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The stool was unforgiving tonight.
Actually, no, everything was — because his leg ached like a fucking bastard and the shitty weather didn’t help, while humidity just sank deeper into his bones, making the healing feel like it’d never quite stuck. Niragi could do nothing aside from shifting uncomfortably on his usual spot, nursing his glass of whiskey and scowling at the condensation crawling down the sides like it had a goddamn grudge against him and his pathetic existence.
Lucid was thin with regulars by now. It had this end-of-the-night quiet vibe as time passed, save for a drunk guy two stools down slurring a love song into his palm and a couple tucked in a booth like the rest of the world didn’t exist. Someone — seemingly new, or perhaps just new to the vibe this bar had near its closing time — had asked Karube earlier, with a raised brow and a vague smile, “He a friend of yours?”, jerking a thumb toward Niragi’s direction like he was some stray dog curled up by the fire.
“Something like that.” The blond responded with a shrug, wiping down a glass like he actually gave a shit about fingerprints. “He likes it here.”
Niragi couldn’t help but snort under his breath. “‘Something like that’, my ass,” he mimicked bitterly, curling his fingers tighter around the glass before knocking back the last of the whiskey and setting it down harder than he meant to. The new guy flinched but didn’t look up, trying (and failing) to pretend that he hadn’t been caught talking about them. Karube, meanwhile, just shot him a look — half-amused, half-exasperated. Figured.
By the time the bar emptied out and the blonde-haired bartender locked the door behind the last couple with a muttered “take care,” Niragi was still where he’d been all night — hunched like a gargoyle, legs stretched out to take the weight off the bad one. The cane leaned against the wall beside him like a silent witness.
“You’re grumpier than usual today.” Karube started, flipping the deadbolt with a solid click and turning the sign around with a practiced hand. “What’s up?”
“Well.” Niragi nudged the cane with his foot. “My leg’s a bitch, your whiskey’s watered down, and some fuckwit thought I was your lost dog. Take your pick.”
“Could’ve said something yourself.” The older man wiped the bar counter with exaggerated care, voice maddeningly calm. “You have a mouth, use it.”
“What’s the point? You already think of me as a brooding mutt,” Niragi muttered, pushing up from his stool with a grunt. His leg screamed sharp and mean, but he ignored it like always. “Seemed like you were enjoying the image.”
Karube didn’t look up at that. He just kept wiping down the bar as if it'd reveal some truth neither of them were willing to say out loud if he scrubbed it hard enough. “It’s late,” he said after a while, voice neutral and deliberately ignoring the previous jabs throwing his way. “You should stay upstairs instead.”
“What, so you can keep tabs on me?” Niragi scoffed. “Make sure this crippling pathetic asshole doesn’t fall down some stairs on the way out and sue your ass for emotional damages? What am I, huh? A charity case for you?”
“Jesus, don’t put words in my mouth like that,” The older man hissed, tossing the rag aside with a sigh that sounded like it’d been sitting on his chest for days. “I’ve had a long night. Don’t make it worse.”
Niragi slammed his cane against the bar, the sound cutting sharp through the room like a slap. “Don’t make it worse?” he echoed, voice taut and brimming with venom. “Yeah, sure, jackass. Let’s just pretend you didn’t call me a mutt in front of some fucking stranger tonight. Real nice of you, by the way.”
“For fuck’s sake—” Karube pinched the bridge of his nose, frustration evident on his face. His voice came out low, barely restrained. “You know what? Maybe I was wrong. Maybe you are a mutt, always snapping at everyone who gets close because you don’t know what else to do aside from attacking the hand that feeds you.”
If the argument between the two of them so far hadn’t done any damage yet, those words from the older man surely did the trick.
“Wow,” Niragi spat, the venom in his voice thick enough to curdle as he tried to hide the way he flinched by turning away, the cane in his hand tapping against the floor in a rhythm that somehow felt angrier than it had any right to be. “Thanks for clarifying that, Karube. Glad to know where I stand.”
He made it two uneven steps before the other man’s fingers closed tight around his wrist — not rough, not gentle either, but definitely enough to stop him.
