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He didn’t remember all of it right away.
It came back to him in small fragments. Finding a playing card on a street. The run of raspberry preserves on a piece of toast. A scarf wrapped around his throat. Slivers of dreams that made their way into the beds of nails that he couldn’t shake.
But it’s because he remembered that he’s even here–sneaking snacks out of group meetings and sitting with Ann in the courtyard. Breaking cookies in half, peeling an orange for her. Never quite sure when they both realized that they were the only ones that remembered what happened. If it happened. If it wasn’t a shared delusion.
It didn’t make any sense. They didn’t talk about it. But they talk about him.
“You should keep an eye on him,” she said. “If he was like that there he might be like that here.”
Might.
Might doing quite the heavy-lifting. But Chishiya agrees—
Niragi was horrible. Plenty of people were horrible. He was horrible. Ann was horrible. The argument could be made for all of them. They did bad things. People are dead. They were lucky to have come back at all. But for some of them it’s easier to excuse death through their inaction than holding a gun and doing it themselves.
And with Niragi–
He’ll keep an eye on him.
So they moved in together.
It didn’t take that much effort to get their names together on the list. Chishiya told the man in charge of housing arrangements for the survivors that they were friends and they wanted to be placed together. If the man ever passed this information onto Niragi, he never said anything to Chishiya about it.
And then they had the apartment. Their own separate rooms. A bathroom stuck between their walls, a kitchen that was too small for the both of them. A little balcony that Chishiya would sit on sometimes with a book, letting the wind flip through the pages. Watching, but not questioning.
He makes snide comments to Chishiya sometimes, about people on a show they’re watching, about the clerk at the store down the street, about the therapist he was assigned (and stopped going to see less than a month later).
He doesn’t clean up after himself. He’s a decent cook but he’s a disaster in the kitchen. Always making messes and waiting for Chishiya to be the one to clean them up. He goes out drinking and stumbles home at least once a week, passed out on the kitchen or bathroom floor.
He is completely and totally aware of how annoying he is and he doesn’t care.
So, Niragi is a jerk. Still.
But that’s it.
It’s not it.
He’s a good kisser.
It’s a silly thing to cling onto, but it’s not something Chishiya can ignore. It shouldn’t have happened the first time, but he was taken off guard by it and—
Chishiya’s never been kissed.
That’s all really. And it was a nice feeling. And he didn’t know how to describe it. He’d spent most of his life devoted to studying that there wasn’t room for anything or anybody else. And then he was working and he didn’t want any crossover. Didn’t want someone asking him about how his day was and having to tell him that a child died because he made a choice he never should’ve had to make.
He hated it. But the kiss made him forget about everything for a minute. Let it slip away. Even though Niragi was drunk and seemed to regret it. It made Chishiya forget.
That’s all.
It’s not like it meant anything.
“Do you think he remembers?”
“No,” Chishiya says. “He doesn’t.”
“How can you be certain?”
Because Niragi wouldn’t have kissed him before.
Because Niragi would have tried to kill him again, most likely. Maybe he wouldn’t have fully committed a murder with real consequences hanging behind the action, but it was still something he probably would’ve hinted at beyond a jab here and there.
But mostly it’s because the Niragi before never would have kissed Chishiya. Drunk or not.
“I just know.”
It’s nothing.
The two of them really were nothing from the get go and proceeded to be nothing. Niragi just liked to kiss him. Usually it was because Chishiya was being annoying, which he didn’t even entirely mean to be. Niragi just naturally pulls that out of him. He’s not stupid, but he does stupid things. He doesn’t always think everything through. He moves too fast. Impulsive and arrogant.
He gets by a lot with that face of his. Even half of it all marked up, he could still do anything and everything he wanted.
Chishiya doesn’t think Niragi even knows that.
But—
Maybe Chishiya is annoying on purpose. Maybe he does it so Niragi will kiss him to shut him up.
Chishiya doesn’t drink anymore but sometimes Niragi makes him wish that he did. Aggravating little things that he does that makes him just want to forget who’s helping him forget. Because it would be easier if Niragi was anyone else. It’s what Chishiya did before.
He’s never kissed anyone, but he’s slept with strangers. It’s a relatively easy thing to do if someone can find the right place, wear the right clothes, act the right way. Chishiya just knew how to be that kind of person that men would take home or to hotel rooms or to cars parked in empty lots. He just had to get really drunk. He didn’t want to think about anything during his first time. He didn’t want it to be with a person he would see again.
But the first time he stops keeping Niragi at arm’s length when they kiss is the first time Niragi presses him against a wall and gets so close against him he can’t think straight. And it’s the point. It was the point before, too. That he’d forget about the blood on his hands and the feeling of latex and the smell of flesh and everything, everything but it’s different.
It’s different when Niragi pulls him up onto the counter, when he moves between Chishiya’s knees, when his hands drift from his side to pushing up his shirt, settling directly onto his skin. Kissing him rough and angry and hungry—
His mind is blank. There really isn’t anything on it at all. Everything completely blurred out, drowned underneath the feeling of someone touching him and that person being Niragi.
Chishiya would never tell him, but part of the reason he started to appreciate that it was him was because it made it like a punishment, too.
Maybe it’s why Chishiya has sex with him. Why he doesn’t even consider stopping Niragi when they find half of their clothes off and Niragi’s lips on his neck and his hand pressing into him and why Chishiya doesn’t try and keep himself quiet. It’s like a punishment for letting this happen.
So he doesn’t say that it hurts or that Niragi is going too fast or that he’s holding him too tightly. It’s good that there is some part of this still that Chishiya doesn’t like.
“Still nothing?”
“If he remembers anything he doesn’t tell me.”
“Why would he?”
Chishiya shrugs. “He would at least act differently around me. He doesn’t.”
“So you think he won’t remember anything at all?”
“Maybe some people don’t.”
She doesn’t like the answer. Won’t quite look Chishiya in the eye anymore.
“How’s Kuina?”
“She’s fine.”
No new memories there either.
It doesn’t matter.
Niragi is the first person he slept with twice.
He’s really an impressive number in the list, but the fact that it happened a second time, the fact Chishiya even saw his face for more than a few minutes the next morning, made Niragi different.
It made it wrong.
It made the two of them snap into a direction Chishiya wasn’t trying to aim for.
They don’t talk about them.
Their conversations certainly veer towards parts of their life, but it’s never about the two of them together, specifically. What would they talk about?
