Work Text:
The first time Nishinoya falls asleep on Sugawara's floor, facedown in his textbooks, Asahi and Sugawara find themselves at a loss.
"Didn't he ride his bike here?"
"Yeah," says Asahi, craning his neck to peer out of Sugawara's bedroom window to where Nishinoya's bike is still lying in the yard. It's not even 9pm - Nishinoya had evidently just gotten bored. Well, to be fair, they've all been tired lately, with the early morning volleyball practices every day before class.
Sugawara gently prods their sleeping friend's arm. "He's out cold."
"What do we do?"
They're speaking in low voices, though they could probably be shouting with no danger of waking him. Once Yuu-chan’s out, he’s out, Tanaka always said on long bus rides, grinning widely, Nishinoya unconscious and snoring on his shoulder.
“Well, we could wake him. Or you could take him home on the back of your bike. Or we could let him sleep here, and I’ll drag him to school with me in the morning,” says Sugawara, laying out the options in a reasonable tone. “I think when he falls asleep at Tanaka’s, they just let him stay over.”
“Right.” Asahi considers Nishinoya’s face, relaxed in sleep. He looks small and soft in a way he would never be caught dead looking in his waking hours, one of his little hands curled into a loose fist by his cheek, mouth slightly open. The blonde tuft of hair that always falls over his forehead flutters with each slow exhale. Asahi brushes the tuft back from Nishinoya’s face with light fingers, though, again, it would take far more than a light touch to wake him. When he looks up, he catches Sugawara staring - not at him, but at Nishinoya, the way Asahi had just been staring himself. Sugawara is wearing a quietly tender expression, one Asahi has never seen on him before. He wonders if he’d been unconsciously mirroring it on his own face, and then Sugawara meets his eyes, and then he’s sure, yes, he must have been. He can feel himself making it again now.
He waits for Sugawara to say something. He waits for a long time. The night-insects sing their strident little songs outside. Nishinoya snores, softly. Sugawara watches Asahi, his eyes bright with… something, something Asahi can’t put his finger on, but for some reason he can’t bring himself to look away. So they watch each other.
Sugawara leans forward, over Nishinoya’s sprawled body, balancing on his hands. For a wild moment, Asahi thinks Sugawara is going to kiss him, right here above Nishinoya’s head, but he only murmurs, “My parents won’t mind if both of you sleep over. Why don’t you put him in the bed, and you two can sleep there, and I’ll get a mat for the floor.”
“But - we can’t kick you out of your own bed,” Asahi stammers, because it’s all he can think to say, besides something even stupider like Do you like me or Do you like Noya, and he’s determined to say neither of those things aloud. Frightened by all the possible answers.
Sugawara laughs as he rocks back on his haunches, out of the danger zone, or what Asahi has come to think of in the past fifteen seconds as the danger zone, also known as Asahi’s personal space, also known as close enough to feel the warmth of Sugawara’s breath every time he speaks. “You’re longer than our floor mats, Asahi-san. I won’t have a guest of mine sleeping with his feet hanging off the mat.”
While Sugawara pads off to the hallway closet to retrieve the sleeping mat, Asahi goes about gathering Nishinoya up off the floor. He’s light, even as a limp deadweight. He mumbles a little and shifts minutely in Asahi’s arms as Asahi lifts him, tucking his face against Asahi’s neck, but doesn’t wake.
“Asahi, what’s the matter?”
Asahi glances up to find Sugawara with the rolled-up mat in the doorway and abruptly realizes he’s standing in the middle of the bedroom floor, cradling Nishinoya to his chest and looking sort of stricken probably. “He’s so cute .”
That gets him another laugh. “He is, isn’t he? Well, put him in bed and take off his shoes, you’re standing right where I want to put this mat.”
Nishinoya clings to Asahi a little as he tries to deposit him in Sugawara's bed. "Stop that," he chides under his breath, hot-faced, prying Nishinoya's fingers loose from the front of his shirt. He gets the sense that Sugawara might be laughing at him as he carefully loosens the laces on Nishinoya's tennis shoes (so tiny, by comparison Asahi's shoes are like boats ) and removes them one after another, but unlike when his other classmates laugh at him, Sugawara's humor always seems gentler, somehow. Good-natured, rather than malicious.
Asahi finds that he doesn't mind it.
He also finds, shortly after, that his heels do in fact hang off of the end of Sugawara's bed if he stretches to his full length, so it's out of necessity that he curls onto his side and falls asleep with his back pressed to Nishinoya, who gives off a surprising amount of heat for someone so small.
***
"Hey," Nishinoya says after practice one Thursday afternoon, when they've finished stowing the equipment and cleaning the floors and are collecting their books and bags from the club room. "I've got something to show you."
Asahi shoulders his bag, heavy with all the assignments he really should have done earlier in the week. "Can you show it to me while I do my English worksheets?"
There's a subtle glow in Nishinoya's eyes. "Actually, yes. Bring it with you, if you want."
They catch Sugawara at the bike rack in front of the school and ride in the direction of Nishinoya's house together, the wind drying the sweat off them. Sugawara shouts up to Nishinoya, "Where are we going again?" and all he gets in reply is an offhand "You'll see," shouted back over Nishinoya's shoulder as he pedals ahead.
He leads them off the main road near the little house he shares with his grandfather, asphalt giving way to gravel that crunches under their bike tires, until trees arch overhead and the world is cool and green beneath them, a blessed relief from the heat of the oncoming summer. Asahi is startled out of the low hum of worry over his looming assignments when Nishinoya swerves off the narrow gravel road, his bike plunging down the swale and disappearing into the bushes.
Asahi pulls up to a clumsy abrupt stop beside Sugawara, and they look at each other in alarm for a moment before Nishinoya's voice, growing more distant by the moment, floats back to them. "Well, come on!"
