My Mate Is My Roommate?

Chapter 3 - Heat Drill

Literature 101 was supposed to be safe. Big hall, a hundred students, no one close enough to smell, professor's voice droning about Heian poetry. Kaito sat in the back row by the open window and took notes with a shaking hand, counting the minutes until he could go back to the dorm and hide in the filtered air. He wore his blocker spray, his collar up, his suppressant taken on time at seven. He should be fine.

He didn't expect to see Renji on the field during passing period.

The lacrosse field was directly below the humanities building, bright green turf, white lines, and the team was running drills in the brutal afternoon sun. Renji was in the center, helmet off for a water break, shouting orders, his jersey dark with sweat between the shoulder blades. Even from three floors up, Kaito could see the line of his shoulders, the way the other players listened when he spoke, the way he pointed and they moved. Captain. Alpha. He looked completely in his element, and Kaito's stupid heart thumped.

And then Renji was hit.

It wasn't dirty, just a mistimed check. Another Alpha, larger, barreled into him while they were both chasing the ball, and they both went down hard, a tangle of limbs and sticks. Renji's ankle twisted under him at a bad angle. The whistle blew sharp. The coach ran.

Kaito was on his feet before he thought, bag banging against his legs as he ran down three flights of stairs, pushing past students. He didn't know why. He just knew cedar and snow had made a pained noise.

By the time he reached the fence, Renji was sitting up, jaw tight, waving off the coach with an annoyed hand. Blood ran from a scrape on his forearm where the turf had burned him, long and red and beading. Sweat made his hair stick to his forehead.

"Renji!" Kaito called before he could stop himself, breathless from running.

Renji looked up, surprised to see him, then his expression softened, pain easing. "You are loud, Aizawa. You should be in class."

Kaito slipped through the gate without permission, kneeling beside him on the hot turf without caring that his pants would stain. "Your arm -"

"It's nothing," Renji said, but he let Kaito take it. That was the thing, he let him. Kaito's hands were gentle, cold against the hot scrape. He had a clean handkerchief - he always carried one now, for nosebleeds that came with suppressants - and pressed it to the blood to stop the beading. His fingers trembled.

Up close the cedar scent was stronger with sweat, and under it something metallic, blood. Kaito's stomach dropped, not with nausea but with a low, hot pulse behind his navel that he recognized with horror. The smell of Alpha blood did terrible things to an Omega, even one on blockers. It was supposed to signal wound, need to protect, need to be close. His mouth watered, his pulse spiked, and an ache bloomed low and frightening. His pupils blew wide.

He swayed. Renji caught his wrist before he could fall, his hand large and warm, calloused.

"Hey," Renji said, voice low, eyes narrowing as he looked at Kaito's too-pale face and blown pupils and the way his lips had parted. The trainer was saying something, the coach, but Renji ignored them, focused only on Kaito. "Are you okay? You are white."

"Blood," Kaito whispered honestly, the only excuse he could find. "I - I don't like blood. Sorry."

It was a bad lie and they both knew it. Renji stared at the way Kaito's lips parted, the way his scent, usually scrubbed to nothing, was suddenly leaking something sweet and distressed, peach milk gone sour with panic. The other players were watching, the coach, a few girls who had stopped to look. Kaito was kneeling too close to an injured Alpha, holding his bleeding arm like a mate would.

Renji made a decision in a second. He stood, pulling Kaito up with him, slinging an arm around his shoulders like they were friends, like this was normal. His cedar wrapped around Kaito completely, grounding and terrible, but also steady.

"Help me to the bench," Renji muttered in Kaito's ear, quiet enough that only he heard. "And breathe through your mouth. You are leaking."

Kaito nodded, face burning, and walked with him to the bench while the team stared and whispered. Renji sat and let the trainer wrap his ankle with ice and bandage, while Kaito sat beside him holding his bloody handkerchief, trying not to look at Renji's mouth or the scrape or the way Renji's thumb had landed on his wrist and stayed.

"You don't have to stay," Renji said quietly, after the trainer said it was just a mild sprain, no tear, ice and rest.

"I want to," Kaito said, and was shocked to find it was true. He wanted to sit on the hot turf bench and watch Renji breathe.

Later, when the trainer cleared Renji to walk with support, Renji limped back to the dorm with Kaito hovering, refusing to let the coach drive him. At the door of 3B, Renji paused with his hand on the frame and said, "You don't like blood, but you ran to me first. Before the trainer. Why?"

Kaito couldn't answer. He looked at the scrape on Renji's arm, now covered with gauze, and felt that ache again, low and frightening. He wanted to lick it clean, to put his mouth there and make it better, to be thanked with a hand in his hair.

"I was worried," he said finally, voice small but true. "You went down hard."

Renji looked at him a long time, his eyes softer than Kaito had ever seen, then reached out and brushed the hair from Kaito's sweaty forehead with a careful, clean hand, fingers lingering. "Thank you, roommate. For worrying."

Kaito didn't wash the handkerchief that night. He folded it and put it in his drawer, blood and cedar together, and told himself it was because he was too tired to do laundry.

The trainer said Renji's sprain was grade one, two weeks of taping. The coach told him to rest, Renji said he could still do upper body, the coach sighed. On the walk back, Kaito carried Renji's bag even though Renji said he could carry it. The campus was golden with afternoon light, students staring at the odd pair, the tall injured Alpha leaning slightly on the small pretty Beta who smelled like nothing and like everything. At the dorm, Kaito insisted on wrapping the ice, his fingers careful on Renji's ankle, wrapping the bandage with concentration, his hair falling forward. Renji watched his hands and thought they were steadier here than they had been on the turf. You are good at this, he said. Kaito blushed and said, I watched videos after you got hurt.

The bloody handkerchief sat folded on Kaito's desk, a small red-brown spot in the center. Kaito looked at it while Renji iced his ankle, and wondered why his first instinct had been to run toward the blood, not away.

The coach told Renji to rest, but Renji did push-ups in the room that evening to make up for missed practice. Kaito counted under his breath, pretended not to watch, and his heart counted with him.