‎‎Incidental Findings

He keeps his fingers in place for another beat, watching Niragi look back at him as though this should have been obvious.

"Not that long, maybe two months."

Two months sounds too long. Too long for not that long.

“One answer,” Chishiya says. “Show me, and you can ask one question.”

He takes another drink.

But the thing is, that he doesn’t want to be normal. He tried it long enough and it didn’t work. He won’t bother with it anymore.

And he feels that Chishiya is wired wrongly in his own way, maybe not as badly as he is but still. That’s one reason why he is curious about him, why he wants to know the version of him that belonged to the real world.

And he wants to hear it from him. Of course he can always make his way back into the real world and ask about him, but he prefers staying where he is.

“You don’t say…” The day goblin replies his tone mocking while he just looks at the other.

He keeps his fingers in place for another beat, watching Niragi look back at him as though this should have been obvious.

“One answer,” Chishiya says. “Show me, and you can ask one question.”

He takes another drink.

Niragi thinks out loud while he can feel the other’s eyes on him. He won’t find anything different about him. Turning into a day goblin doesn’t change how you look in hour human form.

“Anything else you want to ask me?”

Niragi has never been easy. He looks like one button for fireworks and that’s the end of it, but it doesn’t work cleanly. As though something inside him had been wired wrong, cut apart and reattached where it shouldn’t be, electricity jumping from one line to the next.

And now he is trying to claw his way into the real world, but not his - what used to be Chishiya’s real world instead. If the hospital where he used to work can even be called that. Then he sits here nicely for a drink and turns into fire that doesn’t burn.

“You’re not human,” Chishiya says.

The asphalt is wet with rain when Chishiya gets off the bus, hood drawn low over his face, hands in his pockets.

He moves past the pedestrians still milling through the streets. Not as many as during the day. Still enough. A few elderly people, gaunt men in sweat-stained business suits, partygoers in glossy vinyl and coloured hair. A pair of girls in corsets and bunny ears linger at the corner he rounds, leaving the main road for the maze of narrow back alleys.

Usually, it is a cheap motel when someone’s apartment is too embarrassing or their wife is home. Sometimes a park. Some parking lot somewhere.

A garage is a first.

Chishiya smooths his thumb over the stun gun in his pocket when the garage comes into view. It has been a while since he last needed to use it. A while since he has done this, too. But there is always someone who takes short and light as permission to ignore common courtesy, or agrees to one thing and decides, once Chishiya arrives, that his discomfort should become Chishiya’s problem.

Fuji seems too deliberate to be careless.

Still.

People are people.

The garage has a roll-up door with a narrow personnel door set into it. Chishiya tests the handle. It gives exactly as promised.

"Your hands aren't in troubles. Yet." He returns the gaze, his voice still lowered as their faces are close. "Alright. And one of mine is: Don't just touch my piercings out of the blue." He has several: In his ears, in his lip, obviously, a surface piercing above his cheek bone - and another, secret one.

He hesitates. Following commands is unlikely for him. Even fulfilling a request. But he's curious for what's about to come. Into which direction all this will go.

He lets the leather jacket glide over his shoulders and puts it onto a hook in the wall. Wearing one of his vintage Marilyn Manson shirts underneath it that reveals his tattooed arms and more of his just as tattooed neck.

"Content with what you see?", he wonders. "Now you. Take that hoodie off."

“Good,” he says, flat. Easy.

His eyes continue wandering over the exposed skin as he unzips the hoodie and shrugs out of it. Balance restored, or close enough to satisfy whatever made Fuji return the command so quickly.

Chishiya hangs it from the second hook beside Fuji’s jacket before settling against the wall again.

His fingers find Fuji’s forearm. They follow one line and then another: jagged shapes, occult symbols, his own surname worked into the display as though he needs a label. As though people have to be told what they are looking at.

Chishiya draws his lower lip briefly between his teeth. Then he catches the hem of his T-shirt and pulls it over his head. He drapes it over the hoodie without looking away.

His hands return to Fuji. Long fingers slip beneath the hem of his shirt, resting against the skin there. He waits just long enough to see whether Fuji stops him.

He truly can't remember when someone has taken their time to examine his tattoos this closely. Although Chishiya doesn't say anything about them and Fuji certainly wonders what he thinks he decides to not interrupt the silence and just lets him look. Something Fuji absolutely appreciates. Those tattoos tell a lot about who he is after all.

His glance strays to Chishiyas now naked upper body, just to have him hold his breath for a second once he feels the other's hands on his skin again.

"You may."

He even lifts his arms in an approving gesture, and in fact he feels some eager anticipation with the fact in mind that Chishiya will have a lot to look at once Fuji is shirtless.

Once the shirt reaches Fuji’s chin, Chishiya tips his head carefully to one side, then the other, making sure the neckline does not catch on the piercings in his ears. Making sure his fingers do not touch them, either.

He is about to put the shirt on top of Fuji’s jacket as he did with his own, but this does not feel like something chosen only for convenience or comfort. So he folds it loosely, keeping the print turned inward, and sets it down neatly over the leather.

It makes his own clothes look even more carelessly arranged. They are not chosen without thought. They simply are not that important. One monochrome collection of soft, smooth fabric, nothing conspicuous. The indulgence is in the material, if anywhere.

He does not look up at Fuji’s face when he turns back to him, his gaze fixed on what he has just uncovered. One hand returns to Fuji’s chest, fingertips resting against his collarbone, while the other slides to the base of his neck, right at the start of his hairline. His nails move faintly against Fuji’s scalp as Chishiya studies him.

It is not one style, and it is not a mess. It is a layering that must have grown over time. Not planned in one sitting, but added piece by piece, each new mark worked carefully around or into what was already there. Still some skin left plain.