It becomes quickly evident that Nishinoya is following a tiny dirt path, probably of his own making, and not, as Asahi had feared, throwing himself and his bike at random into the undergrowth. Asahi ducks low over the handlebars as he pedals; twigs and branches that Nishinoya would clear with ease are right at clotheslining height for him.
The dirt path ends at a flat clearing, where they find Nishinoya already dismounted, dropping his bike easily on its side in the grass. "Check it out," he says, grinning, and motions to the rickety metal structure standing alone in the center of the clearing.
Before either of them have the chance to ask what exactly they're looking at, Nishinoya's bounding off again. Asahi gives Sugawara a helplessly bemused look as they lay down their bikes and follow.
It's a harrowing climb up a series of metal staircases, every other step creaking and groaning under their weight, and Asahi makes a desperate effort to focus his gaze only above and never below, but when he reaches the wraparound deck at the top he can immediately see why Nishinoya might like it up here. The bushy, nodding heads of the treetops, the ripple of the grass, the distant smudges of buildings far out on the horizon. Nishinoya always did like to feel tall.
He’s in the doorway of the little cabin that’s perched up here on the top deck, with his arms folded, grinning, watching them. “Cool, right?”
He’s fixed up the inside, replaced broken windows with panels of mosquito netting, covered the metal grating of the floor with layers of secondhand rugs and cushions. There’s a whole sagging couch, which doesn’t look like something Nishinoya could have lifted and carried up all those stairs by himself. There’s even a box fan and a minifridge jammed into one corner, humming away softly. When Asahi wonders out loud how he’s got power up here, Nishinoya, rummaging in the minifridge, says, “This used to be a radio tower. It was already wired, I just did a little fiddling and hooked up my own stuff. Let me tell you, it was hot as balls before I got the fan. There’s still a transponder up here, but I have to unplug the fridge in order to use it, so -”
“How did you find it?” says Sugawara, toeing off his tennis shoes at the door. It’s not a house, exactly, but Asahi’s taken off his shoes too. He did it without even thinking; it feels enough like a home that clomping all over it with shoes on seems disrespectful.
“By looking,” says Nishinoya cheerfully, tossing each of them a juice box. He’s watching them enter his space with something like pride in his eyes. “Grandpa said he used to listen to this local broadcast that came from somewhere around here, old traditional Japanese music mostly, but that it eventually stopped playing and he never found out why. I hit the library, dug through some newspaper archives, and found out about this tower being abandoned years ago because the trees had grown so high around it. The original plan was to add an extension to the top, or rip the whole thing down and build a more modern one, but that would have been expensive, so they decided to just build a new one in a better place. There wasn’t like, an address or anything obviously, but I did find a map with sort of a general location, so I came out here and left my bike just off the road and started pacing a grid until I found it.”
Asahi feels like he’s staring. The sun is slanting into the tower and edging Nishinoya’s face in gold as he settles cross-legged on the floor with his back against the closed door of the minifridge and all Asahi can think is, guardian god. The little god and his little temple.
Sugawara inspects the transponder with interest. “I didn’t know you knew electrical work.”
“I taught myself. Used to hang out at the video store in town and watch Shoto-san fix televisions. Sometimes, if something was broken beyond repair, he would let me have some of the parts in exchange for sweeping out the back room or dusting shelves or whatever.”
They all wind up sprawled on the floor in the end, doing their schoolwork in kind of a comfortable heap as squares of sunlight make their slow way across the carpets. Asahi’s English assignment is not holding his attention well; he keeps noticing more details of the space, the sports calendar and magazine pages tacked to the walls, the crazily tilting coat rack in the corner with a towel and what looks like a bathing suit hanging on it. The sleeping mat rolled up and standing on end beside the couch.
"Do you… sleep up here?" he finally gives up on trying not to ask.
Nishinoya grins, lazy and slow, like a cat in the sun. "Sometimes. I wait until Gramps passes out in front of the television and I bring what I need for school in the morning. Especially in the summer. Sleep naked right in front of the box fan. It's great ."
"I used to do that," says Sugawara, prompting a surprised " really? " from both Asahi and Nishinoya. Asahi has always pictured Sugawara as a timid, self-conscious child, though now that he really thinks about it he's not sure why.
"Before my little brother was born and I didn't have to share a room, yes. I hated being sweaty more than I hated being naked."
"You don't seem to mind sweating now," Nishinoya points out, nudging Sugawara's shoulder with the sole of his foot. He's abandoned his schoolwork to lie on his back and toss a scuffed-up volleyball in the air, dancing it off his fingertips.
Sugawara smiles. "True, if it's for a good reason."
Asahi wonders if Sugawara still hates being naked. Come to think of it, for a whole year and a half of volleyball practice and sharing changing rooms, he's been watching Sugawara turn to the wall while he changes his clothes. He does it gracefully, with such a natural twist of his body that Asahi never noticed the purposeful nature of the motion. But now that he thinks about it, he realizes, he's never seen anything of Sugawara but his back - long and fair, lightly muscled, almost delicate wing-like shoulder blades, the high knobs of his spine standing out at the back of his neck.
Asahi feels like he's come unglued from reality, entered some strange fairy dimension. It's this place, he thinks, Nishinoya's secret place, the magic golden sunshine, the low drone of the box fan, Nishinoya with his legs flung over Asahi's lap, the volleyball leaping up and away from his hands in a light rhythm, and Sugawara's arm pressed absently against Asahi's on his other side, head bent to his schoolwork.
***
"Wow," Asahi says, before he can stop himself. "That looks bad."
Nishinoya examines the softball-sized bruise radiating out from his elbow, wincing, prodding at it a little. "Landed wrong. Ss - damn. This elbow always seems to get the worst of it."
