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Parker placed the office phone back on the cradle with a click.
Well, shit.
Boston General could have an influx of flu patients any day except this one evening, please, when he needed his sister’s help. Who could he talk to to get this rush rescheduled? Didn’t even need to be a whole day. Just an hour. If that. Twenty seconds, really, was all he actually needed of her time, but of course the problem was her getting here.
“If you can make it to the hospital, I can help you out here—“ she’d said.
“I would, but Art has the car all evening—”
“I’m sorry, Pete, that’s my floor nurse calling. I really have to go. Just try and make it out here tonight, and I can help. Love you! Gotta go!” The receiver on the other end clicked hastily into its cradle.
Parker slammed a hand on the wall in frustration. Not at her. Not at the floor nurse, or all the patients cramming themselves into the overfilled ward. Not at anyone, really— well, not anyone external to himself. Just the shitty luck he was having tonight, luck that he shouldn’t even need. This shouldn’t be a problem, and it was his own fault that it was.
Art would be back— well, later. Who could say when exactly. He was out hitting the street and would do so until he had found enough of something (or nothing) to call it a day. Parker would normally be out with him as well, except that he’d excused himself tonight on account of “having an appointment”. No need to mention that he was meeting his sister. It was a standing thing, after all, and it did have to be every Wednesday.
But Art would be back later. Parker had probably a couple hours to figure this out.
Okay.
He wasn’t a fucking baby, he could do this.
Parker went into the bathroom and rummaged around to the back of the cabinet until he found a small leather case. Bless Art for being such an incurious sonofabitch. Parker had fretted and fretted about where to keep the thing. He’d considered getting a lockbox (for all the good it would do, considering he’d just taught Arthur how to pick locks). Hell, he’d considered getting a storage locker at the train station. But then once Arthur actually moved in, it had become abundantly clear that he just… was not a nosy man. He had his designated shelf and his designated drawer, and he used those, and never looked anywhere else. Parker’s space in the bathroom cabinet may as well not exist to him. Plus, Parker was fairly sure that if Arthur did ever find the kit and ask what was in it, he could just say something like “beard trimmer” and that would be that. Parker did not have a beard.
He set the case by the sink and undid the clasps to lay it open. The collection of tools inside glittered, sterile and, despite his unwillingness to look at them, familiar.
Parker began to go through the motions. Although he needed his sister’s help for the last part, she had always insisted on him doing the setup himself, and thank god for that now. It had been partially a matter of expediency, of course, but more than that, she insisted on Parker knowing how to take care of himself in case there ever arose a situation where she couldn’t do it for him. A situation like this one, in fact. Annoying how right she was about things, really, the brat. (He loved her for it.)
First, the larger needle. He screwed it onto a syringe, then picked up the tiny glass vial and punctured the thin membrane of the cap. Flipping the vial upside down, he drew down the viscous clear liquid— fuck. He’d forgotten to pre-fill it with air. He was already messing up. Well, too late. He drew down past his volume, pushed out the air bubbles, adjusted until it was just right. He withdrew the needle and set the vial aside.
So much for the easy part.
He screwed off the larger needle and replaced it with a second, smaller one: thin as piano wire and an inch and a half long. This was the part where his sister usually took over.
He braced his hands on the counter for a moment, gazing at the needle where it lay as if he could win a staring contest to conquer it. Hell, maybe that was the secret. Every mandated vaccine he’d gotten in his life, he’d never looked. Better to think as little as possible about the thing breaching his skin and going deep into the muscle, far past the boundary of his skin, far into the territory of a mortal wound if only it were a less slender bit of metal. His little sister had always been a champ with vaccines. That was the only thing keeping a straight face on him: if his sister didn’t cry, he couldn’t.
He turned away from the needle to put the lid down on the toilet. Unbelted his pants, hiked them down around his knees, and pulled up the leg of his boxers. Seated himself. Swabbed his thigh with antiseptic. And then…
It wasn’t hard to pick up the needle. It wasn’t hard to position it. It wasn’t hard to sink it into the muscle.
His mind played through the steps on repeat, and yet at the start of each cycle of the vision, his hand failed to join in.
“Dammit, Yang, you asshole,” he muttered. “You’re really gonna spend the whole evening in this bathroom, huh? Gonna sit on the crapper doing nothing for the rest of your life? English’ll be home eventually. You still gonna be sitting here pissing the time away then?”
How long had it been already? Ten minutes? Twenty? Better not to think about it.
