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Tatta hadn't exactly planned on showing up at Niragi's apartment unannounced.
Before getting there, he'd rehearsed about a dozen messages on his phone — some casual, some worried, some leaning dangerously close to please tell me you're alive because I will spiral if you're not — but none of them truly made it past his drafts folder, because they all felt either too much or not enough. Besides, Niragi would probably make fun of him for being a fussy little wimpy ass, and… well, he'd be right, but Tatta would rather go back to the Borderland again than to hand him that ammunition on a silver platter.
Which was how he ended up standing in the hall of the older man's apartment building, clutching his phone like it could act as a shield to protect him, before finally gathering enough courage to ring the bell.
Nothing.
‘Can't believe I'm gonna embarass myself over this,’ Tatta thought as he pressed the button again. ‘He'll probably rip me apart the moment he—’
The door yanked open with a click.
“What the fuck do you want?”
Tatta flinched, eyes snapping up from the floor to find Niragi glowering at him. The man looked like hell — bloodshot eyes, pale face, hair sticking out in about twelve different directions like gravity had a personal grudge against him. It might've been funny if the whole thing weren't so tense.
“… Good morning to you too?” He offered weakly.
“It's four in the afternoon.”
“… Good afternoon to you too?”
Niragi was thoroughly unimpressed with his performace, and Tatta had to fight back his urge to just run the hell out of here and never thought about this ever again. He'd already embarrassed himself enough by showing up here like some clingy boyfriend — which he wasn't, technically, because they'd never actually defined whatever this thing between them was supposed to be — so he might as well just commit to the bit.
“Look, you haven't answered any of my texts for three days,” he started, trying to sound more confident than he felt. That anxiety dissolved real quick when the older man started to sway on his feet, and Tatta blurted out a “Jesus, you look like shit” while reaching out to stablize him — which was the wrong fucking move, because Niragi just glared even harder than before.
“Thanks for the pep talk, sunshine.” The programmer mumbled in annoyance as he prepared to shut the door once again. “Now unless you're here to tell me the world's ending again, I'd like to go back to bed.”
“Wait!” Tatta hurriedly pushed back to keep that door open. “You don't look… well at all, and I really mean it. When was the last time you actually ate something?”
Now Niragi was thoroughly annoyed. “What are you, my mother?”
“Unfortunately for us both, your mother probably didn't even care to check on you like this.” The mechanic huffed, because wow, the audacity. “Seriously, when did you last eat? Or shower? Or do literally anything that counts as basic human maintenance?”
Niragi just stared at him for a long while afterward and Tatta could practically see the gears turning in his brilliant mind — probably to calculate exactly how many ways he could tell him to fuck off and mind his own business — but then the man seemed to have a change of heart, leading to him stepping back from the door with a resigned sigh.
“You want to lecture me real bad, eh?” The programmer said, rubbing at his temple. “Fine, come in.”
As Tatta stepped inside the apartment, he couldn't help but wince. The place looked like it was thoroughly torn apart by a tornado — takeout containers scattered across the coffee table, clothes draped over every available surface, curtains drawn so tight that the only light came from the flickering TV screen. The air was stale and heavy, like no one had opened a window in days, and he wondered if he should offer a helping hand to clear out the space.
Which Niragi seemed to notice instantly, because the man just waved him off with a “Don't hover like that, I'm alright” while pulling the blanket up his chin.
Tatta, of course, was not convinced. “You don't look fine at all.”
“Don't get yourself work up over me like that.”
“You're literally shivering right now.”
“It's cold in here.”
“It's like twenty-six degrees in here.”
Niragi glared at him over the edge of the blanket. “Are you done playing doctor?”
“Not until you admit you are sick or something…” Tatta reached out absentmindedly, carding his hand through the older man's hair and brushing lightly against his skin. Something about that gesture must feel nice to him, because Niragi's eyes fluttered closed at the touch despite all the protests he had let out so far.
“There,” the mechanic sighed softly. “Was it really that hard for you to admit?”
“Shut up.” Niragi mumbled, his voice low and almost drowsy, while his body leaned into Tatta's hand for a fraction of a second before catching himself and pulling away. “It's just a stupid cold. I'll be fine in a few days.”
“… A few days?” ‘That was… very concerning, actually,’ the younger man thought with a frown. “How long have you been like this?”
