Work Text:
“Did it hurt?”
Nirei’s voice was a gentle touch, like the afternoon sun filtering through the windows. Suo turned his head to look at him over his shoulder, hands still neatly folding the dirty tangzhuang he had just discarded. The light bent like water around Nirei, and Suo found it both hard to look away and look at him directly for too long, like looking at the sun.
“Hmm?” It was like Suo wasn’t expecting the question. “Ah. No, not really.”
Nirei might not have believed him if he hadn’t been there to see Suo take the hit—which really wasn’t a fair description in the first place. He had intercepted a surprise attack headed for Nirei, and thankfully somehow managed to deflect the brunt of the blade. Still, it had sliced through his silk shirt and skin, so when everyone returned to the Red Chanpuru’s base afterward, Nirei decided he would accompany Suo to his room and check his injury.
The shirt might have suffered more than Suo did; after all, one was already patched up, but the other was still somewhat shredded and bloody. Nirei wondered if the tangzhuang was ruined, but Suo assured him it could be washed and mended no problem, he would just need something else to wear in the meantime. When Suo left for his room in search of a change of clothes before dinner, Nirei walked beside him the whole way in silent agreement.
Nirei’s curiosity didn’t seem satiated. “I didn’t mean the knife wound…”
He knew the injury was minor because he had checked it himself. It was a long, thin thing: a feathery red line from his side to his spine, but it wasn’t horrible, wouldn’t even need stitches. Still, Nirei had cleaned it carefully, because it could easily get infected if left untreated. He was relieved both at the lack of severity of the wound and the openness with which Suo shared it with him.
Suo walked back to his room with Nirei knowing what his friend was following him for, and he let it happen. It took effort: quietly clenched fingers behind his back and a not-too-tight tense of his jaw, but he let it happen. It was just one of the many things that had been changing since the turn of autumn, but it was one that often sat the heaviest on his chest.
“Hmm?” Suo hummed again and quirked a brow as he reached for an old set of crimson robes hanging in his closet, still watching his friend with his own growing sense of curiosity.
Nirei’s fingers, which had been passively fiddling with the edge of his jacket—free from slashes or blood—raised to hold the back of his own neck.
Understanding dawned on Suo. First, something instinctive and cautious flickered in his eye, but then his features noticeably softened. If Nirei looked closely, Suo almost looked a little sheepish.
“Ah.”
Something worked over Suo’s expression, the effort less invisible now because he allowed it to be. Nirei waited. Since arriving in Bankoku-gai and finally seeing him again, Nirei and Suo had spent plenty of quiet times together. Sometimes the quiet was just like this, a lull while someone sorted out what exactly they wanted to say.
Suo eventually settled for: “This didn’t hurt much, either.”
Nirei tilted his head, a mix of disbelief and genuine shock. “Really?”
As scarily high as Suo’s pain tolerance was, he expected that a tattoo might hurt enough to be remarkable. But then again, it was something all of the Red Chanpuru members got, so maybe it wasn’t as bad as he imagined it would be.
Suo looked more thoughtful than closing a closet door required. He smiled faintly at Nirei once the partition was gone between them.
“Really,” he confirmed sedately.
Nirei hummed this time, his hand falling back to his side. He was surprised when Suo spoke again.
“Do you want to feel it?”
His tone and smile were both genuine, soft in the golden light warming the walls of his childhood bedroom. Nirei’s face flushed just slightly and he nodded.
Suo’s footsteps were silent as ever. He joined Nirei on the tatami mat in the center of the room, the low wooden table beside them as Suo folded his feet to sit directly in front of Nirei.
A breath caught in Nirei’s throat. Suo was so… open like this. He inched his hand slowly up Suo’s back, as if he were nervous to actually touch him. But finally he did: just the cautious pads of his fingers at first, approaching the mark between Suo’s neck and shoulder blade like it might spook.
Suo’s skin was cool: he always ran cold while Nirei ran hot, he had learned. The familiar coolness greeted him first, then the slightly raised texture where the three dragons curled over Suo’s pale skin that was different from the usual unmarred state of him.
Suo sat incredibly still while Nirei traced his fingers across every bit of his tattoo, hunched just slightly to make it easier for him to reach. He couldn’t help but wonder if it was painful for Suo though, as he was freshly bandaged, and stiff enough to make his own shoulders tense.
The faint sounds of dinner preparations and the evening’s final rounds of dojo training could be heard in the distance, living something separate from the scene in Suo’s room, at least for a moment.
“It really didn’t hurt,” he said lightly.
Nirei drew his thumb over the rightmost dragon, admiring. “I believe you,” he said.
Suo was quiet for a moment. Both of them recognized it, and it was perfectly understood. Quiet is not always empty—sometimes, it is remarkably full.
“If it did, I don’t remember it.”
Suo’s words were still composed, but they were softened now at the edges with something more vulnerable. Something that belonged in the hushed sunset here and with the two of them.
He added, “My brothers were there with me.”
Nirei looked at the three dragons beneath his friend’s neck. “Rakta-san and Bacchus-san?”
Suo hummed affirmatively and an image of the three of them came to Nirei’s mind, maybe younger, but still connected in a way that couldn’t be described better than siblings. He wondered fleetingly if one of them had held Suo’s hand.
“I wasn’t scared,” Suo said, and Nirei’s fingers slowed minutely. “Not of getting it. Not at all.”
A beat passed.
Another.
Then—
“I didn’t tell them at the time, but I was a bit nervous to get mine.”
Sunlight moved slowly across the room, illuminating a dust mite in the air by Suo’s window that neither of them paid any attention to. Nirei waited for Suo to say more—but seconds ticked on, dinner time grew closer, and they would be expected in the dining hall soon.
Nirei thought he understood. Bacchus and Rakta had explained the significance of these dragon tattoos in the Red Chanpuru. He and Suo had talked about what being part of Red Chanpuru meant to him. What belonging looked like for little Sun Fei as he grew up, and what getting that same tattoo as his brothers when he turned fifteen meant to him. How something as intangible as claiming someone as your family could look like three intertwined dragons in black ink.
Suo’s skin was warming under Nirei’s touch. The scars beneath were imperfectly healed.
“It’s okay that you were nervous,” Nirei said.
Suo turned his head to peer at his friend over his shoulder, sunlight settling over his features in a way that made him appear younger.
“Hmm…”
A small breath of laughter escaped Nirei. Suo watched him smile in earnest, a sight he truly thought he’d never get to see again. Something warm stirred in his chest, and he vaguely remembered he still needed to get dressed before dinner.
Nirei stood, a bright figure before Suo’s eyes. He extended a hand. “Should we get going before they come looking for us?”
Suo just watched him for a moment. Every now and then, the absurdity of his reality would seep in through the corners of everything new they were building, and now he couldn’t help but smile at it.
“Yes, before Sakura-kun storms through.”
The image of it—very real and recent in their memories—made them both laugh, a bit easier and looser than before. Suo took Nirei’s hand, still warm and gentle to the touch. It was getting more and more familiar.
Once he was upright, Suo finally replaced his shirt, this one a bit looser-fitting than the previous garment. It nearly resembled a child wearing their parent’s clothes.
Curiosity surged through Nirei once more, but he said nothing. For now, they had a meal to share, and Nirei looked forward to that just as much.