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Nishinoya’s been pacing the room for the last twenty minutes, phone in his hand and lower lip snagged in his teeth. He’s thrumming - you can feel it from across the room. His insides still wound up tight, his blood still pumped thick with adrenaline from a hard game and even though it ended in victory, he can’t seem to bring himself to just...stop.
He gets like this, sometimes. Still dressed his jersey, his hair damp with sweat at his temples as he pauses near the foot of the bed. His eyes darting down to his phone in his hand where you see his thumb swipe across the screen. Opening the same apps, refreshing, then closing them. Opening them again, refreshing, then closing. His eyes not even cataloging what appears on the screen as he shifts his weight mindlessly between the balls of his two feet.
He moves a few feet across the room, twitchy, drumming his fingers on the edge of the little desk tucked into the corner, before pulling up his phone again. Scrolling, refreshing, closing. His shoulders rising and falling on some tension that’s pulled taut in his chest, unable to loosen his jaw. Unable to stop his mind from whirling around in his skull, thoughtless and without direction. Flitting from one stimulus to the next as his body slowly, slowly, slowly drains of the deafening high of an intense game.
He needs help, sometimes. Or he’ll do this for hours.
“Noya,” you call, voice soft. You’re not far, resting on the bed in the corner of the room but he doesn’t even hear you. You don’t think he can hear anything over the rushing in his ears and the roar of his heart.
His back is to you, his jersey sticking between his shoulder blades. Damp with sweat, and the sight of bruises starting to bloom across the backs of his arms has something stirring in you. This always happens, too. By tomorrow morning his body will be littered in them. Dark, angry smudges across his arms and his legs from throwing his body all over the court. Crashing down and jumping high, pushing himself until his lungs give out and his legs shake so hard you can see them tremble from way up high in the stands.
You push yourself to your feet, and he doesn’t notice that either. Spaced out, his eyes unfocused ahead as he breathes. Reliving some memory, some missed receive or amazing set, no doubt, and he startles gently beneath your hand when your fingers touch at his wrist.
He looks at you like he had no idea you were even in the room, his eyebrows up by his hairline. He smiles when he turns and sees you. Faint but reflexive but it falls just as fast and your heart aches for him.
You slip your hand in his and squeeze, and he squeezes back. A hard pulse of his hand around yours, and when you reach out and thumb gently at a bruise blooming on his cheek, it knocks a breath loose from his chest.
He exhales, like he’s coming back to himself a little. His shoulders dropping, another small smile finding his mouth. Exhaustion lurking there behind his body’s buzzing, frantic come-down.
“Hi,” he says, and it almost makes you laugh because he sounds a little stunned. Like he’s surprised that you’re there, but happy for it. Like you didn’t greet him after the game, sprinting to him on the court and throwing yourself at him for him to catch you. Basking in the raucous joy of the moment as he threw back his head and screamed, as the fans in stands rushed the court and joined in with the team’s delighted celebration.
You match his smile, unable to stop yourself. Something in your chest clenches again, a yearning, warm pulse, when you see that really, he’s barely still standing. The adrenaline coursing through him the only thing keeping him upright when all he needs to do is to stop. To rest.
You slip past him and ease yourself onto the desk. Scooting back until the edge of it bumps against the backs of your knees, your ankles swinging down. When you part your knees, he steps into the place between them without prompting. Pulled into your orbit like you’re a planet and he’s your moon, until your knees nudge gently on either side of his hips.
You reach up for his face and he lets out a breath. Exhaling softly, letting his face rest in the cradle of your palms. This is familiar, to the both of you. This is you holding out a life-preserver and him grabbing it with both hands. This is you offering, and him accepting. Just a little help, to slow down. To stop. To rest his aching body and his deliriously whirling mind.
His hands settle on your thighs. Resting there, fingers spread over the soft skin. Still taped from the game, and you barely resist the urge to reach down and take them into your own. Holding his face instead and letting your thumbs swipe soft, rhythmic lines across his cheeks. Breathing slowly in and out and feeling him trying to match you, his eyes fluttering softly closed as he does.
“You’re done,” you murmur. “Game’s over. You did well.”
He nods, eyes still closed. You can feel his cheeks heat a touch beneath your palms and your heart flutters with something warm and delicate. You’d expect anyone with his level of skill to know it. To boast and brag and carry it around like a medal around their neck, but he doesn’t. He just wants to play, just wants to help, and you watch any utterance of praise was over him like an ocean wave.
