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They're already yelling at each other before their helmets are even off, muffled swearing and bitching as they struggle with the straps of their pilot's chairs and fumble out of their star fighters, Nishinoya so mad that his foot slips off a rung of the ladder and he only catches himself at the last second, risking a busted ankle or worse.
"—what you were THINKING," Nishinoya is hollering when the compression of his helmet lifts with a hiss and he yanks it off. He looks ready to conk Tanaka right over the head with it. "You broke formation!"
"I saved your stupid ass, is what I did!" Tanaka yells back, fogging the impact glass of his helmet before he yanks it off. "He was right on top of you! You would have taken that hit square in the cockpit!"
"I'm the defensive flank, that's what I'm supposed to do!" Nishinoya all but stomps his foot in frustration. "That's what my armored ship is MADE TO DO, instead of your flimsy scrap-pile over there!"
"Don't you bring Kiyoko into this! And I have a job too, I'm a Striker and that's what I did, so a little thank you isn't too much to—"
"I'll show YOU a thank you with my FIST up your—"
"THAT'S ENOUGH," Orange Squad leader Sawamura announces, neither of them having noticed his approach. He glares at them, arms folded, face unimpressed. "Both of you were at fault, and I assure you'll be hearing all about it in debrief. In the meantime, could you have this argument anywhere else, like perhaps your quarters instead of this hollow echoing hanger? After you do all your post-flight checks and hit the showers."
"Yes sir," both of them muttered, still glaring at each other.
"What was that?" Sawamura asked, scowl intensifying.
"SIR YES SIR!"
Tanaka kept sneaking angry glances over his shoulder the entire time he was refueling and checking over the Kiyoko. She'd been patched and repaired so many times Tanaka thought he basically had a new ship by now, the lighter armor of the fighter traded in for the speed he needed as a Striker, but that didn't give Nishinoya the right to badmouth her.
"You did just fine, baby girl," he told her, wincing as he saw the neat hole of a laser that had come within half a meter of nailing him right in the cockpit.
"No thanks to you, I'm sure," Sugawara said, startling Tanaka so that he banged his head on the underside of the nosecone. The mechanic grinned, enjoying that way too much. "Get out of here, you smell. I'll fix her up." Behind them there was a yelp and the sharp smell of burnt oil. Sugawara rolled his eyes, slapping the Kiyoko's side. "After I find out what Asahi's destroying now. I TOLD YOU NOT TO TOUCH THAT WITH YOUR BAD VIBES."
"Sorryyyyy," came Azumane's doleful response.
Tanaka is halfway through his shower when Nishinoya appears at the showered next to him. Neither of them says anything the whole time they're soaping up, rinsing down, or drying off. Nishinoya doesn't take the turn in the hallway that would lead him to his own room, though, following Tanaka to his. Tanaka doesn't argue with him, just slaps his palm on the reader and marches into his room, trusting Nishinoya to follow and shut the door behind him. He flops onto his bed, fading adrenaline making his body feel like it's weighed down with warp-capable tungsten.
Nishinoya crawls in after him, fitting himself along Tanaka's side in the narrow bunk, putting himself between Tanaka and the door. "Thanks," he finally says grudgingly. "But I could have taken that hit. If you had, there'd be pieces of you scattered from here to sector seven."
"Yeah," Tanaka admitted. "I did it before I thought, you know. I just saw the opening." Space battles were like that, especially for Strikers, who had a more natural aerodynamic sense and often got caught up in the flow of battle. It made for spectacular rescues sometimes, and other times spectacularly dead Strikers. "You're ok. Right?"
"Aside from the nightmare I'm gonna have every night for a week about watching you being blown up in front of me, yeah, great." Nishinoya pushes up on one elbow to kiss Tanaka, too roughly but warm and alive, making Tanaka's battle-stretched nerves hum like his on-board computer starting up or when the Carrier goes to warp, buzzing him from head to toes.
"Well," Tanaka says, breath short when the kiss breaks, "guess that's a good enough argument for keeping you up all night, right?"
"Try your best," Nishinoya snorts, eyes half-lidded. "Be nice if you didn't live up to the Striker stamina stereotype, for once."