Sometimes when Chishiya looks at him he’s certain Niragi remembers everything. And sometimes when Niragi kisses him, it’s short. It’s nothing. He’s walking away and wiping his mouth like he can’t get Chishiya off of his lips fast enough. He can never tell if it’s a memory bleeding over or if it’s just Niragi trying to remind himself that Chishiya is a boy or not a boy or whatever it is that he prefers Chishiya to be.
They’re good at pretending things don’t exist anyway.
They don’t talk when they both wake up in the middle of the night. Barely say a word when they sit side by side and let the residual nightmares fade away a little more.
It hurts. He doesn’t know why it hurts. It has never hurt like this with anyone else.
And he doesn’t know how to piece any of this together into anything that makes sense.
It starts with Niragi just lingering after sex.
He would usually leave as soon as possible. Stealing the shower from Chishiya, making him wait twenty minutes before he can clean himself up.
And then it was lingering. A few minutes here, stretching out further and further. Niragi never made excuses to stay, not verbally, but he would find them. Touching Chishiya, making sure he finished. Taking his time with it, slowing it down until it was nearly like being tortured. Or just—
Just kissing him.
Still inside of Chishiya, leaning down against him, kissing him over and over until they both can’t breathe right, until their mouths hurt and Chishiya knows he will be too tired for work in the morning.
It doesn’t matter.
He started to stay longer and longer. And eventually it would be long enough that Niragi would fall asleep.
And he would still leave.
They both have nightmares, they’re both quiet with them.
Niragi has always woken Chishiya up. He didn’t want to budge, never wanted Niragi to know that he was awake, but Niragi’s nightmares always woke him.
He never knew what it was. It’s not like Niragi ever was loud. He didn’t yell, didn’t scream, never cried. Chishiya would sometimes wake just before him, when he was still silently sleeping. Maybe a twitch on his face, in his hands. Or it would be like a pull. Something tugging at his stomach and drawing his eyes open when Niragi turned in the bed behind him.
But he was always awake by the time Niragi would latch onto him. Arms around Chishiya’s waist, pressing his face against his back. Chishiya doesn’t think he knows he does it, but Niragi’s hand is always resting over the scar on his abdomen. It’s not a gunshot wound here, just shrapnel, but the wound is shaped the same and Niragi’s hand almost feels like it’s trying to act as an apology or stop the bleeding.
And he still leaves.
Because the touch only lasts for a minute tops before he is pulling away again, leaving the bed. Sometimes coming back, usually not. Sometimes not until morning, just before Chishiya’s alarm would go off. Slipping into bed like Chishiya would chastise him for not being there. Maybe he should.
It doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter if he’s there or not.
But maybe Chishiya would prefer it if he didn’t go.
He doesn’t go to see Ann when she asks.
He feels bad, dodging her calls.
But he doesn’t get much time off work. And Niragi—
He’s like an unresolved question sitting on the back of his mind and the only way to do anything about it is to sit in his lap and kiss him and feel the hands in his waistband and listen to Niragi laugh at stupid tv shows and humming in the kitchen while making dinner and—
It needs to not matter.
It’s not supposed to matter.
Niragi can still be cruel.
It’s not that often and it can be hard sometimes to understand what it is, though. Niragi teases Chishiya the same way Chishiya teases him. His remarks are biting and callous, but they always have the tone underneath it, that he doesn’t really mean it, that he knows Chishiya knows he doesn’t really mean it. But sometimes it drops out. Sometimes he is angry and feels wronged and lashes out at whatever he can.
Bottles thrown at the wall. Slamming cupboard doors closed. Yelling things that don’t even make sense.
So yes—
He can still be cruel. And violent.
It’s not something that Chishiya takes lightly, but it’s different.
They are prefaced by things that are unrelated. They’re uncoordinated in their attacks. It’s never about Chishiya, even when it’s about Chishiya.
He doesn’t apologize in the way a person should, either.
Sometimes it’s minutes later, sometimes hours, sometimes a day or two. But then he is kneeling down in front of Chishiya, his head resting against his abdomen and he doesn’t say anything, but Chishiya knows.
“You can’t do that.”
“I know.”
I’m sorry, is what he means. It’s in the hands clinging onto him, it’s in the face moving to kiss Chishiya’s stomach.
He means it, but he doesn’t say it.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he whispers.
Chishiya pulls away just enough to kneel down next to him, but it’s like it doesn’t matter. Niragi shrinks down, further and further, curling up underneath him. Chishiya’s hand moves along his back, as if he can knead the bad thing out of him.
Sometimes he wonders, too. Not about Niragi, but about himself. What went wrong when he was born or if it happened because of his parents. If he’s even any different now that he’s trying to be.
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
Chishiya nods. Not a point in pretending he hasn’t been.
“Spending time with your roommate?” Ann asks.
“What is your goal?”
“What do you mean?”
“If I had the ability to make him a better person, should I be pursuing that?”
She gives a small laugh. “Do you think that’s possible?”
“Why not?”
“Someone who does something like that is rotten to the core. Any good they do is…” she shrugs. “It’s just an act.”
“Isn’t an act better than being worse?”
“It only matters if it’s real.”
And some people would never accept that it was.
It's not like Chishiya didn't notice it as it was happening. It's not like he didn't think about it or wonder or try and tear apart every little thing Niragi did to make sense of it. But after a while he stopped. He stopped wondering if there were ulterior motives to Niragi's clinginess, if he really meant it when he kissed Chishiya on the cheek before he went to work, if he really wanted him to stay.
He doesn't remember.
And if it means something, it means something.
Chishiya doesn't want to think about any of it anymore.
He has dreams of being trapped at the table with Kuzuryu. It's the only nightmare he has of the games. The fact that it plays on repeat should've dulled Chishiya by now, but it feels like it only gets worse.
He can feel the band digging into his waist. He can feel it around his neck, pulled too tight. He can feel the bullets still stuck inside of his chest, bleeding down his front. The room is empty. Kuzuryu's seat is empty. He always tries to reach for a number, hoping that maybe someday he will know which one it is that he's meant to press that will make it all stop, but when his hand moves forward, the wounds in his chest scream out. Petals shoved inside of the gaping space, thorns digging into his flesh. The vines growing further inside of him, weaseling their way through the empty spaces between his organs, growing through the soft tissue, forcing their way up through his throat.
"Chishiya?"
His eyes open slowly. He can't make out Niragi's face in the dark, but he can see the shadow of his form. Can feel a solitary tear slip down his temple and into his hairline. Niragi's hand on the skin, wiping it away like it will take it back.
"Did something happen?"
"You were having a bad dream."
He was.
Is this the first time Niragi's noticed it? It's the first time Chishiya has cried. If it can be counted as such.