He turned to look at the thing sitting on the counter, sterile and tidy and awfully small. He picked it up and stared deliberately at the tip. He stared at the point where it needed to go, willing the two to connect.
They didn’t.
He pinched the skin, hoping to get the motion going.
It didn’t.
He stared at the tip some more.
It was amazing how quickly the time slipped away while he just sat in silence. A dog started barking across the street, adding an ambience of frantic noise to the dank, gray, poorly-lit bathroom. His mind wheeled again through the process it needed to see happen. Just place, press. Just push the damn thing in so we can clean up and be done. Just fucking do it already, Parker Yang.
The dog went on barking. It was just close enough to be too loud, the only thing his mind could fix on. Behind that steady, just slightly irregular noise was a logjam of piled-up recriminations unable to flow freely. You didn’t have to live a life where you deal with this. You could’ve just sucked it up in your old body. What gave you the audacity, anyway? Look at you now, needing something so badly and unable to take it. There’s nothing even stopping you. If you really were the man you act like, you could do this. Just do it. Just fucking do it! Get it over with! Cross-wise to those logs and tangled with them were more — You’ve never done this without your sister’s help. You could fuck it up and she wouldn’t be here to help. What will you do then? Ask Art for help? Would you do that? Would you trust Art with that?
Not that he reckoned Art would be ugly about it, if he ever found out, but you never really knew with people, did you? Even if he wasn’t an overt asshole about it, would there be a shift from yes we are brothers to yes I know that you are a brother and I should treat you like one, but that isn’t quite the same thing, is it? Would Arthur decide to be a white knight about it? Parker hated that. He’d once nearly bitten Arthur’s head off for coming close to it— they’d been interviewing a person of interest. The man had decided one way to push back on their questions would be to start throwing insults at the guys questioning him, and whether by perceptiveness or sheer chance, he’d landed on some nasty digs at Parker’s masculinity. Arthur must’ve sensed Parker suddenly spoiling for a fight next to him, and out came his eerily silent, focused, I-am-capable-of-murder face, and out came a low, gravelly, “you have one chance to reconsider what you just said,” and the blustery fellow had decided maybe he did have time to just answer their questions politely.
Parker hadn’t needed a rail-thin Englishman to white-knight him, thank you very much. In fact, if there was one thing that he needed less than someone taking those kinds of digs at him, it was another guy coming to his defense for it.
Still, it had left an impression. Art was on his side. He wouldn’t have spent the last months working, sharing an office with him, and cooking meals with him if he doubted that.
No, he didn’t think Art would be ugly about it. He just… didn’t like letting certain things out of the family.
Look down at the needle. Picture the motion.
Nothing happened.
Look down at the needle. Picture the motion.
Nothing again.
Look down at the needle. Picture the motion.
In the background, the dog’s owner started yelling at it.
Look down at the needle. Picture the motion.
“Rouf, rouf! Rouf!”
“…ya dumb idiot animal, there’s nothing out there, will you can it—”
The thing that really pissed him off was that the needle never even hurt. Pain would make sense. He could deal with pain. If it was just a matter of pain, this would not be an issue. It was something else, a glass wall between the needle and his leg that he couldn’t seem to push through.
Look down at the needle. Picture the motion.
How long had it been? Thirty minutes? Forty?
Look down at the needle. Picture the motion.
English would be home soon. If Parker could just be done with this twenty-second task, he could go start on the red tape from the case they’d wrapped yesterday and be halfway done in time for dinner.
Look down at the needle.
His hand moved this time, just a little closer to his bare leg. The needle prodded at the surface of the invisible glass wall separating its metal from the meat of his leg.
Picture the motion.
He saw the long needle plunge in, right through skin and fat and muscle, deep— so deep it scraped the ivory of his femur, bent from the impact, became a piece of barbed wire he would have to tear out of his own leg and—
“Fuck!” His hand drew back involuntarily at the vision, but the needle was still perfect, unbent, shining, and not in his goddamn leg.
And just at that moment, the front door opened.
Shit. Had his voice traveled to the hallway? He held his breath.
“Parker?” came Arthur’s wary voice from the door. “Is everything all right?”
Yeah, he’d heard him yell, because of course he had. Parker was about ready to give this all up for a bad cause, actually. “I’m fine, English, I’m all good!” he called. He was aiming for blithely cheerful, but apparently not convincingly enough. Arthur’s footsteps approached the bathroom. “Hey— don’t come in here, man, I got my dick out!”
The footsteps stopped. “Erm— are you sure? I thought… well, I thought I heard you shouting.”
