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One year since hell, and it still surprised Tatta that they made it out alice and (somewhat) intact in the first place.
He had said this out loud once — that he thought maybe miracles were just statistical anomalies wearing a nice suit — and Niragi had laughed for a full minute straight before kissing him breathless. Even now, sitting across from that same disaster of a man in a private room at their favorite restaurant, Tatta still couldn't decide if he believed in luck, fate, or just plain bad decisions that somehow turned out right.
“You should've seen Arisu's face when I told him we were dating,” he said, grinning as he raised his glass. “He looked genuinely confused for my sake.”
Niragi snorted, leaning back in his chair with a reckless kind of charm that always drew people in even when they really, really shouldn't. “Confused for your sake? What, like he thinks you could do better?”
“No, more like…” Tatta swirled his drink, watching the liquid swirl slowly under the dim light of their dining room. “Like he couldn't figure out how it happened. You know, the whole ‘but he tried to kill us multiple times’ thing.”
“To be fair, I tried to kill everyone when we were at the Beach.” The black-haired man took another sip of his highball then, ice clinking against his glass as he did so. “Nothing personal.”
“That's exactly what I told him!” Tatta said, laughing. His cheeks were warm — maybe from the alcohol, maybe from affection — but either way, it felt good. “And then he just stared at me like I had grown a second head.”
“Probably wondering which head was making your decisions at the time,” Niragi muttered under his breath, smirking into his drink.
The mechanic kicked his boyfriend lightly under the table. “Your head is in the gutter and it shows.”
“You love it.”
“Unfortunately,” Tatta agreed begrudgingly, though his smile gave him away. He reached for another piece of karaage, popping it into his mouth. “I told him about Hokkaido too, especially the lavender fields. He seemed kinda swooned when I described them.”
“The one where you wouldn't shut up about and took fifty photos from different angles?”
“I did not—” He started, then paused and grimaced at the belated realization that yes, in fact, he did take an absurd amount of photos that day. “Okay, maybe I took a few extra. But they were pretty.”
“They were flowers, Tatta. They all looked the same to me.”
“They did not! That one had more petals, and that one was a slightly different shade, and—” Tatta caught the fond look on Niragi's face and stopped himself just on time. ”You're messing with me.”
“Little bit.” His boyfriend grinned, sharp and wolfish. “But watching you get worked up about it is half the fun.”
Tatta threw a crumpled napkin at him, which Niragi dodged easily. Unfortunately for both of them, that was enough to make the taller man tilt back a bit too far, and his chair went out from under him.
The crash was spectacular as well as concerning.
“Oh my god—” Tatta choked back a laugh, rushing around the table to check on his boyfriend. “Are you alright?”
“'M fine,” came Niragi's muffled reply from the floor. “Probably just had too much to drink.”
“… Too much to drink? You only had two Highballs so far.”
Niragi looked up at him. “And?”
“They're five percent???”
“Now that you mentioned it…” He blinked slowly, unbothered. “I'm on two different painkillers that expressly say ‘do not drink alcohol,’ so perhaps that's why. I dunno, I think the warnings are a bit of an overreaction—”
Whatever humor had been bubbling in Tatta's heart died instantly at those words.
“… You are on painkiller!?” He asked, voice came out an octave higher than before. “Are you seriously mixing painkillers with alcohol!? You didn't tell me you were— God, Niragi, what the hell—!?”
“Don't even start it,” Niragi groaned, still flat on his back. “I'm perfectly fine.”
“You literally just fell out of a chair!”
“Because the chair is shit, not because I'm dying.”
“… Alright, that's it.” Tatta's hands were shaking as he reached down to grip his boyfriend's arm. “Get up, we're leaving. I'm taking you to the hospital.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Tatta—”
“No, don't fight me on this right now.” He managed to haul Niragi into a sitting position, which was harder than it should've been considering the programmer was deliberately being dead weight. “You don't get to be stubborn about this. What if something happens? What if you have an allergic reaction or your liver just gives up or—”
“My liver is fine,” Niragi said flatly, standing up with a grunt. “Just… stop freaking out.”
“Stop freaking out!?” Tatta's voice cracked. “You just told me you're mixing alcohol with medication that explicitly says not to! How am I supposed to not freak out?”
“Because it's just two fucking drinks, Tatta, not an elaborate plan for a suicide attempt, so drop it and stop being a whiny asshole.”
“What do you mean I'm being whiny—!?” Tatta took a breath to calm himself first, then tried again. “Look, I genuinely care about you, and I don't want you to hurt yourself because you're too proud or too stubborn or too—”
“Too what?” Niragi snapped, yanking his arms away from his grip with a scowl. “Too fucked up? Too broken? We both know what I am, you don't need to spell it out.”
“That's not what I was going to say.”
“Then what?” His boyfriend's voice was sharp now, defensive in that way it got when he felt cornered. “What were you going to say? That I'm reckless? Self-destructive? Yeah, no shit. Tell me something I don't know.”
Tatta opened his mouth, then closed it. His chest felt tight, frustration and fear tangling together until he couldn't tell which was which. He wanted to yell. He wanted to shake Niragi until he understood that this wasn't about judgment or pity or any of those bullshits that his boyfriend always assumed people meant.
Instead, he just stood there, fists clenched at his sides.
“… Why didn't you tell me you were still on painkillers?” he asked quietly.
