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Tsukishima shuffles across the sidewalk, head held up to the starry sky as his lungs fill with the chilly night air. He shivers a little, goosebumps prickling at his skin beneath the thin layer of his uniform. The occasional car passes, muted through the music blaring in his headphones. An easy beat, something calm and without much substance. He's tempted to close his eyes, to stumble blindly around until he makes it home through one miracle or another. But that seems irrational. He blames his sleep-deprived brain for making it seem like a good idea.
Though he lets his eyelids flutter shut for an instant and he watches the dark expanse before him muddle through the fan of his golden lashes. When he opens them again he sees something that hadn't been there before. Something that makes him tear the headphones from his ears and stop in his tracks.
Or rather, someone.
Nishinoya stands in the centre of the sidewalk, flushed and huffing with his hands outstretched. He waves around a stack of papers and gasps raggedly for air. His breath comes foggy and heavy between the two of them, forming a smoky barrier.
"Could you-" He pants heavily, unable to finish the sentence. For an athlete he's surprisingly out of breath, Tsukishima thinks. "Could you help me study?" Nishinoya asks.
Tsukishima can't say he expected this. He takes a moment to process, before simply saying, "No."
"Why not?" Nishinoya whines in that way that is so unique to him. High and grating and impossibly annoying yet so wildly endearing in the worst possible ways.
"You're a year older than me. I can't help you," Tsukishima explains. He continues on his route, pushing past Nishinoya with the intent of getting home. It's late, he's tired, and the familiarity of his bedroom seems very inviting right about now.
"You're supposed to be smart, aren't you?" Nishinoya challenges. Tsukishima is sure if he could see Nishinoya's face, a glorious shit-eating grin would greet him.
Nishinoya pads across the sidewalk, shoes slapping and ringing out as he catches up to Tsukishima with ease. He's regained his breath and with it his composure.
"I am smart, but that doesn't change that we're being taught different things." Tsukishima knows there's no use reasoning with the likes of Nishinoya. Someone so stubborn can't simply be stopped when he gets set on something.
"I can explain it to you. Please," His voice goes soft, vulnerable, and in some weird way, it makes Tsukishima panic. Nishinoya isn't a soft guy, he's far too proud to bow or beg to anyone—except maybe Shimizu. He's an unbreakable wall of surety with the confidence to match. Softness doesn't come with the package. "I just need help studying." He finishes in that nearly meek tone.
"Fine." The words are out in the open before Tsukishima even realizes he's spoken them, before he's even thought them through and realized the impact of what he's agreed to.
"Great!" Nishinoya exclaims, his voice echoes around in that familiar way, confidence restored. He matches his stride with Tsukishima's. "Take me home, Tsukki!"
Tsukishima can only manage to grumble out a half-assed, "Don't call me that."
For someone nearly a foot shorter than Tsukishima, Nishinoya keeps up well. His rather short legs stay perfectly tuned to Tsukishima's, not even a pace behind as they take their stroll. The two cut through the night air with precision, finding themselves eventually inside Tsukishima's house, quickly running off to his bedroom.
"Nice place," Nishinoya says once Tsukishima's settled at his desk.
Tsukishima waves it off. "Why couldn't you study with the rest of the second years?" It's been plaguing him since midway through the walk.
"Hmm? Ah," Nishinoya takes a second to consider, "Ryuu's going somewhere with Big Sis and we usually use his house so that doesn't work."
"What about the other three?" Tsukishima prods. He ruffles through his bag to look for his own study materials, willfully ignoring the still-standing Nishinoya behind him.
"Chikara's busy with something or other, Kinoshita went out to buy...something, and Narita...I don't know what he's doing. But he's busy," Nishinoya recites, fiddling around with the obnoxious amount of keychains dangling from his backpack.
"And you couldn't have gone to the third years?" Tsukishima, annoyed and incredulous, asks.
"Maybe I just wanted to—" Nishinoya stops so abruptly that Tsukishima spins in his seat, worried something may have happened. But Nishinoya just looks a little puzzled, if not flustered—from their speedy walk, Tsukishima assures himself.
"Maybe I just wanted to learn from the best," Nishinoya finishes, quickly now that eyes are trained on him.
Tsukishima isn't an idiot, he knows that isn't what Nishinoya originally planned on saying, but he can't bring himself to care to ask, or even think on it for a moment more.
"Whatever," Tsukishima grumbles, "Just sit down."
Nishinoya seems to consider this for a moment, head swivelling left and right, before noting there isn't anywhere for him to sit, and opening his mouth to say so.
"Just—" Tsukishima nearly groans, "Take this one." He stands to allow Nishinoya to take his spot at his desk.
Nishinoya pounces at the chair, hopping on like it's some special throne instead of just a regular old desk chair. He folds into a cross-legged position and slaps down the wad of papers he hasn't let go of since stopping Tsukishima in the streets.
"I'm going to get another chair," Tsukishima says as he leaves the room, cautious not to close the door knowing that if he does Nishinoya might turn his bedroom into a pigsty in a matter of seconds.