You stand like that for some time, fitted together like pieces of a puzzle. His hands drifting up your thighs until they curl loosely around the curve of your hip, settling close against you as you hold him and ground him. Your breathing matching as you draw in slow, deep breaths and let them out just as deliberately. Feeling the thrum beneath his skin begin to dissipate, to ease a little, with each slow pass of your thumbs over the swell of his cheeks, until he’s there with you. At last. Back within himself, present, and you can feel in your bones the utter exhaustion left in the wake of the adrenaline as it trickles slowly out of him.
He needs to rest. To drink some water and sleep through the night, and he’ll wake in the morning his usual self. Bright eyed and bushy tailed, wired on not the hollow buzz of a post-game adrenaline high but simply on being the person that he is. Simply on being Noya.
“Let’s go,” you murmur, satisfied that the edge has come off in his insides. Tugging his hand, and there’s perhaps no bigger proof of his fatigue than the fact that he goes wordlessly behind you. Letting you pull him gently towards the bathroom down the hall, his socked feet heavy and a little stumbly on the wood floor.
You’ve done this before, enough that you watch him shift as you bring him through the threshold of the bathroom. He exhales, his head dipping forward a little, as you position him in the middle of the tiled room, like he’s been given permission to. Like he’s relieved to feel the thrum going from his body. Like he can finally breathe again now that it is.
He goes still, there, where you stand him. His eyelids growing a little heavy as he watches you tend to him.
He’d fought you on this, the first few times. Been a little squirrely about it, insisting on doing it all himself. Found it weird, probably, but then he’d fallen asleep afterwards to your fingers in his hair and he’d slept better after a match than he had in years, and well. Now he knows he doesn’t have to pretend that he’s got it all under control. He knows that he’s allowed this. That you want nothing more than to help guide him through this state until he comes out on the other side of it whole.
You lift his jersey over his head, helping it get around his head and over his ears, and let it fall to the floor. The smell of him washes over you, spiced and a little ripe, like sweat and a pounding heart, and you can’t stop yourself from humming softly. Drawing in the scent as you touch softly at a bruise that’s blooming wide over his ribs. A remnant of a receive that had sent him sprawling into the chairs alongside the court in a moment that had lodged your heart in your throat.
Seeing him like this is...a sacrament. A rare and fleeting thing, to see your Noya, the feral, grinning, wild creature that he is swaying softly on his feet. Silent except for the quiet intake and exhale of his breath, his eyes heavy as they watch you. As they trust you and the brush of your fingers over the span of his chest, feeling the sturdy muscle beneath that packs his small frame.
You take his hands in yours and search for the end of the athletic tape, your thumbs massaging the taut muscle in the meat of his palm absently as you begin the slow process of unspooling it. One finger at a time, murmuring a soft apology when the tape catches on his skin, though you know he barely even registers the feeling when his whole body probably feels like a fresh, throbbing bruise.
You snap the waistband of his shorts softly when you finish with the tape, a little tease that has him huffing quietly, before you move past him to get the water running hot and strong. Cranking the dial and putting a hand under the flow of water until it begins to heat and fill the room with steam.
You hear movement behind you, the soft whisper of fabric over skin, and know that he’s stripped down to nothing.
You look over your shoulder and find him standing there. Bare and bruised in the incandescent light, his body tight, wired muscle, and a spool of heat dips in your belly in spite of yourself.
You motion for him, once the water is warm, and he goes. Stepping under the spray of water, but as he brushes by you, his hand finds yours. His hand, big for his size, curling around your wrist and tugging. Gently, but enough to nearly tip you off your feet. Unmistakable in it’s intent.
Your breath goes thick in your lungs and you turn to watch where he’s already stepped under the spray of water. Turning his face towards it, his hair going dark and soaked under the rush of it, and you feel your whole body flush with knowing.
Sometimes he just needs the gentle nudge to take care of himself. To take a hot shower and drink a bottle or two of water and to lay down and breathe. On those nights, after those games, he showers slow and sleepy, and you meet him in bed, where you spend the rest of the night letting your fingernails scratch his scalp and murmur quietly about all the amazing moments of the match until he drifts off. Sometimes that’s what he needs.
And other times. Well.
It takes you just a moment to strip down, your oversized t-shirt and sleep shorts joining his jersey on the floor of the bathroom, and when you step under the spray of hot water, he moves to you at once.
A soft little gasp slips from your lips when he gets an arm around your waist and tugs you to him. His eyes closed against the rush of the shower water but pulling you until your chests gently collide. Your arms lift, coming to circle loosely around his neck, as his hands fit around the curve of your waist, and when he tugs you closer still, intent written over his face, you meet him in kind.