“Yeah, I was yelling at this neighbor’s dog who won’t shut up. Can’t a man take a shit in peace?” Conspiratorial world-weariness. He felt pretty good that he’d hit it.
“Er— right,” said Arthur sheepishly. “Damn noisy beast. Sorry to bother you. I’ll, er, leave you to it, then.”
“Pass me a newspaper, I might be a minute.”
“Right.”
Parker almost laughed when a copy of the Arkham Times really did slide under the door a moment later. He didn’t reach for it. “You, uh, just stopping by or are you back for the night?” he called through the door.
“Oh— ah, back, yes,” said Arthur. Well, that was not what he’d been hoping to hear. “Mrs. Cavendish’s neighbor has been going to quilting guild meetups with her every week for the last twenty years. She gave me the names and numbers of some of the other regulars. I thought I’d make some calls.”
“Brilliant. That’s a great lead, they’ll love to chat,” said Parker.
“I only hope they’ll know something useful,” said Arthur.
“They will,” guaranteed Parker. “That plus a half dozen other things you didn’t know you needed to know.”
“Right.”
Sitting on a toilet, staring at a needle in his hand, discussing the quilting guild of all things. He looked once more at his leg, but the bone-scraping vision still met him there.
Outside, Arthur’s footsteps finally moved away, over to the desk. There was nothing for it; Parker carefully, quietly, capped the needle and set the syringe back in the kit. At this point, he just needed to get out of this bathroom. He flushed the toilet for effect and tucked the kit away in its cabinet. He checked the mirror, made sure he looked as composed as possible before stepping out.
“How many numbers have you got?” he asked before Arthur could start any other kind of conversation. “Want me to take half?”
“Oh— five. Er, three. That is to say, five names, but the neighbor only had numbers for three of them. I’m hoping we may get contact details for the rest as we go through the first three.” He gestured vaguely with his notebook. “But I imagine it’s a bit late on a Wednesday evening to be calling old ladies who go to bed at eight-thirty. I was thinking I’d start on that tomorrow and just work through some cross referencing tonight.”
“Sure, sure,” said Parker, too preoccupied to give this conversation its full consideration. Arthur being home meant the car was back— was it too late to drop in on Mary? He could find a payphone to call ahead, since that conversation would not be happening from this office while Arthur was in it. Aw hell, but was he really gonna drag her away from half the sick people in Boston just because he couldn’t handle one little fucking boo-boo by himself? If he could even just find a— a quiet place somewhere, maybe the bathroom in the bar downstairs— Shit, he had just put the kit away. He would have to go back in for it.
“Anyway, I’m starving,” said Arthur, setting his notebook on top of the pile of papers dedicated to that case. “I was thinking of grabbing something from Mrs. Jin’s before I settle in, if you’d like anything.”
Well, wait a minute, did that mean Arthur was going back out again? “Mm…” Mrs. Jin’s was only a block over, but that should be a solid twenty-minute trip. Maybe if Parker went back in that bathroom knowing exactly how much time he had, maybe— “Yeah, sounds good, actually. I could go for some spicy chicken. Let me grab you some cash.” He found the money for Arthur, handed it over.
Finally, at last, Arthur opened the door and headed out.
The sound of his footsteps receded down the corridor— then abruptly stopped. Parker, halfway to the bathroom, froze. The footsteps resumed— god damn it, god damn it, why was he coming back? Now? Parker managed to make himself look casual just as the door opened on his returning partner.
“Forget your—“ Uhh. His brain was not in gear. “—ass?” he tried.
“Er,” Arthur blinked at him. “No, I—“ He gestured at the bathroom. “I just wanted to ask, before I head out, if you wanted help with your shot?”
What.
“My shot?”
Parker had to run that by his brain one more time to make sure he’d heard right. The icy feeling already clamping around his heart made him pretty sure he had. His mouth, without his supervision, started running deflection, while his body got ready for a fight and his brain calculated whether he could make it out the window before the other guy could catch him. He’d run the numbers and settled on safer to tackle him at the knees on the way out the front door by the time he tuned in to check on his mouth. “—a little early in the day for vodka shots but there’s a lovely place downtown if you’re keen,” he was saying. His knees were slightly bent in readiness to spring, and his pulse was running at a million miles an hour.
But Arthur looked— well, sincere, and a little surprised. No sense of keen watchfulness, no hunter’s gaze, nothing to suggest he was taking notes on Parker’s reaction or getting ready for a scuffle. No triumph or cruelty. Just a bit of honest bewilderment at Parker’s expression, which Parker could only assume was akin to that of a caged tiger. Parker put the dive-for-the-knees plan on hot standby. This was Arthur.