"Here," Niragi says, moving to sit against the headboard. He pulls the pillows and blankets around, padding the spot on his lap. He doesn't have to tell Chishiya what to do, he moves on his own, laying his head down on the space.
It's not comfortable. His feet are hanging off the bed, his back hurts, his wrists feel angry and his insides are twisted.
And then Niragi's hand is stroking through his hair, pulling it back slowly. His thumb passes over his cheek, moves to caress his jaw. And it's not so bad.
She’s not a bad person.
Ann is not a bad person. She never has been.
What she wants, whatever she’s looking for as a solution, is not something bad.
It’s just—
He likes it. He likes who they are together. He likes knowing that person in his bed at night, kissing his neck and massaging his lower back doesn’t know and doesn’t care about how bad of a person Chishiya was before.
And—
He thinks Niragi loves him.
Stomping off when Chishiya teases him instead of lauding him with compliments or a return of affection. The uncomfortable way he will stare at Chishiya like he’s worried about something. Moments when he goes soft and gentle followed immediately by running away.
He’s not sure if Niragi knows, but Chishiya is certain of it.
It’s a selfish thing to take for himself, Chishiya knows that. But he’s never felt it before. Nobody has ever cared so much. Niragi wakes up early in the morning just to tell him to be safe on his way to work. He goes to the bookstore to get Chishiya a newly released novel he’s been waiting for. He packs a lunch for him when Chishiya is too tired to do it himself. All of this and he wraps it in insults, calling Chishiya dumb or annoying but in a way that the word comes out so soft Chishiya is certain of what word he’s replacing it with.
Ann never asked for Chishiya to manipulate Niragi, she never asked for him to hurt him or break the truth out of him or find some way to turn a knife in as deep as Niragi did to anybody else. And it still feels like when Niragi kisses Chishiya that he isn’t supposed to be doing it.
Technically, Chishiya has kissed Niragi before. He kisses him back, he pulls him down for a second or third or fourth. He kisses him on the forehead when he finds Niragi on the couch napping. He kisses Niragi’s hand whenever he holds it. Kisses his shoulder blade when he’s behind him, kisses the inside of his thigh, his stomach, his neck—
Chishiya has kissed him. He just hasn’t kissed him first.
And when he does, it’s like Niragi can’t cling onto him back hard enough. Pushing him against the counter so that the edge of it digs into his back, fingers clawing at his clothes. He is always so greedy, so hungry for it. Niragi is someone who takes. Always touching Chishiya like he has an expiration date.
Chishiya’s never bruised easily, but sometimes Niragi will hold a little too tight, press down too hard, and when he sees it the next day he will press a kiss to it, try to be gentle, and it never really works.
It’s not that he’s incapable. How many times has Chishiya woken in the night to his hands rubbing soft circles on Chishiya’s side or his stomach? Or his fingers tracing his features in the dark? Or when they fell asleep on the living room floor watching fireworks and he woke the next morning to Niragi’s hand held in front of his face, blocking the sunlight from his eyes? How long had he been like that? Trying to give him this fraction of comfort?
He just wants things too much.
“Do you want me?” Niragi asks.
Chishiya is leaning over the edge of the bed, picking up the closest thing he can reach. It’s ugly, of course, because it’s Niragi’s. All of his button ups with a myriad of prints. Black and white cheetah, black and white giraffe, black and white zebra. But the fabric is soft, it’s big enough to cover him, and he likes to lean his cheek against his shoulder and feel the smooth grain of the satin against his face.
“Hey. I asked you something.”
He turns back to him, sitting cross legged towards the end of the bed, watching Niragi aimlessly flip through the book Chishiya was reading, just something to look busy while the question floats between them.
“Do you think I don’t?”
He shrugs. Doesn’t even look at him. He always looks so annoyed when he asks these kinds of things. Preemptively mad at something Chishiya hasn’t even done or said.
“If I didn’t then it wouldn’t have happened.”
“You don’t ever ask for it.”
Chishiya could say that Niragi never gives him the chance, but it’s not true. Niragi has gone through his phases, most often just for parts of a day, but still phases in which he pulls away from Chishiya so completely that it could’ve easily been something he could ask for. It’s not like they have sex every day, but they almost always share a bed now, and Niragi almost always kisses him at some point throughout the day.
“Do you want me to beg?”
“That’s a leap from…” Niragi trails off and finally looks at him. Some sliver of seriousness dropping away. “You could.”
“I don’t think you’d be good at it.”
“Good at hearing you beg?”
“You’d give in to me too easily.”
Niragi scoffs. But he has to know Chishiya’s right. He’s not the kind of person with the impulse control necessary for someone to beg him for something he wants just as badly.
Niragi has a picture of Chishiya on his phone.
He wasn’t trying to pry when he saw it–Niragi was in the shower when the phone rang. Chishiya was just checking to see who it was, if it was important enough to answer or another spam call or journalist looking to bother them. And Niragi wasn’t really hiding it though, was he? If he made it the lock screen, when anybody could see it.
Chishiya doesn’t know when he took the picture. He takes them often, always trying to be slick about it. Hiding the phone between pillows but turning the light on in the middle of the night. The picture, Chishiya thinks, is from a while ago, because he hasn’t seen the shirt he wore in it in a while. He’s at the counter, making lunch, maybe. Too bright for it to be anything other than mid-day. The quality grainy enough that Niragi must’ve had to zoom in to get Chishiya in it close enough to make out his expression. His mouth stuck in a pout, his hair in his face.
And that’s what Niragi chose?
There has to be better pictures on his phone of him than this.
But it’s not like Chishiya’s is much better.
He takes the photo a week later, when Niragi is sleeping on the couch. The back of his hand to the scarred side of his face, the white cat Chishiya got him sitting on his chest.
It’s the first time Chishiya finds something that he can look at during any point in the day that still makes him smile.
"Does Usagi even remember?" Chishiya asks.
It's a selfish question. It's cruel. It's the wrong thing to bring up. It doesn't matter either way.
What happened happened , that’s what Ann says.
And Ann doesn't dignify his question with an answer anyway. "Do you ever wonder how many others there were?"
All the time.
"It hurts."
He wasn't thinking about saying it. He never said it before, and it's been worse. Chishiya doesn't know why it's different this time, just that he can't do it. Can't let Niragi do this because something inside of him is multiplying it over and over again.
"Hm?"
“It hurts.”
“How?”
"Just slow down," he mumbles. His hands move up to Niragi's chest, doing little except resting against the skin. "I'm not going anywhere."