“Don’t—” Karube said, barely above a whisper. “Don’t go yet. I—”
“You what, Karube?” Niragi yanked, though not hard enough to break free — just enough to remind them both he could. “Gonna tell me I’m a housebroken mutt now?”
“Would you fucking stop—” The blond hissed through gritted teeth, dragging a hand over his face like that might somehow erase the last thirty seconds. “I didn’t mean it like that, alright?”
He couldn’t help but bark a laugh at that excuse — sharp, humorless. “Yeah? Sounded pretty fucking clear to me.”
Karube looked like he wanted to say something — anything — but the words got stuck somewhere behind clenched teeth and tight shoulders.
So he sighed instead, a long, heavy sigh, and gently tugged Niragi closer to him.
“Look, just… stay the night.” He repeated, tone softer this time. “I don’t want you to walk home like this.”
“This,” Niragi muttered, gesturing vaguely to his leg, his cane, the bar, the empty glasses — his whole miserable existence condensed into a single, bitter sweep of his hand — “has been like this for months. You didn’t care then, so why now?”
“I did care.” The retort came fast — too fast, perhaps, like they’d been sitting behind the blond’s teeth waiting for the right crack to slip through. “I do care.”
“Oh yeah?” He gave Karube a tight smirk, the kind that never touched his eyes. “If that was the case then you must have a funny way of showing it. Letting some fucker talk like I’m a rescue animal you feed scraps to out of pity—”
“Niragi,” he interjected, and something in the way he said it — low, warning, almost tired — made the younger man pause, if only for a second. “You done?”
That earned Karube a glare. “You don’t get to pull the exhausted bartender act right now.”
“Then quit making me earn it,” the man muttered, rubbing at the spot between his brows like Niragi had physically burrowed his frustration under his skin. “I’m trying here. You think I want to have this conversation? Fuck no, but if you keep pushing like this, I swear I’m gonna start throwing bottles, and I like my stock.”
“Start doing it then,” he shot back, sharp-edged and wobbly with all the hurt he had bottled up over time. “At least then you’ll be honest about wanting to hurt someone.”
“Well yeah, I did want to hurt someone when I have to answer a bunch of slurring assholes about what you are to me like you’re nothing more than a fucking stray dog,” Karube snapped, jaw clenching hard enough to tick. “I didn’t say anything because it’s none of their goddamn business, not because I’m ashamed of you.”
“… Could’ve fooled me.”
“You were there, man.” The bartender’s voice broke at the end of his sentence into a quiet, tired sort of defeat. “You heard him. You think anything I could’ve said would’ve made a difference to guys like that?”
Niragi didn’t answer right away — just shifted his weight like the ground might stop aching if he found the right stance. It didn’t. The pain in his leg flared fresh and hot with every heartbeat, a pulse of sharpness radiating up through his hip. Maybe it was the whiskey. Maybe it was the fact that he hadn’t eaten anything solid since sometime yesterday. Maybe it was just that he was so, so fucking tired.
“You didn’t even try,” he muttered, softer now, but no less bitter. “Guess I’m not worth the breath.”
“If you aren’t worth the breath, I would not water down that whiskey so that you don’t die on me after mixing it with fucking painkillers,” Karube said — blunt but not cruel, just… defeated. “And don’t look at me like that, either. You think I didn’t notice?”
Niragi stilled.
For a moment, his mouth opened like he had something scathing to say — some flippant jab, a snarl, anything to turn the attention away from the fact that he had taken a couple of pills earlier without thinking. Or maybe on purpose, though the truth was… well, the truth and it was bitter as fuck on his tongue.
Hard to say anymore.
So he scoffed instead — quiet, deflective — and said, “You gonna scold me now, bartender? Gonna give me a stern talking to while you wipe down a countertop and pretend it’s not about feelings?”
Karube was never a graceful person.
However, with how he effortlessly swooped Niragi up in one smooth motion while still giving him that look like he'd committed an unforgivable crime, one would argue otherwise.
“What the—?!” the younger man flailed, nearly elbowed Karube in the face, and would’ve fought harder if he wasn’t halfway to blacking out from a combination of whiskey, rage, and that fucking nerve still grinding through his thigh like it hated him personally. “Put me the fuck down, you asshole—”
“Can’t. You’ll fall on your ass.”
