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Kris’s hands are shaking.
He takes a deep breath, then another, trying to will the tremor out of his hands. It doesn’t work. The vial stays in its spot on the counter, the needle beside it, Kris terrified to touch even the stupid plastic it’s wrapped in.
It’s something he’s dreamed of, begged for, but now being faced with actually doing the damned thing he is left a shaking mess.
Someone knocks on the bathroom door.
“Yeah?” Kris asks, swallowing around the tremor in his voice.
“You ok?” Fig’s voice calls through the door.
Kris nods, realizes they can’t see him, then hums aloud. “Yeah.”
They let the answer hang in the air.
“No.”
Fig doesn’t ask to come in, instead turning the knob to test if it’s locked. It’s not. They slip through the door, plopping down on the bathroom rug as Kris sits on the lip of the tub. Their chin finds its way to his knee, letting their warm skin rest on his thigh.
“It’s hard?” they ask.
“I get—” Kris shakes his head, pressing his palms into his eyes till stars start to spark behind his eyelids. “I have a hard time with blood.”
Fig snorts. “You're a cleric.”
“I know,” he groans. “It’s different when it’s in battle. The like, adrenaline overrides it. It’s harder when it’s just me. Alone.”
“Not alone,” Fig reminds him, skin still pressed against him.
“Not anymore.”
It’s meant to be a joke, a poke at them and the ridiculousness of being pressed close in the bathroom of all places, but when they look at him it doesn't feel like a joke. Color fills his cheeks and nothing has ever felt less like a joke.
Kris’s gender has always been… strange. Wrong. He was never good at being a girl, a little better at being a lesbian, but even then. Loving himself was a mercy of boyishness. Loving Fig in all that they were was the same. He gave up labeling himself long ago, giving in to the doubt of what felt right. Fig with their stubbly cheeks pressed to the soft skin of his thigh felt right.
“Ok, what are we working with?” Fig asks, pressing a kiss to his leg before turning and looking at the supplies laid out on the counter.
“Um, so I have to clean off the bottle, then clean off my leg. Then I take the, the uh—”
“—the needle.”
“The needle,” he repeats, swallowing and resisting the urge to put his head between his knees. “I take it and put it on the syringe, get it out of the bottle, put it in my leg and then: boom.”
“Boom?” they ask. Their head tilts teasing to the side as they look at him.
“Boom,” Kris nods. “My voice drops, I hair everywhere and I get sick gains.”
“All from just one little shot?”
He rolls his eyes, laying back over the side of the tub. “You know what I mean.”
Fig hums. “Pull your shorts up.”
“What?”
“Pull them up. I need your leg.”
Kris spends the next five minutes in a dissociative haze, letting Fig set to work on his leg as he tries not to pass out into the bathtub. When it’s over he is rewarded with a pat on his now slightly achy thigh and a kiss on the cheek.
“Hmm.”
“What?” he asks, opening his eyes for the first time since Fig started.
“No spontaneous hair growth,” they note as they brush a finger over his cheeks.
Instead of telling them to shut up like he wants to, he lets his hands find the back of their neck, pulling them down to meet him. Their lips are soft against his own, no urgency as they lean over him.
“Thank you,” he tells them when they finally pull away.
“Same time next week?” they offer, a smile pulling their mouth crooked.
“You don’t mind?”
They shake their head. “I’m like, creating my boyfriend. It’s sick. Plus,” they say with their hand still brushing his cheek, “if I don’t I’m gonna find you in here passed out with a needle—”
Kris rushes to kiss them again, not wanting to hear the end of the sentence. He doesn't need to, because it’s not going to happen. Not so long as he has Fig.