Chapter Text
When they first moved in together, Chishiya thought that the arrangement wasn’t going to last long. He accepted to rent a room to Kuina’s friend out of the goodness of his heart and a greedy pocket that wanted to be filled. With his parents paying for all his expensess, getting a little money on the side for himself seemed like a good idea. Little he knew the mess he was getting himself into.
With a promise about her friend being quiet and laid back, Chishiya thought that nothing wrong could come from it.
And then he met Niragi.
To this day, he doesn’t know how or why he endured the first two years of knowing him. Maybe it was because of how his outburst stayed out of the house. Maybe because Kuina begged him to give him one more chance each time Niragi messed up. Maybe he just found it funny or entertaining, sharing his space with a ticking bomb that could detonate at any moment.
Things went as badly as they could get.
And then things got better, and Niragi was still Niragi, annoying and infuriating. So the danger was over, no more ticking sounds under the floorboards. He stopped getting calls about how he was spending the night at the police station because, for some reason, he had been listed as his emergency contact.
When he asked about it, Niragi’s answer had been just an It’s not like I have someone else to call and in a big demonstration of his lack of maturity, he added, Oh and I like bothering you at unholy hours and you're the only one who knows my blood type.
Chishiya hasn’t received one of those calls in five years. What a good track. But Chishiya would be lying if he said that he wasn’t expecting the record to be shattered at some point.
What he wasn’t expecting was for the call to arrive in the form of a nurse searching for him while he’s getting ready to go back home and collapse into his bed.
“A friend of yours,” she says. “I’m sorry, I thought you would want to know.”
Chishiya feels scared for a moment. He snaps out of his head and looks at her, and then the next words hit him like a train.
“The police brought him and three other guys to the ER,” the nurse says. “I’m sorry, but I saw the name in his emergency contact, and I knew you were on night shift.”
"What happened?"
Of course.
Of course it was Niragi.
Why did he even worry about something serious happening?
"Stab wound."
Fuck.
There are, indeed, two police officers in the corridor when he arrives at the ER. They’re too busy talking with one of the other doctors, so they don’t notice how Chishiya slides past them, pulls open the curtain, and feels the urge to strangle Niragi with the IV tube.
“Hi.”
He says.
Hi.
“You’re still on probation.”
Niragi rolls his eyes at him.
“I haven’t spent a night in the police station since 2020, thank you very much.”
He doesn’t look too bad this time. Chishiya had the pleasure of seeing him way more beaten up on other occasions. All his teeth seem to be in place at least, and paramedics did a good job to stop the bleeding in the ride here. The bruises from the party were starting to fade, so he does't know if what he is seeing is all tonights doing or still lingering from his encounter with Murata and the others.
“I meant in-group probation,” which is way worse than being watched by the police. One wrong move and Karube would be smashing a bottle over Niragi’s head for being stupid. “You’re on thin ice.”
“Oh please, when was the last time I got in trouble?” The look Chishiya gives him is enough for him to scoff like a scolded child. “The party doesn’t count. No one called the police on me and they started it.”
Of course he knew Chishiya was going to bring that up, what an idiot.
“Shut up and show me your hand.”
Apart from the new piercing Niragi has acquired, the other injuries don’t seem that bad. He does give Chishiya his hand, and the only thing wrong about it is the weird position of two of his fingers and a few broken nails.
“I think there should be a legal limit for the number of times a human being can break their nose.” Chishiya is not even looking him in the eye. He grabs his arm instead and looks at the fingers that are bent in the wrong angle. “You look like shit.”
“You should see the other—” but Chishiya chooses that moment to put them back into place, and all that leaves Niragi’s mouth is a loud scream. “Warn a man!”
“Don’t be stupid, and maybe I won’t need to relocate your bones!”
This isn’t even his job. There’s an actual ER doctor who should be doing this, but who cares? If Chishiya is here, he can at least get rid of Niragi so people with real problems can get the attention they deserve.