Niragi looked away, jaw clenching tight. For a moment, they both didn't say anything, then the programmer let out a sigh and begrudgingly said, “Because I just wanted one normal night.”
Tatta blinked, all his anger and concern skitted to a halt. “What?”
“I want one night where I'm not a guy who is still in pain even a year after everything.” His boyfriend started to rant then, voice strained with all the things he had suppressed for so long. “I just want to forget that I still have to pop pills just to get through the day, or that my body is so fucking easy to break, or that you have to keep tiptoeing around me not knowing when I'll blow up.” He gestured vaguely at himself before giving up altogether. “I just wanted to feel normal for once. Is it really that hard to understand?”
“Niragi…”
“… You know what, forget it.” The older man mumbled, turning toward the door. “Let's just go.”
“Wait.” Tatta caught his wrist, gentle but firm. “Hold on.”
Niragi stopped but didn't look at him, so he gently tugged at that wrist, coaxing his boyfriend closer. “Niragi, you are normal to me. None of the things that happened today will ever change that.”
“Don't—”
“No, listen.” He pleaded, tugging at his wrist one more time until the taller man finally turned and met his eyes with a wary, guarded expression. “I know you're still healing, and… yeah, maybe some days are harder than others, but I never see you as a broken person. I just see you as… you, and I love everything about you, even the parts that you deem broken or unlovable.”
For a moment, Tatta could see something broke through that layer of anger and exhaustion his boyfriend wore, so he continued pushing a little more, hoping that it would work.
“I love you, Niragi.” He repeated, voice small and soothing. “And you don't have to keep everything bottle up like this. Let me in as well, yeah?”
For a long moment, Niragi just stared at him — dark eyes shone with something like wonder and pain mixing together — before the man eventually let out a slow, shaky breath, shoulders sagging a bit more than before.
“I'm tired, Tatta.” His boyfriend murmured quietly, stepping forward to lean into him. “The pain just… doesn't go away no matter how diligent I was with my medication or my physiotherapy, and I don't want to… ruin this one good thing that you have been looking forward to in weeks.”
Tatta wrapped his arms around him then, pulling the man closer. Niragi was taller, broader, but in that moment he felt smaller somehow. The thought alone made his heart ache.
“I'm grateful that you tried, and I'm sorry the pain bothers you so much.” He said, carding his hand through those dark locks of wavy hair. “And for what it's worth, you didn’t ruin anything. I'm just glad you're here.”
The taller man made a small sound against his shoulder — a thing that stuck between a laugh and a sigh. “Even though I'm a walking disaster?”
“Especially because of that.” Tatta smiled into his hair. “You think I got into this expecting smooth sailing? I knew what I signed up for.”
“Yeah?” Niragi pulled back just enough to look at him, eyes still red-rimmed but clearer now. “And what did you sign up for?”
“I signed up to be with a reckless, lovely person who likes to be a pain in my ass at times.” He responded softly, hand reaching up to brush a strand of hair from his boyfriend's face. “He is also the same person that likes to make me laugh even when he's being insufferable, remembers I like my coffee with two sugar despite how I only mentioned it once, and—”
“Okay, okay, point taken.” Niragi chuckled. “You're such a sap.”
“Yeah, well.” Tatta gave him a small smile, glancing at the mess around them — the half-eaten meal, the abandoned drinks, the overturned chair still lying on its side — and gave it a shrug. “Come on. Let's pack this up and get out of here.”
Niragi pulled back, wiping at his eyes with the heel of his hand. “We haven't even finished—”
“Doesn't matter.” He said, hands already reaching for the takeout containers the restaurant had provided and starting to pack up the rest of their food. “We can finish this at my place. Put on something stupid on TV, eat on the couch like civilized people.”
“Civilized people don't eat on the couch.”
“Fine. Like uncivilized people who've had a long night and just want to be comfortable.” Tatta shot Niragi a look then. “And without alcohol being mixed together with painkillers this time.”
“Fair point,” Niragi admitted, cracking a small smile. He bent down to right the fallen chair, wincing slightly as he straightened. “Though for the record, I was having a good time before the chair betrayed me.”
“The chair didn't betray you. Physics did.” Tatta snapped the last container shut and gathered their things. “Come on, disaster boy. Let's go home.”
They settled the bill and stepped out into the cool night air. Tatta's apartment was only a fifteen-minute walk, and the silence between them felt more comfortable now, tension dissolving into something softer. Their shoulders occasionally brushed against each other as they walked, and he couldn't help but smile whenever that happened.
“You know,” Niragi said after a while. “I think Hokkaido was… nice despite all the sappy shits you spew about the lavender.”
Tatta glanced at him, surprised. “I thought you said they all looked the same.”
“They did.” A pause. “But you looked happy. That part was nice.”
Warmth bloomed in his chest at those words, and Tatta giggled softly while bumping his shoulder against his boyfriend's. “Careful. Keep talking like that and people might think you're actually sweet.”
“Don't push it.”
“Too late. I'm telling everyone.”
“Tatta—”
“Arisu's gonna love this. ‘Guess what, the scary guy with the rifle actually has feelings—’”
Niragi grabbed him around the waist and pulled him close, cutting off his teasing with a kiss that tasted like alcohol and karaage and something indefinably them. When they broke apart, Tatta was breathless and smiling.
“That's cheating,” he murmured, tucking a lock of dark hair behind Niragi's ear.
“Worked, didn't it?”
It certainly did.