Title: The Earring
Author: Traxits
Rating: Teen.
Content Notes: Graphic description of piercing an ear.
Word Count: 1975 words.
Prompt: Author's choice, Author's choice, giving jewelry as a gift
Summary: Rude is convinced to pierce Reno's ear.
Author's Note(s): None.
[[ ... One-Shot ... ]]
It had surprised Rude that Reno didn't have any piercings. Particularly when he'd discovered that Reno had come from under-Four, had grown up down there. The redhead had ink splashed all over his body (the marks on his face, spiral patterns that probably weren't nearly as mystical as they looked over his back, a bar of musical notation wrapping around his left bicep that Rude was sorely tempted to ask about but never did, and a small heart tattooed on his ankle, just to name a few), but not a single piercing, for all his apparent fascination with Rude's ears. Rude had decided after just a few weeks that anyone who felt the need to touch someone else's earrings that much needed at least one of their own.
Reno was agreeable enough to the suggestion— Rude vaguely wondered if Reno thought that he'd meant it as a test, a challenge that he would lose face for backing down from, but Reno had seemed genuinely interested, so he dropped it— but he had flatly refused to go to any of the tattoo parlors that Rude had originally suggested (where Rude had gotten most of his own done). Instead, he had offered Rude that lazy grin and told him that if Rude wanted his ear pierced, he could damn well man up and do it himself. Yo.
Rude had stopped off after work to pick up a few things. Small necessities, if he was going to be the one doing it. He hadn't bothered to correct Reno's impression, hadn't bothered to point out that he'd done some of his own piercings, that not all of them had been parlor work. Reno thought he was pushing Rude, testing him the same way Reno felt tested. Rude didn't think Reno would much appreciate being corrected.
The moment he got home, he slid his shoes off, leaned back against the door, and glanced up at Reno, who was sitting up on the counter on the edge of the bar. Rude smiled just faintly. "Want an ibuprofen?" He raised an eyebrow, and Reno's eyes narrowed before he shrugged.
"If you think I'ma need a painkiller for a little needle prick, yo—"
"For the swelling," Rude said quietly, and Reno's mouth snapped shut. They continued to look at each other for another minute, and finally, Reno shrugged. That meant 'no.' Rude pushed off of the door. "There's a cigar box in the bathroom."
"In the drawer by the sink, yeah. You want it?" Reno was already sliding off of the counter before Rude nodded, and Rude watched him go before he dropped the bag on the counter near where Reno had been sitting. He glanced around the room, judging the heights of the different surfaces (the chairs would put Reno too low, but the bar would make him far to high up for Rude to comfortably reach his ear), and after just a minute, when Reno was walking back into the room with the box, Rude had moved the bag over to the table instead. He pulled out a package of latex gloves, a hollow needle, and a cork, setting them all three out before he held out his hand for the box.
Reno handed it to him, and then he picked up the packaged needle and started looking at it. Rude snorted slightly. "Don't work yourself up," he warned, and Reno offered him that lazy grin again.
"Yeah, yo. I know how this shit goes. Jus' cause I don't have any, doesn't mean I never watched it done, yeah?" His eyes returned to the needle, and Rude wondered briefly why Reno hadn't ever had it done. Then he shook it off and flipped the top of the box back. The handmade dividers kept everything relatively organized, and it didn't take but a heartbeat to find the couple of barbells that were still in their packaging.
He pulled them out and offered them to Reno. "Pick one," he murmured, and Reno didn't look up at him as he took the handful of packages, thumbing through them. Rude walked over to the sink, rolling up his sleeves and scrubbing his hands and arms down.
"Any of 'em?" Reno sounded a little surprised at the offer, and Rude steeled himself against jerking his head around to see the expression that accompanied those surprisingly quiet words.
"Whatever you like," Rude promised, and not for the first time, he wondered if Reno would ever lose that undertone of disbelief whenever Rude or Tseng or Reeve let him pick out anything.
(The first time Reeve had agreed to cook whatever Reno wanted was a memory that was both heart-wrenching and beautiful all at once to him. Reno hadn't been above the plate long, and Reeve offered him that quietly restrained smile, the one that won almost everyone over. Reno hadn't been able to ask for anything and in the end, Rude had been the one to pick. His expression though, that combination of shock and uncertainty and yearning all at once, thinly veiled with the arrogance that Reno favored when he was off-balance, it had never left Rude's memory. Rude was certain that it had never left Reeve's either, because even months later, Reeve's smile still seemed bigger than usual whenever he offered to cook.)