The kiss is slow, at first. A soft press of lips in the steam, no sound but the rush of water and the whisper of your lips against each other. A gentle, knowing thing. Familiar and warm.
You fit together like this, pressed together under the rushing water. Bodies warm and slick where they touch, one of his hands curling around your jaw to tilt your face towards him while the other spreads across your hip.
You trade slow kisses back and forth beneath the water spray. In no hurry as you remind yourselves of each other. Of the slow drag of lips against lips, breath heated between you. Tasting into each other’s mouths with slow delving tongues, drawing soft groans from each other that thicken up and dissipate on the heavy steam.
Grounding yourselves in the gravity of the other, clinging to each other and rooting yourselves in the now. Touching each other with gentle, drifting hands, pressing fingertips. Mapping out skin that you know as well as your own, the familiar dips and curves of muscle and bone that feel to you like coming home.
You lose time, doing this. Lost in the feeling of his hands on you, strong and sure. Drifting on something of a haze, the intimacy of the moment making your heart feel hazy as he sucks on your lower lip and draws a quiet little gasp from your lungs.
Eventually, begrudgingly, you reach blindly behind him for the loofa hanging there. Because if you don’t move this along to actual washing, the two of you will just make out under the spray until the water goes cold. It’s happened before and the sudden rush of needle-sharp ice water demolishes whatever soothing of him you’ve managed to do, and you’re not willing to risk it today. Not when he’s gone so soft and pliant under your hands. Not when he’s being so good.
He makes a soft sound when you pull back from him, a frustrated little huff, and your hand pulses on his forearm as you suds up the loofa, because you know. You understand. He’s actually pouting when your eyes find his through the steam, his mouth hooked down in a little curve, and the sight of it makes a quiet laugh bubble up in your chest. Impossibly fond, your chest clenching down on a little ache of affection when you bring the loofah up to his chest and start to gently scrub.
The pressure of your hand and the soft scrape of the sponge over his skin drains the frown from him near as soon as it starts, the strokes of your hand over his chest and shoulders firm and gliding smooth with soap. You move slowly but surely, working the loofah in soothing circles as you go. Lifting the sweat from his skin, pressing down on the distant ache of his muscles in a sort of massage, and you watch as his eyes fall gratifyingly closed again on a quiet sigh. Drifting back under, just like that.
You move him as you need to, lifting his arms on either side to scrub beneath them, your eye helplessly training on the thatch of dark hair nestled deep there, lifting your nose to try to catch a fresh whiff of his scent on the air even though the steam has dispersed it all. Loving the strength of his body beneath your hands as he lets you move him, hopelessly addicted to the quiet power that he carries in every cell of his body.
He’s gone a little hard, by the time you’re satisfied with your work. His cock a little thick against his thigh as you run a hand over his shoulders and down to his belly to wash the last of the suds down his body and down the drain. Your belly grips at the sight, a little twinge of heat lighting there, and you allow yourself an indulgent moment to imagine taking him here and now. To imagine kneeling down and nuzzling your face into the crease of his thigh, drawing in the scent of him there. To think of what his cock would feel like, fattening up on your tongue. To remember the taste of him, and your mouth fills with saliva at the simple memory of it. Wanting it. Aching for it.
But that is not your aim, not tonight, so you do a cursory scrub over yourself with the sponge instead before reaching to get a pump of shampoo in the palm of your hand and reaching for him once more.
He helps you sometimes. Takes over for you under the spray of the hot water, cleaning you with the broad spread of his hand, his breath quickening, and those times usually do devolve into something more, there, with the tile of the bath squeaking quietly beneath your feet. But he’s too far gone tonight, too thoroughly zoned out into a quiet blissful haze, and you find yourself achingly grateful for it. To see him standing there, his shoulders heavy with exhaustion and his eyelids heavy, trusting, as you tangle your fingers into his hair and begin to work the shampoo into the thick locks.
You watch him as you clean his hair, because you can. Cataloging every small thing, wanting to remember this the next time he’s shouting and leaping and otherwise being the chaotic tornado that he simply is. It’s a rare sight, to see Nishinoya blissed and quiet and still, and you want to commit it to your memory every single time you’re graced with it.
He is so handsome. Unbearably so, if anyone were to ask you. Large eyes that spark with life and fire, cheekbones angled and sharp. A full mouth that you lose yourself in staring at more often than you’d like to admit, and an expression that whirls freely between emotions. Every single thought he has playing across his face like a movie screen, every emotion grand and pronounced and feeling.
