Nari snapped as she roughly wiped away blood from a cut on his arm.
Jeno jerked his arm away. "Watch it, woman!" he snarled, angry at her attitude and abrupt tone. "God, I told you it was just a fight, alright? Just drop it already."
"Just a fight? Jeno, every time I find you here you're bleeding and covered in blood. How many fights do you even get into? You've been like this for the past three weeks!"
He groaned as she continued to jabber on in a rather shrill voice, high-pitched in her worry. "Shut up already, goddamn."
Nari's eye twitched and he bit back a yell as isopropyl alcohol splashed onto his arm, making it sting with hot prickles and twitching nerves. "What the fuck is wrong with you?!"
She huffed and recapped the plastic bottle. "I want to know what's going on. Why are you always so injured?"
She gestured at his ripped clothes, his dirtied hair, and his ever-wounded hands, scarred and scratched and swollen and scabbed over. "You keep telling me you got into a fight, like that's not vague at all."
"I'm telling you the truth," Natsu said forcefully.
"I got into a fight. That's it."He watches as she wraps gauze around his arm and, not for the first time, wonders.
"Why do you do this anyway? You don't know me and I don't know you. We've only seen each other a handful of times and you're already carrying around all this in your bag." It wasn't the only thing he wonders, but he refuses to think about it.
He cannot, because as much as he hates to say it, it frightens him because there is one answer he absolutely cannot allow.
Her cheeks darkened slightly and her eyes refused to meet his. "Maybe I just like helping people," she retorted, and it wasn't an answer, not really.
Not the one he was looking for. She reached into her bag— Givenchy this time— and pulled out a paper bag. "Here, I got you food."
He pulls out a blueberry muffin. "I don't like blueberries." And he tossed the bag back.
"Well you have to eat something." She grabbed the bag and threw it at his face.
"Eat."
Jeno meticulously glares at her but pulls the muffin out and bites into it— he was a little bit hungry— as Nari finishes binding his wounds and begins to pack her things.
She tossed the blood-spattered rag and Band-Aid wrappers in the garbage before disinfecting her hands and settling next to him on the bench, putting away the alcohol and kit in her purse before picking up a bottle of orange juice and sipping from it.
"Give me some of that." Jeno takes the juice from her and gulps half of it down in two swallows.
"Hey I was drinking that!" she protests. Her full lower lip sticks out in a childish pout, though her eyes seemed to shine brighter.
There was something there and he looks away.
"I left you half." He hands the bottle back and she caps it.
They sit in silence, two people in the quietness of 2 am on Monday morning.
It was more of lack of conversation on Jeno's part, and it was more of the enjoyment of the companionship on Nari's, but it was comfortable silence nonetheless.
Eventually, she sighs as she realizes how late it's getting. "I assume you have somewhere to stay for the night?"
He tosses away the muffin wrapper into the darkness and she barely bites back a protest at his blatant littering. "Yeah. Thanks again." He stands and begins to walk away, hands in the pockets of his sweatshirt.
"Will I see you again?" Lucy abruptly blurts out. He doesn't see her blush.
Jeno stops, thinks about the past three weeks, wonders why he always stops at this particular water fountain and just happens (Because he has to blame this all on her. He has to.) and sees Nari sitting there on the bench in her Manolo Blahnik or Christian Louboutin shoes and her Gucci or Louis Vuitton bags and her Dolce & Gabbana or Kate Spade outfits.
She came from good money, he could tell, but he couldn't understand why she continued to come.
"I don't know," he eventually says, and feels the impact of those three words more than she ever will, and leaves.
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