“One answer,” Chishiya says. “Show me, and you can ask one question.”

He takes another drink.

“If it does what Hatter thinks it will, huh?” This question isn’t meant to be answered.

“Ever considered that this place might stop existing before that goal is achieved?”

“Could be. Or not.”

He glances at Niragi over the beer.

“You make it sound like you know.”

“One answer,” Chishiya says. “Show me, and you can ask one question.”

He takes another drink.

Niragi says as he grabs his bottle again and drinks a few more sips. And meanwhile he tries to think about a question to ask him.

“You said you want the cards. What do you plan to do after you got them?”

One question, and Niragi spends it on something written across a whole wall downstairs.

“Leave,” he says.

His thumb moves over the wet glass.

“One answer,” Chishiya says. “Show me, and you can ask one question.”

He takes another drink.

"Fine, but don't fucking blame me if you question your sanity after." He says and rolls his shoulders once before placing his bottle on the diving board between them.

The day goblin then focuses on his energy while thinking about his other form. A few moments later he is surrounded by light and once it fades he is in his flame form.

There isn’t as much heat passing over his face as there should be. Warm, but not singeing. It moves around his shoulders, and the lack of heat from a flame this close leaves a shiver across his skin. There is no fabric, no rifle, no shape left to follow. Only flame circling through the air where Niragi had been.

Chishiya turns his head with it.

Then the light gathers over the diving board again, and Niragi is sitting there as though his body had only been briefly misplaced.

Chishiya looks at him. At the bottle between them. Back at Niragi. The timing fits now. The silence too.

“You weren’t lying.”

His fingers tighten around his bottle.

Through the air. It should be an obvious lie. It accounts for the time, though. The silence too.

He lowers the bottle.

As he tells him to show him how he made his way through the air he snorts and his lips curl up into a smirk.

"If I was to show you... what would you trade for it?"

“One answer,” Chishiya says. “Show me, and you can ask one question.”

He takes another drink.

Chishiya holds his bottle out for Niragi to open as well.

Niragi says before taking the bottle from Chishiya and opens it with diving board before handing it back to him.

For a moment he thinks about what to tell the smaller male. In the end he decides on the truth, being sure the other won't believe him anyway.

Through the air. It should be an obvious lie. It accounts for the time, though. The silence too.

He lowers the bottle.

Niragi allows Chishiya to take the bottle that was in his hand. There was no difference between them. But if the blonde insists he can have this one.

He takes the bottle standing between them and uses the diving board to open it and takes a few sips. The reasons the smaller male gives for being at the Beach sound like him so he is inclined to believe them.

Chishiya holds his bottle out for Niragi to open as well.

The asphalt is wet with rain when Chishiya gets off the bus, hood drawn low over his face, hands in his pockets.

He moves past the pedestrians still milling through the streets. Not as many as during the day. Still enough. A few elderly people, gaunt men in sweat-stained business suits, partygoers in glossy vinyl and coloured hair. A pair of girls in corsets and bunny ears linger at the corner he rounds, leaving the main road for the maze of narrow back alleys.

Usually, it is a cheap motel when someone’s apartment is too embarrassing or their wife is home. Sometimes a park. Some parking lot somewhere.

A garage is a first.

Chishiya smooths his thumb over the stun gun in his pocket when the garage comes into view. It has been a while since he last needed to use it. A while since he has done this, too. But there is always someone who takes short and light as permission to ignore common courtesy, or agrees to one thing and decides, once Chishiya arrives, that his discomfort should become Chishiya’s problem.

Fuji seems too deliberate to be careless.

Still.

People are people.

The garage has a roll-up door with a narrow personnel door set into it. Chishiya tests the handle. It gives exactly as promised.

"Your hands aren't in troubles. Yet." He returns the gaze, his voice still lowered as their faces are close. "Alright. And one of mine is: Don't just touch my piercings out of the blue." He has several: In his ears, in his lip, obviously, a surface piercing above his cheek bone - and another, secret one.

He hesitates. Following commands is unlikely for him. Even fulfilling a request. But he's curious for what's about to come. Into which direction all this will go.

He lets the leather jacket glide over his shoulders and puts it onto a hook in the wall. Wearing one of his vintage Marilyn Manson shirts underneath it that reveals his tattooed arms and more of his just as tattooed neck.

"Content with what you see?", he wonders. "Now you. Take that hoodie off."

“Good,” he says, flat. Easy.

His eyes continue wandering over the exposed skin as he unzips the hoodie and shrugs out of it. Balance restored, or close enough to satisfy whatever made Fuji return the command so quickly.

Chishiya hangs it from the second hook beside Fuji’s jacket before settling against the wall again.

His fingers find Fuji’s forearm. They follow one line and then another: jagged shapes, occult symbols, his own surname worked into the display as though he needs a label. As though people have to be told what they are looking at.

Chishiya draws his lower lip briefly between his teeth. Then he catches the hem of his T-shirt and pulls it over his head. He drapes it over the hoodie without looking away.

His hands return to Fuji. Long fingers slip beneath the hem of his shirt, resting against the skin there. He waits just long enough to see whether Fuji stops him.

He lets out a small snort as the ID appears inside the other’s pocket together with his hand.

“I think you’re more than capable of launching a surprise attack if you just want to.”

As he reaches for the bottle in his hand he moves it out of his reach.

“You have your own don’t be so greedy.” He says and then pauses to think.

“You give me yours. You can have mine.”

He leans in until he can work the bottle from Niragi’s fingers.

“To steal all the cards.”

His gaze drops to the bottle left on the board between them, waiting for Niragi to pick it up.