"It's because you care more about keeping the ball in the air than you do about keeping yourself intact, Noya-san," says Tanaka cheerfully, slapping Nishinoya's shoulder. The club room is lively with movement and chatter and the zzzzrip of gym bag zippers. Takana mops his sweaty face with his shirt. "Which is pretty manly of you, if you think about it."
Asahi doesn't know why, but seeing that huge purpling bruise makes him feel guilty somehow. As if he ought to have done something different, spiked harder, blocked higher, received better, and then maybe Nishinoya wouldn't be hurt.
He takes one of his knee pads home that night, borrows a sewing needle from his mother. Makes a few clumsy alterations.
"But don't you need it?"
Asahi's face goes hot at the way Nishinoya is looking at him, a big-eyed, vaguely incredulous look, like he can't believe Asahi has done this. The bruise has really developed overnight, like an awful Polaroid, deep blue and purple, completely ringing his elbow.
"N-not really, I almost always receive to the other side. And you obviously need it more than I do. Does it - does it fit? I was kind of guessing, your arm is probably half the size of my leg -"
Nishinoya tugs it on, with only a slight hiss as the pad comes to settle over the bruise. A grin starts at the corners of his mouth. "Quit fussing," he says quietly, flexing his arm. The little grin blooms into a full on smile, and when he turns the true force of it on Asahi, his face heats up all over again. "It fits."
***
Sometimes, lying shoulder to shoulder on the floor of the radio tower after the sun goes down, they play a game. One question, one honest answer.
Tonight, with Nishinoya's warm little body tucked against his side, it's Asahi's turn to ask the first question. He has refrained from asking before, expecting Nishinoya to give some kind of deflective non-answer, but there's a particular quality to the air between the three of them tonight, conducive to truth-telling. Some combination of how hard they worked at practice today, the good meal they had together at Sugawara's house, the breakneck flying race to make it out to the tower before daylight faded in the forest and made the narrow, barely-marked bike path colossally unsafe.
Asahi swallows and asks the question he's been saving. “Why the radio tower? What gave you the idea?”
"There was this American movie I got from the video store," Nishinoya says up into the dark. "I don't remember the name of it. It was my birthday or something, Gramps let me pick any tape I wanted, and I liked the cover. Kid gets trapped in a library, or some shit. But the kid had this treehouse that he and his dad built together, and when I was a little kid all I wanted was for my dad to build a treehouse with me, just like - a place just for me, you know? But instead, he got a teaching position in Russia two years before I was born. They didn't plan it like that, my parents - I was a surprise."
"They just shipped you off to your grandfather?" Sugawara sounds faintly scandalized.
There's a laugh from Nishinoya. "They wanted to bring him with them, but Gramps threw a huge fit. Said they'd have to drag his corpse onto the plane if they wanted him to leave. And they both had jobs, and they hadn't planned on raising another kid. It never bothered me much - I only ever knew Gramps, my sisters all had their own families in the area and stuff, so I'd see them sometimes, but. I was kind of bummed about the treehouse."
Asahi would expect to hear bitterness in Nishinoya's voice, talking about his parents abandoning him, but he sounds just as casual as he does about everything else that isn't volleyball. That's one of those things about him that Asahi can't stop admiring - stuff just rolls right off him, like he's covered in duck feathers or something.
"So you found this place and fixed it up instead," he says, feeling his face rearrange itself into a softer shape that he's kind of glad the others can't see.
"Yeah. Collected old furniture and appliances - used to go around the neighborhood at four a.m. every Thursday to beat the garbage truck - raided the junkyard over behind the Yimizus’ chicken farm, saved up electrical parts and tools from the video store. The couch was tricky. Someone put it out to be hauled away on big-garbage day and I couldn't carry it alone with just my bike, so I dragged it into the woods and came back later to take it apart and haul it out here piece by piece. Never really stood straight after that, but, you know, it didn't stand all that straight before I took it apart either. Okay. Suga, your turn."
Sugawara takes his time thinking. While he thinks, Asahi imagines Nishinoya wrestling chunks of couch up the awful rickety metal stairs to the top of the radio tower, the stairs that still give Asahi a heart attack every other time he climbs them, whenever a slight breeze makes the struts groan and clatter. Why didn't you ask for help, he wants to say, but it's not his turn anymore, and besides, he knows why. This place was Nishinoya's secret. Until now, anyway.
"Asahi," Sugawara says finally, and Asahi hears the shifting of fabric as he rolls over to face him from Nishinoya's other side. "Have you ever liked a girl?"
Asahi splutters for a moment and then has to say, honestly, "No, I - no." He really hasn't, if he thinks about it. He's never really looked at girls at all.
"Really? Never?" That's Nishinoya's voice, incredulous. "Not even in like, middle school?"
"Girls were just as scared of me in middle school as they are now," he says, hiding his reddening face in his hands even though the others can't see him.
Nishinoya is laughing. "It's so funny that everyone's scared of you, Asahi-san. If only they knew you're just as scared of them! Probably more!"
Sugawara is also laughing, less raucous than Nishinoya. "I've wanted to ask you that since our first year, Asahi-san. It just never seemed like the right time."
"I was going to be embarrassed no matter when you asked me," Asahi mumbles into his hands, but lucky for him, Nishinoya is already barreling on ahead.
"Alright, Suga, what about you? Same question. Surely someone else around here appreciates the fine qualities of girls."
"Not me," says Sugawara, and Asahi can hear the smile in his voice. "Knew it was only boys for me ever since I was tiny."
"You're kidding me! I'm all alone!" Nishinoya flings out a dramatic arm, smacking Asahi across the chest. "The only girl-liker!"
"Not that girls aren't nice; they are," Sugawara adds, rather thoughtful, as Nishinoya produces a series of theatrical fake sobs. "They're pretty and kind and soft and things. I just don't get all fluttery-feeling around them, you know? Not like Noya-san does around Shimizu -"
"Aghhhhh, Kiyoko-san," Nishinoya wails, and then Sugawara is half-sprawling over Asahi to tickle him, and Nishinoya is shrieking and tickling him back, and Sugawara is trying to bundle Asahi between them like a wide-shouldered human shield, and Asahi is protesting but he truly doesn't mind.