“Better than being carried like some Victorian bride—!”
The blond just adjusted his grip under his knees with an unfazed hum. “You’re heavier than you look. Stop squirming or I will drop you, and then you can add ‘concussion’ to your list of complaints.”
“You son of a bitch—!”
Niragi didn’t even get to finish the insult before Karube kissed him.
The kiss wasn’t soft, or romantic, or gentle in any way — it was frustration and exhaustion and shut the fuck up, I don’t know what else to do with you combined all into one action. It was two people smashing into each other like they both wanted to win an argument and lost the words for it. Niragi made a startled sound, half-growl, fists tightening into the fabric of Karube’s shirt as he kissed back like it was a challenge. Like if he kissed hard enough, it’d prove something — or break something equally significant to them both.
By the time they pulled away from each other, the two of them were breathing hard and still standing in the hallway like some irate fairytale gone wrong.
“What the fuck was that for?” Niragi snapped the second he had air to do so, voice ragged and high with something that might’ve been adrenaline or panic. “You don’t get to call me a mutt and then kiss me. That’s not how this works!”
Karube didn’t answer right away. Just kept walking — calm, maddeningly unfazed, like he hadn’t just done something completely insane. Niragi hit him in the shoulder once with the side of his fist, and again with more force when the older man had the audacity to smirk.
“Say something, dickhead,” he snapped, louder now. “Or are we doing the whole ‘strong, silent caveman’ act now? You gonna club me next?”
“Can’t,” The blond sighed — half-amused and half-exasperated — as he nudged the apartment door open with his foot, still holding Niragi like some grumpy, wounded sack of insults. “You’d enjoy that too much.”
“Oh, fuck you—”
“You’re not exactly light, y'know.” Karube huffed as they cleared the threshold. “And squirming like that isn't helpful either.”
“Then put me down!”
“I will. When we get there.”
“You said that five doorframes ago.”
“And I meant it five doorframes ago.”
By the time they made it to the bedroom area, Niragi had thoroughly exhausted his insult repertoire and was halfway through threatening to bite him the next time he pulled something like that.
“You’re all bark,” Karube sighed, easing him down onto the edge of the mattress like he wasn’t full of whiskey, fury, and pure spite. “Calm the fuck down or else you would hurt your leg even more than you already have.”
“I’d rather hurt my leg than deal with your stupid mouth,” Niragi snapped, though his voice lacked heat now — more grumble than growl, more habit than intent. He shifted with a grimace, the mattress creaking beneath him, and shoved Karube’s hand away when it lingered too long near his knee. “I can sit down by myself, you know. I’m not a fucking porcelain doll.”
“You’re right,” the blonde-haired bartender agreed with a small nod, straightening up and cracking his back with a tired sigh. “Porcelain’s more graceful.”
“Eat shit.”
Karube just grinned in response, slow and crooked, before dragging a hand through his hair and turning to rummage through a drawer — probably for something that could be used as pain relief, knowing him. Niragi watched him for a while, fingers flexing against the fabric of his pants like he wanted to punch something and didn’t quite have the energy to do so.
“… When you said you watered down the whiskey,” the younger man muttered eventually, eyes still looking down on the floor, “you weren’t just talking shit, were you?”
Karube didn’t answer right away. He tossed a small gel pack onto the bed beside him and dug around in the drawer a moment longer before finally straightening with a faint sigh.
“No.” His voice came quiet, stripped of the usual bravado. “I wasn’t.”
Niragi exhaled through his nose — sharp, derisive, but not quite angry anymore. Not just angry. “Great. So now I’m your pity project and your liability.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“You don’t have to.” He leaned back on one palm, ignoring the way his leg protested even the slight shift. “It’s not exactly subtle, man. You babysit my drinks, carry me up the stairs like some wounded animal, and then have the sheer fucking audacity to call me a mutt just like those fuckwits did. Forgive me if I’m a little unclear on where I stand.”
That was enough to make Karube sigh and glance at him in a way that screamed hurt.
“… Niragi.” The blonde-haired man sighed. “I would rather have you drunk and pissed and trying to bite my nose off than dead. So if I call you something stupid while you’re half-sober and mixing pills with alcohol like you’ve got a death wish, maybe consider that I’m not exactly thinking straight either.”
