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1. Niragi never learnt what “tender” was supposed to be.
All he had ever learnt throughout his life was violence and anger and blood sticking at the corner of his mouth. He was not graceful enough to be loved, he was not patient enough to be kind. Monsters like him were supposed to be dead the moment that meteor crashed — with the sky tearing open in fire and the earth shaking beneath him. It would be fitting for him to end that way, wouldn't it — burnt out and ceased to exist before he had to look too long at the emptiness in himself.
But then he woke up alive, again. He always fucking did — no matter how rotten and mangled his soul had become. It should've felt like triumph, like spitting in the face of whatever god kept trying to erase him, but all it ever did to him was to just remind him of how pathetic it was that he couldn't even die right.
What a fucking joke…
He should've stayed gone. Every time he blinked awake to the dull light of survival, it was like opening his eyes in a coffin he hadn't been smart enough to stay buried in. The world outside felt quieter now, slower and softer in ways that only twisted the knife deeper into his chest, because it showed him just how wrong he was inside. He was still raw nerve endings and rotten ideals stitched into the shape of a man, dragging himself forward because stopping wasn't in his nature, even when he wanted it to be.
And perhaps that was why the Borderland spat him out rather than swallowed him whole despite how nothing in him fit here and nothing in him deserved it. He could put on clean clothes, could scrub the blood from his hands until the skin broke, even smile at a mirror if he drank enough — but beneath all those façades, the wiring never changed. He was still a dog taught to sneer first, to bark harder, to bite until there was nothing left and his jaws shattered on the bloody ground.
He wasn't raised to love tender. He wasn't raised to love at all.
2. Power was a game he understood.
The game was simple enough — you found a weak spot, you sharpened your teeth on it, and then you bit down until the other side broke first. Nothing in this world or the last had ever survived him long enough to prove him wrong. That was the only rule Niragi had ever known, the one thing that had branded itself into his bones: break them first before they could break you.
And yet—
(and yet, and yet, and yet—)
It was different with him.
Tatta never played along with these games — or, more often than not, he unknowingly played them in a very strange, very peculiar way of his. The man didn't counter or yield, didn't fight or flee, but rather just… endured. A mechanic's patience, Niragi supposed, the kind someone needed to coax stubborn engines to life and sand rust from broken metal until it shone. There was this preseverance in him that made his hands twitch with an overwhelming urge to ruin, because what kind of fucked-up world could ever allow someone like this to walk around unscathed, to still tuck soft laughter beneath their breath and carry warmth with every touch they held?
That gentleness made his teeth ache. That gentleness made his blood boil. That gentleness also possesed so much power, one that could make him fucking tremble like the kid he used to be, cornered and small and waiting for someone to teach him that he still deserved a bit of kindness from this sick, twisted world.
It was terrifying, really, how Tatta could just… hold him there without a second thought. How this kindhearted person could still look at him with that easy, stubborn sort of fondness — like he wasn't a loaded gun waiting to go off, like he wasn't a bad idea dressing up in the form of a human being — and something in his chest would lurch and try to break free.
That was the part Niragi hated most.
He could handle anger, he could handle fear — hell, he had spent his entire fucking life being sculpted by those two things until he was all sharp edges and barbed wire — but this was something else entirely. This was quiet and kind and carried the wrong amount of gentleness that made him want to do something incredibly reckless, like press his forehead against Tatta's shoulder until the whole world went away.
And he couldn't let himself do that.
Because a little was enough to undo him. A little was enough to make him kneel like a fucking dog and beg — for scraps, for anything Tatta was willing to give, for all the warmth he carried so recklessly in his hands.
But if that was the case, then what did that make him? What did it reduce him to?
(A fool, probably — a desperate, stupid, lovesick type of fool.)
So instead he bit his tongue until he tasted blood. He steadied his trembling hands against his thighs. He told himself, again and again, that a little was too much — that leaning in, even for a second, would burn the whole world down around him.
And Niragi wasn't sure if he could survive the tragedy of what was to come afterward.
3. “Why do you keep doing this to yourself?”