“Do you think I could use this hand in a few hours? I have a deadline and a lot of work to do,” Niragi says, looking down at his hand. But Chishiya ignores it, too busy wrapping his fingers with a bandage. A hard piece of plastic stops him from bending his fingers, so Niragi guesses that is a no. “Did you talk to the pigs?”
“No, we’ll be bailing you out of jail this time?”
“Ask them,” he says with a shrug. Niragi slumps against the bed, holding his hand closer to his chest with a wince. Finishing all his work with only one hand is going to be slow, boring, and complicated. For all the times he laughed about people who can’t throw a punch, he stands corrected by life one more time. “I only know that one of the pigs pulled me away when I was starting to have fun. Those dudes’ dentists are going to send me a Christmas card gift with how much work I gave them.”
He’s going to kill him himself.
He’s done, it’s over.
How can this person be his friend? How can Niragi be this fucking stupid?
“Really?”
“I didn’t start the fight!”
For some reason, Chishiya grabs the plastic chair and pulls it closer to the bed. He should be going home, not doing this.
“Start talking before I regret it.”
“Heiya called me in the middle of the night,” he says, arms crossed in front of his chest. “She wanted to leave a party, but she was scared to call Aguni,” and he can’t blame her. Aguni may love the kid with all his heart, but he’s also scary. “I guess she could trust me more to not reprimand her about being out alone this late, so I grabbed my keys and my bike and went to get her.”
For someone who to this day still refuses to call anyone a friend, Niragi has plenty of soft spots.
“Some guys were being annoying when I arrived. They looked older and smelled like shit. Drunk as fuck. High maybe.”
“Heiya can handle herself against some idiots. That girl has guts,” and nails as sharp as her attitude. And Aguni as father.
“Well, yes, but she’s still a kid. At seventeen you’re not fully ready for things like this. She was alone, it was dark, she had a few drinks, and now three guys were pestering her. Anyone would be scared.”
And knowing Niragi, he wouldn’t really mind getting into a fight with the excuse of it being part of a noble cause. With how stressed he is lately and after everything that happened at that party, Chishiya is more surprised about how long Niragi waited before searching for trouble to get it out of his sistem.
“If something happened to her when I was the one she called, Aguni would have my head,” and because he doesn’t want anything happening to Heiya. But he’s not saying that out loud; he’s not going to admit having the kid as one of his closest friends because that would be weird. “I told them to fuck off. They pushed me away from her, and it escalated really quickly,” he gestures towards the bandages, “I guess one had a knife.”
Chishiya pinches the bridge of his nose.
He had been working all day, assisting in a surgery that had lasted most of the afternoon, and before he could ever change out of his scrubs, Niragi had to ruin his day. When the nurse had first told him about a friend being here, Chishiya had been naïve enough to think that it would just be Arisu with one of his migraines. Maybe Karube after dealing with some idiot at the bar.
But no, of course he can’t have it easy.
“And I’m here because?”
“Because I want to leave, and someone needs to sign the discharge paper.”
“You took a knife to the stomach.”
“Yes and? Had it worse,” he says with another shrug. “It’s not my first rodeo. Did you know baseball bats are pretty good for giving someone a concussion?”
“One day you’ll end up dead in a ditch after messing up with the wrong people, and I’m going to throw a party, Niragi.”
“And then you’ll die after burning down the kitchen without me there,” Niragi shrugs, but a wince escapes him. Blood soaks through the bandages. Idiot.
“Doctor Chishiya,” a nurse walks in, interrupting their fight. She’s giving him a soft smile. “Is everything okay? Isn’t your shift already over? You should go home and rest. You worked so hard already.”
“It was,” and he stares into Niragi’s soul in a way that screams murder. He should be in bed already, not here. Niragi winks at him and grabs his phone from the small bedside table. “But someone needed my attention.”
Chishiya gets up from the chair and walks to the woman; the smile she gives him is sickly sweet.
