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"Watch where you're going, dumbass!"
Arisu observes quietly as Niragi, one of the Militants that seem to be particularly trigger-happy, shoves at Tatta’s chest, almost sending him into the pool in the process.
What a prick!, he thinks to himself, and throws Niragi’s back a venomous glare before he helps Tatta back onto his feet.
God, he really hopes that guy gets himself killed during a game soon.
♡
“What are you doing here, dumbass?!”, a voice calls and Kuina turns around, ready to pounce on whoever had managed to sneak up on her. “Don’t you see the mass murder going on around you?”
It’s Niragi, but he doesn’t pay her any mind. Instead, he looks at Tatta, angry but somehow also … confused? Scared?
She doesn’t know, and she’s never been very good at reading people. Especially not people who’ve made it their lives work to be as unpredictable as humanly possible. She already has her work cut out for her by Chishiya and his mood swings; she doesn’t want to invest in somebody else right now.
But maybe she should because Niragi actually manages to surprise her. Not only does he not shoot them, but he also somehow gets them out of the corridors with the most bloodshed going on and to the morgue where Ann has been furiously working on figuring out who killed that poor girl.
After that, he disappears again, throwing Tatta another one of those looks that confuse Kuina to no end. But then, Last Boss shows up, and Kuina decides that she has way more important things to worry about.
♡
“Don’t fucking do that again, you fucking dumbass!”, Usagi hears Niragi grumble. He's watching with hawk eyes as she dresses Tatta’s wound in a makeshift bandage made from a ripped piece of cloth from her own top.
She shivers, the rest of her top quite revealing, but to her relief, nobody pays her any mind. Tatta's eyes are closed and he is swaying slightly against the now closed door of the container. Arisu went to win them the game, hopefully, and Niragi … well, Niragi hasn’t taken his eyes off of Tatta since Usagi and Arisu arrived to find the bracelet removed from Tatta’s wrist.
They haven’t told her what happened yet but looking at the splatters of blood on the container door and on the ground, Usagi is relatively certain she knows what could have happened at least. If somebody hadn’t come to intervene.
She eyes Niragi warily. She doesn’t know what to make of him. They had all presumed him dead after the Ten of Hearts and she'd been relieved, his disposition too erratic to not be a liability in the Borderlands, but now, he somehow seems calmer and more … sane than before.
Usagi still vows to keep a keen eye on him.
♡
“Hey, dumbass… looks like you were right, after all. We might actually make it back.”
Chishiya hears the mumbled words somewhere to his left. He doesn’t turn his head at how soft they sound, even though he wants to.
He can’t. He can’t move at all. He can only stare at the night sky, and the fireworks that have started lighting it up.
That’s bad. He knows it’s bad. He’s a doctor, after all.
He waits, but no answer is coming. He figured that already. He’s pretty sure Tatta’s dead. He must be, with how badly he'd been hurt during that King of Spades attack.
Chishiya doesn’t understand why Niragi's still talking to him. Has been talking to him for hours, without once getting an answer. Has been talking about anything and nothing, even though he too must know that Tatta is most likely dead. Niragi's smart, after all. Under all that prancing and posturing, his mind is sharp and intelligent, only rivaled by Chishiya and maybe by Ann.
So why is Niragi still talking, and why is his voice all quiet and soft? Why hasn’t he let go of Tatta, even though he is injured, too, and having that added weight on his chest must mean he's in a lot of pain.
Chishiya doesn’t understand it.
And he probably never will.
♡
"You're such a dumbass”, the man with the piercings says to the nice man on the hospital bed. The one that was badly hurt. The one that almost didn’t make it.
Kota knows he shouldn’t know about that. He knows he shouldn’t know about a lot of things, that they’ve been shielding him from the news and the injuries and the deaths, because he’s just a kid.
But he was there, too. He survived, as did that nice man, the one who looks like he's about to burst into tears because that man with the piercings showed up in his room.
Kota wriggles in Usagi’s lap, trying to hear better, but he doesn’t understand the nice man’s answer, because his voice is very quiet and very weak.
“Why would I leave?”, the man with the piercings asks, and Kota watches fascinated as the piercing above his eye rises with his eyebrows. “Where else am I gonna find a bunch of weirdos who actually like me?”
Kota has to smother a giggle, because the way that man talks is funny, he always uses a lot of words Kota's never been allowed to use, but the nice man on the bed still looks like he's going to cry, and Kota doesn’t want him to think he’s making fun of him for that.
Because it’s okay to cry. He did that a lot in the last days, when he heard that his parents had died from the meteor. He knew that already, they had died during their second game after all, but it's still sad and Usagi said that it's okay to still be said about it. Or to be sad about it again.