“You think I fucking asked for it?” Niragi muttered, though it came out weaker than intended, slurred around the taste of blood and the feeling of bruises starting to swell on his skin. He didn't meet Tatta's eyes when he said that — couldn't, actually. “Shit happens. I've survived worse.”
“Doesn't mean you have to suffer just so you can feel something…”
A damp cloth pressed against his cheek, making him hiss in pain before he jerked away. Tatta didn't flinch at the reaction, didn't scold, didn't even sigh — he just waited, always, as if this level of stubbornness was nothing more than another storm he had learnt to stand through.
It was always like this. He would pick a fight he couldn't walk away from, and the younger man would be waiting for him at the end of it — gentle hands, quiet voice, that fucking patience. Then Niragi would sit there, seething at himself for letting it happen again, at the world for not killing him sooner, and at Tatta, most of all, for being so fucking forgiving.
Too forgiving for his own good.
“Don't you have better things to do?” He muttered, looking away out of shame mixing with anger. “It's not like I'm your fucking responsibility.”
“You're not.” Tatta confirmed, calloused hands still busy with the task of tending to Niragi's wounds. “But it pains me seeing you struggle on your own.”
That answer almost made him laugh — a sharp, bitter thing, scraping like smoke he couldn't exhale. Of course it pains you, he thought viciously, but not at Tatta — never really at him. It was more at the fact that someone like him could sit here, hands steady even when covered in someone else's blood, and still look at Niragi as if this whole thing wasn't a lost cause altogether.
Which was way, way worse than all the bruises and the pain and the rage he had carried his whole life, because what the fuck was he supposed to do with that? He wasn't born to be kind — he never would be.
“… You're just wasting your time,” Niragi muttered eventually, voice low and scratchy against his throat, because if he said it any louder it might sound too much like pleading.
“And you're wasting yourself.” Tatta countered calmly, jamming the knife and twisting it deeper into his chest. “Now bear with me for a bit, yeah? I don't want to hurt you.”
He stayed silent after that, because there was nothing left in him to fight back anymore — not when the mechanic was still here, right in front of him, dabbing away at his split lips and pressing gauze to his temple like it would be enough to keep him from breaking down.
(They both knew it was far from the truth, but Tatta still tried anyway, and Niragi let him — even when he knew nothing about that whole equation would ever end well for either of them.)
4. He knew what people said about monsters. He knew what happened to those who had the courage to love them.
He would rather die and perish in Hell than subjecting Tatta to that same cruel fate.
5. Niragi had never been good with his hands.
They'd always been better at breaking things than holding them — always better at clenching into fists, at pulling triggers, at leaving bruises instead of easing them. Even now, long after the Borderland spat him back out, his fingers twitched like they were waiting for violence, restless and cruel, muscle memory stitched too deep into his bones to ever really fade.
Which was why he never let himself reach for Tatta, because what if the wrong part of him bled through? What if his hands forgot themselves and reached too hard, too fast, with all that rage still snarling in his veins? What if his grip turned bruising before he even realized he was holding on too tight, and this sunshine of a man ended up becoming another casualty he couldn't stop himself from making?
The thought alone felt obscene, and yet he caught himself staring sometimes — at the veins running pale and delicate beneath Tatta's skin, the soft slope of his wrist, the calluses on his fingertips that, impossibly, still seemed gentler than anything he had ever managed in his life. The worst part was how this gentle soul could offer all of it so freely — his patience, his kindness, his light — not knowing how a monster like Niragi could cut himself bloody against it just to feel its warmth.
So when Tatta looked at him like he wasn't dangerous, he forced himself to look away, to never dare touching it, as his burning want would bring nothing other than destruction in its wake. He ran, always, because everything beautiful that ever touched his life eventually crumbled in his bloody hands.
And if he did the same to Tatta — even for a single, fleeting second — Niragi knew he would never forgive himself for what he did.
6. It would crush him to know that his very existence caused Tatta pain — to realize he was the reason for every fracture in something so gentle. The thought alone could tear him apart until there was nothing left of him to atone with.
But worse…
7. If he ever hurt Tatta — really hurt him — there'd be no coming back from it. He could live with blood of others on his hands, but not his, and that possibility alone was enough to gut him.
It would always be the one thing he wouldn't — and couldn't — survive.
