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All things considered, Goshiki loves Shiratorizawa.
There’s just one little thing…
“Don’t you see, Wakatoshi-kun?” Tendou isn’t as good at whispering as he thinks he is, so Goshiki can hear loud and clear whenever he gestures towards him with worry. “His wings. We’ve gotta…”
He always trails off as Ushijima says something in return; his captain is much better at whispering, which is great for whatever secret is spilled between the couple, but bad for Goshiki’s sanity.
Why are they so worried about his wings? They’re absolutely fine!
Sure, maybe his plum starling wings are a little messy, the pin feathers awry and the secondaries askew, but that’s alright, it happens to everyone! Not everyone has a roommate or someone to help them groom, like Ushijima and Tendou have in each other, and Goshiki isn’t flexible enough to reach the feathers in the small of his back, like Semi or Shirabu.
He does his best, flattening them out against the wall of his dorm so they’re aligned enough to fly and glide as he needs, and they all get straight enough eventually when he sweats his way through a volleyball match. It’s not his fault that everyone else at Shiratorizawa has perfectly groomed wings, all the time.
He’s never really needed someone to groom his feathers for him; he doesn’t need to start now.
Goshiki hits the ground in slow motion.
Or, at least, that’s what it feels like; he tries to twist in mid-air to dive for a ball, but his wing doesn’t cooperate, and he loses the wind.
It’s not a long way down, not by a long-shot; they play volleyball a few feet in the air, even though some players — ones with bigger, broader wings — can reach nearly impossible heights from just gliding.
But it hurts, a little, when he lands. Even though nothing is broken — “I’m fine!” he calls out, standing with barely a stumble, his right wing folding in perfectly to his back but his left refusing to bend — he knows there’s going to be a nasty bruise on his hip.
Washijou tells him to go to the nurse, but Goshiki heads to his room, instead.
At least, with the rest of the team hovering above his head, Tendou’s whisper doesn’t carry; but he can feel his worry on the back of his neck like Tendou has a hen’s wings instead of the sweet pink and grey of a rosefinch.
He knows what that expression looks like, by now. He doesn’t have to look back.
It’s all his own fault, he realizes, sitting in the quiet of his dorm for another few hours until practice ends; he knows, at some point, he should leave to eat dinner, but the night comes on quietly as he presses against his tender skin, his aching and stuck wing.
His pretty purple wing, all in disarray — dark grey pinfeathers peeking out near his shoulder, the ones they’re replacing ready to drop, the primaries twisted. His shoulder stings from the pain of it; of holding it open for so long, of his body trying to push it closed.
If only he’d been better at grooming; if only he was as flexible as the rest of his family, his cousins and siblings who could twist their bodies and reach every inch of their wings with undistilled ease.
But Goshiki was different; he flew higher than them, was stronger than them, yet lacked the same avian grace. He’s supposed to be self-sufficient, ready to leave the nest, but Goshiki hadn’t yet learned how to groom his own wings.
Although he tried to hide it, the effects were obvious; Tendou’s whispers, his own stupid fall. He’s probably going to get barred from practice for a day, especially because he’s skipping the nurse, and then what will he have?
He’s at Shiratorizawa to play volleyball, after all, and he’s just jeopardized that. Who is he if he can’t play? Who is he if he falters in an off-gust of wind, if his stupid wings refuse to cooperate?
There’s a heat behind his eyes, and his head gets fuzzy, and before he knows it, he’s —
“Hey, none of that, little Tsutomu,” a voice says, softer than he expects it to be, before he feels a handkerchief get pressed against his burning cheeks —
He’s crying.
When was the last time he cried?
He feels a weight settle onto the bed as someone — Tendou, it has to be Tendou, he always smells vaguely like chocolate — helps bat away the tears, and he leans into his body as he wracks with heaving sobs, and he’s never felt more like a child.
“You didn’t go to the nurse, did you, Tsutomu, huh?” Tendou talks into the crown of his head even though Goshiki can’t respond, his tears dampening the soft handkerchief.
Tendou doesn’t own pocket hankies, he thinks, the stray thought crossing his mind, before he feels Tendou scoff. “Oh, stop skulking in the doorway, big guy; come in, you’re gonna scare him!”
Oh no.
Oh no.
Where Tendou goes, Ushijima is sure to follow; he doesn’t want his captain to see him like this: a snotty, childish mess with wings all askew.
“No, no, I’m fine,” he says, trying to push away from Tendou’s chest. He doesn’t succeed, though, because there’s a warm hand pressing between his narrow shoulder blades as Ushijima, and his big, albatross wings, settle on the other side of him.
“You are not fine, Goshiki,” Ushijima says. “Satori says you nearly died.”
“That is not what I said! I said you looked like death. Wakatoshi-kun, stop misrepresenting me, please!”
“I do not see a difference?” Ushijima’s voice tilts like he knows he’s riling Tendou up, just a bit, and it makes the sob welling up inside of Goshiki turn into a laugh.
Tendou sighs against him. “There, that’s much better, isn’t it, Tsutomu?” He lifts Goshiki’s chin, peering into him with his maroon eyes. “Tears all gone?”