His expression shifts. Something under the surface breaking apart. Niragi's hand moves from Chishiya's thigh to his hip, leaning down against him. Inside of him so deeply that Chishiya can feel his spine bending like it needs to accommodate a nonexistent thing stretching all the way to his shoulders.
"You're not?" Niragi says.
It's a joke. Chishiya thinks it's a joke, anyway. There's just something off about his tone.
Chishiya wishes Niragi was still wearing his shirt. Easier to grab onto and pull him down. Maybe he'll get him a necklace. Lure him closer so he can kiss him without his hands on his neck, tangled in his hair.
Sometimes Niragi is too messy and needy with it. He bites and licks and nips and gnaws on Chishiya, every part that he can. Leaves marks on his jaw and his neck, his shoulders, hips. Things Chishiya has to cover so people don't question it.
But the kiss is gentle. Slow, like Chishiya asked for. Slow like the roll of his hips against Chishiya, his hand on him stroking with the rhythm of it.
He didn't know he could ask Niragi for this and he would listen.
"This better?" Niragi whispers.
"Mhm."
"Feels good?"
Chishiya's eyes close and he can feel Niragi kissing him again. Short, punctuated kisses. Stretches of space in between like he's waiting for something.
"Chishiya? Like this?"
He looks back up at him, and it feels like it's hard to keep his eyes open. Niragi can be hard to look at for too long. A sun shining too brightly. A snow blanketed street. He is always and has always been an overwhelming sight. But he can see it. Niragi is waiting for him.
He is having trouble with his words. He doesn't know how to spit them out without something sounding wrong about them coming out of his mouth.
But Niragi wants it.
"Yeah, like that," he says. "That's good."
"Good?"
"Yes," he pulls Niragi back to him, kissing him, letting his voice go quiet so it can really truly be just for the two of them. "You feel good."
He can feel Niragi smiling. Can feel his hands trying to find places to cling onto him. Always like this, except when they’re in public together. Always has to be touching Chishiya somewhere.
"Can you..." he says quietly. He trails off.
More.
He wants more.
He feels sick with it. Too hot in the room and Niragi's body sweaty against his and his head feeling like it's too full of a thousand different words. So he gives Niragi as much as he can.
Yes, just like that. Right there. You're so good, you feel so good, you're so big, can you feel how much I want you? Don't stop. Please, please, please--
He can't breathe. Breaking every sentence up with kisses, forcing Niragi to slow down so he can try and catch his breath and make it last longer. Their bodies trembling as they struggle to hold themselves together.
And he shouldn't have said it but Niragi was looking at him with those eyes of his and Chishiya felt drunk off of it, like something in the air made its way into his lungs and--
"You're such a good boy, Suguru," he mumbled, stumbling over the words.
It felt like more than it was. Like something else was contained in the name.
If Niragi were to suddenly remember everything, would it change them?
He would hate Chishiya.
He’d leave,
Is that something that matters?
“How’s Kuina?”
“She’s fine. Good. She’s really good.”
But she doesn’t remember. It’s part of the reason Chishiya thinks he keeps coming back here. Waiting for Ann to finally say that Kuina remembers everything. He wants to talk to her. Kuina. His friend. They weren’t an exceptionally chatty pair before, but she was the only person he wanted to protect for a long time.
Ann wouldn’t lie to him about Kuina. She cares for her much better and much more than Chishiya could anyway. He’s glad they have each other, even if Ann can’t talk to her about the games.
And besides—
If Chishiya saw her, if she remembered everything, how would he even talk to her about this? Why would he put any of this on her as something that needs to be discussed? He wouldn’t gain anything but another person that would question every little thing he’s doing, everything he’s done.
It’s Niragi.
He’s not allowed to care about him.
Niragi is leaving.
"Just for a week," he says, tossing clothes onto the bed.
Chishiya's cardigan is among them. He takes a step forward, pulling it out of the pile. "And your work?"
"It's fine. I'll deal with it."
Chishiya's pants--?
He grabs those, knowing that they will be too short on Niragi. Cut him at a weird spot on his leg. He's seen him wear them before, it never looks good. Bad enough that both times Chishiya had come over to him and pulled them off of him immediately.
"If your parents want to see you so badly, why did they wait so long?" he says.
"More important family matters."
Which is code for Niragi isn't going to elaborate any further. It’s not like Chishiya’s parents came to see him in the hospital or at any point in the last ten months, but Chishiya never expected them to. He never even called them, they never asked if he was hurt either. Niragi, at the very least, seems to exchange the rare phone call with one of his parents.
"It'll be the first time they see you. You want to do that alone?"
"Do you think the hospital will let you leave for a fun little trip to Nagoya for a week? No. It's fine. Put that back."
Chishiya drops the shirt back into the pile. It's just a plain black one, but he's fairly certain it's his, not Niragi's. Niragi's clothing is not plain enough.
"What am I going to wear while you're gone if you keep taking my things?"
“Nothing. And you’ll send me pictures just to prove it, won’t you?” Niragi says.
“No,” Chishiya states plainly.
“Fine. But all of this is mine, so I don’t know why you’re making a big deal about it." Niragi says, dropping a sweatshirt into the pile. One of the very few things Chishiya owns that has his university's name on it.
"Okay," he says. "And you're going to explain that how?"
"This?" he picks up one of the shirts, covering it up. "Shut the fuck up. It's not your business, is it?"
Chishiya puts the few things he's rescued aside, moving over to Niragi's side. He doesn't touch him very often. Doesn’t initiate things despite the fact his hands itch to grab onto him, the amount of times he wants to kiss him to try and calm him down when he's getting too annoyed about his work or about chores.
But this time, his hand moves to Niragi's waist, pulling him away from the closet to face him.
"Are you going to tell them about me?" he whispers.
He doesn't really care either way, but Niragi is a hard person to gauge when it comes to this.
Niragi can kiss him all he wants, he can cuddle him and he can fuck him and he can treat him in every way that he likes. But it doesn't mean Chishiya knows what it is that Niragi wants.
"I already told them I had a roommate."
"And?"
He shrugs. "Guess they're happy I have a friend who doesn't--who isn't... who is like you."
"You didn't have friends before?"
"No."
"Not even in school?"
He gives a sharp laugh. "No. Not--no."
"Not even a girlfriend?"
"No. Why are you even asking? It's not--"
"But you weren't a virgin."
Niragi suddenly pulls away from him, moving towards the bed to start sorting through the clothes. Or, rather, picking up pieces and angrily tossing them from one side to the other. Neither folding or packing, just angry.