8. Reintegrating back to the real world was a real nightmare for Niragi.
The therapists liked to use the term rehabilitation programs to describe what it was, as if he were a broken machine that could be rewired, polished, and sent back into polite society with a fresh coat of paint and a manual on how to be human again. They had worksheets for his anger, breathing exercises for his panic attacks, and pills that turned his edges soft enough that he could sit in waiting rooms without wanting to burn the whole building down.
But there was no worksheet for him to cope with the way Tatta's laugh made his chest ache like it was caving in, didn't have a twelve-step program for the addiction that was building in his bloodstream every time the younger man smiled at him like he was worth saving. No detox center could flush out the way that voice calling out his name, gentle yet fearless, made him feel like he was drowning in something sweeter than any drug he had ever tried his hands on.
This was the one craving he couldn't force his way out of. Tatta had, somehow, become an addiction he couldn't afford to develop, a habit that would ruin him for everyone else who might ever try to love him. One taste of that kindness, one moment of letting himself believe he deserved those soft looks and careful touches, and Niragi knew he would spend the rest of his life chasing a high no other person could ever give him.
But addicts were dangerous when desperate, and danger was the one thing he had always been good at, so he rationed his doses of Tatta's presence, careful not to let himself overdose, because the alternative was letting himself get so hooked that withdrawal would kill him. And if he ever let himself taste what it felt like to be loved by someone that good, that pure, that fundamentally decent, Niragi would never recover from that.
He would spend the rest of his life trying to forget the shape of Tatta's name in his mouth and failing every single time.
9. If dreams could take human form, they would look exactly like Tatta.
Sometimes Niragi swore the man would be gone when he woke up, dissolved back into smoke and memory like the rest of the Borderland had — some cruel hallucination his head conjured to punish him with the idea of salvation he had never earn. People like Tatta weren't supposed to survive Hell with all their edges still soft and their goodness intact. People like him were too good for a world that chewed up innocence and spat out the bones.
Yet there he was — solid and warm as he sat across the coffee shop, laughing at something on his phone while Niragi gripped his mug until his knuckles ached just to anchor himself. He would count the freckles scattered across those cheekbones like counting the stars, trace the way the morning light caught in honey-brown hair, memorize every single detail — because dreams had a way of fading, and if this was just another trick of his mind, he couldn't afford to lose a single piece of it.
Sometimes Niragi watched him for a bit too long just to check that the younger man was real — that he would blink, shift, do something human instead of flickering out of existence like some glitch his mind hadn't patched yet. He would dig his nails into his palms until it hurt to ground himself, because the idea that this warmth could dissolve was worse than every nightmare the Borderland had ever fed him.
And still, when Tatta caught him staring and gave him a smile in return — one that made his lungs seize like he had taken a bullet to the chest — Niragi wanted to grab him by the shirt just to see if he would stay solid afterward, to find out if the universe was really cruel enough to let him know what salvation looked like only to shatter it between his fingers.
But he didn't. He never did.
Instead, he just sat there and let the moment burn through him, because some part of him still believed that if he held on too tightly, he would wake up alone. That when this dream ended, the silence would be crushing and unbearable in a way even hellfire could never compete with.
And that was enough to kill him already.
10. Niragi couldn't relax that night.
Tatta was sitting on his couch with his knees drawn up and a blanket pooled around his waist, talking about nothing in particular — the new train schedule, the shitty vending machine at the station that kept eating his coins, some stupid joke Arisu had told earlier that week — and Niragi just sat there like some shell-shocked animal and let the words wash over him until they sounded less like language and more like something close to safety.
He had thought letting the younger man stay over would be a mistake — a mistake of too much proximity and too much temptation wrapped into one. But when Tatta offered in this quiet tone like he didn't want to spook him — like he knew exactly how brittle Niragi was under all the sharp edges — something inside him had cracked wide open. He didn't even know why he said yes, but if he had to guess, it probably came from a place of hope — a wish for this whole thing to not be a lie, to not break his heart and instead humoring him despite how broken he was — and he was pathetic enough to cling to that, to let it sink into him like morphine until it was the only thing keeping him breathing.
