Chapter Text
You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
— Wild Geese, Mary Oliver
The first thing Arisu does upon waking up is beat the shit out of Niragi.
Actually, that’s the third.
The first thing he does is absorb.
He has to come to terms with the fact that life as he once knew it dissolved; pulled apart at the seams until the strings holding it together tangled and tore.
He has to process the fact that Borderland was a figment of his imagination, despite the life-altering wounds it brutally inflicted upon him, them.
He has to metabolize the fact that Chota and Karube are actually dead. Grief is a lonely room, dark and edgeless, and he sits alone inside it; detonating.
The pain is so suffocating, he chokes with it.
The second thing he does is look for Usagi.
It took countless hours to fight off the dissociation, the paralyzing numbness spreading like sickness beneath the film of his skin. But he did, he came out of it, for his precious friend. Turns out that as he was stumbling out of bed to go find her, she found him instead.
Their tear-jerking reunion is unfortunately cut too short because a third uninvited guest barges in on their happy moment.
Niragi is staring at them, standing there like some sort of grim phantasm.
Arisu doesn’t think—he reacts.
Thus, the third thing he does is punch Niragi. Repeatedly.
He has no clue how the deranged man has somehow found himself into his hospital room, but Arisu doesn’t plan on letting him get out of it alive.
He recalls it in feverish shards, remembering the vile, foul things Niragi did, remembering what he attempted to do to Usagi, multiple times.
Arisu sees blood.
“You asshole! You piece of shit!” Arisu’s shout scrapes through the walls of his throat, whole body so tense he feels like his spine will snap, his skin will burst, he will explode. “I’ll fucking kill you!”
His knuckles are painted violet, scarlet, sore-smeared. His arm hurts, he’s putting strain on his stitches, his muscles are frozen stiff, achy from injury and unuse. He doesn’t care about any of that. He isn’t stopping, not on his own.
“Arisu!” Through the piercing ringing in his ears, he hears a high-pitched voice floating from behind him, a frantic touch at his waist, pulling him back. “Arisu, stop! Please!”
Usagi tries to pull him off the bastard, who lies there almost motionless, provoking Arisu’s asphyxiating anger even further.
Niragi takes advantage of the moment to talk—or try. “I j-jus…w’nt’d t-to…‘pol-l’gize…”
The goddamn nerve?
“Yeah, well.” Arisu grits his teeth, his heart sitting like burning coals in his chest. “Apology not accepted. Asshole.”
Niragi’s face is laced with pain, streaked in blood, he’s gurgling on it, and what splutters out of his mouth sounds like a laugh, distorted, an edge of desperation knifing through it.
That’s when the nurses barge in, hastily tearing them away from each other with some difficulty.
Arisu only calms down once the bloody mess that is Niragi is carried out of the room.
Is this what coming down feels like? He’s heaving for breath. He’s in pain. He wants to cry.
He’s exhausted and angry…but somebody should be.
Arisu suddenly finds himself surrounded by warmth.
They’re clumsily sitting on the hospital floor, limbs entangled, arms like borders encircling one another, holding each other firmly lest they crumble to pieces again. Usagi huddles against his chest, crying, shaking, breathing, real, she utters in the quietest, warmest whisper, “thank you”.
Arisu holds her tighter, the heat of tears welling up his throat.
The hospital pushes Niragi to make a decision regarding the “incident”. Surprisingly, Niragi doesn’t take action against him, so a lawsuit is avoided; and even if it weren’t, Arisu doesn’t regret his actions one bit.
At some point it becomes too much.
He could pretend to ignore it while he was in a zombie-like state, but now that he’s regaining his lucidity it’s getting harder to turn a blind eye to the elephant in the room.
“Say…why are you here?” Arisu asks, finally.
His little brother pauses in folding his clothes. He keeps performing all these little tasks around Arisu, all the while never looking him in the eye, as if he’ll be physically sick if he does. And that’s what this is: performative.
He’s startled enough to look at him. “What?”
“Why are you here?” Arisu repeats, steel glinting in his eyes.
“I—” Hajime balks. “Because you’re here.”
Arisu snorts. It burns the back of his throat.
“You treat me like shit for years and then suddenly you remember I’m alive?” Arisu quirks a brow at him, an ill-humored smile stretching his cheeks. “And it only took, what, a near-death experience?”
Hajime clenches his jaw. Glances away. Yeah, he doesn’t know what to say.
And Arisu wouldn’t want to hear him anyway. He’s been through too much, he’s come too far. After everything, he knows he deserves at least a little better than this.
“I don’t have it in me to play happy family anymore.” Arisu mutters, leaning back on the pillows, watching his hands in his lap, so foreign now. “Tell Dad he isn’t welcome either.”