It’s not something the two of them talked about—why would they? It was unnecessary. But it also wasn’t something that Chishiya didn’t notice. Niragi knew what he was doing the first time they slept together. Whatever he had done wasn’t awkward or uncomfortable because it was Niragi’s first time, it was awkward and uncomfortable because it was their first time together.
"You had a boyfriend?"
Niragi won't look at him. Chishiya needs to stop. He doesn’t know why he won’t.
"Did he--"
"He died, alright? Can you fucking quit?" he says. His voice breaks on the last word. "It was a long time ago and it doesn't fucking matter."
Doesn't it?
He doesn't come to Chishiya's bed that night. He'll be leaving in the morning, but it feels like he's already gone. It is too empty and too quiet and Chishiya is used to it, but he doesn't want to be.
Niragi has been angry with him for the entire evening. Not speaking to him at dinner, closing his bedroom door the second he got the chance to retreat. But it's not locked, not when Chishiya goes to his room a little after midnight.
And Niragi’s not asleep either.
He doesn't snore, exactly, but there is a depth to his breathing that Chishiya can recognize in the dark that's missing. Chishiya moves to the left side of the bed, the side he always takes, has always taken. Pulls the blankets back as he climbs inside, and he can feel Niragi's arms lifting, making an empty spot for him to lay beside him, Niragi's head resting against his chest immediately.
"I shouldn't have called you an asshole," Niragi whispers suddenly.
"What?"
"Or a piece of shit."
"When did you say this?"
Niragi shrugs. "Maybe I just said that to myself."
Oh.
"I miss you," Chishiya whispers back.
Niragi’s not the only one shit at apologies. This is the closest Chishiya will get at one.
"Haven't left yet."
He knows.
"It doesn't matter if anything happened to him," Ann says. "It doesn't change it."
Nothing does.
"And if he doesn't remember?"
"Doesn't matter either."
"You're not even the person he hurt."
"No. But she's too kind. She forgave you, too."
And it's Chishiya’s fault she was there to begin with. It was his fault that Niragi was angry enough to get away with taking her. His fault that Arisu got locked in that room, got the shit kicked out of him. His fault, maybe, that more people died during the last game at the beach than needed to.
She is too kind.
Nothing really changes while Niragi is gone.
Other than the fact he is missing from the equation, Chishiya still spends his evenings reading on the couch or by the balcony or in their bed. His nights are not filled with one too many kisses or a hand always in his shirt or down his pants. When Chishiya sleeps, he wears one of the shirts Niragi left behind. He folds the edge of the duvet and pulls it around him like a missing arm holding him down.
He misses him.
He would like that to mean nothing.
"Hey," Niragi says.
His voice is quiet over the other end of the phone, strange in a way. A different way than it usually is on the few phone calls they've made back and forth. Usually only when one of them isn't answering texts, when the highest demand of needing the other's attention is as important as forgetting to add an item to a grocery list.
"Why are you calling me?"
"You're not busy are you? I waited until you'd be off work."
"Maybe a little too long."
"Oh, going to bed now?"
Chishiya closes the book he was ready, laying down on the bed. "Working on it. Where are you?"
"Nagoya."
"Niragi."
"Outside, trying not to wake my parents up," he says. "Do you remember what you told me before I left?"
"To have a safe trip?"
"No. The other thing."
Their conversation was brief. Niragi left for the train station a few hours after Chishiya had to leave for work. The only other thing Chishiya said that morning was for Niragi to go back to sleep. But the night before--
"I miss you?"
"Yeah. That."
"What about it?"
"Nothing," he replies. "Nevermind. I'm gonna go to bed. I just wanted to say good night."
"That's all?"
"Yeah."
"Then why aren't you hanging up?"
"I don't know."
"Do you miss me?" Chishiya whispers. "I won't tell anyone."
"Maybe. Yeah. I missed--" he goes quiet suddenly. There's a shuffle of noise over the phone, and when he comes back his voice is so low that Chishiya can barely understand what he's saying. "I missed your voice. And your stupid face. So I guess I kind of have to miss you."
"Just those two things?"
"Yeah."
"Only one more day."
"Mhm," he mumbles. "Can you send me a picture?"
"Now?"
"Yeah."
Chishiya sits up, turning the bedside light on. He shifts, laying on his side, the picture taken, sent, deleted as quickly as he can manage. He doesn't like looking at himself that long. Doesn't like looking in his gallery and seeing images of himself lurking amongst pictures of cherry blossoms on the sidewalk or old vending machines.
Though, Niragi has filled in some of those gaps himself. It's just not obvious that it's him most of the time. Chishiya's pictures of Niragi are his hands, a cropped part of his face or his neck, the back of his head.
He doesn't know if Niragi would let Chishiya take a proper picture of him, and he likes these ones better anyway. Ones that don't make sense. Little fragments of him strewn about.
"Are you in my room?" Niragi asks suddenly.
"Your bed is more comfortable than mine."
If it can be considered Niragi's. If it can be considered only Chishiya's.
"That's my shirt."
"Mhm. You're very adept tonight," Chishiya says. "I need to go to sleep, though. If you want to text me any more of your musings, I’ll get back to you in the morning."
"Fine. Good night."
"Goodnight, Suguru."
Chishiya doesn't need to be at the station, but he didn't have work. So he waits amongst the crowd, looking out for the ugly patterned shirt, waiting for the face to appear. It’s annoying that he’s on his tiptoes, frustrating that he’s even searching for a person that he should be happy is gone.
“Boo.”
Chishiya turns, his hand instantly moving out, smacking Niragi hard in the chest. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I scared you?”
“No.”
Niragi is so pleased with himself. Smiling, standing close but his hands are kept far away from him. Tucked behind his back or holding onto the handle of his suitcase.
It’s not a surprise for Chishiya, this part at least. That Niragi would keep at an acceptable distance. That he wouldn’t touch Chishiya at all. Not even a hug. They don’t exist outside of their apartment. They never have. They don’t tend to even go anywhere, either, but when they have the closest they have gotten to touching is when Chishiya has pushed Niragi aside to stay out of the way of someone else walking by.
So maybe Chishiya shouldn’t have even been here in the first place.
But even with the rules they’ve put in place, Chishiya still reaches up and fixes Niragi’s lopsided collar. His hand pauses for a minute, his gaze moving to Niragi’s neck. And certainly he has looked at his throat before, has kissed it, has placed his teeth around it like a threat. He has leaned against Niragi before, his face kept there, his eyes closed, trying to think through some forgotten thought. He’s not that much shorter than Niragi, but it is the easiest place for Chishiya to kiss him sometimes.
