BLOOMS | [ various oneshots ] ▼

❁ Sleep | Tenya Iida

❁ [for ;; ayatoaki] ❁

The day has been long and tiresome, and with every passing blink, every fleeting moment, your eyelids seem to hang down upon your eyes, obscuring your vision and forcing you to view the darkness of the impending slumber your friends had been so quick to ease you into. It was just the right state between being awake and being asleep. The sort of state when, regardless of external stimuli, your mind raced into the sunlight but your body clung to the shadows; your psyche plowed on whilst your body fell behind. The sort of state that encompasses everyone at one point or another but persists like a prevailing pest for hours on end. There is no sleep for a mind too awake, and there is no wake for a body too asleep.

You rolled over in your covers. The bed felt far too hard and cold, like a chunk of ice, and the blankets were far too hot and heavy, piles of steaming humidity unable to dissolve into calmer airs. Brightness hit your corneas hard, emitted from your ever-present phone. The same messages kept popping up.

GO TO SLEEP
go to sleep
gO tO sLeEp
GO to SlEeP

A sigh filled your lungs as you clicked the device off. Despite your friends' best wishes, nothing seemed to be working. The day - or, rather, night - continued to drag onwards. It was a tired traveler that dragged its feet upon the ground as though cinderblocks.

The abrupt sound of the door opening caused you to sit up within the dimness of your early-morning room. "Mm...?" Your voice trailed off as you saw the figure hovering in the doorway.

Tenya.

His face, brightened by the glow of your phone, as more frantic messages demanding your rest flooded your device, was unusually soft, his angular features blended into curvatures against the gradient of light and dark, glasses sitting still on his face, catching the light in its cavorting, caracoling comportment. A pile of paperwork was stashed beneath the crook of his arm, filled with his fastidious flicks of the pen, no doubt homework. His lips parted slightly, and his eyes grew gentle.

"[Y/n]?" he murmured, the concern in his voice just barely evident. "What're you doing up?"

Your gaze flicked from his face, flourishing with fretfulness, to the foot of your bed. The mattress let out a small groan as he climbed onto the pillow next to you, sitting cross-legged, eyes never leaving you. "I can't sleep."

A flicker of frustration, followed by a frantic fervor, wishful to lift whatever blanket of detriments draped across your doted-upon mind. His hand found its way to your hair and flitted through it like butterfly kisses. "You should have gotten me sooner," he chastised delicately, his touch ginger against your forehead as he brushed a few stray strands out of your view.

"I'm sorry." Every fingerprint felt like explosions, shooting through your synapses, toying with your sympathy and tugging at your sentiments, mixing regret with your initial choice to do what you'd believed to be right. "I know that you had a lot going on, and I - didn't want to be a bother..."

His eyes were wide with rueful revelation. "Love..." his hands traveled down to your cheeks, to your chin, where they paused, charily, circumspectly cupping your face in his smooth-skinned palms. "You are never, ever a bother." He looked on with pleading eyes.

"But...just look at all of that," you rebutted, reaching out to the stack of stationary under his arm, running your fingers across its gargantuan girth.

His eyebrows came down hard upon his eyes. "This," he began, "is nothing." He allowed the paperwork to fall to the bedsheets, then shoved it back, sending it flying freely through the empty air behind him before settling, strewn, on the carpet floor. His presence shifted closer to you, until he held you, head to his neck, one hand in the small of your back and the other against the posterior portion of your head, pulling you close. Warm breath, welcome, tranquilizing, billowed against your face, rippling across your hair. "You are everything."

The flush to your face felt flamingly obvious, a flash of sound in the silence. He was so close. You leaned into him, burying your face against his sturdy chest, his collarbones meeting your forehead as you melted against his heat. Your eyelashes flittered, battering against his skin, before your heavy eyelids drooped farther, finally shutting. "I love you." Your breath was equally balmy.

The last thing you heard before drifting off into the so deeply desired sleep that had seemed unfeasible mere seconds ago came from Tenya. His chest moved ever so slightly as he returned, "I love you, too. Have a good rest, [y/n]."

❤️

[My apologies for this being short ;-; I wanted to write something sweet with Iida in it to fill in the emptiness that waiting for exams leaves you with, but I hope this was alright! <3]