He’d told you, on one of your first dates, that girls had never really been much interested in him, and you’d scoffed at him. Actually scoffed, a soft little disbelieving huff falling from your lips, because you simply couldn’t believe it. Still can’t, as your fingernails scratch at his scalp and you watch a responding shudder trickle down his spine, but secretly, selfishly, wickedly grateful for it, because it means he’s here with you. It means he’s yours.
He closes his eyes as you tip his head beneath the spray until the water runs clear, working your fingers against his scalp to loosen any remaining suds and hearing him groan quietly as you do. He stays there, his body leaning lightly against yours as you make quick work of your own hair, scrubbing shampoo through and then rinsing it clean, your heart lurching helplessly when his arms come up and wrap loosely around your waist. Keeping you close as you watch yourself to keep from knocking your elbows against his face as you wring the last of the suds from your hair.
He shivers when you turn the water off, a full-bodied, quiet thing, and your whole body aches at the sight of it. His eyes are open when you tug him gently from the shower and onto the bathmat, but heavy-lidded. His bones looking like they’re made of lead, weighing him down as he stands there and lets you fuss over him. Toweling him dry as he blinks slowly and breathes deeply, so thoroughly blissed out that you could do anything to him, if you wanted to. It makes your insides soar, to see it. The trust there, freely given in the soft, yellowed light of a tiny little bathroom as he simply allows himself to exist and knows that you’ll take care of him. That you’ll give him what he needs.
You get the both of you dressed in soft sleep clothes and back into the bedroom, Noya letting you herd him gently this way and that until you’re able to push him down onto the plush of his bed and he just goes. Collapsing down like his strings have been cut and groaning softly as he rolls to make room for you. Lifting his arms like it’s effort to do so when he grabs for you and manages to get a hand on the hem of your shirt, tugging you down with him and making a soft flurry of giggles slip past your lips as you settle yourself down against him.
The reading lamp on the desk is still on, casting the both of you in faint light and comforting shadow as you lay there beside each other. Curled up on your sides and facing each other, your faces just inches apart. His breath is warm on your cheek, slow breaths that promise a deep sleep, but his eyes are on yours as his hand comes up to touch at your face. Gentle, always, as his palm touches your cheek and you watch his emotion play across his tired face. As easy to read as if he spoke aloud. Soft, aching sincerity, fondness and affection, flicker there, heavy in his tired eyes as he thumbs gently at your mouth and lets out a quiet breath. Past speaking in this state but you understand him, and your hand comes up to curl loosely around his wrist. Feeling the healthy, steady beat of his pulse there and finding comfort in it.
He’s fighting it, the exhaustion that’s plain on his face. Wanting, it seems, to stay here in this moment with you. Breathing together in the dim light, bodies warm and loose and pink from the hot water and the steam. He needs a little more, to push him towards that inevitable rest. Just one last nudge.
You reach for him, touching the sliver of skin above his waistband and lower, and your belly flips at the way his face collapses when your palm spreads easily over the thick of his cock. Still a little hard there in his sweatpants, a need that isn’t urgent but pulses through him all the same, and you can’t help but murmur his name when you grip gently and the breath rushes hotly from his lungs into the space between you.
You scoot closer to him, shifting over the bedding until your knees bump softly together, and then you tilt your face to him and press your mouth to his. Swallowing the soft groan that falls from his lips as your fingers curl around the shape of him through the cloth, feeling him stir and grow at once at your touch.
You kiss him, then. Indulgently, more for you than anything else, shivering when his lips part and you taste his tongue, and you slip your hand beneath the waistband of his pants and feel his whole body lurch softly when your warm hand closes around him.
You hold him there for a moment, his cock hot and thick and smooth like silk in your palm as you breathe out your nose and suck delicately at his tongue. Desire stirring in your belly as you feel the fever hot slick prespend smear across the pulse in your wrist when his cock pulses in your hand.
You can hear his heartbeat, can feel it grow strong as you grip gently with your hand. Drawing his hips forward in a little nudge he can’t seem to help, doesn’t seem to notice, as another fat gob of prespend leaks from the tip and heats the thin skin of your wrist.
You draw in a breath, feeling a little shaky, a little drunk with want, and then let your hand drift up his cock. Closing gently around the head of it, gathering the heated slick there in your palm, before gliding your hand back down in a tight little squeeze of your fist. A firm work of his cock that has his hips jerking against your hand.
“H-ah,” he breathes, his brows drawing on his face, his eyes squeezing closed.
