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“So, I heard you made Hiyori-kun cry,”
said Nagisa and punched Rinne in the face.
That’s what happened five minutes prior, after Nagisa caught Hiyori crying bittterly in the kitchen, and upon asking him what’s wrong, what’s wrong! in distress and hearing a vague mumbling of Rinne’s name, forgot who he was and rushed to their dorm room.
Now Hiyori is crying because Nagisa is sitting on his bed with a bloodied nose and a purple cheek and a swollen lip, reaping the result of having punched a guy who actually punches back.
“This is so stupid!” cries Hiyori. “Why did you think it was a perfectly normal thing to do, starting a fight in my room?! Are you a savage, or maybe you’re a neanderthal?! Were you raised in the wilderness?!” Hiyori continues cursing, dabbing a cotton pad on Nagisa’s cheekbone, where the skin is split around a little red cut where blood has already started to dry. Rinne’s heavy rings are practically weapons on their own.
Nagisa has the audacity to not only say nothing, but also have his maimed features set in the most sincerely serene expression despite the blues blooming all over his face. If Hiyori’s vision wasn’t so blurry with tears, he’d even see a tiny hint of a smile in the unharmed corner of Nagisa’s lips.
“Right? Ain’t ya like, a bourgeoisie, or somethin’?” yaps Rinne from his own bed, pressing a towelled bag with frozen peas to his left cheek. His nose is no longer bleeding, but there is a bit of curdled blood around his nostrils, and chafing stains on his chin.
“You, don’t even dare say anything, Rinne-senpai!” Hiyori exclaims, sharply twisting around to throw a bite at Rinne, then returning to Nagisa on his bed, then snapping back around to, “Why did you even punch Nagisa-kun?” with an unconcealed crack in his voice.
Rinne’s eyes grow so wide with indignation that they would’ve popped out of their sockets were they not already tired from popping blood vessels. “He punched me first!”
“You punched him back!” Hiyori parries on even higher tones.
“He punched me first!” Rinne’s voice cracks as it reaches a few octaves ahead of itself to match Hiyori’s, and before Hiyori can squeal an even more impressive note—
“Hiyori-kun.”
“What!”
—the angry bark essentially brings it back to its lower register.
“Don’t even talk to me!” Hiyori sniffs and takes out a new cotton pad, to sprinkle more antiseptic on it.
“Why are ya only takin’ care of him? I’m the victim here!” whines Rinne in a very manly manner, and Hiyori turns so abruptly and hurls the freshly wetted cotton pad at him with such speed that Rinne had absolutely no chance of escaping the attack even if he was in good health – or good looks, for that matter. The bruise on his cheek is such a stark shade of purple that UNDEAD could barge into their room, demanding their logo colours back.
Hiyori stomps his foot. “Shut up, Rinne-senpai!”
They allow a few seconds of silence to pass between them. Hiyori rubs his eyes with his wrists, careful not to let traces of alcohol on his fingers get into them. He evens his breath just enough to lower the volume of his voice and say: “Please get someone else to treat you, Rinne-senpai. I can’t have you both in the same room.”
Rinne wants to argue, of course, that it’s his room and that Nagisa, the offender, is the one who doesn’t belong here, but—Hiyori’s tears.
Hiyori’s tears are real, and it’s kind of—sort of—possibly Rinne’s fault, for real. Not that it was intentional. Not that his punch (several punches, in response to Nagisa’s several) was intentional either. You threaten a man with violence, the man will respond in style. And Nagisa is haute couture in everything he does.
That is, it’s futile to try to match him, but only the bravest of fools would take on the challenge.
So, Rinne sighs, stands up, presses the improvised cold compress to his right dislocated elbow instead, and makes his way out of his room. Hiyori exhales heavily with a light whistle to his breath. Grabs more cotton pads and shakes the disinfectant bottle. Sniffs again, and more tears stream down his cheeks.
Nagisa is looking up at him, with his calm eyes and a split eyebrow and remnants of dried blood on his jawline on the left side. At least his nose is clean now.
“You’re so stupid,” Hiyori murmurs, wiping his eyes with his wrists again – all in vain, as they only swell up anew. “It was all a misunderstanding.”