Hajime’s outraged protest falls on deaf ears.
Ice colors Arisu’s voice when he says, “Don’t let the door hit you on your way out.”
He watches the door being wrenched shut, the crack-slam of it echoing inside his skull like a bullet.
Arisu doesn’t flinch.
(He survived much, much worse than this.)
Arisu hasn’t cried yet.
He’s had a few, a few instances where he was close, rivulets of tears kissing his cheeks, but he still hasn’t properly cried, let the gut-wrenching sobs escape his body yet. He wonders when, if, it will happen.
This drought is the very worst.
It was the earth-shattering, reality-shaking kind of shock to see them all alive and well again.
He wasted no time wrapping Kuina and Tatta up in a bear hug, which Usagi was prompted to join too with happy tears (as she had already done so once, being the one who found them first and brought them to Arisu), and the four of them had joyously jumped up and down—whilst still being careful of their wounds—laughing hysterically.
Chishiya had kept to himself, but from where he was leaning against the wall, he watched the child-like display of pure, unstained happiness with an unfeigned smile.
When Arisu noticed, it made his heart skip a beat or two, the staggering feeling of it like missing a step while going down the stairs.
Unanimously, they decided to make Arisu’s room their base, since he’s the only one lucky enough not to have ‘roommates’. They quickly fall into an easy rhythm without missing a beat, as if they’ve been friends their whole lives.
Arisu feels a suspicious tightening in his throat. He’s already had friends like these, and doesn’t know if he’s allowed a do-over, but god, he wants.
They tip-toe around the subject of Ann, who is still in a coma fighting for her life, which Arisu can see how much it physically weighs on Kuina, and they all try their best to reassure her.
Time, unfortunately, flies by when they’re together. Arisu wants to claw to them, but he knows his friends have a life outside of him, having to tend to their own injuries and families, so he sees them out with a plastic smile.
But Chishiya has nowhere to be just yet, it seems.
“That looks like it hurts.” Chishiya comments idly, gaze falling on his bruised knuckles, gentle, as if caressing them with his eyes to avoid hurting him further.
He’s wearing a knowing expression. Of course, if Kuina knows then Chishiya most definitely knows too.
This is the first thing, Arisu thinks, Chishiya says to him after everything that went down in the Borderlands.
Arisu suppresses an inopportune and slightly pleasant shiver.
“It was worth it.” He mumbles.
Chishiya observes him wordlessly, the seconds sticking together stiflingly. At some point he simply says, “Good.”
Outside, the sky’s groaning, purpling like a bruise, crying against the window panes. Arisu wishes he was there, letting himself get drenched, laughing while nature unleashed the sharp stab of her anger on him.
Inside, he sits on the edge of the bed, dry and safe, the other four scattered about the room.
Easy conversation slowly flows into more unpleasant topics.
“I have to find a new place. I can’t live at—” Home? No, it stopped being home the second Mom left this world. “—there anymore. I just…need to move.” It’s as if the word has its own gravitational force; Arisu can picture it falling on his lap, making an indentation in the pillow he’s strangling between his arms.
They all pause at that, as if letting the idea linger, take root in their minds. And then:
“Me too.”
Arisu turns, surprised to hear the words came from Chishiya of all people.
Suddenly, Usagi looks between them, the suggestion leaving her lips almost immediately.
“Why don’t you move in together, then?”
Arisu gapes, meets the equally shocked gaze of Chishiya.
Huh?
“Huh?”
Arisu blinks, rapidly, as if his body is trying to digest the information.
“Yeah, that’s a great idea!” Kuina exclaims, exchanging a grin with Usagi that Arisu feels he should be at least slightly suspicious about.
“You guys would save on rent, too.” Tatta tacks on, enthusiastic like the girls.
Arisu pauses.
…could he do it? Move in with someone who betrayed him, stood by while Arisu and Usagi got hurt, and left them to fend for themselves? But then again, he did sort of redeem himself by taking that bullet for Usagi, and Chishiya is definitely not nearly as bad as Niragi. Still…
…but the prospect of living alone doesn’t sound entirely too appealing either. He’s never been on his own, wouldn’t even know where to start.
“Would you…” Arisu clears his throat when his voice comes out a little high, chopped. “...be okay with that?”
“Would you?” Chishiya asks back.
Why does he always have to catch him off guard?
Arisu grinds his teeth. It’s almost a challenge, almost like a game, almost as if he has to spite him.
Alright then.
“I wouldn’t mind.”
Arisu doesn’t look away from that enticingly dark, probing gaze, determined not to lose whatever this is.
“Good.” Chishiya murmurs, a slow smile burning through his face. “I wouldn’t mind either.”