His hand moves, his thumb passing over the skin where a chain now cuts the throat in half. Dark silver beads strung together, but in an odd pattern. Smaller beads separating out defined spaces of larger ones or thick bars—?
… …. ..- -. - .- .-. ---
“Where did you get this?” he says quietly.
“Hm?” Niragi says, pulling away. “Just found it at a store.”
“You just—” he looks up at him. “Did you make this?”
“No.”
He’s such a bad liar. Was he a good one before? They never played games together where they needed to lie, he never had a reason to when he was backed by Aguni who was backed by Hatter. And even if he did lie, was Chishiya ever in a position around Niragi that he didn’t automatically distrust him? He doesn’t remember a single thing Niragi said to him that he believed at face value.
But here, now, he can see it written across every part of Niragi’s face. Like the lie has carved out something in his gaze, which looks almost worried, with his mouth that is trying to hold back a smile. Chishiya can press the subject and he thinks Niragi might finally bend and give him a real answer, but he already has it.
Niragi made it. He strung those beads together to make this on purpose, and it is kept around his throat so tightly that it might be digging into him.
“I like it,” Chishiya says finally. “Home?”
“Home,” Niragi repeats back.
He does like it.
He kisses every letter of it when they get inside of the apartment. Niragi is already trying to unpack when Chishiya pushes him against the bed instead. A week is not that long of a time to go without him, but Chishiya doesn’t want to go any longer either.
And Niragi’s hair smells like the wrong kind of shampoo. His clothes are wrinkled and he has a bruise on his knee that wasn’t there before and a bandage on his left pinkie. He has only been gone a week but he feels different. He feels soft and kind and he lets Chishiya do as he likes. Open him up and make a space for Chishiya inside. He kisses him like he’s been gone a year. He kisses him because he knows if he doesn’t he might just start mumbling stupid things instead and Chishiya’s never been one to allow himself to mumble stupid things.
He doesn’t really know how he got like this.
To get to the point that his back arches against Niragi’s hand when the fingers move along his spine, to expect and crave the kisses given to him even while he is being kissed. This used to feel like a punishment before but it feels like a salve to wound now. And when he looks at Niragi and he pictures him before—
He thinks he would still want him.
He thinks if Niragi remembered everything, it wouldn’t matter to Chishiya.
And maybe it’s wrong, but he doesn’t think he really cares anymore.
Did he ever, really?
“I don’t want to do this,” Chishiya says finally.
They’ve been sitting across from each other in silence for ten minutes. Ann has been stirring her drink, checking her phone. Waiting for Chishiya to give her whatever information she’s looking for. As if he has ever been capable of telling her anything.
Niragi is not the only thing they discuss, but he is an unavoidable topic.
“Then stop.”
Is that an option?
He doesn’t have to meet with Ann anymore, but it would still be something he’s doing. He would still be living in an apartment with Niragi. He’d still be looking for the signs. He’d be waiting for the other shoe to drop. The only way to stop it entirely is to leave.
Niragi loves him. Chishiya is sure of that. Leaving now would hurt him. But it would hurt both of them.
There isn’t a winning situation here.
“Is the sex that good?” Ann asks quietly.
Chishiya looks up, but she won’t meet his gaze.
“I’m not stupid. You’ve been dancing around telling me for almost a year now. Were you two together before?”
“No.”
Ann sighs. “You can convince yourself he’s different all you want. You can even say that it’s fine because he doesn’t remember or because it wasn’t real enough to matter. But it still happened. It doesn’t matter if it was in this life or not. These kinds of things don’t get to be undone.”
The necklace wasn’t the only thing that Niragi brought back, but he never officially stated that the other was a gift.
Chishiya wakes up first in the morning, of course. He goes to work at the hospital while Niragi stays home. Chishiya doesn’t really know what he does. He’s listened to him talk about it before, but it’s one of those conversations that Chishiya tunes out of near instantly and instead just watches Niragi’s face while he complains about clients or coding or internet malfunctions.
The point being: Niragi is always asleep when Chishiya leaves for work, so he is the one that makes their bed every morning.
For a long time, it was always Chishiya’s task. Come home, make the bed so that for at least a few hours before he went to bed, it would be properly put together. On his days off, Niragi would watch from the doorway, unhelpful.
And then they had an argument. And it wasn’t about the bed. Chishiya can’t even remember what it was about. But the bed was made the next day, and the next, and every day until now. It wasn’t done in the way that Chishiya would’ve done it, but it was made nonetheless.
At some point during this, Niragi started to leave the cat that Chishiya gave him between the pillows. The only time it moved was when Niragi would take a nap, but the majority of the day it sat right between the two pillows.
When Niragi returns from his trip to Nagoya, there’s a second cat sitting beside it. It’s not the same brand, not even the same size. A black cat, just a little bit bigger and sitting on its hind legs, usually stuck sideways to lean against the white one to keep it upright as best as possible.
Niragi didn’t give it to Chishiya, but it feels like a gift in the same way Niragi’s necklace feels a little bit like a gift.
At night, when Chishiya goes to sleep without Niragi, he sets them on his dresser in the same way. And when Niragi doesn’t come to bed before Chishiya falls asleep, he takes the black cat and holds it against his chest.
It’s small and stupid.
It makes him happy.
He gets off track easily when they’re at the store together. Chishiya is fairly certain it happens even when he’s not here, because it’s only when Niragi does the grocery shopping that their pantry ends up filled with too many snacks. But being in the store with him, it’s incredibly easy to see why. Niragi always ventures there first, comes back for a second or third walkthrough after deciding on one more (or two or three or four) things to add to the basket.
“Just might be in the mood for this instead, you know?” Niragi says. “And these are always a good back up to have around because—hey, are you listening? Chishiya. Chishiya?”
“No. We need to get the bread.”
“You can go without me.”
Chishiya stares at their basket, which is already too full and none of it what they’re planning to make for dinner over the weekend. “I don’t trust you here.”
“I’m not a child.”
“Then stop acting like one.”
Niragi scoffs, and Chishiya can see him fighting the urge to stick his tongue out at him. His gaze moves away from Chishiya awkwardly before he takes a step away from him, putting a little distance between them.
“You know you should get your roots redone. Your hair looks stupid like that.”
“Where’d this come from?”
“I don’t know. You’re pissing me off.”
Chishiya follows after him, his hand moving up quickly and taking Niragi’s, tugging him down the aisle.
And it’s the first time Chishiya has held his hand, really. Because it’s a bit different when they’re lying in bed and Chishiya is holding Niragi’s hand, because he’s always so fixated on it. The shape of his fingers, the feel of his knuckles, the lines on his palms. Tracing them like a child would on a piece of paper, pressing kisses from his fingertips to his wrists.