“I realise it now,” Nagisa responds. Calm, soothing voice. A broken lip. It’s a miracle his facial structure survived the maiming. And the scarring… Hiyori will take care of it – because he has to. Not a scar will be left on Nagisa’s skin on his watch. He wants none of those reminders of their brute actions.
Even Rinne, Rinne who is not actually a brute as folks may think, but the one who merely got in trouble, “All because of a puppy,” Hiyori chokes down, echoes of the story Rinne told him smacking against his temples again. “His puppy died when he was a child, and you punched him in the face.”
Nagisa nods. “It would’ve never occurred to me that this was the reason for your despair.”
Hiyori is over-soaking the pads now, distracted, distressed, sniffing and crying, sniffing and crying. “Couldn’t you just ask him? You’re so good at talking about the most unnecessary things, but when it comes to dealing with interpersonal relationships, you’re suddenly all fists and testosterone.” Hiyori presses the dripping pad to Nagisa’s tender lower lip, ignoring the way his shoulders jerk and his mouth quirks just ever so slightly at the stinging sensation. “Are you still going through your hormonal phase at this age? What’s gotten into you?”
It’s hard to take Hiyori’s berating seriously when his pretty little nose is red and shiny, and his pretty long lashes are sticky with tears, and his perfect blushy cheeks are brighter than ripe strawberries, and his fingers tremble even as they expertly handle the antiseptic, and Nagisa reaches into the realm of logic and finds no explanation plausible.
“When I saw you crying…” Nagisa starts—and stops there. With Hiyori being so close, any digging for introspectives and words and social concepts seems futile. “I think what I experienced was rage… bodily rage. I could tell something was happening to me physically, but it was too late… I was seeing red. Most peculiar,” he mutters under his breath, deep in this self-reflection journey now. “Receiving a blow in return felt almost more exhilarating than landing one.”
Hiyori kicks him in the shin. “Nagisa-kun!”
“Ah,” Nagisa exhales, his hands folding into fists as the ache of the kick jolts up his body. “Not exhilarated anymore, Hiyori-kun.”
“Don’t you go around projecting your newfound emotions on other people!” Hiyori’s voice rises in pitch again. He picks up his cosmetics bag and digs through the multitudes of tubes and tubs and other goodies for a healing cream.
He squeezes a careful dollop on the tip of his pointer finger and brings it to the cut on Nagisa’s cheek. Nagisa’s mouth twitches, of course, and Hiyori notices his struggles, and it doesn’t make him feel any better. His lips wobble, his chin crinkles, and tears swell up in his eyes like soap balloons. Nagisa’s fists tighten. His red knuckles turn white.
“The one I should be beating up now is myself,” he says, and Hiyori frowns so hard that a deep wrinkle lays between his brows – and Hiyori never frowns, because a deep wrinkle is the last thing he wants.
“What are you—”
“I made you cry this time.”
Hiyori stares—try staring—firmly, admonishingly, and though his chest still hiccups and his nose is stuffed, the tears make their escape down his cheeks and stop at such an incredulous statement.
He twists the cap closed on the cream tube and gently tosses it on the bed. Already all scrunched at the spine to be on the level with Nagisa’s face, he plants both hands on his knees for more stability and leans in. Eye to eye.
“Nagisa-kun, are you stupid?”
Nagisa pays no mind to the light lashing. “I can’t bear to see you cry. Especially because of another man. It… disturbs something inside me to witness my ever-smiling Hiyori feel so… hurt, that a story about a puppy causes him to overspill. Though, I suppose I would feel less angry if I was the storyteller, but then… If I’m the cause of your sorrow, I can’t simply forgive myself. I am sorry for my reckless, violent actions.”
His hands itch – to mutilate his face even further or to grasp Hiyori’s fingers in his – he isn’t quite sure, but they tense uncomfortably on his lap.
Hiyori stares at him properly now, bloodshot eyes and sticky eyelashes, but his gaze is unwavering. He is easy to understand when he is smiling – Nagisa has memorised the shape of his joyous, the shape of his excited, the shape of his victorious and prideful, his sardonic and sarcastic, his mischievous and flippant, and even his rare bittersweet. Hiyori has the smile range appropriate for every situation one can think of.