But then the nice man smiles, and the man with the piercing smiles back. He looks like he doesn’t do it often, like he has to try and figure out how to do it best.
Kota thinks he’s doing all right, though.
♡
Ann is about to return to the living room where everybody has gathered for the final countdown. She knows she has to be quick or Kuina will be mad at her.
Ann doesn’t think it will make that much of a difference if they kiss now or in five minutes, but it seems to be important to Kuina, and Kuina is important to her. Immensely so.
A whispered “Dumbass” makes her halt right in front of the kitchen door that has been left ajar. She takes a peek and finds Tatta leaning against the kitchen counter, one of his hands on the single crutch he is still using. His other hand is lying flat against somebody’s chest, and when Ann leans in a bit more, she sees that it’s Niragi.
Ann is surprised to see him there, even though the use of the word “Dumbass” should have told her it’s him. But seeing him this close to Tatta, to any person really, is not something she expected from him.
“Is that … is that okay?”, Tatta asks in that moment, his voice shaky and unsure. Ann sees him swallow and thinks, yes, Tatta is incredibly nervous. She isn’t sure why, because as far as she knows, Niragi hasn’t been a threat to anybody since long before returning from the Borderlands, but there’s something like fear in Tatta’s eyes, and his hand on his crutch seems to shake.
Ann is unsure of how to proceed. She knows it’s harder for her to read the emotions of people, so she doesn’t want to make a hasty assumption. Instead, she just waits and watches, ready to intervene should she feel the need to do so.
“It’s fine if it’s not. Okay, that is. The me liking you part, I mean. And the me wanting to kiss you part.”
Oh, and that’s a surprise as well. Generally, Ann feels that Tatta is somebody who is wearing his heart on his sleeve and his feelings plainly on his face, which means that Ann has an easier time reading him compared to a lot of people in their group. But him having feelings for Niragi is not something she saw coming.
“Dumbass”, Niragi says again, and Ann thinks his voice might be shaking as well. “Obviously, it’s okay.”
And if that isn’t already very much out of character for him, Niragi then leans forward and captures Tatta’s lips with his own.
In the background, Ann sees the first fireworks going off and that pulls her out of her surprise.
Kuina will probably be disappointed with her now, she thinks as she throws one last glance at the still kissing men in the kitchen, because now it’s already the second time she doesn’t get to share the fireworks with her.
But Ann is sure they will be fine, regardless. After all, she has all the time she wants now, and as such, many more opportunities to kiss her girlfriend.
♡
Tatta seems to be lost in thought, so Heiya pokes him in the ribs with her toe. “Hey dumbass, it’s your turn.”
Everybody stops to stare at her.
She almost bursts out laughing, because she didn’t think those five words would get her such a reaction.
“Don’t call him that”, Niragi finally snarls and she’s sure if his eyes could throw daggers at her, they would.
She cocks her head, smirking. “Why not? You call him that all the time, don’t you?”
“Yes”, he drawls before sliding an arm around Tatta who is staring at him with wide eyes. “But he’s my dumbass. No one else gets to call him that.”
Heiya grins even brighter before holding her hand out to Arisu.
“Pay up.”
Arisu only groans.
♡
Aguni feels like he should have taken a different turn. Somewhere in his life, he should have done something different, made a different decision, taken a different train, you get the idea. Because he really, really doesn’t want to be where he is right now.
It’s like one of those accidents you can’t look away from. A particularly ugly painting, or somebody wearing really clashing clothes. Anything that Danma did when he was alive, really, now that Aguni thinks about it.
He shouldn’t be here. He doesn’t want to be here. Not in this secluded park, not on this bench partially hidden under the drooping branches of a weeping willow, but especially not less than thirty feet away from where his former second in command has just gotten down on one knee in front of his boyfriend of many years.
Aguni closes his eyes, pretends that they aren’t there, pretends that he himself isn’t there, but that’s hard to do, because he can still hear them perfectly fine. And it’s agony.
“Hey, dumbass. Will you marry me?”
Aguni doesn’t know what he did to deserve this. Right now, he really wishes he hadn’t declined citizenship in the Borderlands, because nothing in that place could be worse than this.
And what is Niragi even thinking?
Sure, Aguni has never been known to be a man of many words, or of particular eloquence, but even he knows that calling your significant other a dumbass during a marriage proposal is a guaranteed way to get yourself kicked in the face.
He waits for the inevitable outburst, but when he hears no such thing, he slowly opens his eyes and peeks through the swaying branches of the willow.
Instead of a pissed off boyfriend and a Niragi with a broken nose, he finds them hugging, their faces buried into each other’s shoulders.
Well, shows what he knows.
He still wants to be anywhere but here, thank you very much.