Once they've collectively quieted and the only sound in the dark radio tower is the whirring of the box fan, Sugawara says, face tucked against Asahi's shoulder, "Noya-san, if you like boys and girls, why are you only annoying about girls?"
Asahi braces for another tickle fight, but Nishinoya just laughs. "Learned it from Gramps, I guess. You've seen the girls he brings home. He must be doing something right. And as far as I've seen, Gramps doesn't like boys, so I didn't have any kind of example for that."
He's turned toward Asahi, saying that last bit, and Asahi becomes abruptly aware that he can feel Nishinoya's breath, warm along the underside of his jaw.
"Your turn," Nishinoya says, low-voiced, and Asahi swallows, startled at the dryness of his mouth, the clumsiness of his tongue, as if all of a sudden the accursed thing no longer fits properly behind his teeth. Nishinoya is so close that Asahi swears he can feel the shape of his grinning mouth -
"Asahi-san, you're blushing so hard it's giving me a sunburn," Sugawara says, flicking Asahi's cheek, which, now that his attention is on it, is definitely hot. But when he turns his head towards Sugawara to protest, he finds himself in the same position, mouth so near to mouth in the warm heavy dark that he's dizzy with it.
So, we all like boys , he wants to say, but his big stupid tongue is filling his whole mouth and he can't seem to get a single word out, and besides, he's not sure what his actual question would even be, so in the end he stammers out to the ceiling, "Have you, have you got any juice left in the fridge, Nishinoya," because he's a coward, and afraid to let his brain finish the thought it's trying to have, afraid to let his mouth do what it wants to do, and Nishinoya and Sugawara are both laughing at him but it's good-natured laughter.
Maybe I'm not the only one who's afraid , he thinks, sitting with his back against the sagging seat of the couch and draining the little juice packet he found in the minifridge in one long desperate swallow, Nishinoya chattering about the hot girl his grandfather brought home last week ("She's a model , she's been on television -" "How does your grandpa keep up with these girls? Where does he find them?" "How should I know? Don't you think I'd have a hot model girlfriend by now if I did?"). Maybe Nishinoya and Sugawara are just as wary of this high, dazzling edge as he is. Though he doubts it; he's never seen Nishinoya afraid of anything.
***
They don't put a name to it, whatever this is, this strange quiet thing growing between the three of them. They don't talk about it. They talk about fairly little, to be honest, outside of schoolwork and volleyball. It seems to be an agreement they all arrived at silently.
Really, what is there to discuss? It's not really dating , in any traditional sense of the word, since there are three of them, and if one were to write their three names on a sheet of paper and draw lines connecting them together, not all the lines would be the same color or thickness. And it's not like they do any of the gooey romantic stuff you're supposed to do when you date somebody. They just. Spend a lot of time together. All of their time together, where possible.
Asahi puzzles it over in the privacy of his own head on the way back from the mart, swinging a plastic bag of various rice crackers and squares of dried seaweed in crinkly little packages, Sugawara walking his bike to one side and Nishinoya jogging backwards to face them, laughing loudly at some joke he was telling that Asahi didn't catch. A story about one of his first-year classmates, Asahi thinks.
And there's the other thing they don't talk about. Sugawara and Asahi will graduate a year before Nishinoya, and in all likelihood, that will be the end of whatever-this-is. They have some time before then, but Asahi wonders whether letting it go on indefinitely might be crueler than putting a stop to it before they become too tangled up in each other.
Except they already have, haven't they? Asahi already can't remember what he used to do after practice before he started spending every evening with Sugawara and Nishinoya, either at one of their houses or at the radio tower. Seriously, what did he do before? Go home, do his schoolwork in front of the television, help his mother with the dishes, go to bed?
It's embarrassing to admit, even to himself, but all Asahi has ever been trying to do is make it through high school as smoothly and quietly as possible, so that he can get on with the business of being the adult whose body he's been inhabiting since the age of fourteen. This - this thing, this thing they don't have a name for - it wasn't in the plan.
***
"He's not picking up. Or answering his texts."
"Yeah, he's not here either," says Sugawara, sounding slightly out of breath over the phone, as if he's just sprinted up the stairs to the top of the radio tower, which is probably exactly what he's done. "And I don't see a note or anything. Should I try his house? Or Tanaka's?"
Asahi drags a hand over his face, trying to make his heart slow down. It's a Saturday night, there's no school tomorrow, maybe he's just gone somewhere with the other first years and let his phone battery run out. (Or maybe he's crashed his bike in the woods and is bleeding and unconscious, Asahi thinks, no matter how he tries to stop himself.) "Let's not worry Tanaka's family until we have to. I'm going to call him agai- wait, sorry, one moment -”
Nishinoya is calling him. Asahi scrambles to switch the call over. “Nishinoya! Where have you be-”
“Sorry! Sorry, sorry! My phone died at the hospital and I’m borrowing a charger from one of the nurses and it just now got enough battery back to see all these missed messages -”
“Nishinoya!” Asahi slumps with relief, and then stiffens up again immediately as he parses the word hospital . “Wait, are you okay? What are you doing at the -”
“Yeah, I promise, I’m good! It’s just Gramps, I’m okay. Everything’s okay, really. Sorry to scare you guys.”
Asahi forces himself to breathe and calm down and really listen to Nishinoya’s voice. He doesn’t sound panicked or in pain. “What about your grandpa? What happened?”
“Stupid old man tripped on the porch steps,” says Nishinoya, and there, finally, is a tiny hint of concern underneath his usual bravado. “Carrying a bag of groceries so he couldn’t see his feet. Popped a hip out or something. Didn’t hit his head, so I’m not worried. He’ll be okay.”