But when he is not smiling… it’s a little hard. Though, maybe it’s because no one could imagine Nagisa would ever throw hands. It’s the kind of murky territory that seems not only implausible, but also impossible to cross.
And Hiyori, usually transparent like the most delicate vase made of glass, is now filled with murky—milky—liquid of his own.
With a somewhat deliberate slowness, Hiyori brings his hands to Nagisa’s face and cups his cheeks. His thumbs tenderly caress the rounds of his cheekbones, careful not to press on the fresh bruises. Nagisa has an itch to nuzzle into his palms like he used to do as a kid, when Hiyori was overly fond of squishing his face to keep his head steady so Nagisa had no choice but to narrow the scope of his world to Hiyori’s rapidfire mouth – though Hiyori didn’t have to do any of that because Nagisa would have listened regardless.
But no nuzzling for now — his pain receptors seem to have finally processed that the bruises hurt. Like a bitch.
And Hiyori’s hands, though delicate, are soaked in antiseptic, and it hurts with double, triple intensity, because of this impractical inability to touch. Nagisa is growing more and more acutely aware of the air stinging his tender, open skin, the buzzing ache increasing by the second, and then he is stripped of all awareness when Hiyori closes in, parting what unpleasant air was between them,
and
(A scalding sensation.)
kisses Nagisa on the lips.
Because Hiyori is truly the one prone to unraveling his feelings through actions, flippant and spontaneous, words before thoughts, and mouth before words, and heart before all of the above. This time, though, he was given a chance to ponder, and what Nagisa learns through historical romance novels, Hiyori knows by being well-versed in romance himself.
He, too, would throw a punch or two if he had himself as a boyfriend. Maybe. If there was a guarantee he wouldn’t get as much as a speck of dust on his skin.
Ah, Nagisa’s poor, pretty face. All Hiyori’s ever craved was to litter it with wordful kisses about his beauty, shoving affirmation into the empty cell in Nagisa’s brain that’s in charge of his self-conception, but thank god he is filling the void in his heart little by little. Filling it with feelings for Tomoe Hiyori, of course.
Nagisa likes him so much he’s got shit beat out of him. This is what happened. This was Nagisa’s enlightenment reflected in Hiyori’s tears.
Hiyori sighs into Nagisa’s mouth. Almost dreamily, almost delightfully, if it weren’t for the snot blocking his nose and his throat parched from dehydration; if it weren’t for the ache in his chest at seeing—feeling—Nagisa so hurt underneath his palms, his thumbs, on his lips. Tender. Hiyori feels so tender for his tender, callow Nagisa.
“You’re so stupid, Nagisa-kun,” Hiyori whispers into his lips.
And puts the distance between them. Unpleasant, terrible distance. He gifts Nagisa’s cheeks one final caress, featherly soft, before sliding his hands to his lap, taking Nagisa’s limp hands into his, sheathing the blue knuckles in his ardent warmth
(that spreads up-up-up along their veins to the poor beating thing beneath the sternum).
Nagisa’s eyes flutter open. He has the sort of doozy look to him that he doesn’t usually have. So much for all that masterfully crafted majestic persona. One kiss from Hiyori, and he is reduced to a simple, simple man. It’s cute.
Hiyori shakes his head at his inner dialogue, as if chastising himself. “I’m now seeing your violent spurt as a romantic gesture. I don’t like it. Change your ways, Nagisa-kun.”
Nagisa blinks, and a spark of consciousness returns to his pensive eyes, and, again, his hands tense under Hiyori’s. “Now I’m angry again,” he says. “I wish I could have figured out a way to kiss you sooner.”
With a piercing cry of defeat, Hiyori abruptly straightens and flails his hands, smacking himself on the crown of his head. “Nagisa!”
Almost in a show of embarrassment, Nagisa casts his eyes down onto his knees, but it’s not the shame he’s feeling. Hiyori’s warmth (and the scent of antiseptic) still linger on his hands, and he brings them to his chest, clutching an invisible orb of these abstract, human feelings that are now somehow manifesting in physical sensations. Thudding against his rib cage. Tightening in his guts. Stinging on his lips. Anger, or affection, or anger as a result of affection.