But he has never held Niragi’s hand like this before. To pull him somewhere, to do it so publicly even though the aisle they exit from and the aisle they move to are both empty of other patrons. But there’s also a camera, isn’t there? And that feels explicit, it feels like an entire audience sitting forward in their seats and questioning what these two are doing.
“You can let go now.”
Chishiya shakes his head.
He really can’t.
They don’t leave the apartment much together, but Niragi does leave on his own sometimes. And usually it’s after an argument over something stupid or when Chishiya works late and Niragi gets bored.
So sometimes he does come home late at night. Struggling with the key in the lock so many times that it wakes Chishiya up before he even gets inside. His feet stomping on the ground as he stumbles through the living room. A clatter of keys being tossed somewhere that Chishiya will have to find for him in the morning.
If he doesn’t get up, Niragi’s jacket will be on the floor. His shoes will be missing. And, in most cases, Niragi will give up on trying to figure out which bed to go to and he’ll instead choose to sleep on the floor.
So Chishiya pushes the covers back, meeting Niragi halfway. His hand helping Niragi take off the jacket. He feels a kiss placed haphazardly on the top of his head.
“I’m sorry.”
It’s the only time he apologizes. Chishiya can’t even remember what it was for, if something happened last night or the night before. He didn’t even see Niragi after he left for work this morning.
Maybe it’s just for being drunk.
“You’re so pretty, you know that?” Niragi mumbles. His hands are on Chishiya’s face, but they’re not dexterous enough to do anything but touch him. “I thought— thought…”
“Thought what?” Chishiya asks. He helps Niragi’s arm out of one of the sleeves, struggles to get it off the other.
“An angel?”
“Hm?”
“I thought you were an angel,” he slurs, his head leaning forward but his body staggering back a step. “When I saw you for the first time. AT the hospital. You looked—it was the light?”
“Oh. And now?”
“I hate it.”
Chishiya bites back a smile, taking Niragi’s arms and helping him towards the bedroom. “You hate it?”
“Because you still look like one. But you’re not.”
“No?” he moves Niragi to the foot of the bed. “Sit.”
Niragi does, but his entire body is wavering. His eyes staring glassy up at Chishiya. “You’re a dick sometimes.”
“Being around you kind of forces one to be,” Chishiya replies, kneeling down to help slip off Niragi’s shoes. He leaves them carefully lined up at the foot of the bed. They’ll be put away properly in the morning. He just needs to get Niragi to sleep.
“You think I’m—I’m a bad person?”
“Sometimes.”
Niragi laughs. It feels very real, maybe he mistook Chishiya’s candor for sarcasm.
“If you don’t want to fix your roots you don’t have to.”
“This again?” Chishiya says, standing up. “Lay down.”
Niragi flops backward, arms spread out in as dramatic of a way as possible. “What’d you think of me?”
“When?”
“When we met. Dummy.”
Chishiya slips his belt out of the buckle enough to get the leeway to pull Niragi’s pants down past his ankles.
What did he think?
He thought Niragi was insufferable. He doesn’t remember the first time they met very well. It feels like a long time ago now, and so many of his memories from the games have become foggy, far too entertwined with his nightmares. And he can’t remember what his first impression of Niragi was when he woke up in the hospital. It’s all colored in now that he remembers Niragi from before. So all of his firsts are gone. Too many that they’ve overwritten each other.
But, he does remember one thing.
“I thought you were handsome in a very wasteful way.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
Chishiya’s not quite sure he does either. “It doesn’t matter.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Am I still wasteful?”
“No. You are still pretty, though.”
“Sure. What happened to handsome?”
“Fine. You’re still handsome.”
“Can I be cute instead? No one’s ever called me cute.”
Chishiya sits next to him on the bed, carefully brushing the hair out of his face. And it’s not like it was untrue before. Someone that looks like Niragi being as cruel as he was was a waste of his looks. And he never used them for anything. He used his guns and his fists and Aguni’s other helpers to get whatever he wanted.
“You are very cute,” Chishiya whispers. “Suguru.”
It doesn’t seem to change Niragi’s expression. Only seems to worsen the pain that’s lingering behind his features. Something’s upset him today, and Chishiya doesn’t think it was an argument that he didn’t realize they had or a job that went awry.
“I mean it.”
“But I feel…” Niragi’s hand moves awkwardly to his chest, his hand held in a fist over his heart. “Wrong, here.”
Chishiya takes his hand away, holding it gently. His thumb pressing a circle against his palm. “So do I.”
“Do you think it’s too late to fix that?”
“I think you have to try.”
Niragi finally looks at him again, and his gaze is distant and barely there. How much did he drink? What brought on all of this? Or is it just something that he lives with? And when it comes to a boiling point, the only way to stop him from wanting to destroy something is to drink it all away?
Chishiya never tried that with his own feelings. They didn’t come to him easily, but they were always pliable. Easy to fold down until they started to become nothing. But that was before all of this. Before Niragi made things nearly impossible to fold away. Like he’s there, constantly rummaging through the shelves, undoing every bit of Chishiya’s hard work.
“I can try,” Niragi mutters.
“Maybe just go to sleep for now.”
“Mhm.” Niragi rolls onto his side, pulling at Chishiya. Not a care for how comfortable this situation will be for either of them, just clinging onto him again.
Niragi always comes with him when he goes grocery shopping now.
Chishiya is fairly certain he puts off doing it by himself as much as possible, but he doesn’t think it’s for some desire to spend even more time with him. He is fairly certain it’s because when they’re at the store or walking on the street and nobody else is around, he will take Chishiya’s hand and squeeze it until someone else rounds the corner.
But he doesn’t move away from Chishiya’s side instantly anymore. The small gap that they had practiced during their outings has shrunk to Niragi being so close to him that holding his hand wouldn’t even be visible anymore, it would just be a natural expectation of two people stuck together.
Niragi has always been clingy and Chishiya has always let him.
But he does make sure that he is the one that reaches out to him first sometimes, too.
He makes sure that he is the one that kisses Niragi before Niragi can kiss him.
He thinks he’s been thinking for too long about who Niragi was.
It’s something to consider, and Ann was right about that. He can’t pretend none of it happened. Niragi, this Niragi, was someone who could be capable of all those horrible things that have marked him as someone beyond repair. It doesn’t matter what anyone else did, there was a line in the sand. None of them saw it, none of them knew it was there, none of them even considered it until Niragi crossed it. How close to it were they? At which point were they able to stay on the side worth saving?
