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It’s not his fault.
“This gash on your arm is so deep! What happened?” Kotoha flips open the first-aid kit, pulling out a roll of gauze.
It’s not Sakura’s fault that he got distracted. It’s all Suo’s fault, for always wearing those tassel earrings that sway in time with his body, streaks of red following the graceful destruction he exacts. Sakura losing focus because of that is inevitable. Suo should have known the sun’s glint on his earrings is particularly harsh, that’s it!
“One of the guys pulled out a knife on him,” Nirei explains, expression still stuck in one of worry.
Right, it’s that guy’s fault too.
Sakura scowls, gulping down his entire glass of water. “It’s nothin’. I’ve been hurt worse. Someone so lame that they need to bring a knife to a fistfight can’t do anything to me.”
“It’s not very comforting when you say it, Sakura-san…”
Suo tilts his head slightly to the side, followed by the light clinking of his earrings that Sakura knows as well as his voice. “A strange virus has been spreading around Makochi lately, did you know? It enters open wounds and clogs up your blood vessels. Not the best way to go.”
“What? Real–” Sakura stops. Nirei’s looking at Suo like a parent whose child has told them for the fifth time that they’ll grow up strong because they eat crayons. “Tch. I’m not falling for that.”
“Oh? Seems like you’re catching on quick these days.” There’s always that stupid fucking lilt to Suo’s voice, his smile perfectly translated into sound waves, teasing and probing at Sakura until it stretches his cheeks red. “Looks like you’re growing sharper.”
“I’ve always been sharp!” There’s that stream of heat flowing through Sakura’s body again, something like the foreign half-cousin of kneejerk anger that always finds its way to his face.
Suo only continues to smile, a ridiculous attempt at foolishness. “I’m touched, really. Our grade captain is developing so fast.”
“You–!” He doesn’t know if it’s because of the word “our”, if it’s because it feels like belonging and acceptance, if it’s because Suo is saying it, but it makes Sakura’s face drown in that stream of heat, Kotoha’s shouts telling him to stay still, idiot, all but wind.
“Sakura-san, you’re going to knock over your cup!” Nirei grabs his shoulders in a futile attempt to push him down, shooting a look of panic at Kotoha.
“That’s an expensive cup! Your wounds are going to open up even more if you keep moving around,” she scolds, holding the roll of gauze like she’ll use it to choke Sakura.
He sits back down, keeping his eyes on Suo, who has the gall to let out a little laugh as his only reaction. There's something weird simmering beneath his cheeks now, something like red-hot lightning in a bottle. It’s strange, because it’s not jumping and rattling all the bones in his body to alert him to get up and throw a punch. Sakura doesn’t even have the chance to think about what it is as it grows more vigorous when Suo stands, leaning over to pick the other roll of gauze from the first-aid kit and cutting a long strip with the pair of scissors on the table.
Sakura starts with, “Oi, I already said I didn’t need it” but Suo’s wrist is already around his arm, pulling it closer to him. He wraps the gauze around it in quick motions, leaving a strip open to tie the gauze together at the end. Sakura’s words are stuffed back down his throat; Firstly, Suo’s hand is really fucking cold, what the hell? Secondly, it’s… stinging, the contrast of warmth and cold at their touch, like someone’s smashing a gong in Sakura’s mind to scream at him how weird it is to be touched like this. To have his arm held, not grabbed. Healed, not hurt.
Touch is supposed to be rough and quick but Suo’s hand feels soft. Gentle, even. Sakura glances up, looking at the hair framing Suo’s face, the focus of his gaze, how his earrings move languidly here and there with every small movement of his head, and notices a little too late that Suo’s mouth has been moving this whole time (not that he’d been paying attention to it).
“–kura-san!”
Sakura instinctively stands, snatching his arm away from Suo. It feels like there’s something hot and boiling about to jump out from his cheeks. “W-what?!”
Nirei stares at him, concerned. “Sakura-san, are you sure you’re okay? You were spacing out the whole time.”
“There’s nothin’ wrong with me.” Indignant, Sakura points an accusing finger at Suo. “He just started doing that out of nowhere!”
“Was my gauze-wrapping really so awful?” Suo sighs, his smile dropping into a disappointed frown, something of a leash that pulls Sakura’s emotions back.
He averts his gaze. “That’s not what I said! It’s not like there was anythin’ wrong with it. Just– just tell me if you’re gonna do something like that first! No reason to be sneaky about this kinda thing…”
“Hmm, but I’m never sneaky. I’m like an open book.”
Kotoha snorts and Nirei looks at him in disbelief. Sakura’s been with Suo enough to know that glint in his eye, the one he gets when he inevitably falls for his lies. It’s infuriating as hell and latches onto Sakura’s body, sinks its fingers into all his brain matter, making him want to grab Suo’s collar, pull hard and wipe that smile off his face by– Sakura’s mind stutters.
Throw a punch? Right? There’s a weird visual he is trying very hard to block from his head, and it’s steeped in the same red that flashes in his veins when he fights, but that red is now spreading much slower throughout his body, bleeding onto his skin and the scene. He blinks, and a swaying, golden tassel earring makes itself the focal point of his vision.
“Yeah, right.” There’s a stagger clinging to Sakura’s voice, an almost-murmur where his loudness should be.
What the fuck is happening to him?
“...Sakura-san, are you really okay? You should go back home and rest if you aren’t! Suo-san and I can get whatever you need.” Nirei turns the whole thing back on Sakura, and Suo’s eye fixating on him doesn’t make things any better.
“I already said I’m fine,” Sakura mutters. That dot of red, that stupid eye, keeps reaching out to him at the edge of his periphery.
Suo folds his hands over his lap, back practically parallel to the wall, playing up the image of a cultured gentleman, but Sakura knows better. If he really was one, there wouldn’t be this… thing wriggling everywhere in his body. “In the end, it’s you who’s the open book, hm?”
Sakura whips his head around to face Suo, a retort hot on his tongue, but his mind slams him with zeroed-in thoughts of the playful smile on Suo’s face, the gentleness and deceptive daintiness that his features come together to form, contrasted by the Suo who fights and has a capacity for cruelty with no foreseeable end. Sakura remembers being twelve and hearing the girls gathering at a table in the corner of class, murmuring excitedly about the boys they found ‘cute’ or ‘handsome’, and he can physically feel his body heat up out of embarrassment that he’s connected this memory to whatever his mind is sabotaging him with.
“Shut it.” Sakura rubs the back of his neck, trying to get rid of whatever is pricking at it with a hot needle.
By now, Kotoha has cleared up the table and placed the first-aid kit where it belongs behind the counter. She looks up, glancing between Suo and Sakura, and when she catches the latter looking at her, a weird smirk spreads across her face, and if Sakura listens closely, she’s even snickering.
“Wh-what’s with that look?!”
“It’s nothing~”