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Everybody has them. These tiny silver papercuts across their fingers. White lies, politely offered or said to lighten someone else's mood or make the lives of others easier. Some stay a faint sliver, others cut a little deeper, reopening time and time again from re-use. People lie, it's just how things are.
Most people have deeper cuts as well. Bigger lies, I'm at my friend's place tonight, No, I didn't drink anything, No, I didn't break it, I found it like this.
Niragi has quite a few of those deeper cuts on his body. Scars that tell the story of someone who just fell down some stairs, who got that piercing because I thought it would look cool, and who obviously has slept with girls before.
There's one particularly nasty set of scratching lines over his shoulder. A lie he told himself over and over: I want to change, I want to turn into someone people hate. Someone they fear. I want to be that person because I don't like who I was before. Those scars never really healed for close to a decade, opening everyday anew, but were superficial enough to mostly be ignored. These days they're better, but he knows they're gonna stay with him for the rest of his life.
He also has a few that go even deeper, ones he has come to regret a lot more, scars that hurt and that he has sworn to never re-open again if he can help it. Those scars earn him quite a few suspicious looks, but he has learned to live with them. They're mostly his fault, after all.
Everybody has scars and it's very rare to find someone who doesn't show at least a few of them at first glance. It's even rarer if the person doesn't show any even at second or third glance.
Chishiya Shuntaro is one of those people. Niragi meets him through a mutual friend, and Niragi hates him at first. Hates that he's a doctor that screams wealthy background, hates his unblemished skin that is proof of how much better of a person than Niragi he must be, and especially hates the way those soft, delicate, papercut-free fingers dance over Ann's piano in a way that betrays years of practice.
Hates him right until the moment Chishiya Shuntaro opens his mouth and Niragi realizes that the man is far from the good person his scar-less skin leads people to believe. Is just really, really good at bending the truth, at weaponizing his words and at hiding everything he truly means underneath layers and layers of misleading double talk.
At that point, Niragi Suguru stops hating Chishiya Shuntaro and begins to crave him instead. And Chishiya doesn't seem to mind.
The first time they fuck is hushed and frantic and Niragi doesn't think twice about the fact that Chishiya doesn't take his shirt off during it. The second time is calmer and they can take their time, but still Chishiya keeps his upper body covered. Niragi doesn't mind, can't mind with how Chishiya pushes into him and makes delicious painpleasurepain shoot up his spine.
Maybe it would have stayed that way; Chishiya keeping his torso clothed and Niragi being too out of it to notice. But then Niragi arrives early and to an opened door one day and has a front-row view to the truly horrendous scar that covers half of Chishiya's back. From his right shoulder blade to the ribs on the left side of his torso; one single lie but the most gruesome one Niragi has ever seen.
Niragi is sure that it has to be the same lie, told over and over and over again. With smaller scars people can oftentimes tell the number of times the lie has been told. With this one, Niragi can't even begin to guess.
The moment Chishiya notices Niragi standing in the doorway, he looks resigned. To what, Niragi can't tell. Whether he expects Niragi to turn around and leave, or shout obscenities at him, or if he believes that Niragi will just silently disappear from his life - Niragi doesn't know for sure, but whatever it is, it can't be good.
He stays. Obviously he does, he'd be a hypocrite if he didn't. Has been too much of a piece of shit himself to accuse Chishiya of something he doesn't even know the true extent of, or the real meaning. But it stays on his mind, the deep burning red of that single scar deforming Chishiya's pale skin. Someone who can tell a lie like that - Niragi isn't sure if it's something he ought to envy, or to fear.
The day Niragi learns the truth behind Chishiya's big, terrible lie, they're on a simple grocery run. Niragi's fridge has been glaringly empty for days and Chishiya threatened not to stay over if Niragi doesn't stock up on Chishiya's favorite cookies and feed him something tasty for dinner.
They pass a crossing, each of them carrying a bag filled with various fruits, vegetables and other items Niragi has let himself get talked into buying, when the air is suddenly full of screeching tires. It's followed by a thud, and then a truly awful scream.
They both turn around at the same time but while Niragi is still trying to get a general overview of things, Chishiya already dropped his own bag and is halfway across the street. Apples roll around the tarmac and a handful of eggs paint the street yellow, but Niragi's gaze is fixed on the legs peeking out of a skyblue dress dotted with little white flowers, and on the small white sandals, one of which points in a direction that's really unnatural for a young child's foot to be in.
People are staring, shouting, screaming. Someone is herding a group of children away, another seems to be on the phone, hopefully to call an ambulance. Niragi thinks of doing the same, but his legs carry him over to Chishiya instead.
The man is kneeling next to the small child and the distraught mother. There's blood pooling under the girl's body, pouring onto the pavement and staining it red like a tipped bucket of paint on a big black canvas. It's not the red Niragi truly sees though. His eyes are stuck on the line that shines through the thin fabric of Chishiya's white shirt, as he hears Chishiya repeat the words that cut deep over and over and over again.
Look at me. You're going to be alright.
You're going to be alright.