“Y-yeah,” Goshiki croaks out, unused to talking, throat a little sore from all the tears. “You don’t have to stay here, you can leave, I’m fine, I’ll go to the nurse, don’t make me leave the tea-”
A finger presses against his lips.
“Shh,” Tendou says. “You’re rambling and spiraling. Nothing good happens when we spiral, ain’t that right, Wakatoshi-kun? And don’t talk about carousels again, no one likes a literalist.”
“No one is kicking you off the team, Goshiki.” Ushijima says, and a weight releases from his chest. It’s almost like he can fly again. “But we will not leave.”
Damn.
“But-”
“No buts!” Tendou squawks. “We won’t make you go to the nurse, either, even though you had a nasty little spill. But we are gonna help you out a little bit, okay?”
Goshiki opens his mouth to ask what they mean by that, but instead he gasps as Ushijima’s fingers start to card through his feathers.
His back goes straight, a shiver of pleasure running down his spine. “W-what are you doing?”
“Preening you,” Ushijima says, straightforward as ever.
“Your wings are all a mess, little bird,” Tendou says, carefully manipulating Goshiki’s stuck wing to pull it further out, making him hiss as his sore muscle aches, “and we’re here to fix you up.”
“Satori taught me how to do this,” Ushijima admits, “I will not hurt you.” As if his big hands were ever meant for harm.
Goshiki wants to protest; wants to claim he’s self-sufficient, that he’ll find a way to work on them himself, because boys like him aren’t supposed to need help like this.
But Ushijima presses a sports drink into his hands, and Tendou’s started brushing through his pinfeathers, the still growing ones near his bend which caused the problem in the first place, putting them all in order and massaging the blood back in. They’d gotten twisted up and numb, and he couldn’t pull in his wings enough because of it.
And Ushijima pulls out the molting feathers on his other wing, the ones toward his shoulders that he could never quite reach.
Their touch is so gentle as they work through Goshiki’s wings, picking out the detritus and fixing his secondaries and primaries and coverts by his bend back into place. It makes him shudder and shake, and it takes everything he can to breathe through it.
When he was younger, failing to learn from his parents, preening was a speedy process. But Tendou works slowly — Ushijima following his pace — as he massages the sore skin on his wing, his long feathers, and he keeps up a mostly one-sided line of conversation as he does it, which covers up Goshiki’s shocked little gasps and squirms as they touch him.
“You’ve got such pretty wings, don’t you, Tsutomu? I’ve never seen feathers like this, so iridescent! So shiny! And they look so good in Shiratorizawa colors, don’t they, Wakatoshi? Not like mine, you know; mine clash. I think it looks tacky.”
“Mhmm,” Ushijima hums.
“So you agree? I look tacky? Rude, Wakatoshi-kun!”
It makes Goshiki giggle, too; their bickering is comforting, but it doesn’t distract him from how nice they feel, how kind they are.
“I think your feathers look nice, Tendou,” he says, and Tendou pauses.
He tenses up, wondering for a second if he said something wrong, before Tendou leans forward, peering around his wing, a soft smile on his face.
“You flatter me, Tsutomu! A boy after my own heart!”
He’s glad Tendou goes back to working on his wings after that; this way, he doesn’t notice his blush.
“Just a little more,” he says, after what feels like days have passed — but based on the clock, it’s been barely a half hour. Does grooming normally take this long? “You’ve been so good, Tsutomu, you know that? Your wings were all twisted up, and I know from experience that it can hurt to take care of it, but you’ve been so patient and sweet while we got you fixed up, isn’t that right- Tsutomu? You’re crying again, did we hurt you?”
This time, the tears come unbidden, but they’re not sad. This time he falls into Ushijima’s chest — really, Ushijima pulls him in, so he can feel his deep breaths, his shallow heartbeat — as he pulls out another handkerchief to wipe these away.
“No, it – it feels so good,” Goshiki says, interrupting himself with sniffles. Has he really cried twice, in front of them? That’s so embarrassing. “Is it always supposed to feel this good?”
Is this what he’s been missing, in trying and failing to take care of himself?
Warm hands around his cheeks as Ushijima cups them.
“It can,” he says, “when people who care about you do it.”
Goshiki didn’t know he had more feelings left inside of him, but it’s like a dam bursts in him as he sobs happy, relieved tears into Ushijima’s chest as Tendou finishes his work.
It’s nice to be cared for, he thinks.
There’s a kiss to his crown that must be from Tendou, and he turns to him, bleary-eyed and sniffling.
“Whenever you need your wings groomed,” Tendou says, “you’re gonna come to us, okay, Tsutomu? We’ll take care of you.”
He turns, wide-eyed, to Ushijima.
“You promise?” he asks, and then blushes, sitting up and trying to not sound so desperate for it. “Do you really mean it?”
“I always mean what I say,” Ushijima says, and then — after sharing a look with Tendou — kisses his temple. “We will come to you, too, if you need it.”
He doesn’t know how long they sit like that — with Ushijima’s long wings spread around the both of them, holding them tight — as Goshiki’s wings feel, for the first time in a long time, comfortable and nice.
It’s not long enough, he thinks, but surely there will be more nights like this.