“Isn’t he the guy the police were talking with Doctor Higuchi about? Should I call them?”
The nurse asks. Niragi notices the sidelong glance he receives. The staff must know that the guy in cubicle 5 is the one the police brought in. She steps closer to Chishiya; for a moment he doesn’t know if the woman is scared or stupid.
“That’s me.” Niragi ignores the woman and keeps scrolling down his phone. He sends Kuina a message telling her that yes, he’s okay. Yes, he’s with Chishiya.
“You know each other?” She’s fluttering her eyelashes now. Whoa. Does Chishiya really have that effect on women?
“I'm his boyfriend,” Niragi says, lifting his eyes from the phone. Behind the nurse, Chishiya’s mouth falls open like a trap for flies. “She doesn’t need to call them, right, Shuntaro?”
The nurse stutters, pretends to check the IV, and disappears behind the curtain after saying goodbye to Chishiya.
“Why did you say that!”
“Oh, it’s not that fun when you’re on the other side, is it?”
“This is not a party! It’s my workplace!” Chishiya says, pointing an accusatory finger at him. “And I was helping you!”
“So was I; that nurse would drop the annoying flirting now. How can someone spare a look at you and think you’re interested in women?”
“What?”
“She was flirting with you, Chishiya.”
“No, she wasn’t.”
“Yes, she was, and it was painfully obvious, so you’re welcome. If she’s a decent woman, she’ll stop pestering you.”
Chishiya looks at him.
Is he for real?
“Are you going to sign my discharge papers or not?”
“The only thing I’m going to sing is a request for them to take you back to the psychiatric ward.”
Niragi's answer is not even an offended gasp. He rolls his eyes at him and laughs.
“Going for the heart, aren’t we?”
“No,” this time Chishiya feels like a disappointed father when he crosses his arms over his chest. “Going for the heart is telling you that you either spend the night here, leaving me the fuck alone, or I throw your computer out of the window.”
That makes Niragi react.
“Don’t you dare.”
“Try me.”
After a stupid staring contest, Niragi slumps back against the bed. Under the white light he looks pale and frail, even if Chishiya knows that he’s nothing of that. It could have been worse, he thinks.
“Where is Heiya?” He asks to distract himself from the worry he doesn’t need to feel about someone like Niragi.
“Talking to the police in the corridor, I think.”
“I’ll check on her, and I’ll come back tomorrow and take you home after my shift,” Chishiya says, already pulling open the curtain. “I’ll get you a shirt or something.”
“Bring me my spare glasses too, would you?”
Wait, that was what all the squinting was about. Chishiya turns around to look at him again. It can’t be. He’s not angry, well maybe a little. But he’s just blind right now.
Chishiya can’t stop himself from bursting into a loud laugh; this is so funny. He didn’t even need to bring up the computer; he could have just threatened Niragi with not guiding him home, and it would have been enough.
“I’ll see about that,” he says between giggles. “I hope you get sepsis and die.”
He gets exactly five seconds of calm before he finds it shattered again.
“Is he okay?”
Chishiya takes a step back when Heiya runs to him. She’s wrapped in what seems to be Aguni’s coat, and she still hasn’t cleaned the ruined mascara from her face. She’s pale and tired and worried, but Chishiya doesn’t have the energy to be anything but blunt.
“He’ll live,” he says. “They’re stitching him back together, so it should be fine.”
He doesn’t mention the blood transfusion or the broken bones; there’s no point in going into detail.
“What about the police?”
Heiya keeps shivering, and the big question lingers in the air.
Aguni has been in their lives for years already. For some reason the man had been the only person to offer Niragi help after the worst episode of his life. It had been something small, repairing things around the gym, but enough to bring him back to his feet. The man had been looking after Niragi since then, and now his eyes wander to the two police agents and to the cubicle number 5.
“The police said that they have a few witnesses and the security camera footage.” Aguni has an arm draped over his kid's shoulders; he squeezes her closer, but Chishiya can tell he sounds worried. “I guess they’ll talk to him at some point, but tell Niragi and the others that he’s out of danger for now. Everyone is saying that they started it; if the footage matches that version, they won’t even make more questions.”