Two little beeps in his ear remind Asahi that Sugawara is still probably frantic on the other line. “Okay - okay. Good. I mean! Sorry, I mean, I’m glad your grandpa’s all right. Do you want us to come to the hospital? Do you need anything - food, or clothes, or anything -”
“Nah, really, I promise I’m good. There’s a decent cafeteria here and the chairs aren’t even all that uncomfortable. I’ll catch you guys at school tomorrow. Promise.”
“O-okay, if you’re sure... Please call either one of us if you do think of anything we can do or bring or -” Beep beep . “Ah, sorry, Suga’s still on the other line, I better let him know -”
“Oh, yeah! Tell Suga hi from me! And, Asahi -” A short pause. “Thanks.”
Asahi makes an affirmative sound, and then Nishinoya’s call drops and Sugawara’s voice is in his ear again. “- Asahi? Asahi, what’s going on?”
“That was Nishinoya,” he says, and hears the tension go out of Sugawara in a short but gusty exhale. “He’s at the hospital. For his grandpa! He’s not hurt.”
Another exhale, sharper this time. “You’re going to put me in the hospital, giving me a heart attack like that. Well, am I meeting you there?”
“He says he doesn’t need us.”
Sugawara spends a moment thinking on that. “You spoke to him. Did he sound like he didn’t need us?”
“I mean, yeah, but I think he was trying to.”
Another weighted pause. “So am I meeting you there?”
***
A gust of thoroughly chilled air sweeps over them as they enter Miyagi General Hospital. Asai shudders. Hospitals frighten him.
"Don't be afraid," Sugawara says, low and calm, laying a reassuring hand on his back as they approach the receptionist's window. He's gotten so good at reading Asahi's thousand little fears.
The waiting room that contains Nishinoya is no warmer than the lobby, and something about the harshness of the fluorescent lighting makes him look tiny and brittle in a way that Asahi has never seen him, and hopes to never see again. Curled into a tight animal shape in one of the (definitely super uncomfortable, the lying little bastard) plastic chairs, chin resting on his knees, eyes half shut like he's going into hibernation, it takes a few seconds for him to focus on Asahi and Sugawara. But then, of course, he's bolting up out of his seat, wide awake.
“Asahi? Suga! What are you doing here?”
Asahi already has his hands up in a surrendering gesture. “Sorry, Nishinoya, I know you said you didn’t need us, but we felt bad letting you stay here by yourself.”
At first, Asahi thinks maybe he’s going to get defensive, yell at them to go home, but instead he barrels into them and flings his arms around their waists, squeezing them together, burying his face in the side of Asahi’s arm. “Stupid, you’re both stupid. Thanks for coming, assholes.”
His cheek is cold against Asahi's skin.
***
They keep Nishinoya's grandfather overnight.
Sometime around three in the morning, Nishinoya falls asleep sideways in his chair, head lolling back against Asahi's shoulder, legs tucked against Suga's chest, breathing in soft little huffs.
Asahi is almost asleep himself, staring at nothing and fighting to keep his chin from dropping every so often, when Sugawara says softly, "Are you glad we came, Asahi-san?"
Asahi blinks sleep out of his eyes and turns only his head, craning his neck a little to avoid jostling Nishinoya. "You knew, didn't you. That he wouldn't want to stay here alone."
Sugawara smiles. "No one wants to stay in a hospital waiting room overnight, alone."
Asahi means to look away then, but finds that he doesn't want to. Sugawara's hair is silver-bright in the fluorescents. No one should look good in this kind of light, but Sugawara manages it somehow. He's tired, Asahi can see that, but beautiful, in a strangely ethereal way, almost spirit-like, as if he's nothing more than a visiting ghost from beyond the mortal realm. He's always been beautiful like that, really, in that displaced kind of way.
Asahi realizes he's been staring at Sugawara for a long time. It's like the night he and Nishinoya stayed over at his house and he almost kissed Sugawara on his bedroom floor, Nishinoya asleep between them.
Asahi doesn't kiss him this time either, but he doesn't look away, and neither does Sugawara.
***
There’s a moment, sometime in that final set, where it all crystalizes for Asahi. He gets that moment of suspended time people love to talk about, where everything sharpens into high-definition focus, where he can see each leg hair and droplet of sweat on his closest teammates, can see the individual twists of thread that make up the net, each tiny hexagon on the lightly textured surface of the ball.
The moment comes the instant before his hand connects with the ball, and he can see immediately and perfectly, but cannot stop or change, the failed trajectory of his spike.
This isn’t the first spike he’s failed to get past Dateko’s blockers today. In fact, that’s all he’s been doing, spiking straight into the blockers over and over and over and over, his arm is tired, his legs are tired, he’s tired all over, he just wants it to be over, but more than that, he doesn’t want to let down his team. Which he’s doing, right now, he knows in that hanging moment, right before the ball smashes into the blockers’ hands yet again and rebounds into the ground with a deafening slam.
And to think, just a few seconds ago, when he’d jumped, he was so sure he would score this time.
Only when he goes to apologize to Nishinoya, who explodes at him, does Asahi realize that being right up on the net really does narrow his field of vision. All he can see are the opposing blockers, and what he cannot see at all is Nishinoya, doing his level best to keep the ball from hitting the ground. Sugawara confirms it for him later - of all the spikes Asahi didn’t score in that game, Nishinoya saved at least half of them.
That clinches it for him. Nishinoya is vital to Karasuno’s volleyball team. Asahi is not.
***
Nishinoya corners him in his third-year classroom the day after the Dateko match, immovable in the open doorway despite his stature, third years edging past him, whispering what is he doing here and isn't he a second year and gosh he's so small and did you hear what happened with the volleyball team . Asahi takes his time packing his books and pencils neatly into his bag, waiting for his classmates to clear out. He still finishes too early, is left standing still beside his desk with his back to the door, staring resolutely at nothing.