He finds a squeaky-looking fold-out chair and returns to a bizarre sight. Nishinoya's actually studying, or at least reviewing the papers in front of him. His face is drawn in confusion, eyebrows together and lips turned into a little pout.
Tsukishima clears his throat as he sets his chair next to Nishinoya at his desk.
"Kinda close isn't it?" Nishinoya mumbles through the fist he's planted in his cheek.
"If you're going to complain you can leave. You don't have to be here," Tsukishima scoffs. He scoots his chair closer if only to be a pest.
"Don't kick me out! Then if I fail it'll be all your fault!" Nishinoya whines as he childishly kicks his feet through the air where they don't meet the floor with the height Tsukishima's set the chair to.
"It's not my fault you're an idiot," Tsukishima grumbles.
Nishinoya tucks his legs under him. His thigh presses into Tsukishima's, who can feel the warmth even through their layers of clothing.
"Is that any way to talk to your upperclassman?" Nishinoya teases, giving a sly side glance through those wild eyes of his. Deep and intense brown, greyer towards the edges, wide and always calculating by instinct alone. Animal, maybe. So purely human in the most nerve-wracking way, maybe.
With Nishinoya's technical prowess it's surprising to Tsukishima that he's so bad at academic testing.
"Is that any way to talk to the person whose house you're staying at?" Tsukishima fires back. He grabs at Nishinoya's papers before the little ball of energy can manage to divert the study session once more.
They get through reviewing the subjects, with Nishinoya briefing Tsukishima on everything he needs to know to help. Tsukishima isn't unfamiliar with the concepts, but the refresher does help. He can say for certain that Nishinoya is a lot better at explaining academics than he is volleyball techniques. The session is so rid of sound effects Tsukishima nearly worries he's taken home the wrong person.
Though before they can actually get into the things Nishinoya is supposed to be working on, the man in question bangs his head into the desk, smashing the little blond bit of his hair and groaning so loud it hurts Tsukishima's ears.
"Do you have any snacks?" Nishinoya grumbles, cheek flush with the desk.
"You can't be hungry already. We've barely started," Tsukishima says with a roll of his eyes. He shifts in his seat, and his thigh feels prickly and cold where it leaves contact with Nishinoya's.
"We can't all function on barely anything like you can!" Nishinoya practically screeches.
"We can't all be fat assess like you," Tsukishima shoots right back. "And I eat just fine, thank you for your concern." Sarcasm drips thickly from his voice.
"I don't believe you." Nishinoya's smiling with his cheek still pressed into Tsukishima's desk.
"Would you like to take me out to check?" Tsukishima sneers.
Nishinoya bolts upright and raises his brow in a smug way that basically screams he won't back down from a challenge.
"I'm kidding!" Tsukishima growls, "I'll get you something to eat. Would you like a drink with that O Guardian Deity?"
"Sure! You got anything blue?" Nishinoya says cheerfully, completely ignoring the malice presented in Tsukishima's tone.
"Blue?" Tsukishima repeats, confused and a little weirded out.
"Yep!" Nishinoya claps a little, flashing a glorious smile over his shoulder.
Tsukishima nods as if that clears anything up, and stomps off to the kitchen. He grabs something simple and prepackaged, a blue sports drink for Nishinoya, and some water for himself. Then shuffles back to his room, crinkling bag in one hand and condensation-damp drinks in the other.
"Tsukki!" Is the only thanks Tsukishima gets before Nishinoya pounces, latching onto the bag in his hand with blinding white teeth like some sort of ravenous beast. He tears it open and scarfs down half its contents before realizing that he's in the presence of another person.
"Want any?" Nishinoya asks around a mouthful of food.
Tsukishima clicks his tongue as his lips curl in disgust. "I'm good."
Nishinoya shrugs like it's Tsukishima's loss and downs the last of the food. Tsukishima hands him his drink and sits back down at the desk, motioning for Nishinoya to do that same.
With his stomach satiated, Nishinoya sits without protest. He cracks open his drink and takes a long sip before staring back down at his school work with newfound attentiveness.
They continue to work for quite some time before the next interruption. A particularly troublesome subject gets Nishinoya riled up the point where he slams his head into the table once again, this time with enough force to rattle the shelf on Tsukishima's wall.
Tsukishima tries not to tell him to get his act together as he glares daggers at a stray droplet of condensation that makes its way down the side of his drink.
Nishinoya sits upright, takes a sip of his own drink, and slams his head into the table once again. As luck would have it—because Tsukishima hasn't suffered enough already—Nishinoya's drink topples over as the desk quivers, and spills into his lap.
He groans again and leans back in the chair, thoroughly soaked from the waist down.
Tsukishima presses his lips together, ready to punt this under-grown man-child into the moon. Instead he finds an inkling of pity somewhere deep inside of him, and picks the spilled drink off the desk, standing to dispose of it and to grab something to clean the mess.
