Chapter Text
Robby fully understood the use of the adjustable chairs tattoo parlors and dentist offices used as he watched Jesse bounce his foot out of the corner of his eye. Propped up and laid back, people couldn’t fidget. Couldn’t jangle their legs as they stared off at the poster of the food drive like it was something that needed to be deciphered. Fidget with everything in reach on the table except for the supplies Robby had set out.
“Uh… Robby?” Jesse spoke up for the first time since he had sat down. Voice soft and a little shaky with no effort going into hiding it. “Maybe we should do this another time. Like maybe after Thanksgiving or—”
“That makes sense.”
He perked up for the first time since he sat down, looking at Robby with surprise and relief. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Grabbing a pair of gloves from the box that was always kept by the sink, Robby leaned against the counter as he slipped them on. With a nod in Jesse’s direction, he smiled. “How many times have you backed out of getting pierced at the last second?”
“What?”
“You’re nearly twenty-five. You could’ve gotten this done at any point over the past… seven year?” And it had always struck him odd, the amount of excuses that Jesse could work out to put off such a quick procedure. Crossing the room to the table, he pulled out a seat and sat in front of him, shrugging before asking, “So do you even really want this or—”
“Yeah, of course. I just…”
The vague roll of his wrist explained nothing, but Robby couldn’t blame him. He wouldn’t exactly be rushing to admit to a fear of needles in Jesse’s position either. Clasping his hands together to keep from touching Jesse. Robby rested his arms on his lap, careful not to lean too forward as he sat there.
“You really hate needles that much? Not judging, but you are a nurse. And former—What was it? Paramedic?”
Jesse scoffed and shook his head. “EMT. I gave up on being a paramedic when I decided to go for nursing.”
“Sorry for that mistake. Point is, you’ve done this sort of thing to others plenty of times. And have done far scarier things like dealt with angry drunk, pissed off parent. Bought a house for some insane reason.”
Despite his reluctance, Jesse let out a small chuckle as he looked down at his hands. Waffled for a moment, his head rocking side to side, before biting at his bottom lip. “The need for shelter? And I thought people were supposed to buy homes and—I don’t know—get married or something. Have kids…”
“But needles scare you?”
Jesse shrugged. Running a hand through his hair as he looked toward the door as if he expected someone to barge in. Not, entirely unlikely, but with Night Shift settling in and their shift long over, it didn’t matter. Just gave him something to look at that wasn’t Robby himself, it seemed.
Placing a hand on Jesse’s shoulder after reaching for his knee, Robby attempted to comfort him with the gentle squeeze. Not that Jesse even so much as looked at him. “It will hurt a little. The two months of healing will kind of suck. But it takes ten minutes, about ten second of which is the piercing process. So, better to do it now than… next year or something.”
“I just feel like I’m going to vomit every time I think about it too hard.”
“That’s the nerves.”
With a deep breath, Jesse at least looked back at him, frowning as he did. “And what if I pass out? My friend Rick, he uh… He got a helix and passed out in the chair.”
“At this rate I fully expect that.”
Knocking away the hand on his shoulder, Jesse started to say something, then went quiet as he jerked up right. Both of their eyes whipped toward the door where Dana held up her hands in surrender before making her way to the fridge.
“Just me. You can relax.”
As if it was that easy. Out the corner of his eyes, Robby saw Jesse go back to staring at the notice board as Dana retrieved her lunch from the fridge, though why she bothered to bring one, Robby would never understand. Most days she tended to spend the better part of her lunch break in the ambulance bay smoking with him. Which, sure, wasn’t the best, but it stopped the hunger pains.
Looking over her shoulder at them, she paused. Then turned around altogether, crossing her arms over her chest as she looked them over. “You’re not done piercing him yet?”
“Oh. Uh…” Looking over at the neatly laid out tools and then at the side of Jesse’s face as he continued to look elsewhere, Robby shook his head. “Got distracted talking about Black Friday plans. I was think I might try to uh… get a computer. Best Buy had good deals.”
Making her way over to the table, Dana tapped at Jesse’s shoulder with the back of her hand. “You believe this guy? Most people plan for Thanksgiving and family and he’s thinking about sales on Friday.”
“I work Thursday. Swapped with Adamson so he could spend time with his family since, honestly, I’m not doing anything that day.”
“I thought your grandmother lived in town?”
“She’ll be sleep by time I’m off work. Plus, she’s Russian. High holy days and New Years is all she cares about,” he said, ignoring the curious arch of Jesse’s brow or Dana’s frown that said a lot about what she was biting her tongue over.