He doesn’t remember, and it hasn’t pulled him back over.
Chishiya’s not going to forget about it. He’s not going to pretend it never happened, but—
But what is the point in drowning in the pity of what ifs?
Because what if Niragi was like this in the games instead? What if he was this kind, this caring, this uncorrupted by whatever the games allowed to open up within him? What if he was just as horrible before and somehow he isn’t anymore? What if, what if, what if—?
It doesn’t matter.
Because this is him now. Chishiya has known him for over a year in this life. He has seen him angry and drunk and crying and pitiful and broken and happy and laughing and smiling and—
And he isn’t the same. There are traces, but it’s a new sketch over an old one. It’s the faded markings left behind on a notepad. It’s the other side of a coin, it’s a picture taken of a picture taken of a picture.
That’s what matters.
“Did you date anyone?” Niragi asks. “You know, before?”
He does this sometimes, when he wants to broach a certain type of conversation. Find somewhere in the room to busy his hands with something. Chishiya’s books, the spices in the kitchen, the albums tucked in the shelf under the T.V.
Tonight, it’s the bottles, the plants, and the cats on Chishiya’s dresser. He should be back in his room, working on whatever project he’s supposed to finish by the end of the week. And instead, he followed Chishiya in here after his shower, and immediately started messing with his things.
“Before you?”
“Are we dating?” Niragi asks, looking back at him. Expectant, but for what kind of answer?
“Do you want to be?”
“I don’t know,” he says. He picks up the white cat, holding it like something almost religious to him. “I don’t think I’d want you to be with anyone else.”
“I’m not. Are you?”
“No.”
He’s glad he can tell Niragi is telling the truth, not that there were any signs that he had. Maybe they haven’t talked about just being with each other, but if he had been—
The idea feels a bit like a needle jammed straight into Chishiya’s eye.
“But would you want to be with me?” he asks. “Like, to be in love with me?”
“Is it about want?” Chishiya asks.
Niragi turns away, placing the cat back beside its partner. “So that’s a no?”
Chishiya shrugs. “If you want me to be honest with you, I’ve never wanted to love someone less than you. It didn’t stop it from happening though.”
“You love me?”
Is that what Chishiya said? His mouth feels dry, his neck like a piece of machinery that needs to be oiled. So his response is barely a nod. Not even one. A tip of the chin upwards, if that can even be counted. It’s not a nod, but it is a yes.
“Okay,” he replies. And he can’t even stop himself, can he? Niragi can’t even contain that the response makes him a little too excited.
It’s his face. He’s never been good at hiding emotions, but Chishiya’s never really appreciated how little he can hide when he’s happy. How much harder he tries for it but how much more he sucks at it. His entire body pulled towards the bed, sitting beside him. Chasing to close a proximity, to put his hands on something.
“Maybe you shouldn’t act like you’re so fucking clever all the time, then.”
Chishiya feels his face want to break in half. The pull of his mouth into a smile, “But I am clever.”
Niragi moves, leaning over him. “Can you say it?”
“Hm?”
“Just say it.”
“Say what?”
“That you love me,” Niragi whispers. “Can you?”
Can he?
He has never said it before. He’s sure at one point, when he was small, he might’ve been able to say it to his parents. A kind of expected thing to say to family, even if it never meant anything. But he can’t remember the last time he said it to anyone. He can’t remember making the decision to stop saying the words, can’t even remember if he consciously knew how little it meant to say to his father or his mother.
So maybe Niragi’s question of Can you? seems light, playful even, but he’s not certain if he is physically capable of actually putting those words together.
Chishiya opens his mouth, fully ready for the words to come out. To try and force them one by one. Grab the syllables out of his throat and tear them from where they live uncomfortably in his esophagus. But there’s nothing.
It just comes out—
“Suguru?”
His name always softens the worst blows, doesn’t it? Chishiya never really says it. Niragi doesn’t call him by his name, either. It is always half-whispered in the dark like it has to be secret from even each other.
“Shuntarou,” he whispers back.
And maybe Chishiya is laying flat on his back. Maybe Niragi’s hand’s aren’t even touching him right now. Maybe their only point of contact is Niragi’s thigh pressed against his, but it doesn’t feel like it. His name feels like hands slipped under his shirt, it feels like a kiss pressed to the back of his knee, it feels like his hair being tucked away from his face, it feels like wearing one of Niragi’s shirts.
Chishiya never did a good job at fighting what it felt like, did he?
His hands come up and cup Niragi’s face, one moving to the back of his neck, pulling him down until he is laying on top of him. Chishiya’s lips brushing against Niragi’s, moving to his cheek, settling against his temple.
“I…” he trails off for a moment. Worried that it won’t sound the same as when Chishiya says his name.
Because it’s in that, isn’t it? Not just when he says Suguru instead of Niragi, but when he’s chastising him at the grocery store. When he’s teasing him over his cooking. When he’s giving Niragi pills and water for his hangover or when he’s waking up in the middle of the night to Niragi’s hand shaking as it tries to cling onto him. It’s in everything, and it’s so impossible that Chishiya could make it sound the same in just a handful of words.
“I know,” Niragi says finally. “It’s okay.”
It’s a nice out to be given, but Chishiya doesn’t want to be pardoned.
Chishiya’s hand squeezes his shoulder, closes his eyes. Pretends he is the kind of person that has said these words to someone who deserved them before. “Let me say it.”
“Fine.”
He’s scared, really.
He knows he is. Because if Niragi were to remember everything, he’d leave, and Chishiya would have to deal with all of that fallout. It’d be his own fault. He allowed this person to worm his way into his body and he was defenseless.
Niragi has no idea how tangled and messy he is in Chishiya’s mind. How impossible it is to trace the thread of him that wraps around Chishiya’s ribs to his pancreas to his toes to his brain and back again. All looped up and knotted and the only possible way to get rid of him would be to cut all those pieces out of his body. There’d be nothing left but bloody bones and broken organs and an empty cavern to leave the jumbled pieces in.
“I love you.”
He’s not even sure if he said it, because it was so quiet. So dainty and delicate it felt like a thought.
But Niragi’s hand finds some part of his body somehow, like it always does, and it clings onto him. He feels his face press against Chishiya’s neck, his mouth kissing awkwardly in the crook.
“I love you, too.”
It was easier when Chishiya was unfeeling, wasn’t it? When he didn’t know that these kinds of things could make someone’s entire body feel too small for themselves to fit in. How much it can matter to hear a handful of words.
Because it does matter.
Niragi matters.