Well, that’s actually good.
The last thing any of them need is having Niragi back to the starting line of messing things up.
“Go get some rest; you must be tired,” Aguni says, his free hand squeezing Chishiya’s shoulder, and he ignores the warm feeling that it brings inside him. “I’m going to have a word with him, and then we’ll go home too.”
“Yeah, whatever,” he’s about to collapse on his feet.
Chishiya waves goodbye to them and to the nurse from before. She avoids his eyes, cheeks tinted pink.
Maybe Niragi was right.
He doesn’t have the energy to care.
Chishiya throws him a shirt thirty minutes before lunchtime, saying that it’s time for them to go home and to hurry the fuck up.
Niragi, who was busy trying to catch a Pokémon on his phone, glares daggers at him when the shirt hits him on the face.
“Chishiya, where the fuck are my glasses?”
Niragi asks, looking at the lump of fabric Chishiya has brought him. A big smile spread across Chishiya’s face and.
“Chishiya Shuntaro I told you where I keep my spare glasses, why aren’t my glasses here?”
“It’s way funnier this way.”
Because like this, when Niragi changes into a shirt that is not drenched in blood, he needs to walk slow and careful of his surounders. He can’t run away, and when he tries to smack the back of Chishiya’s head, he fails by a mile.
“See? You’re way easier to keep an eye on when you’re blind.”
He’s not sure if Niragi is squinting because he's mad or trying to see something. Either way, it makes all the tiredness go away, and Chishiya feels fresh and new.
Messing up with him is always funny, but, at the same time, he allows Niragi to rest his non-injured hand over his shoulder as they walk.
He feels better than last night, well rested and relaxed. He’s no longer that annoyed about the Niragi thing, and a small part of him is even glad about his roommate being fine.
When they get home, Niragi goes straight to the room. Arms waving around like some kind of doll out of control, he must be really desperate to see again.
“I wasn’t able to find them, for real this time,” he leans against the door frame of Niragi’s room. “And don’t blame me; this place is a mess.”
Books, clothes, and all kinds of electronics cover every single surface in the room. Inside the drawer Niragi told him to open, there were only sketchbooks, sheets of paper, and a few napkins with concept art of his last project.
He tried a few other ones, because he’s curious like that, and found nothing. Not glasses, not contact lenses, and, worse of all, nothing funny or embarrassing. He was hoping for a few secrets at least, but nothing came out of it.
At least now he’s having a good time watching Niragi stumble around and pat over tables and shelves and curse each time he doesn’t find what he’s looking for.
“Don’t you have contacts?”
“Used the last ones at that fucking party,” he says. Chishiya is about to tell him that he shouldn’t be moving so much with a stabbing wound, but whatever. If he wants to die, sure, why not. It’s not even his stitches the ones he would be pulling or messing.
“Why would your glasses be under the bed?”
“Why not!” When he tries to climb from his place under the bed, he hits his head against it and goes back to cursing. “Help me, you fucking bastard!”
He goes through the endless lines of books on the walls, "What I am even searching?"
“Blue case. Old as fuck. Covered in marker drawings,” Niragi keeps searching and bending to crouch down and check under the table, and Chishiya is starting to get annoyed. “If I don’t find it, I’m asking you to gauge my eyes.”
“I’m not interested in organ collection, thank you,” Chishiya is trying to search for the case among the endless rows of books on the shelf. “Your eyes are not even functional. No one would give me a good price for them.”
His hand finally touches something that feels like plastic and pulls it from in between a pile of books that fall to the floor with a loud thud.
The cloud of dust makes him cough, but at least they finally found it.
The case is covered in dust when Chishiya opens it, he finds an even older-looking pair of glasses.