“Er,” said Arthur, “I’ve— upset you.” There was a hint of a question in that statement, but Arthur seemed to pretty quickly resolve it for himself. “Never mind. I’m sorry. I’ll just go get that food.” He turned for the door.
“No, hang on,” said Parker before he could get away. “Wait a minute.”
Arthur paused.
“What are you asking me exactly?” asked Parker. That was a question that didn’t give anything away, right? Yeah.
“I…” Arthur gestured at the bathroom again. “I thought you were having trouble with your shot. If you need someone else to do it for you, well, that’s— I’ve done plenty. I know how. Er, assuming you do them the same way, I suppose. If you don’t use the same site, you may need to tell me where exactly you take it, but I can’t see that being a problem.”
“The same— Art. What are you telling me right now? When have you done plenty of shots?”
Arthur gaped at him a moment. “I… every week? Testosterone shots?”
“On… who, exactly?”
“What do you mean, on who? On myself.”
Nope. What. “Arthur.” Parker braced his ass against the counter edge for some kind of moral and/or physical support. “Arthur Lester, are you telling me you’ve been doing T shots, on yourself, every week, for as long as I’ve known you.”
“I… thought you knew that already.” He sounded mildly surprised. “Did you not know that?” He was starting to blush blotchy crimson, bless his Anglo-Saxon complexion.
“Wait a minute.” No, this explained some things, suddenly. “So when I thought I was losing my mind forgetting to properly hide my used needle wrappers— you were the one throwing those in the trash for all the world to see.”
“You hide your used needle wrappers?” said Arthur with interest. “Why? Who would go looking through our trash?”
Parker gave an incredulous sort of laugh. “Well, Arthur, I did think there was some chance you might look in there.”
“But I—“ He looked, actually, a little miffed. “Well, you can bloody well stop hiding them from me now, good lord. You didn’t know? But then why— at Jack’s bar— I thought you had clocked me. That wasn’t why you bought me a drink?“
Oh boy. One thing at a time; Parker was going to be processing Arthur is also a queer man for the foreseeable future alongside Arthur already knows I’m a queer man and See? ARTHUR can do his own shots, what’s YOUR excuse? He did not have space for the complex discomfort of Arthur clocked ME the first time we met, in the course of a single conversation, while drunk off his ass at rock bottom. That would have to wait a couple business days, thank you. And, hold on. “You thought I started talking to you out of— what— solidarity?”
“I— well, it just… made more sense than anything else.” Arthur’s red face was not getting any less red. “It doesn’t matter.” He gestured toward the bathroom again. “Look, do you want help, or not?”
Parker glanced balefully toward the door. Goddamn it, he did want help, though. “This is not the end of this conversation, Art,” he said firmly.
“Sure,” said Arthur. “Ask me more anytime.”
“Right. Yeah. I will.”
“Er. So, in the bathroom, or—?”
“Bathroom, yeah,” said Parker, looking toward the door. Now that he listened for it, he could still hear that fucking dog barking down the block. He suddenly wanted not a thing more to do with that bathroom. And besides, the bathroom was where he hid from Arthur, a thing which he evidently did not have to be doing. “No, kitchen. I’ll just grab my kit.”
“Sure.”
Arthur met him at the tiny, two-chair kitchen table and hovered while Parker sat. Parker realized he was going to have to pull his pants down in front of Art, but hell, of all the things he’d gone through this evening, what was one more, really. He cleared his mind of any thought that could verge on shame and hoped the universe would at least give him the grace to be wearing boxers with no holes in them. The buckle hit the floor while Arthur was rather tactfully sorting through the kit on the table.
Once he was seated, Arthur stopped averting his eyes and held out an alcohol swab. “On your thigh?” he asked.
Parker took the swab. “Yeah. Just right here.” He swabbed the spot for the second time that night. “Straight up and down. The syringe is already drawn up.” Arthur found it and uncapped the needle while Parker very deliberately looked away from that. “Once I say I’m ready, just go for it,” he said. “Don’t count down. I don’t wanna have time to think about it.”
“Right,” said Arthur, hovering at the ready. “Whenever you’re ready, then.”
Was he ready? He was not. “Fuck. Hang on a sec.”
