Ushijima off. “That’s a problem for tomorrow Satori,”
Ushijima persisted. “It is highly inadvisable to ignore this test, you informed me it was a large portion of your grade—”
Tendou’s hand whipped out from underneath the covers and latched onto his wrist. With a startlingly strong grip, he yanked Ushijima into the bed behind him, gripping his arm to his chest and taking it hostage. Ushijima let out a soft oof and before he could even react properly, Tendou had thrown a blanket over him.
“...Tendou, what are you doing?”
“‘M making you come to bed,”
“I still have homework.
You
still have homework—”
“Oh please, as if you haven’t finished the homework for the next week.”
“That does not include you. Are you aware that I am still in my street clothing.”
“Take ‘m off then!” Tendou whined petulantly.
Ushijima glanced at Goshiki hesitantly, worried he would wake up at Tendou’s complaints. He didn’t stir whatsoever.
Tendou groaned. “Geez Captain, can you go any slower?”
Ushijima, unsure of how to exit the situation, sat up and slowly removed his jacket, if just to appease him for the moment. He wanted to be as quiet as possible. “This bed is not big enough for three people.”
“Semantics,”
“...” Ushijima sighed and gave up on Tendou for the moment. For the first time that night, he spared Goshiki a proper look, comforted by the peaceful expression on his face. The worried lines of his brows were smoothed out, that determined scowl of his absent for once. Already, the bags under his eyes looked better with just a few hours of sleep, and even in the dark, Ushijima could tell the pallor of his skin was easing up.
Tendou nudged him curiously with his elbow. “...I can hear you thinking from over here, Waka-chan. Spit it out.”
“...Thank you for taking care of Goshiki,” Ushijima whispered, grateful.
Tendou made a purring sound. “Mmm. Always knew you were a big softie at heart.”
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t think I don’t notice the way you look out for the team,” He nestled even closer to Goshiki and the sight was so endearing Ushijima had to look away. He couldn’t deny the feeling of warmth unfurling in his chest at the sight of Tendou caring for their youngest. “In your own way of course. Eh, Wakatoshi-kun?”
“...”
“We joke, but you really are a great captain.”
“I…” Ushijima, even if he didn’t show it, was very flustered.
“Oh, also, we’re going to go beat up a couple of first-years tomorrow.”
Ushijima blinked, slightly relieved if not flummoxed at the topic change. “You and me specifically? I believe that is called ‘hazing’, and it is strictly against the rules as stated in the Shiratorizawa handbook.”
“No dummy, all of us! C’mon, it can be a team bonding activity. Besides, it’s only against the rules if we get caught~!”
“That is flawed logic,” he deadpanned. “Elaborate.”
Tendou turned his head to face him and Ushijima suddenly remembered that while he himself was undoubtedly strong and intimidating in his own right, Tendou could be scary as well. “You know how Goshiki’s so sleep deprived he can’t even stand up properly?” Ushijima nodded, a silent yes. It was hard not to. “Apparently his roommate and his neighbors have been picking on him so often he can’t sleep at night.”
Ushijima clenched his jaw, suddenly a lot more open to hazing a group of 15-year-olds. “That is… cruel and unusual, to say the least.”
“You’re tellin’ me,” Tendou gave a high-pitched and melodramatic sigh. “Kids these days,” He finished his sentence with a yawn, turned back to Goshiki and snuggled him closer.
Ushijima’s breath caught at the sight of it. Dammit. He distracted me. Again. Ushijima tried to protest one more time. “Satori, don’t change the topic. You should still be getting out of bed, it would be highly detrimental to your grades if you—”
“Ushijima. Sleep,” Tendou spoke.
Ushijima found himself unusually sleepy. Still confused, he laid himself back down, finding the bed a lot more comfortable than it had been 30 seconds ago. His muscles went inexplicably lax. “What…?”
“Shhhh. Join us.”
If Ushijima didn’t know any better, he would call it magic. Accepting his fate (not unlike Tendou did earlier), he pressed himself against Tendou in an attempt not to fall off the bed. He buried his face in the nape of his neck and breathed in his scent.
Tendou pressed a kiss to the top of Goshiki’s head, then reached a hand up to run his fingers through Ushijima’s hair. “...Night, miracle boys,” He smiled.
Ushijima leaned into the touch with a low-pitched hum.
Cuddled around each other, they fell into a blissful slumber.
The night continued on.