"You got a shirt I could borrow?" Nishinoya asks as he shakes droplets off his arms. He seems nearly unfazed.
"No 'sorry Tsukishima I didn't mean to ruin your floor'? Or 'sorry Tsukishima for imposing on your night and making your life so much more difficult than it needs to be'?" Tsukishima teases, a lighthearted edge slipping into his annoyed mannerisms.
"Keep talking like that and I might start to think you actually hate me," Nishinoya says through a stupidly cocky grin.
"Maybe I do." Tsukishima matches that same grin before slipping out of the room.
When he returns, empty bottle disposed of and cloth to tidy the mess retrieved, he finds Nishinoya looking conflicted.
"Do you actually hate me?" Nishinoya asks. He pouts a little and it sends a scary little pang through Tsukishima's chest.
"Maybe if you didn't bite me we'd get along better," Tsukishima says instead of answering the question.
"You say that like it's a daily occurrence," Nishinoya says. His pout is gone, a regular little smile that tilts at the corners of his lips taking its place.
"Sometimes it is." Tsukishima pats the desk dry, thankful all their papers seem untouched by the bright blue liquid.
Nishinoya hums thoughtfully. "So you like me then? As a friend of course."
"That's a weird way to phrase it," Tsukishima says, "But I don't not-like you." He thinks to himself that that's also a weird way to phrase it, but anything else would feel too weird. Too vulnerable. Too soft. Too much like a confession for a feeling he doesn't even have a name for.
"Anyway," Nishinoya waves away the tension, "About that t-shirt?"
"Don't you have a spare from practice?" Tsukishima asks.
"I have shorts but no shirt. I'm assuming you don't want me to study shirtless."
"Correct assumption." Tsukishima tosses a simple white t-shirt in Nishinoya's direction. He catches it with ease and exits the room to change, coming back seconds later to ask where the bathroom is. Tsukishima sighs and points him in the right direction.
In the minute at most that he's left alone, Tsukishima realizes that the productivity of the night hasn't been all that great. They've gotten through maybe half of the work Nishinoya brought, and Tsukishima hasn't even started on his own work. And it's been a good couple of hours.
Tsukishima's newfound vigour is dampened as soon as Nishinoya walks into the room. He looks a little silly. The borrowed t-shirt drapes nearly off his shoulder and reaches his mid-thighs, but he seems completely unbothered as he sits down at Tsukishima's desk once again and gets right back to his work.
Tsukishima can't say he shares this unbothered attitude. He gets distracted by the openness of the gaping neckline, the pale showing of Nishinoya's collar bones and the dip of his sternum. Then there's the way the sleeves nearly touch his elbows. His arms aren't petite by any means, he's muscular, he takes training seriously, but he looks small when draped in Tsukishima's clothing.
And Tsukishima thinks, much to his annoyance, that if there ever were a man who embodied the phrase too big for his own skin it would have to be Nishinoya. As much as every individual aspect of him isn't all that small, his whole is petite, even by lax standards. Though he more than makes up for it with everything else about him. The very air around him seems to buzz with some wild electricity, dangerous to get too close. Every sentence he speaks seems punctuated by an exclamation of sorts, pulling eyes towards him in any scenario. To Tsukishima it seems only fitting for him to dress in the bright orange jersey when the rest of the volleyball team is stuck in black. He deserves the extra attention it brings him. He seems to revel in it. To preen under it. To survive off of it.
Everything about Nishinoya is larger than life. And in some ironic turn of events he has been given the disadvantage of lacking height.
Looking down at him, dwarfed by a simple t-shirt as he glares at his schoolwork, Tsukishima smiles at him. It's a warm smile, not the snarky kind that curls his lip and narrows his eyes, but the kind so vague it's hardly there. The kind that spreads warmth from his core outwards.
His eyes slip to Nishinoya's exposed chest, to the part covering his heart. Tsukishima watches it for a second, wonders if it beats with the same warmth his own does.
And he says, "You'd better finish this work or you're going to fail, dumbass." Tasteful, in his opinion.
"You don't need to keep reminding me!" Nishinoya cries out, "Jeez, could you be any more blunt?"
"I can, actually. Your work ethic is sloppy, your struggle to focus is a pain to deal with, and yo-"
"I was kidding! Sarcasm!"
"Just do your work." Tsukishima is betrayed by that little smile again. Crinkling his eyes and sending a little jolt of white-hot glee through his chest.
"Fine," Nishinoya says through a little chuckle. He smiles in spite of himself, teeth showing through the pinks of his lips and he tries and fails endlessly to accomplish his school work.
Maybe Tsukishima isn't ready to unpack all of the things he's feeling. Maybe he doesn't want to go through the hassle of it all. Maybe he will be later and maybe he won't. Maybe it's denial and maybe it's not.
But surely if he knows one thing, he knows he will get Nishinoya to pass all of his classes. No matter how many study sessions and spilled drinks and unwanted bite marks it takes.
And maybe, if he's lucky, he'll even enjoy it a little.