Niragi’s glasses, the ones that lay broken somewhere in a street, were made of a thin frame of silver metal. Expensive and made to look like he’s not that blind. These ones are made of black plastic, big and square and a bit ugly.
Chishiya can see how this one must be older, the crystals thick as the bottom of a bottle. They couldn’t make crystals as thin as they do now a few years ago.
“Found them,” he calls. Niragi hits his head again when he gets out from his place under the table and stumbles towards him, hands in front of him like he’s scared of falling. “How blind are you?”
“You’ve seen my medical record. You know that already.”
Well, yes. One good thing about having access to the hospital computers is gossiping about his friends when he gets bored.
“Here, bend down.”
For some reason, Niragi obeys, and Chishiya places the glasses gently on Niragi’s face after cleaning them with the hem of his shirt, careful not to push too hard against his broken nose. Chishiya has to maneuver the frame so it rests above the bandages, but he manages to do it. Purple is starting to bloom all across his face; it won’t turn into a pretty color anytime soon.
Niragi blinks behind the thick glasses, and his eyes look impossibly big now. He stays silent, looking at Chishiya; now that he’s no longer squinting, he doesn’t look half as angry.
“What?”
“I forgot how ugly you are when you’re not a blur.”
“Shut up and go sit on the couch,” Chishiya says. He cleans his hands from the dust using Niragi’s shirt. “I’m redressing the wound.”
Chishiya puts everything in a metal tray and carries it to the coffee table. There are some bandages and a sterile needle in case he needs to redo any of the stitches. It’s not his ideal job; he hates doing stitches, and most of the time nurses are the ones in charge of that.
But if Niragi wanted good medical attention, he should go back to the hospital. Once his shift is over, Chishiya refuses to be a doctor. He’s doing this only in fear of Kuina.
And maybe in fear of Heiya and Aguni, who, for some reason, love this fucking idiot.
Niragi is looking at him; with those stupidly big glasses, he looks almost innocent and nice.
“Shirt off,” he orders, because he’s not going to drag this on any longer. He wants to do his not-job and kick Niragi into the kitchen so he can make them lunch. He owes Chishiya that much at least.
“Turn around.”
“Niragi. I’m a surgeon; I see people's chests all day round." He’s doing this for the goodness of his heart. He’s not dealing with more bullshit today. “I can assure you I’ve seen worse things than your ugly tattoos.”
But Niragi’s arms are still crossed in front of his chest.
He’s looking away from Chishiya, ears colored bright red. The blush goes down to his neck and disappears down the collar of the shirt he’s still refusing to take off.
“Turn around.”
“What?”
“Turn around.”
“I’ve seen Kuina and you walking into the same room to get changed for years,” and they’ve been roommates for seven. Friends for less, but regardless, it’s been a long time.
“Yes! Because it’s Kuina!” He turns back to look at him. He waves his arms around like he’s trying to make a point in this useless argument. “And you are you! So turn around!”
Whatever.
He just wants to be done with it.
“I’m not looking,” he turns around and covers his eyes with his hands. “This is stupid. I hope you know it.”
“Not all of us are shameless!”
“Niragi I don’t think you’re the one to say that," he’s never going to understand him; that’s out of the grasp of his emotional intelligence. “I can't believe this bullshit.”
“Shut up, Kuina and you are the ones who walk around showing off, not me.”
Chishiya is the one who wears a jacket without a shirt underneath and stupid low-cut shirts. Kuina is the one who has taken off his top at least one time in front of everyone in their group of friends.
“Well, when you pay what we have paid to look the way we look, you show it off.”
Idiot. A fucking idiot—that’s what Chishiya is.
When he turns around, Niragi has his shirt draped over his chest, but at least Chishiya has access to the wound now.
“Aguni's chest is bigger than whatever you’re hiding under there,” he says, starting to peel off the bandage. “And it’s not like me of all people won’t get it.”
“I know.” Niragi is still looking away; he refuses to look at Chishiya. He can see how far the blush has crawled down by now; if it wasn’t Niragi, he would even call it cute. “And for that same reason I know you’ll look away when I ask.”