“So?” Nirgi snorted bitterly, picking at a loose thread near his knee, “you get to play white knight and insult me in the same breath? Real nice tradeoff.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Does it really fucking matter?”
That shut them both up, not because there wasn’t more to say — Niragi was a fountain of venom and rage when he wanted to be, and Karube could go rounds in a shouting match with the best of them — but because the silence settled too fast and too thick between them to cut through without bleeding for it.
After a while, the younger man clicked his tongue and looked away, hand picking harder at the loose thread until it came free and curled around his knuckle like it might anchor him to something that made sense.
“… Could’ve just let me fall down the stairs, man,” he muttered, voice low and almost too soft to hear. “Doesn’t take that much to kill me with how fucked my leg is.”
That was a bad thing to say, because it made Karube pause mid-step, his shoulders tense like he’d just been punched in the gut.
“I don’t joke about shit like that,” he murmured. “Don’t you either.”
Niragi huffed out a sharp breath, his hand still playing with the thread in the palm of his hand. “Who said I was joking?”
The blonde-haired bartender couldn’t help but exhale through his nose, the sound heavy and resigned. He crossed the room in a few steps, crouching so they could be on the same eye-level with each other.
“Hey,” Karube said. “Look at me.”
Niragi didn’t, of course — because that would require admitting this wasn’t just another one of his offhanded, flippant remarks — but the blond wasn’t known for his patience.
“Niragi,” he repeated, softer this time, reaching out and grabbing his wrist. “Look at me, please.”
With a sharp click of his tongue, he finally relented, eyes narrowing like he was daring the man in front of him to say something he wouldn’t like.
“I didn’t carry you up here because I pity you,” Karube started, tone calm yet edged with a kind of raw honesty Niragi wasn’t used to. “I didn’t water down your whiskey because I think you’re weak and can’t handle your alcohol either. Whether you like hearing this or not, I did it because I care.”
“Care,” Niragi repeated, the word tasting foreign and bitter on his tongue. His expression twisted into something sharp, defensive. “You sure about that? Last time someone ‘cared,’ I ended up—”
“Don’t,” the blond interrupted, tightening his grip on his wrist. “Don’t go there. I’m not them.”
That was enough to shut Niragi up, so Karube took it as a chance to reach for his leg with the gel pack in hand.
“Fuck—” The hiss escaped before he could stop it, and the other man paused instantly, eyes flicking up in quiet concern. Niragi refused to meet them, locking his gaze on some vague point on the wall instead, gritting his teeth to will the pain away.
Karube noticed, of course. His touch was gentler after that.
“I’ll go slow,” he said quietly. “Just… tell me if it’s too much.”
He then pressed the gel pack carefully against the muscle that had seized up, and Niragi flinched. It wasn't even from the pain anymore — he could handle pain, after all, had lived and survived and cut his teeth through it to come out meaner — but he didn’t know what to do with kindness.
That was the thing that truly, utterly, thoroughly fucked him up the most.
“You always like this with people you ‘care’ about?” Niragi muttered after a while. “Kissing them on stairwells, manhandling them into bed, and icing their injuries like it’s foreplay?”
Karube huffed out something that might’ve been a laugh, but it was too tired to count. “You always deflect this hard when someone doesn’t treat you like shit?”
His jaw clenched at that.
That was a low blow — fucking low — and Niragi wanted to snap back with something sharp enough to carve distance between them. But his body was too tired, and his mind too frayed at the edges to manage anything that didn’t collapse under its own weight. The painkillers were already humming through his veins, blooming slow warmth in their wake, just enough to make him sluggish… and just enough to risk everything spilling out if he wasn’t careful.
“… I didn’t take them on purpose,” Niragi added eventually, barely above a whisper. “The pills. Just forgot I’d already taken some before going to the bar.”
Karube nodded — slow, thoughtful — like he was filing that away for later. He didn’t look entirely convinced, but they’d spent the whole night arguing at that point and neither of them felt particularly in the mood to light another match.
“I don’t think you’re trying to die,” the blond said after a while. “I think you’re just… tired.”
Niragi exhaled, bitter and bone-deep. “You gonna put that on a fucking Hallmark card?”