The room empties. He stands still long enough for the overhead lights to go out, and only then, with just the low sunlight slanting in through the windows, does Nishinoya speak, his voice surprisingly even.
"Daichi says you quit."
Asahi shoulders his bag. "I did."
"Well, come back."
"I'm not coming back."
"The fuck do you mean? Are we supposed to just play without our ace?"
Asahi knows it's meant to sting. He winces anyway.
A few light footsteps behind him. Nishinoya is small, but his presence always seems to fill any space. Asahi can feel Nishinoya on approach, radiating heat like a little ball of fire. He can feel Nishinoya holding himself back, just a pace away. Can imagine his clenched fists, the tucked jaw like he's spoiling for a fight, the burning glare, like pure lightning.
"You can't just -"
Silence, for a moment, both of them holding very still, even though Asahi's heart is skittering like a rabbit's and all he wants to do (coward, he's a coward) is run away. Why? Because he doesn't want to face the rest of the team? Because he doesn't want to face Nishinoya? He's already quit. It's not like he's going to see them all before and after school every day anymore.
Doesn't matter. Nishinoya won't let him go.
He hears Nishinoya huff out a breath, and then there's a pair of wiry little arms wrapping around him from behind and the warmth of Nishinoya's cheek between his shoulder blades and if Asahi thought his own pulse was loud in his ears, Nishinoya's is like thunder, right up against his back like this, how can such a small body have a heart so huge?
Asahi takes hold of Nishinoya's hands where they've gathered up a double fistful of his school vest, gently pries them loose, turns to face Nishinoya for the first time today. He's wearing the exact expression Asahi knew he would be, that look of laser-locked unbreakable focus. As he has every time since the match with Dateko, Asahi looks away first. He takes Nishinoya in his arms in turn, tucking the two of them firmly together from knee to shoulder, trapping Nishinoya's hands between their chests.
"I'm not coming back," he repeats, pressing his temple to the crown of Nishinoya's head. "I'm sorry."
There's a moment of stillness then, where all he can feel is the slight humidity of Nishinoya's breath at his collar, the press of his chin, his hard little fists clenched between them. And then Nishinoya's body tenses and he shoves at Asahi with all his strength, which is always so much greater than Asahi expects it to be, and shouts, strangled and furious, "I won't let you quit! You're good , Asahi, we need you!"
Stumbling back into the row of desks behind him from the wild force of the shove, Asahi thinks, Why do I keep underestimating him. "Not good enough! I'm not good enough, Nishinoya."
"Yes you fucking are!" Nishinoya is crying, Asahi realizes suddenly, fists balled up at his sides now. "Just because you made one mistake that I couldn't cover -"
"I made more than one mistake!" He feels like he's pleading with Nishinoya somehow, begging him to understand, even though what he's ostensibly doing is defending himself. "I did my best, and it wasn't enough -"
"So train harder!"
"I've quit, Nishinoya. I'm done."
"No!"
His voice cracks. He drags the back of his hand over his eyes. Asahi takes one long step towards him, lifts a hand, to do what, he's not sure - dry Nishinoya's tears, brush back that ornery little tuft of hair that always falls over his forehead - but Nishinoya slaps his hand away on reflex, without even opening his eyes. "Don't! Don't touch me. Not unless you fucking mean it."
And then he storms past Asahi and slams the classroom door behind him. There's the crash of shattered ceramic, a shout from the vice principle, but all Asahi can hear is that slamming door, the underlying wobble in Nishinoya's voice as he spits not unless you fucking mean it.
***
He texts Asahi that night, late.
you better be at practice tomorrow.
***
"Nishinoya's suspended," Sugawara informs him a few days later, sitting beside him at lunchtime. "From school for a week, and from club activities for a month."
"I'm sorry," Asahi says automatically, unwrapping his lunch without really looking at it.
Sugawara laughs, a little sad. "He would be so angry to hear you apologize for that."
"Sorry," Asahi says again, and then shakes his head at himself and puts a bite of rice in his mouth.
"I'm not here to put pressure on you, Asahi-san. But I really think you should talk to him. He misses you."
"He doesn't want to see me."
"He's upset and disappointed. Mostly with himself, I think." Sugawara takes a pensive sip of his juice. "He won't see me either."
Asahi looks at Sugawara, really looks for the first time in days, sees the fatigue in the line of his neck, the low set of his shoulders. He and Asahi haven’t been doing their homework together anymore, have barely seen each other aside from between classes. Asahi's hand, the one he's not holding his chopsticks with, half-twitches in his lap, like it wants to smooth away some of that tension. But he doesn't bring his hand up. Doesn't touch him. Sugawara never gave him that ultimatum - Don’t touch me. Not unless you fucking mean it - but Asahi can’t seem to untangle the two of them in his mind. They’re different people, of course they are, but they’re connected in his head by this strange and fragile thing, broken now, that none of them dared to name, and anyway what's the point of calling it anything when it’s already over.
It just doesn't work between them, him and Sugawara, without Nishinoya to bridge the gap. Maybe they’re both cowards.
“You look tired,” says Sugawara mildly, not looking up from his lunch. “Have you been sleeping?”
Asahi could almost laugh. “Have you?”
Sugawara does laugh then, the light chuckle Asahi loves, though his eyes are still sad, and sets down his empty juice box. “Have any of us?”
No, because we miss each other, Asahi wants to say, but doesn’t, of course. I miss you. But the problem is that he misses Nishinoya just as badly, and asking Sugawara to bring over his schoolwork after practice, to sit in silence with Asahi and study and then go home, seems incomprehensible. They just don’t bounce off each other the same way when Nishinoya’s not there. Stuck in their heads too much. They can get the ball into the air, but they can’t stop it from hitting the ground.
