Charlie spends weeks planning this session, as with every session. He traces the spiral by hand on paper, over and over, until he's sure the proportions are just perfect. He plots skin depth. He selects different needle and cannula lengths and gauges depending on their position in the spiral. He checks and rechecks his equipment days in advance, as though it might get up and walk right out of his bedroom one night.
He creates the art before he even touches Larry's body. This is his pleasure: not in the flesh, nor the sensation- rather, the math. The beautiful patterns he can create on Larry's chest, the way Larry bleeds. Charlie had asked Larry once why he enjoys what they do. "It's sharp, dull, and numb, and riveting all at once. Because pressing my own skin and feeling the hollow tubes just underneath it is like being fucked right through my skin, right through my fear." Charlie has never fucked, so he doesn't quite understand.
But he knows Larry, and he knows that Larry's happy and enjoys this, and Charlie gets his own slighter pleasure out of it too. It isn't the same, there isn't any rush in it for him, but it seems to make Larry happy and that makes him happy.
The night of the session, Charlie spends hours drawing and redrawing the spiral on Larry's skin, cutting right through his areola and ending at his nipple- just so-, just as Charlie had planned. Larry lays with his shirt, a stack of towels underneath him on Charlie's bed. He wriggles impatiently as Charlie works, and that makes Charlie have to start all over again. Charlie rubs his Larry's to calm him down and encourage him to stay still, and eventually the feedback system works, and they finish together.
Charlie starts outside in, with the longest cannulae barely on the edge of Larry's sterile chest. His gloves wrinkle around the yellow-tipped plastic and he rubs Larry reassuringly in between needle insertions, disposing of the needles into a red sharps container on the night stand with each go. As he gets closer to Larry's nipple, he transitions to pink-tipped needles, and Larry has an even harder time staying still. Charlie works even more slowly, then.
Larry says "please, Charles", and Charlie knows that he can't give Larry everything he wants but he can give him -this-. He changes gloves and switches to the green set, and Larry isn't sure if he wants to beg Charles to stop or beg him for more as each one slides just beneath the surface of his skin. Instead he begs to touch, and Charlie snaps "Not yet!" at him.
Larry waits, and Charlie watches patches of blood form at some of the needle sites, blood slipping out and down Larry's side in tiny little strands. Charlie switches to the brown-tipped cannulae, and holds Larry's hand with his free hand between insertions. Each one drips blood openly, but he only does three before he's at Larry's nipple and looking at Larry's face for an affirmation of consent. Larry nods. "Of course, Charles."
And he does, and Larry cries, and they're not even done. Charlie -finally- lets Larry touch, lets him tug and pull the free lengths of cannula through his skin, lets him flick the caps on the tubes. Charlie traces his spiral- his artwork, his perfection- over and over. He takes a photograph of it to remember, although he knows that he'll always remember it any ways. He photographs the way Larry touches himself, gently pulling at plastic tubing all whilst harshly inflicting pain in the very same movement.
He pulls out the cannulae outside in, as quickly as he can, and Larry's covered in blood pretty quickly. Charlie uses a gloved finger to rub the blood across Larry's bleeding and sore erect nipple, and when Larry squeaks and asks him to do it again he complies, smearing more blood over Larry's nipple. He pinches it and flicks it, and Larry pushes his head back into the pillow and it doesn't make sense at all to Charlie, but it worksin one way or another. They like this.
Charlie plots the next session as he wipes Larry clean and covers him with a tegaderm bandage, and he tells Larry all about it later when they're in bed and he holds Larry through the numbness and awe and the perfection.