Work Text:
Karube didn’t think it was possible for him to wake up at two in the morning after pulling off a twelve-hour shift at Lucid the night before.
Apparently, he was very, very wrong.
The first thing to greet him as he opened his eyes wasn’t Kuro (thank god — he wasn’t emotionally prepared for a paw to the face), but the pale glow of Niragi’s laptop screen. His partner sat hunched near the foot of the bed, hoodie pulled up like a cryptid surviving on caffeine and sheer spite. Wire-rimmed glasses clung to his face at a crooked angle, and his fingers danced in twitchy bursts over the keyboard — tap-tap-tap, pause, tap-tap-tap, sigh, repeat — like he was angrily composing Morse code.
“…It’s two in the morning right now, Suguru,” he croaked, dragging a hand over his face to try and be more awake. “Why the fuck are you still up?”
Niragi didn’t even look up from the screen as he tapped again. “Bug in the loop logic,” he muttered, squinting in visible annoyance. “It crashes the player every time they load the third save slot.”
The bartender could only stare at his partner in disbelief, then let his head thump back against the pillow with a sigh.
“You know what else crashes?” he grumbled. “The human brain, when you haven’t slept properly in over twenty-four hours.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re squinting like you’re trying to decode the fucking Matrix on a Lite-Brite.”
That earned him a tired snort. “Shut up. You wouldn’t get it.”
“No, but I do get that you’re one mistyped semicolon away from seeing God.”
“Semicolons are for cowards,” Niragi muttered automatically, rubbing his eyes with the back of one sleeve. “And JavaScript is a godless language.”
The blonde-haired man cracked an eye open at that comment. “Are you seriously picking a fight over coding syntax at two a.m.?”
“I will continue picking that fight until this bug is fixed. Now go back to sleep.”
“You’re not even functional anymore, man. You’re crashing.”
“I said I’m—”
But before Niragi could wind himself up into another defensive, stubborn tirade (the kind he always pulled when exhaustion got the better of him), Karube sat up — slow, groggy, not remotely graceful — and gently reached out to pry the laptop from his twitchy, genius fingers.
“Hey—!”
“You can yell at me after six hours of sleep and a real breakfast,” the bartender said with a sigh, already shutting the laptop and setting it on the nightstand. “Until then, I’m invoking boyfriend privilege.”
Niragi scowled like a kicked cat, muttering something under his breath that might have been a string of threats or just badly disguised JavaScript syntax, but he didn’t actually move to get the laptop back into his control.
“It wouldn't take long,” the man mumbled begrudgingly, sounding far less convincing this time around. His hands dropped into his lap, boneless and twitchy, like they’d only just realized they were attached to a body powered by equal parts jello and Red Bull. "I was almost done by now."
“I’m sure you were,” Karube hummed, smiling faintly as he leaned over to slide the crooked glasses off his face. “You’ve been over here rewriting the laws of reality for god knows how long. I love you, and I’m proud of your stubborn ass. Now can you please lie the fuck down?”
The younger man grumbled something unintelligible again, but this time it was more protest by habit than real fight. His shoulders slumped beneath the oversized hoodie, posture sagging like a dying NPC who hadn’t eaten in a few in-game days. His hands flexed once in his lap — ghosting like they didn’t quite know what to do without the keyboard — and then stilled.
Karube took that as his opening.
Cautiously, he leaned in, sliding an arm around Niragi’s waist and tugging gently — not hard enough to manhandle, just enough to coax. “Come here,” he murmured, voice still heavy with sleep.
“I can’t sleep like this,” Niragi said automatically, which was his usual first line of defense before promptly doing exactly that. “I’ll be too wired to—”
“You’re already half melted, Suguru,” Karube said against his temple, breathing warmly against his skin. “C’mon. Let me be annoying to you until you forget what a save slot is.”
“You alone are already annoying enough,” he muttered but didn’t put up much of a fight, and when the blonde-haired bartender tugged again, he let himself be pulled in, grudgingly sliding out of his sitting position and collapsing sideways onto the bed like a marionette with snipped strings.
The older man then shifted them carefully, settling on his back and pulling the covers over them both with practiced ease. Niragi’s hoodie was cold from being out of bed for so long, but his breath was warm against his collarbone. That was a good sign, at least.
“You smell like bourbon,” the younger man mumbled, words slurred at the edges now.
“Because I work in a bar, dumbass.”
“You smell like bourbon and sweat.”
“And you smell like an all-nighter and mental illness, so maybe let’s call it even.”
That finally earned him a small, muffled laugh from Niragi — a breathy little thing against his chest. His nimble fingers curled into the fabric of the bartender’s shirt, twitching once, like they were still looking for the nearest Ctrl key on the keyboard.
Karube softened then, pressing his nose into dark curls at his partner’s crown. “You can finish the code in the morning.”
“It won’t take long.”
“Baby, it’s already taken all night.”
“I hate you.”
“I know. Go to sleep anyway.”
The silence that followed was warm, worn-in, and easy in a way it hadn’t always been for either of them.
Karube let his eyes drift shut, one hand resting lazily on Niragi’s back. The rise and fall of his partner’s chest began to slow — uneven at first, but gradually smoothing out. The hoodie still smelled faintly of some unholy energy drink he’d chugged earlier, but Karube didn’t mind. He’d take that over finding him collapsed again, like that time six months ago when he’d overdone it and nearly passed out in the middle of the kitchen — leg seizing, breath ragged, refusing help until Karube had picked him up like a sack of furious, dehydrated potatoes and carried him to the couch.
“You took your meds today?” he murmured sleepily, hugging the man he loved closer to his chest.
A noncommittal grunt was the only answer he got.
“… Niragi,” Karube sighed. “You know that’s not a yes.”
“They make me too drowsy to work,” Niragi slurred. “I was busy and just forgot about it, but I’m fine.”
“They literally keep your leg from locking up.”
“I said I’m fine. Don’t fuss over me.”
“And I said I’m not dealing with another episode where I have to carry your ass to the ER ‘cause your knee decided to play dead.” The blond cracked one eye open then, squinting in mild disbelief. “Sometimes I genuinely can’t tell if you need that leg or not.”
“I need it for symmetry, asshole.” His partner mumbled, though his voice was already thick with sleep. “And don’t be a dramatic bitch. The pain wasn’t that bad today.”
“You say that now, but I’m the one who has to explain to the cat why you keeled over next to her litter box over the next couple weeks if you keep this up.”
At that moment, a soft mrrp echoed from the edge of their bed as Kuro jumped up without either of them noticing, her sleek black form curling up neatly near Karube’s feet. Her glowing eyes blinked at them in slow, judgmental disapproval, tail flicking once as if to say you two are disasters, but you’re my disasters before she settled down in the small space of blankets between the two men, loafing and purring away as she dozed off.
He smiled faintly, reaching out to gently scratch the back of her head. “See? Even Kuro’s over your bullshit.”
“She's over yours too,” Niragi murmured into his collarbone, pressing a soft kiss there before snuggling in closer to the warmth and comfort of their shared space.
“Yeah, but I give her tuna.”
“… Asshole.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. You can cuss at me all you want after waking up.” Karube grinned and pressed a kiss to his partner’s hair. “Now sleep, won’t you?”