“Noya,” you murmur, your cheeks hot from the slippery pulls of desire in your blood, and when he nods in response, your name whispering from between his lips, you know you have him.
You end up pushing his sweatpants down his hips, bunching up around his thighs, pressing your body to his as you grip him tight and begin to work him between you. Slow, but sure. Steady. His cock thick and pitch-hot as it glides through your fist, leaking continuous splurts of slick with every pass that you gather and spread down. Just enough to ease the way, to help his cock glide through your fist with soft, wet sounds. The catch of your skin on him just friction enough to make his hand fist in the hem of your shirt and his breath to catch in his throat
It’s a means to an end. Far from the best sex you’ve ever had with him, far from the most pleasure you’ve ever given him, but it has him panting against you all the same. His cheeks heated and flushed in the dim light from the desk lamp, his mouth dropped open on hot, exhaling puffs of breath. He needs this, needs you to draw this last bit of tension from his body, to dispel and free it into the night air so he can finally let himself go, and you know from the pitch of his breathing that it won’t be long as you work his cock into the tight, slippery grip of your hand.
He ends up gathering you close. Unable to stop himself from pulling you tight, so that your hand is bumping against both of your bellies as you work him. He kisses you when he can, mouth wet and soft against yours, murmuring nonsense against your lips. Delirious, honeyed words that only make some sense, your name blurring with whispered curses and heated catches of breath, promises of affection, of adoration, hanging heavy in the air between you and touching at the skin of your face like a caress.
“You can,” you tell him, lips brushing across his. Nose nudging against his cheek, a soft murmur into that skin. “You can, Noya, it’s okay.”
His pleasure builds in him slowly in him, echoed to you as his breath pants across your face, and you ease him across that threshold in a way that has his body heaving on a desperate exhale and then shuddering loose as he finds his release. Nothing explosive, nothing shocking and sudden, just a soft cresting and a garbled moan into your throat as his cock stiffens in your fist and then kicks hard. Lurching in your grip as he comes, spitting fat ropes of spend up between your bodies that feel molten when they spatter on your skin where your shirt has ridden up.
You shudder too, unable to help it as you watch him come apart. His forehead thumping against your shoulder as his hips rut softly against your fist, letting you wring him dry. His voice going weak and crackled as he moans out his pleasure, as you draw the very last of his strength from him with firm, sure pulls of your hand.
You lay there with him and listen to him come through it, your own heart thudding hard in your ears at the feeling of his release painted up on your sleep shirt. Feeling like it’s singeing the skin beneath it, it’s so hot.
The room is silent and dark, save for the heavy pants of your breathing, and you keep him there close. Watching his face in the dim light as he slowly catches his breath, his hands loosening in your clothes as the last of it drains from him. Keeping him there in your hand as his spend begins to cool on your wrist, schooling your breathing to be slow and steady as soon as you manage to get it back. Knowing that he’s just teetering on the edge of something now, and needing fiercely not to disturb it.
It takes a few minutes of this stillness, of quiet, warmed bodies lying beside each other, before you see the tension ease between his eyebrows. Before he lets out a breath, deep, from his chest, and you see his shoulders droop forward. Sleep settles over him like a blanket, the last of the day finally, slowly draining from him, and you wait a few minutes more. Waiting until his rest has taken deep root in him, feeling yourself weigh down with it too, before you move carefully. Drawing your stained shirt up over your head and dropping it to the floor behind you. Goosebumps shivering down your arms as your bare skin slides against his when you settle back against the weight of his body.
Your center pulses faintly, distantly, on some lingering, simmering want, but you let it go from you on a quiet exhale. Shifting until your chest is pressed to his, tucking your face under his jaw and against the warm skin of his throat. Knowing that he’ll spend the day tomorrow thanking you for tonight, like he always does. Waking with dark, rested eyes and kissing you slow and deep. Making his way down your body and settling between your legs to kiss at the insides of your thighs and touch where you’ve gone heated and slick for him. Repaying you, many times over, with the hot press of his mouth against your sex, teasing you over peaks and valleys of pleasure, no matter how many times you’ve told him that to do this for him is no burden at all. That to be this for him is a gift.
It comes for you too, then. Sleep, heavy and warm and dreamy. Settling deep in your bones as your breathing slows and evens to match his and you let your eyes drift closed. Feeling his heartbeat pressed between you and letting the sound of it fill your mind. Clinging to that steady rhythm and the promise of his heart, as you drift slowly off and away. Knowing that he’ll be there for you, bright like the sun and yours yours yours, when he wakes.