Crossing her arms over her chest, Dana frowned at him before turning her attention to Jesse. “You still going hunting on…”
“Wednesday. Yeah,” Jesse said, forcing a small smile while rubbing at the back of his neck. Probably would’ve left it at that except Robby was staring at him curiously, so he added with a wave of his hand, “Family tradition. My dad, brothers and I go out and we bag a turkey or two depending on how much family is visiting. Spend the day cleaning and brining it. Then come Thursday, we cook it. No thawing necessary.”
“Really going from zero to hundred with you two.” She shook her head, patting Jesse’s shoulder before making her way back to her things on the counter. “Me? I’m going to get drunk to cope with my mother and mother-in-law’s insistence that I’m somehow cooking everything wrong while my sister gets praised for her awful pasta salad because she tried. Middle ground.”
Looking at Jesse, Robby had to look away shaking his head as the guy bit his lip in a rather poor attempt to hide his laughter. The agreement that Dana’s holiday plans sounded far worse than the two of theirs was something that didn’t need to be verbalized. They could see in each other’s face. As could Dana given the look of faux offense on hers.
“Well, if you want another piercing, all Robby charges a beer and a decent meal.” Jesse offered, as if it was in his right. “So I doubt he’d complain about your cooking.”
A fact Robby readily agreed to. Not that he couldn’t cook for himself. He often wound up cooking for his grandmother when he had the time and opportunity. But free food was free food. And it probably wouldn’t have hurt for him to take up doing the odd piercing for a friend or two. Or at least offering it. Something to keep it from being being a favor he did for Jesse. Just in case.
Looking over her shoulder, Dana eyed his meager set up and smirked. “Let me se what damage he does to you first, then I’ll decide.”
With that and a brief wave, she headed out, making sure to give Jesse a brief hug on the way. The uttered goodbyes of the three of them the last thing to be said before it was just him and Jesse at the table. His lidocaine, antiseptic wipe, marker and needle all laid out next to the silver dagger shaped earring. All of it ready if Jesse was and from the looks of him, nothing was ready.
Worrying the corner of his lip as he stared at the neatly arranged items, Jesse exhaled perhaps too loudly. The whole room swelling with a sense of resignation that Robby couldn’t quite parse out.
“You know, um, my family always makes too much each Thanksgiving since my mom cooks like she’s planning to feed her whole class.” Something Jesse found funny enough as he shot Robby a small smile. Then a weak shrug, thumb tapping away on the tabletop rather than bouncing his leg. “So if you want to stop by mine after work Thursday, I can have a plate waiting for you.”
“I don’t know. What are you making?”
“More than you are.”
Laughing, Robby had to concede to that point. After all, his meal plans didn’t go much further than making a week’s worth worth of stroganoff to split with his grandmother and then maybe spending Sunday making pelmeni if they had the time—knowing full well that he’d wind up doing the majority of the work in exchange for spending time together. Adding a little variety to the mix in the form of whatever it was the Van Horns ate for Thanksgiving beyond freshly slaughtered turkey didn’t sound like such a bad idea.
Nodding to the array of supplies on the table, he asked, “So we doing this or what?”
Jesse pressed his lips into a thin line and handed Robby the lidocaine. He looked pale—jaw clenching as that restless foot of his started bouncing again—, but determined enough to nod. “Sure. Just… don’t hate me if I puke on you.”
“Honestly wouldn’t be the first to do so today,” he admitted as he uncapped the tube to squeeze out a dime sized dollop.
“You had a puker?”
“Gastritis vs a Chinese buffet. Pretty sure the buffet won.”
And taken out his hoodie in the process, much to his annoyance. But with the way Jesse looked and the nervous way he fidgeted with his hands, maybe it one of those inescapable fates. Someone was going to ruin his hoodie that day. Although, in some weird way Robby had almost wished it had been Jesse. Guy never ate until after work and stomach bile was definitely the easier mess to clean.
“Oof. That’s… awful. Did he have duck?”
Rubbing the gel between his thumb and forefinger, Robby grasped Jesse’s earlobe as he shook his head. He didn’t think ‘duck’ had been mentioned in the list of greasy, spicy and acidic food that had left his patient alternating between curling up and vomiting anything he tried to put in his stomach. Rubbing the lidocaine into the area, watching the odd faces Jesse made as the numbing took effect, he asked, “Why? Is that my meal?”