By the time he'd finished washing up, Reno was perched on the edge of the table (he had some kind of aversion to any normal form of seating besides a couch, and even then, he tended to sprawl over it, to own it by sheer presence alone), holding one of the packages. The others had been dropped back into the box. When he saw Rude looking at him, he held it out. Rude smiled and shook his head. "Open it up."
Reno licked his bottom lip, and he opened the package but he didn't touch the earring. Instead, he set it on the table, and then he opened the needle too. Once again, he didn't touch the needle itself, just tore open the packaging so that Rude would be able to get to it. Rude felt his smile widen. Reno really had watched it done then. The gloves were opened last, and Reno held out the package and Rude pulled them on out. He picked up the earring then.
"You want one or two?"
Reno tilted his head just a little, and after a moment of considering it, he said, "Jus' one. We can add more later." He leaned over and grabbed the bag, examining it until he found one of the alcohol wipes that Rude had dug out of the glove box of the car to drop in there. He tore it open and wiped off his earlobe, offering Rude a little grin. Rude couldn't help but smile just slightly in response. There was almost something charming about Reno actually conforming to the idea that it needed to be clean.
Then Reno's fingers dug out the velvet-covered jewelry box that was still in the bag. His eyes widened, and he glanced over at Rude suspiciously. Rude shook his head. "Not yet," he said, and he reached over for the needle, not looking to see if Reno listened to him. He didn't hear the box snapping open (or back closed, if Reno had managed to get it open silently), and he pulled the plastic guard off of the needle before he picked up the cork in the same hand. When he turned back to Reno, the box was sitting on top of his leg, and his fingers were tapping lightly against it.
Rude was pretty sure that he hadn't opened it. He didn't comment on it though, instead he reached out and rubbed his gloved forefinger and thumb lightly over the earlobe that Reno had offered him.
(His left. The one that would be right over his dominant hand, the one that the electro-mag rod sat so close to on his shoulder. The thought of an earring dangling there, just above the cool gray of the rod and framed in red hair was more than just a little appealing.)
"You flinch for your ink?" Rude asked as he reached down and unscrewed the ball from one end of the barbell that Reno had picked out (dark blue, same color as their suits), transferred the cork to his free hand, and positioned it just behind the earlobe. His thumb slid over that little patch of skin, and he grinned when Reno started to shake his head and stopped himself.
"Nah, man. Ink's soothing, you know?"
Rude took the moment that Reno started talking to judge his positioning, to get the needle up just in place, acting as though he needed to lean back and check where it was going so that Reno wouldn't tense up.
"Jus' don't count or any of that shit. When you're ready, fuckin' do—" Reno cut off abruptly as Rude took him at his word and simply pushed the needle through. It always went through a little easier than Rude thought it should. It caught in the cork, and Rude reached down for the barbell, making sure that the ball for the end stayed exactly where it was. He lined it up with the end of the needle, sliding it into the hollow end and pushing the needle all the way through. The earring caught in the new hole, and Rude dropped the needle to the table in favor of grabbing the ball to screw back on the end.
Reno shivered when Rude drew back, one hand going up to touch it without him even thinking about it. His fingertips came away bloody, and he stared at them for a long moment. Long enough that Rude got up, dropped the needle in the sharps container on top of the fridge, got the paper towels from the kitchen, and had moved to wipe the blood from Reno's fingers for him. Reno looked up at him, and Rude held out the paper towel to him so that he could clean up the rest. Reno smiled slightly, and by the time he was done, his smile had widened into a grin.
"Shit, man. I saw that needle an' it looked like it was gonna fuckin' hurt. That wasn't barely a pinch! You look all bad-ass with your row of fuckin' earrings, and I bet the fuckers didn't even hurt. I bet—" But whatever Reno bet was going to have to wait, because he trailed off when he saw Rude take the jewelry box from him. He opened his mouth, but the moment he saw Rude looking at him, he snapped it shut again, his amusement fading from his face as though a switch had been flipped.
Rude slid his fingers over the box, and he considered his options for just a heartbeat. He hadn't expected Reno to find the box yet. Hadn't really expected Reno to even be interested in the bag, honestly. But he had, and Rude wasn't entirely sure that it was nice to make Reno wait. Instead, he flipped it open and let Reno see.
He knew what was inside. He knew that the pair of little niobium hoops was perhaps a little plainer than something that Reno would have picked out, knew that he really should have waited and taken Reno out to let him pick, but he'd seen the set in the parlor when he'd been picking up the needle, and so help him, he couldn't leave it. It had simply seemed ... perfect. Reno didn't need anything flashy in his ear; everything about him already screamed 'look at me,' and flashy earrings would be overkill.
Reno took the box from him, angling it a little so that the hoops caught the light. His grin returned full force, then widened a fraction more. That was all Rude needed.