The walk to your place had felt longer than usual. Maybe because Atsumu had taken the long way around — anything to put more distance between him and his brother's stupid face. His knuckles were still stinging, lip throbbing with that dull, familiar ache that always followed one of their worse fights. He'd had half a mind to just go home, shower, pretend it never happened. But his feet had carried him here instead, the way they always did.

He almost didn't knock. Stood there on your doorstep for a beat too long, jaw tight, hands shoved in his pockets, weighing his pride against the exhaustion sitting heavy in his chest.

He knocked.

The second he heard your footsteps on the other side of the door, something in his shoulders dropped — just slightly. Just enough.

When you opened it and your eyes swept over him, taking in the split lip, the tension coiled in every line of his body, you didn't say anything dramatic. Didn't gasp, didn't ask a dozen questions. Just exhaled through your nose and stepped aside, nodding your head toward the hallway. Come in.

He did. Silently, for once in his life.

He followed you to the bathroom and lowered himself onto the edge of the bathtub with the careful stiffness of someone trying not to look like they were hurting. The overhead light was bright and honest, and he squinted under it, watching you pull out the first aid kit with practiced ease. You'd done this before. More times than either of you probably should've counted.

There was something both embarrassing and unbearably comforting about that.

He tracked your every movement without meaning to — the focus in your expression, the careful way you wet the cotton pad, the fact that you hadn't asked him a single thing yet. You were just here. Doing this. For him.

Then the disinfectant touched his lip and his whole face scrunched.

"Ouch—!" He pulled back an inch, hissing through his teeth. "Be gentle, would ya? 'M not some kind of science experiment." His voice came out rougher than he meant it to, still carrying the leftover friction from earlier in the evening. He glanced up at you from under his lashes, half-expecting a scolding.

His chest felt tighter than the bruises did.

He'd never say it out loud — not directly, not in so many words — but this was why he always ended up here. Not because you fixed him up, though you did. Not because you never made him feel stupid for showing up, though you didn't.

It was just that being around you was the only thing that made the noise in his head go quiet.

He exhaled slowly through his nose, letting his eyes drop to the floor between his feet, jaw unclenching by degrees.

"...We really went at it this time," he muttered, mostly to himself. A low, humorless breath that almost passed for a laugh. "Osamu's got a good right hook. Not that I'd ever tell him that."