He took a moment to breathe, and white-knuckled the kitchen table for good measure. He’d be fine. He was fine when his sister did this for him; he trusted her. And he could trust Arthur. Arthur who had, apparently, been doing this for ages— he could trust Arthur! Goddamn. Arthur. Of all the people he could’ve scraped off a bar stool, he’d picked a guy who knew, who was going through the same shit, who could help him— Little wonder Arthur had found it improbable, honestly, and he could feel some kind of delayed emotion threatening to take over his chest.
(Or maybe that was just his body reacting to the uncapped needle close by.)
“Okay, do it, just do it,” he said, before he could think too long about it. Arthur didn’t say anything at all, not even an “okay” in return, just plunged the needle in. That was not what Parker had expected but he couldn’t even be mad. It did the trick.
A few seconds to push the plunger down, and then the damn thing was drawn free and into a sharps bin, and Parker was free, done with the whole ordeal for another week. A giddy adrenaline rose in his chest. God damn, he could just about kiss Arthur right now. He elected not to say so while sitting with his pants around his ankles.
Arthur was busy pressing a fresh swab over the site, grimacing. “It’s a bleeder,” he said. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s— it’s fine. It’s good. Thanks.”
That thanks sat between them a moment, hollow and impersonal. Parker’s tongue didn’t seem to have anything glib at the ready, either. That was a new one.
“So…” There was still some kind of feeling putting pressure on Parker’s chest. He cleared his throat, which did not make it go away. “So. How long have you been—?”
“Six years, come August,” said Arthur. “Er, you?”
“Almost two years,” said Parker. “But I normally have my— a nurse help me with it. Wasn’t going to work out tonight, though, so.”
“Right.”
“Yeah.”
There was another moment, then— “Did you have the—“ “How long did it take for—“ and they both cut themselves off. Arthur gave a self-deprecating laugh. “You first.”
“No, I was just going to ask how long your beard took to come in,” said Parker.
“Oh,” said Arthur dubiously, “It still hasn’t, really. It comes in all patchy. I’m better off keeping it clean.” He gave Parker’s face an evaluating look. “Your hair texture is nothing like mine, though, so maybe you’ll have better luck. Did you develop the monster appetite?”
“The monster appetite! Christ Almighty, did I,” laughed Parker. “Should’ve thought twice about that before becoming a freelancer. Puberty’s expensive.”
“Jesus, tell me about it. I only wish I’d gained any weight from it.”
The feeling of pressure in Parker’s chest was changing, less dire but still hard to ignore.
Arthur seemed to realize he’d been holding the swab in place for several minutes now; he removed it and replaced it with a bandage. “Well, I suppose you’re all set, then,” said Arthur. “I should go get that food.”
“Yeah,” agreed Parker. It was time for him to get up, re-buckle his pants, and move forward.
He did get up, and he did re-buckle his pants, if only so they wouldn’t be around his ankles for the next part, because instead of moving forward, he started talking.
“Art— hey,” he said. “Listen, I just want to say—“ His mouth had gotten going without him again, and he had to let his brain catch up. “Listen, about Jack’s Bar. I didn’t— well, I mean, maybe unconsciously on some level, but no, I had no idea. That wasn’t why I— Look, it wasn’t because of any particular thing that you are, or that I am. It was because—“ He finally got his tongue in sync with his brain. “It was because I, Parker Yang, am an excellent judge of character, all right? I knew I needed to know more about you. And every thing that I’ve learned about you since has proved I couldn’t have picked a better partner, or a better friend.”
Whew. The pressure seemed to release, and a gentle giddy relief washed over him in its wake. He’d managed to say something that needed saying.
Arthur’s expression, though, was complicated, guarded. He twisted his mouth in acknowledgment of Parker’s overture, but it wasn’t a smile.
“I’m glad to be your partner, Parker,” he said after a pause. “And I hope I’ll always be a good friend to you.”
The weight of a but hung heavy in the air for a moment.
But Parker wasn’t having it, not today. “I hope you aren’t about to imply something disparaging about my ability to judge character, Art,” he said, “because I wouldn’t take it kindly. You helped me out a lot tonight. You don’t even know how much. So let’s leave it at that, all right? And for chrissakes, let’s go pick up that food. This is hungry business. I’ll walk with you.”
To his credit, Arthur did not argue. Parker closed up his kit and then brandished it thoughtfully. “Same time next week?” he asked, cocking an eyebrow. “Can I count on you?”
Arthur gave a fervent nod. “Yes,” he said. “Of course. Any time.”
Parker grinned. “It’s a date,” he teased. “Now let’s go get dinner.”