“Yeah. My dad uh… He found himself with about half a deer from one of his friends so I got a lot of leftover duck meat from the freezer. Salmon too, if you’re into that.”
Robby stripped off his gel covered glove. Got up to throw it away with a soft chuckle before grabbing another from the cabinet. “You’re so odd.”
“What?”
“You have a fear of needles and then turn around and do things I could never. I mean, fishing is fine, but you are legitimately the villain in Bambi.”
A fact Jesse brushed off with a roll of his eyes and a laugh. “I— No. Because—”
Robby shook his head, grinning and laughing through Jesse’s increasingly weak defense of murdering Bambi’s mom—because Robby had to insist it was Bambi’s mom, specifically. Which led them down the path of whether that made the duck waiting for them counted as Daffy—which it didn’t because Daffy never died—and which cartoon animals were acceptable to eat. Daffy, of course, since he was annoying. That lying frog that could sing and dance, though Jesse gagged at the thought of eating frog’s legs. Porky, but not Porky, since Robby felt worse about the idea of eating him than not keeping kosher.
Just a stupid conversation that kept Jesse distracted as Robby opened up the antiseptic wipe to clean off the area. Far more careful with the process than he had any real need to be. Same with the marking his target with a tiny, black dot.
It was only when he stood up did the easy conversation die. Mid sentence, Jesse just stopped as Robby used the clamps to hold his lobe as he grabbed the needle. Eyes shut and hand gripping Robby’s waist in a way that was definitely too intimate for work. Failing to fight the urge to look back at the hall where everyone was more concerned with their jobs than the break room, Robby swallowed down his own nerves and took a deep breath.
“Just breathe, alright? Gonna do this on the count of three.” Jesse nodded through his bracing for the worst. Unwilling to prolong his suffering, Robby placed the needle at the mark with a barely stated, “One—”, before pushing the needle through.
“What happened to three?!”
“You were already tensing. This way it—” Robby grabbed the earring and placed the post into the needle; pulling it through until the needle came out the other side with the earring left securely in place as soon as he pushed the backing into place. “Is done. You got a piercing.”
“Yeah?”
Hand shaking, Jesse reached to touch the earring, only to back off like he’d been burned as his finger brushed against the metal. His eyes jerking to look up at Robby when he snorted because, really, the guy looked like he was in a state of shock.
Placing the clamps and needle aside, Robby focused on removing his gloves rather than touching Jesse as he asked, “How we feeling?”
Letting out a relieved scoff, Jesse offered up a wan smile. His nod a little mechanical. Throat working awkward and fast as his eyes grew a little distant. Backing up as Jesse bolted from his chair, Robby made sure to give him a wide berth as Jesse rushed to the sink to lose his typical lunch of cokes and little more. Grimacing through the sound, Robby made his way over to rub at Jesse’s back.
“So I guess I’m eating alone tonight?”
Jesse raised a middle finger between gagging. A sound that quickly gave way to miserable groans and the running of water as he turned on the tap; staring into the basin for a long moment before looking over at Robby. “You were wrong. I so regret this piercing.”
“At least you didn’t pass out?”
Jesse gave a vague nod, smiling faintly to himself. “Yeah. Just lost my lunch.”
“Your lunch is made of sodas. It wasn’t a great lost. Maybe if you’re nice I’ll share my meal with you. Whatever it happens to be.”
“Duck. Cherry sauce. Mash.”
Robby huffed, kind of surprised by the effort Jesse put into it. Kind of curious about whether the effort was really for him or just one of those weird Jesse things. Rather than ask, he turned his attention toward cleaning up after himself while Jesse found the will to ease his grip on the counter holding him up.
“Wow. And the beer?”
“Heineken. And… I have the rest of your payment at my place, if you want.”
“Your place?”
Jesse shut off the water and grabbed his bag from the table. “Yeah. My place, where I keep my toothbrush. Which I like to use after puking.”
A reasonable desire, if ever there was one. Finishing up with his cleaning, Robby grabbed his own bag and looked at Jesse. Very much the same as always, except a little pale and a little pierced. He gripped at the strap of his bag in a bid to keep his hands to himself and nodded. “Sure. Though, I don't really need further payment. The food and beer is more than enough."
Rather than reply, Jesse stared at him. Kind of like he stared at him that day in his bathroom or any given morning they happened to wake up together. It was telling but brief. The moment gone in a roll of his eyes before he made his way to the door, making sure to brush up against Robby as he passed.
And with the full understanding of it all, Robby nodded to himself with a muttered, “Yeah,” before following him out.