“This is… nice,” Nagisa says, then sighs and looks up. And smiles. The two of them don’t hear it, but they can imagine the crackling of the skin as the wound on his bottom lip splits open again.
Hiyori exhales, heavy as the ache panging in his chest again at the sight of this stupid, beaten up child, but at least he is no longer crying. “Don’t make me develop a thought that I liked you better as an emotionless doll.” He finds little bandaids in his cosmetics bag and finishes up fixing Nagisa’s face.
“I think emotions are something that makes us likable as humans,” Nagisa says like he is about to delve into another spiral of inaccessible deep ponder. “I understand it better now, how to be qualified as a human being. I read this in Dazai Osamu’s novel once, that apprehension and terror before societal—”
“Shush at once,” Hiyori cuts in and pokes a finger into Nagisa’s forehead – the only wholesome unharmed part of his face. Nagisa shushes at once. He can’t retort when there are two strips of heart-patterned bandaid on his cheek. “Go to your room and learn how to express that you like me in more simple terms.”
This fills Nagisa with a strange sense of resolution. He gathers his limbs together and stands up, and after standing straight for a second or two, suddenly wobbles and wavers, feeling kind of woozy. He did get a nose bleed. Those with privileged blood like that rarely can stand to lose any of it.
“Woah there!” Hiyori gasps and grips Nagisa’s arms, and then, upon realising how a few punches to the head can reduce a man to a dopey dingus—
smiles.
And giggles. A heavenly sound.
Glimmering eyes and sparkly teeth, the apples of his cheeks still streaked from tears and eyelashes sticky, but Nagisa looks at him like he’s learning the concept of beauty in real time from ancient Greek philosophers. He suddenly leans in, and Hiyori smoothly slides back, willing his lips to drop the quirk.
“Not while you’re swollen like an overripe blueberry,” Hiyori says, meaning to scold but sounding soft instead, having now caught up with exhaustion from all the crying and stressing and scrunching.
So Nagisa brings his hands to the sides of his head, because Hiyori prohibits anyone from touching his angelically clean face, and caresses the thin, blushy shells of his ears.
“Then I entrust my face in your care. That way speedy recovery is guaranteed.”
Hiyori wraps his fingers around his wrists, gently detaching his hands. “Or you can just promise me to take care of yourself like a normal human being.”
Nagisa clutches his hands over his chest again. “This feels like… rejection.”
Hiyori stomps his foot. “Now I’m getting angry!”
And when Nagisa finally leaves, Hiyori softly thwacks his pillow.
***
“Damn, dude, that’s crazy,” says Jun, dabbing antiseptic all over Rinne’s forehead.
“I know,” Rinne mewls.
“I never would’ve imagined Nagi-senpai to throw hands. All ‘cause of a puppy?”
Rinne uselessly flaps his hands. “Like, how was I to know Hiyori was gonna cry? Is it really that big a deal when he does?”
“Nah, don’t worry about it. He cries all the time during sad movies, I got used to it. I’d only be on guard if he started actively badmouthing you.” Jun sticks a big piece of gauze on the side of Rinne’s face and moves on to his chin.
“He’d never do that,” Rinne says proudly, “he loves me, and I’m a perfect roommate, and we live in peace and harmony.”
Jun is too distracted wiping off dried blood to really appreciate the sentiment, but tries to get involved in the situation anyway. “Yeah, you might wanna… not phrase it like that in front of Nagi-senpai, ‘kay?”
“Fuck,” Rinne exclaims, in excruciating, manly pain, as the alcohol stings a cut he didn’t even realise he had, “ouch-ouch-ouch.”
“This is one hell of a precise blow,” Jun almost whistles. His unit’s leader is kind of skillfully insane! As in, insanely skillful.
“Yeah, well, I wasn’t falling far behind either,” Rinne mutters.
Jun halts with a wet cotton pad a few centimetres away from Rinne’s face and stares him dead in the eye. “You what.”
Rinne holds the eye contact and tries to think of the way to make the quickest escape.