All that Niragi offered him was silence, which… certainly didn't help his case at all.
“Niragi.” He tried again, voice softer this time. “… How long have you been sick?”
“Since… maybe Tuesday? Monday? I don't know.”
“It's… Friday today.”
“So?”
“So you've been sick for three days and you didn't think to tell me? Or call a doctor? Or literally anyone?”
Niragi shrugged, the movement barely visible under his cocoon of blankets. “Didn't think it was worth mentioning.”
But this whole thing was, indeed, worth mentioning, and maybe if Tatta had known beforehand, he wouldn't have spiraled like this, because it was three days of radio silence that he'd spent analyzing every possible reason why Niragi would ignore him like that. It was also three days of running through worst-case scenarios and thinking he'd fucked up whatever fragile thing existed between them, three days of staring at his phone while hoping for a text that never came, and three days of not knowing whether the man he loved had had enough of his messes and didn't want him anymore.
And all this time, Niragi had just been sick.
“You're an idiot,” Tatta chided, though there was relief in his voice too. “A complete and total idiot.”
“Gee, thanks. Really making me feel better here.”
“I'm serious.” The mechanic sank down next to the couch, close enough to feel the heat radiating off Niragi's feverish skin. “I was worried about you.”
Something flickered across the older man's face then — surprise, probably, or confusion, like the concept of someone worrying about him was a strange thing to understand.
“You were… worried,” he repeated slowly.
“Yeah, well, you didn't respond to my texts for days.” Tatta rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly feeling self-conscious about how his concerns were rolling off of him in waves. “What was I supposed to think then?”
“That I was giving you space, silly. Normal people do that all the time, you know? They don't cling.”
The word cling hung in the air between them, loaded with implications that neither of them wanted to address directly. Tatta felt his cheeks warm. ‘People do cling, you know, just that it'll be towards the person they consider to be safe.’
“There's a difference between giving someone space and disappearing off the face of the earth,” he said instead. “Next time, could you just send a text or give me a quick call and say ‘Hey, I'm not dead, just feeling like garbage’? I would've brought soup or something.”
Niragi went quiet afterward, studying Tatta's face like he was trying to solve a particularly complicated puzzle.
“You would've brought soup,” he repeated incredulously.
“Yeah. Or medicine. Or just... I don't know, made sure you weren't dying alone in your apartment like some tragic anime protagonist.”
Despite himself, Niragi's mouth twitched at that. “Tragic anime protagonist?”
“You know what I mean. All brooding and mysterious and refusing help until it's too late.” Tatta gestured vaguely at the mess around them. “Very ‘I must suffer in silence to protect the people I care about’ energy.”
“I don't brood.”
“You're literally brooding right now.”
“I'm sick.”
“You can be sick and brooding at the same time. It's called being an jerk.”
This time Niragi actually snorted, thoroughly amused. “You're ridiculous.”
“Maybe. But I'm ridiculous and still here, which is more than I can say for your survival instincts.” Tatta stood up, already mentally listing out things that needed to be done. “When's the last time you took anything for the fever?”
“I don't know. Yesterday?”
“That's not a valid answer.”
“It's the only answer you're going to get from me.”
The mechanic couldn't help but sigh. “Okay, new plan. I'm going to clean up this disaster zone, get you some actual medicine, and make you something that isn't from a convenience store. And you're going to let me, because you're too sick to put up a proper fight.”
“I can still fight.”
“Sure you can, tough guy.” Tatta was already gathering up empty containers, trying not to think too hard about how domestic this felt. “Save your energy so you can get better, won't you?”
➶-͙˚ ༘✶
The night was quiet, and so was Tatta's mind, thankfully.
After cleaning up the apartment and coaxing (or more like forcing) Niragi to eat something, take his medicine, and at least pretend to care about his own survival, the younger man was thoroughly exhausted. He’d barely managed to pull the blanket up before he drifted off, slumped beside Niragi on the couch. At some point during the night, he could feel the programer's arms pulling him into this half-feverish embrace, and that was the last thing he remembered before sleep claimed him.
Then he was woken up by something, and it took him a few moment to realize that something was the sound of Niragi crying behind him — soft, ragged, and muffled against his shoulders.