Well, he got Chishiya with that one.
Luckily for Niragi, none of the stitches have come undone, not even with all the movement. But Chishiya still takes his time to clean it from dry blood and antiseptics.
“You know the funniest thing about it?” Niragi says, breaking the silence. “About taking a knife for someone like Heiya?”
This time, he does look at Chishiya. His eyes wander down to the wound, to Chishiya’s hands gently wiping it clean.
“Heiya is the kind of girl I would have hated back in school,” Niragi looks away from the wound, talking in a whisper. “She’s not the kind of girl who picked on people like me. But she’s the kind of girl to whom I would have been invisible.”
He loves her; she’s such a fun kid. She annoys the hell out of Aguni, but the man can’t deny his kid anything. She gossips with him when he drops by the gym, and she has matured a lot in the past year; she’s no longer a full-time mean girl. Having an attitude and standing your ground is important, but she’s still a bit mean. Not like Niragi can complain about that with his own shitty attitude.
“I would have hated her because she held so much power, and I was pathetic and weak.”
There’s a moment of silence as Chishiya starts to change his bandages, but he’s quick to break it again; he doesn’t allow the silence to linger over them.
“What about me?”
“Uh?”
“Would you have hated me back then?”
“I think you’re the kind of person who only notices the people who are interesting to him.” Well, Niragi is not wrong about that. “If we had met back then, you wouldn’t even see me.”
“You’re smart; I’m sure I would have been annoyed if you got better grades than me.”
“But I was quiet smart,” Niragi scoffs. He tries to starch the wound, and Chishiya slaps his hands away. “I aced each test, submitted everything in time, but never talked during classes so I wouldn’t call anyone’s attention. I would have bored you to death.”
Chishiya stares at him for a moment, surprised by the gasp in his always raised defenses, by the moment of vulnerability. For a moment, he’s back at the party. They’re back at the booth instead of being inside their home.
I would have seen you, he wants to say. I would have seen the pain and what they did to you.
Chishiya knows that they would have shared a class. That Niragi and he would have a battle for the top spot, for the best grades, for the teacher’s attention. Chishiya knows that he would have known what was going on with Niragi.
But he also knows that he wouldn’t have cared.
Not even for a moment.
Because the person he was back then would have looked at someone like Niragi and thought it was deserved. Because he had been thought to think like that.
Maybe that’s the reason why he redresses the wound as gently as he can, instead of being harass as he was last night.
“And you graduated early,” Niragi adds. “We weren’t even in the same year.”
“They never tried to make you skip a year?”
The only person who has even stood to his level and made him fight in a field that usually was his alone. He thinks about it for a moment, of a world where they’ve been fighting like this since kids. It could have been nice.
“I always refused,” Niragi says. His head drops back against the couch, eyes nailed to the ceiling. “If the kids my age were like that, I was terrified of what older ones would do to me if I showed up in their class, one year younger and better than them.”
How sad it is. Maybe Chishiya could have learned to care. Maybe Niragi would have given his school years some entertainment. Some fight. A worthy rival.
He doesn’t think Niragi was boring back then.
Niragi is not boring right now.
He’s annoying and a fucking asshole; he drives Chishiya crazy every day, and for some reason, Kuina is the only one who can control him. She’s the only one who can handle both of them, and Chishiya would never admit that his friend must be really special to be able to do that.
Someone who makes Chishiya step out of his comfortable and cozy indifference zone can’t be boring, but that’s not something he likes to think about.
“Enough of the trip down memory lane,” he says, placing the clean bandage in place. Sometimes he wonders if Niragi keeps being his roommate just for the quick access to medical care. Or if it is something else, a kind of understanding they never talk about. “Go to bed, Niragi. I know you didn’t sleep a single minute in that hospital bed.”
And with that, he picks up everything and disappears into his own room.
When he closes the door, he still feels Niragi’s eyes in the back of his neck.