Now that they were right next to each other, Niragi realized, with belated horror in the depth of his rotten soul, that he wanted to kiss Tatta. He wanted to cup his cheeks and press their lips against each other just to find out if he tasted as soft as he looked, wanted to ruin that sweetness until it stuck to the back of his teeth. He wanted to know if the mechanic would still look at him the same after — if that gentle gaze would survive what he had turned it into.
But if he kissed Tatta, things would become real, and then he would be forced to go back to a world where he wasn't welcomed in, so he sat on the other side of the couch with his face buried in his hands without doing anything about it, let the hunger chew him up from the inside out. It really made him want to scream.
“You're quiet tonight…” Tatta gently rubbed his shoulders, the touch so gentle it nearly burnt him. “Are you alright?”
“I'm fine,” he lied, the words scraping raw against his throat. He couldn't look up — couldn't risk meeting those dark eyes that saw too much, understood too much. “Just tired.”
“You don't look fine.” Tatta looked worried when he said that, blissfully unaware of the knife twisting deeper into his heart. “You look like you're about to crawl out of your own skin.”
Because I am, Niragi wanted to say. Because you're here and you're real and I don't know how to want something without destroying it first.
But instead he just shrugged, tried to make it casual despite how his body tensed like a live wire. “Bad day. They happen.”
He knew that was a lie. They both knew that.
“Niragi.” Tatta's voice was closer now, and when Niragi finally risked a glance up, the younger man had shifted over, closing the distance between them until there was barely a foot of space left. “Look at me, please.”
And despite every instinct screaming at him to run, to get up and lock himself in the bathroom until this storm finally passed, he still looked up anyway, facing those gentle curves and concerned eyes he had so desperately run away from.
“Talk to me, yeah?” Tatta asked, and his voice was so careful, so patient, that Niragi almost broke right there on the spot. “I want to know what's going on in that brilliant brain of yours.”
I want to kiss you, he thought desperately. I want to kiss you so bad it feels like dying, but if I do, you'll realize what you're doing here with me and you'll leave. If that happens, I'll then wake up alone once more and I don't think I can survive—
“Nothing,” he lied again, the word barely more than a whisper. “Nothing's wrong.”
But Tatta just looked at him with those too-knowing eyes, and Niragi realized with a sick sort of certainty that his dreams were numbered. That sooner or later, reality would come knocking, and all of this would eventually cease to exist no matter how much he tried to keep them in his hands.
It scared him shitless. It made him want to run.
But…
(+1.) Even in the darkest of rooms, Tatta still shone like sunlight on a gloomy day. He was still warm to the touch, still gentle and kind and patient in ways Niragi could never be.
He was still so… stunning, despite all the hellish things they had gone through.
(+2.) He felt warm hands cradle his cheeks, and he didn't realize that he had started crying.
How strange it was that a monster like him could have a heart, could still bleed and ache and feel emotions that only humans could have.
“Oh, Niragi…” Tatta sighed softly, thumbs wiping the tears that still ran down his face. “It's okay. You're okay.”
But he wasn't okay — he never would be.
“Fuck, I'm sorry.” He choked out, the words barely coherent with how messy his breathing was. “I'm so fucking sorry. I don't know why I—”
“Hey, no, don't say that.” Tatta gently chided him, pulling him back from whatever spiral he was stuck in. “Don't apologize for this. You've done nothing wrong.”
Niragi wanted to laugh at that — wanted to rattle off the endless list of sins carved into his bones, the cruelties he had inflicted, the blood on his hands that would never wash clean. But Tatta's thumbs were still moving in gentle circles against his cheekbones, and it made him forget, even just for a brief moment, all the reasons why he didn't deserve this kindness in the first place.
“How can you—” He tried, voice cracking like glasses, and failed to find an adequate way to speak his mind. “I'm not— Fuck, Tatta, you should've run. You should've left me the moment you had a chance to.”
Tatta's hands stilled on his face, but they didn't pull away. If anything, they seemed to get even warmer — kinder and gentler and more patient than he had ever deserved to.
“But I didn't.” He said like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “And I'm not going to.”