Tatta blinked blearily into the dim, curtain-drawn room, his brain scrambling for context, becaus he had never seen the older man cried before — or, at the very least, not in front of him like this. He had seen the man in countless different ways — broken bones, bloody mouths, things that a normal human being couldn't handle but he could, because Niragi had mocked Death itself so many times before, had laughed blood into the dirt and swallowed all the pain this world had given him even when it hurt. And now—
Now he was crying on his shoulders. Clinging to him with trembling hands and sobbing quietly into his shirt, hoping that it would be enough to cover up his sounds.
‘Have I done something wrong?’ Tatta tried to keep his breath in a rhythm, pretending that he was still asleep. ‘What should I do now? What could possibly make him cry like this?’
Time seemed to crawl endlessly as Niragi wept behind him. ‘What should I do? What could I do?’ Each question became a thorn stabbing straight to his heart. ‘Should I turn around? Stay still and ignore it?’
‘Wouldn't it be cruel to just leave him be on his own?’
The answer came to Tatta much easier than he had expected it to.
With slow, careful movement, he let his hand rested against Niragi's pulse point, the touch gentle enough to pass off as a sleepy movement. It was almost nothing, really, but the programmer seemed to find solace in it, his sobbing slowly ceased as his breathing pattern returned somewhat normally.
Which was… good. That meant he could go back to sleep and pretended that he probably just hallucinated things—
“Tatta?” Niragi murmured, his voice strained with tears.
‘Did he figure out that I wasn't sleeping?’ The younger man didn't open his eyes nor did he answer that soft call of his name, because he wasn't sure if he was allowed to do either of those things. ‘Was it a mistake to comfort him when he didn't ask for it?’
“Tatta, I know you're awake.”
‘Fuck. Of course he did, but running away now would be such a coward thing to do, wouldn't it?’
Throwing all of his common senses and anxiousness out the window, Tatta locked their fingers together. Niragi loosened his embrace at the way things progressed, his grip not as desperate and feverish as moments ago anymore. ‘So he wanted it, then.’
But still, the question remained, and he had to answer it before it was too late.
“I don't know a thing, Niragi.” He said quickly, words tumbling out before he could stop them. “That never happened, and it'll always stay that way for me.”
“… Thank you,” Niragi muttered, his voice still shaky from whatever had torn him apart in his feverish dream. His arms tightened around Tatta's waist once again, pulling him closer until there was no space left between their bodies — the gratitude in his words and action visible even in the darkest corner of this room.
‘But that was nothing to thank me for.’ The mechanic squeezed those fingers where they were still interlaced with his own, hoping it could convey what he couldn't figure out to say. ‘I'd pretend ignorance about a thousand breakdowns if it meant he'd let me stay close like this to help.’
“Your fever's down,” Tatta murmured instead, because that was a safer territory for them both, a concrete thing he could focus on rather than the way his heart was thumbing in his chest. ‘I'm still glad about it, nonetheless.’
“Yeah,” Niragi breathed against the back of his neck, and he could feel the ghost of a smile lingered on his skin. “Still feels like shit though.”
“Well, you are shit at taking care of yourself,” he shot back without thinking, then immediately tensed. ‘Fuck, was that too much?’
But the older man just huffed out a breathy laugh at his retort, the sound warm against his shoulders. “Says the guy who fell asleep on a couch next to a sick patient.”
“Says the guy who would've probably slept on the floor if I hadn't forced him onto said couch, but you do you I guess.”
“Touché.” Niragi chuckled tiredly, hugging him tighter. “Anyways, it's still early, so maybe you should go back to sleep.”
“What about you?” ‘Will the dreams tear him apart once more? Should I stay up to make sure it won't happen?’
The older man sighed airily and squeezed his hand in response. “I'll be fine, don't worry too much.”
Tatta doubted that, but he also knew better than to push. Instead, he settled back against the couch cushions and let his eyes drift closed once again, hyperaware of the man behind him — still tense in some places, but gradually relaxing as the minutes ticked by.
But just before he started to drift off, he could feel Niragi press a soft, almost tentative kiss against his shoulders.
Neither of them would mention it in the morning, but Tatta would carry the memory of this night like a secret warmth pressed against his skin, something fragile and precious that belonged only to the quietest hours of the night.
(And maybe one day he would be courageous enough to face that storm head-on, to hug and kiss those tears away until the pain passed, but he hoped this would be enough for now.)
(It was.)