He wonders how Nishinoya is sleeping.
***
He hits the ground again. Bangs his elbow. It'll bruise. He's covered in bruises these days. He's seen the teachers looking. Probably thinking his old man beats him, or something.
Nope, Teach , he imagines saying, imagines the casual grin he would use. Just volleyball practice.
Or maybe he wouldn't say that, since technically he's banned from the club for another two weeks.
Weird to think about how, when he gets back, he'll be a second year with brand new first years to boss around. Tanaka too - he's been looking forward to it. And Suga and Asahi will be third years. Practically ancient.
If Asahi comes back , says a mutinous little voice in the back of his head. If you didn't drive him away forever.
Nah. He'll change his mind. He'll change his mind, and things will go back to the way they were.
Noya picks himself up and dances back three paces to the edge of the concrete stoop, where he resets his stance and prepares to dive again. The front of his white t-shirt is stiff and brown with caked dirt and sweat. The hard-packed dust of the little yard in front of the house he shares with his grandfather is flat enough and smooth enough to serve as a (very cramped) practice space, so long as he doesn't dive too far and end up with his face in the prickly bushes. He takes a half-step and throws himself to the ground, arms outstretched, cracking his knee this time.
It hurts. Noya doesn't care.
***
For the first couple of weeks, it's hard for Asahi to retrain his body to turn his bike towards his own house instead of Sugawara's or the gravel road leading out to the tower. His grades take a dip, even though he's got all this extra time to study. Daichi throws him unreadable looks between classes, sometimes. Asahi knows Daichi would welcome him back gladly. But he's not going.
And he won't go to the radio tower.
That's Nishinoya's domain. And he's well aware that Nishinoya doesn't want to see him.
***
Sugawara does go, three weeks into Nishinoya's club ban. But Nishinoya's not there.
Standing in the doorway, looking at the telling coat of dust on everything in the little room at the top of the radio tower (the door was shut, but not locked), Sugawara feels a stab of guilt. It's got to be his fault, his and Asahi's, that Nishinoya doesn't come here anymore. They must have left too much of themselves here, printed the shapes of their bodies and their voices thoroughly enough into this space that Nishinoya can't bear to -
Or maybe he's just not here today , Sugawara tries to reason with himself, but the dust tells the true story.
He leaves without going inside.
***
“We can still fix it,” Sugawara says, taking the two jagged halves of the broken broom from Tanaka, and then wonders how true that is, standing alone in the supply room holding the remains of something he didn’t realize he badly wanted until he didn’t have it anymore.
Well , Sugawara reasons, wrapping the broom handle with tape, I'm pretty good at holding broken things together. It may just take time, to bring the pieces back into alignment. But it hurts, in the meanwhile, in the now. For now, it's just broken, and nothing he does seems to fix it.
By the time he’s propped the repaired broom up against the wall and put the roll of tape away, his vision is blurry and his face is wet. Sugawara presses the heels of his hands to his eyes as if to force the tears back inside himself, and that’s how Daichi finds him. The captain mercifully doesn’t ask him what’s the matter, only tells him, in a low, steady voice, that he’s buying pork buns for the team and that he’ll save one for Sugawara if he doesn’t feel like coming down to the mart with the others just now.
Sugawara pulls himself together. He goes to the mart, eats his bun, laughs and jokes with his team, or what's left of it. He's always had a talent for putting others at ease, which sometimes means hiding his own unease, and hiding it well. No one looking at him would have any idea he was even upset.
***
"i'm not coming back unless Asahi comes back," Noya says, and means it. He fixes Daichi with a determined glare, but can't quite seem to keep it on his face. "If I play without him, and we win - it'll be like we didn't need him. And I won't believe that."
He kind of feels like crying. He won't, not with Daichi looking at him all - all sympathetic, like this. Noya's not a big crier, generally; he's cried in public only a handful of times in his life, never on the court, and never in front of the captain, not even during their most frustrating and humiliating losses in his first year, and he's absolutely determined not to start now.
"I know it cost him, to make the decision to leave," Daichi says gently, pitching his voice low enough to be nearly hidden under the squeak of sneakers and the shouts of the rest of the team running drills and stretching, making practice throws and badgering each other. "He misses you, and Suga and the others. He feels guilty. Give him a little more time."
Noya's face tries to do something awful - an ugly, wrenching twist of his mouth that he only forces back with a supreme effort - not gonna cry, not gonna fucking cry - and he makes sure his expression is set into a stern and even mask before he risks replying, "Don't worry, Captain. I'm not interested in bothering him."
It comes out bitter but unwavering, which will have to be good enough this time. He turns his back on Daichi to start his diving drills so he doesn’t have to see the kind concern on his stupid face anymore.
He still wears the elbow pad Asahi made for him because, well. Because it helps, and it was a gift, and Asahi hasn't asked for it back.
Asahi still hasn't spoken to him at all.
***
Something draws Noya's gaze to the doors of the gym just as Asahi steps inside.
It makes sense; hasn't he spent more than a year fiddling the dials of his awareness until he's locked onto Asahi's frequency, until he can sense his presence at fifty paces? Hasn't he calibrated his entire being around Asahi's and Suga's positions relative to himself? Isn't that the whole point of him, to know where they are, to know where the ball is, to connect them? Isn’t that what he’s for?
He calls out Asahi's name involuntarily, it just kinda rips out of his mouth, but Asahi's eyes find him even before the sound does, and Noya has a thunderbolt of a thought: maybe he's locked onto me too .
Sugawara sees it happen, pausing up by the net. Sees the broken pieces coming back into alignment. He smiles. The tension he hadn’t even realized he was carrying, in his neck, in his shoulders, lessens just a hair, as if he’s finally struck upon the right stretch to begin loosening a clenched muscle.