“Why? Why would you—”
“Because I want to stay next to you no matter how rough it is.” Tatta smiled — a sad little thing that tugged at his heartstring. “And because I don't want anyone else. I just want you.”
(+3.) Niragi felt like someone just took all the air out of his lungs afterward.
“But how—? God, Tatta, you're insane. How can you—?”
“Because I love you.” A pause, then Tatta's thumbs brushed against his cheeks again, and he realized belatedly just how cold he was. “I love all and everything about you, Niragi, even the parts you think are too broken to be loved.”
Love.
Tatta loved him — this beautiful, gentle soul who deserved nothing but good things in this world had somehow found it in himself to love this monster of a man, to be kind and warm and loving every time they were together.
It… baffled him, really, the idea that someone could love him honestly like this — even when they knew and witnessed everything he had done, everything he had been, everything he had destroyed with his own two hands.
“You don't mean that,” Niragi whispered, because surely this had to be some cruel joke, some twisted dream he would wake up from any moment now. “There's no way you mean that.”
“I do.” Tatta reassured him, tone warm and certain. “I mean every word.”
The gentleness made him want to crumble and beg for it — to drop to his knees and scrape his palms raw against the floorboards if that was what it took to keep Tatta looking at him with warmth and kindness. He wanted to howl, to bleed, to rip himself open just to prove he had nothing left worth hiding or lying about. He would not hesitate to give away everything he had, to make himself bare and vulnerable under sunlight — if it meant the man he loved and yearned for would keep holding him this way, keep touching him like he wasn't a monster trying and failing to live in a human society.
“Please.” He whimpered, his heartbeat a wild, frantic thing that was seconds away from jumping up his throat. “Please, Tatta, I couldn't— I can't—”
“Shhh.” Tatta hushed him softly, not with condescension but with the kind of gentleness that could break bones if Niragi let it. His thumbs stilled against his cheeks, resting there like an anchor, and the warmth of them almost burned. “It's alright. I love you, and you'll never have to beg me for it.”
The words dug under his ribs, sharp and cruel in how kind they were. He wanted to scream that of course he had to beg, of course he had to earn even a second of this warmth — monsters didn't get to be held like this, didn't get to keep something this pure — but the sound wouldn't come out, stuck in his throat like shards of glass.
So he just stared instead, broken open in the dim light of the room, wondering how someone could look at him with eyes that soft and not turn away in disgust. Perhaps that was what love was supposed to feel like — not light or easy, but heavy and unbearable in its purity, something so blinding that a man like him could only look at it sideways.
“Will it help,” Tatta offered, seemingly able to read his mind and the storm that was raging inside, “if I kiss you?”
The question was so simple in its naïvety, and Niragi knew he should've laughed at that — should've sneered and snapped back — but he was tired. He was so fucking tired now that the thought of losing even a second of this comfort was enough to break him.
“… Yeah.” He croaked, more like a plea than an actual answer. “Fuck… Yeah, please.”
The kiss that followed was nothing like Niragi had expected it to be — no hunger, no teeth, no desperate edge of someone trying to consume or be consumed. It was soft, maddeningly so, and the warmth of it crawled under his skin until it hurt. Tatta kissed him like he was something worth cherishing, like he hadn't been built from blood and violence, like his mouth wasn't meant only for cruelty.
And he broke.
Every breath trembled out of him as if his body couldn't remember how to take in air while being touched this gently. He didn't know how to hold it, how to endure it — this unshakable tenderness pressing into his mouth, this patience that didn't demand anything from him but simply stayed. He wanted to bite down, to ruin it, to shove Tatta away before it all slipped through his fingers, but his hands wouldn't move. His chest ached too much, his ribs felt too fragile, and his heart had never been so loud.
When their kiss ended and they rested their foreheads against each other, Niragi was left gasping — with eyes that burnt and lips that trembled from the weight of it. He wanted to speak, to say something ugly and selfish and full of fears, but all that came out was a ragged sound caught between a sob and a laugh.
“See?” The younger man whispered, thumbs brushing against his cheeks in soothing circles — tender touches that felt like feather tickling his heart. “Nothing to beg for. I'm already yours.”
And Niragi thought, with the kind of ache that could kill a man, that it wasn't so bad to kiss Tatta after all.