“No,” Karube said plainly. “Gonna put it on your gravestone if you don’t stop acting like you’ve got nothing left to lose.”
… So that meant the older man had been watching him spiral long enough to know what direction he was spinning then.
Typical.
“Don’t look at me like I'm a stray that you picked up one day and decided to house it in your bar,” Niragi muttered, weariness dragging down every syllable. “And one bad day doesn’t mean I’m ready to fuck off into traffic.”
Karube was quiet for a long, long time afterward.
“… You’re not a stray,” he said eventually. “Not for me at least.”
“Bullshit. You called me one not too long ago.”
“I did, and I'm sorry about it.”
“And I might not fuck off into traffic today, but I still hate everything about this.”
“I know that too.”
“Then why—”
“Because you’re still here,” Karube interjected, voice firm but no less gentle. “And maybe that’s not enough for you, but it’s enough for me to keep showing up.”
Niragi stared at the blond for a while like he was trying to twist the words into something easier to mock — something he could laugh at or spit on. But there was nothing in Karube’s face to fight, not when all he could see were steady hands and warmth and a quiet kind of presence that didn’t ask anything from him.
It became too much, so he had to look away eventually, shame curling low and hot in his gut.
“… You’re a fucking idiot,” he mumbled, barely audible.
“Probably.”
“And a hypocrite.”
“Definitely.”
“But if you kiss me again, I’ll break your nose.”
Karube smiled — crooked and infuriatingly charming — and pulled the gel pack away, his hand lingering a second longer than it needed to. “I’ll take my chances.”
“Try it then,” Niragi mumbled, still not meeting his eyes. “And see what’ll happen to yourself.”
It seemed to make the man in front of him smile even more than he already had.
He fucking hated it.
“You’re bluffing.” Karube chuckled, head tilting slightly to the side. “Your aim’s shit when you’re half high and pissed off.”
“Fuck you, you asshole—”
“Later.” The older man leaned in, and Niragi’s breath caught somewhere in his throat. “But for now, I think this should suffice.”
Before he could even protest properly, Karube just tugged him forward and pressed their lips together — slow and solid, nothing feverish or rushed, just the kind of kiss that didn’t demand anything except permission to stay. It made him tensed up like a storm was about to come, but the bastard didn't even flinch or pull away. Instead, he just kept guiding Niragi through it, kept kissing him with a patience that scraped somewhere raw in his chest, a calm pressure that said you’re allowed to be tired and still wanted anyway.
When they finally pulled away from each other, his shoulders started sagging like he’d been holding up the weight of his own anger for far too long.
“… You’re such a fucking idiot,” Niragi muttered, though it sounded a little less like an insult now.
“We both already knew that,” Karube replied softly, brushing his thumb against his knuckles as he stood back up. With the kind of care that made his heart ache, the blond eased him down onto the mattress, adjusting the pillows underneath his bad leg like he knew exactly how much of the ache was physical and how much was something else entirely.
“Don’t tuck me in like that,” Niragi muttered, already squirming at the edges of how gentle everything was. “I’m not a fucking invalid.”
“Never said you are.” Karube rolled his eyes. “Though you should consider yourself lucky that I don’t kiss your forehead too.”
“Try it and I’ll headbutt you.”
“With what balance?”
“… Fuck you.”
The blankets were pulled over him with practiced ease. The gel pack returned to its rightful place against the worst of his pain, and Niragi hissed softly but didn’t move. The cooling helped, and he didn’t have the energy to pretend otherwise.
“… If you dare snore tonight, I’ll punch you,” he grumbled, eyes already fluttering shut.
“Well,” Karube chuckled. “You drool on my pillow, so that’s only fair.”
“Asshole.”
“Get some sleep.”
He didn’t want to, not really. Sleep meant dreams, and dreams meant the Borderland, and the Borderland meant blood and ash and the echo of a voice yelling “burn the witch.” But Karube was here — real and warm and breathing — and for once, that seemed to be enough to keep the ghosts at bay.
Niragi closed his eyes, the corner of his mouth twitching faintly.
“… Wake me if I start screaming.”
“I will,” Karube murmured, already settling down next to him. “Promise.”
And for once, Niragi believed him.