Nishinoya's face is pure surprise for a long, hanging instant, and Asahi's first and greatest fear - that Nishinoya really doesn't want to see him here, here or anywhere, that there's no fixing what's broken between them - seems more tangible than it did even in the entire past month of restless hours spent lying awake in the dark.
But then Nishinoya calls out his name, and without meaning to Asahi feels himself smiling.
***
Spiking from the back half of the court gives Asahi the vantage point he hadn’t known he needed. Gives him a wide view of the net, of Sugawara preparing to toss, of the entire opposing team rather than just Aone and the other blockers, the well-guarded areas and the spaces between them. And, out of the corner of his eye, Nishinoya, coiled to spring, watching Asahi with total ravenous concentration.
He slams the spike dead-on. It feels so good, he’d forgotten.
Blocked.
No!
He tracks the ball in a sort of haze as it travels on the other side of the net for a few seconds, and then it’s arching back over to Karasuno’s side, high over the heads of the blockers, over his own head, and then as he turns to keep tracking it, he sees a streak of movement so low in his vision that for a moment he thinks he’s lost track of the ball after all and it’s rolling along the court, but the streak resolves itself into Nishinoya, throwing himself full length on his stomach, flinging out his hand at the last possible instant, palm flat against the floor, and the ball is bouncing off the back of his hand and it’s airborne again, and the Karasuno players are screaming, and Nishinoya is scrambling to his feet, eyes crackling lightning, in absolute battle mode, fuck, it's like he's wreathed in flames, and then Sugawara is shouting “Asahi!” and the ball is coming to him again and Asahi finally feels it all snap back into place then, the web of light connecting him and Sugawara and Nishinoya and every other player on their side of the court, he swears when he bends his legs to jump this time it’s like he’s moving the front legs of a many-limbed beast, his drawn-back arm ready to strike like the head of a snake, simultaneously aware of the ball’s trajectory (not the freaky crosshair business Kageyama described to him once, but a gut-deep awareness, a sureness and a rightness) and each panting sweating body on this side of the net, all of them breathing and moving and leaping and yelling and fighting as one creature.
The jump-spike takes him high enough to see clearly the entire back half of Dateko’s side of the court, wide open. Even as the flat of his hand connects with the ball, smashing it with brutal gale-force directly through the waiting arms of the blockers, Asahi can already see where it will strike the court, can already hear the sound.
The ball lands so hard it compresses into a comical squashed shape and goes rebounding wildly off across the gym.
There’s the whistle, and then there’s total silence for so long Asahi thinks time must be frozen again, or maybe he’s lost his hearing suddenly, and then from behind him Nishinoya releases a wordless, triumphant howl, and that gets time running properly, and now everyone is shouting and crowding around Asahi and slapping at him and leaping into the air just like a real pack of crows, and Nishinoya is there, leaping the highest, face alight, and Sugawara, clasping his shoulder, and Asahi is sweaty and out of breath and exhausted and he has never felt higher in his life.
***
They start doing their schoolwork together again.
At first, it’s just that. They’ll pick someone’s house (almost always Asahi’s or Sugawara’s, as the tiny house Nishinoya shares with his grandfather is already cramped as it is), bring their assignments and snacks from the mart, and stay up studying in companionable quiet, broken up at intervals by Nishinoya’s easy chatter. Asahi always gets the sense Nishinoya’s studying is less studying and more asking the upperclassmen for the answers to problems they studied a year ago or reading the material aloud in funny voices while taking zero notes, but it makes him and Sugawara laugh, and he’s missed laughing with Sugawara, and he’s missed lying on his stomach on his bedroom floor with Nishinoya pressed against his side, both of them reading from their respective textbooks.
And if Nishinoya takes to leaning his head against Asahi’s shoulder while he reads, or if Sugawara starts absently tapping the ball of his foot against the side of Asahi’s leg in time with the faint music coming from Asahi’s sister’s room down the hall, well. Asahi certainly isn’t about to stop them.
***
The setting sun washes the radio tower in gold.
Asahi climbs the stairs at a measured pace, grounding himself in the repetitive stretch and burn in his legs, in the hot metal of the railing beneath his palm. Summer has arrived for real. His shirt is sticking to his back by the time he reaches the top deck and knocks on the closed door.
Nishinoya opens it immediately, as if he'd been standing on the other side, listening to Asahi's footsteps on the stairs. His pointed little face is serious. "I'm not gonna apologize to you, Asahi-san."
"No," Asahi says. The sun warms his back. "I'm going to apologize to you."
That seems to jolt Nishinoya, the serious frown dropping away to reveal something open and vulnerable.
Asahi tilts his head at the stairs. "Do you want to, uh, come down? Walk awhile? I don't want to do it here if you -"
"No." Nishinoya catches Asahi's arm as he begins to back away, holds him in place for a long moment. "I want you to do it here."
Asahi should really quit getting caught off guard by his strength, but the way Nishinoya is looking at him, the way his eyes are locked with Asahi's, he couldn't break that link even if he wanted to (and he does want to, at least some part of him does, just a little, he's still a coward after all, but Nishinoya won't let him).
He opens his mouth, preparing to deliver the apology he’d practiced over and over in his head and under his breath on the way here, but what his body does instead is bend his head down and take Nishinoya’s face in his hands and kiss him, long and slow, and Nishinoya takes a fistful of his shirt and Asahi expects to be pushed away, is bracing for it, but Nishinoya just drags him closer, surges up against his mouth and makes him forget how to breathe.
“Sorry,” he gasps immediately when they draw apart, feeling the heat rise in his face. “I know that’s not a substitute for talking -”
“Yeah, well, I changed my mind,” says Nishinoya, with maybe the shyest grin Asahi’s ever seen on him. He gives a tug on Asahi’s shirtfront, unbalancing him enough to get him to take a staggered step forward, drawing him into the radio tower. “I don’t want you to apologize anymore.”