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Sitting amongst a plethora of hair products and loose make-up he hadn’t been able to clean up before rushing out to school that morning Kaoru silently tilted his head back against the glass behind his head. Eyes fluttering softly shut as Kojiro stood uncomfortably close in front of him, pulling and playing with the lip that would soon be pierced into with metal--the piece of jewelry resting on his bare thigh.
His boxers having ridden up with the motion of being put on the counter with Kojiro’s help, the t-shirt he had stolen a few months ago pooling in his lap where the jewelry sat unmoving. Kaoru was deathly still as the lip was once again tugged on and stretched while a small pen hovered near his cheek as if he was going to start drawing on their face.
“Hurry up already,” he grumbled, slightly shaking fingers moved to twist the bottom of Kojiro’s shirt--the one on the other’s body instead of his own--between his fingers. With the soft roll of his eyes, Kojiro finally applied the dot to the underside of his lip and once again began to play with it in the same manner he had before.
“Make sure it’s in the spot you want it,” he mumbled while turning to wash his hands and ready the needle, “we won’t be able to change it once it’s pierced and then your Mom will beat my ass not only for doing this while she wasn’t home but for making you look stupider.”
Slapping his hand against Kojiro’s bare shoulder--the other almost never wore shirts when they were just in the privacy of Kaoru’s bedroom, they were far-too comfortable to care about such simple nudity--he turned around to check that the markings were where he wanted them to be. With a steady nod and the soft mutter of “doesn’t look terrible,” they turn back towards Kojiro’s waiting form.
“Do it,” Kaoru said as his fingers tapped soundlessly against the counter as he mentally built himself up, “whenever you’re ready…do it.”
Nudging Kaoru’s thighs wider, Kojiro stepped closer to him and slowly began to clean the area where the piercing was going to go; ignoring how Kaoru’s legs wrapped tightly around him. Their ankles locking at the base of his back in order to keep the other teen close to his front, barely enough space between them to constitute two people let alone enough room for him to properly pierce the other’s bottom lip.
“Kaoru, I need a little room, loosen your ankles.” he says while tapping at the inside of the other’s thigh, doing it enough to make it so the other boy loosened them enough so Kojiro could bend down. “This might sting a bit so don’t be a bitch about it.”
Kojiro knew Kaoru wasn’t good with pain but babying him about it would only lead to anger and Kojiro being pushed away for daring to view the small moment of vulnerability.
“How long will it take until it's fully healed?” he mumbled while Kojiro tilted his head back against the glass once again.
“Do I look like I’ve ever given a piercing?” Kojiro asked with a deadpanned gaze at the other teen, making the other’s lips attempt to spread into a small grin. With the lightened shake of his head, Kaoru stared up at the ceiling and forced himself to disassociate; blocking everything out and letting himself shut off all feelings that could occur around them. Kojiro was familiar with this tactic done by his best friend--he had been doing this since they were kids, never crying when he was in pain but disassociating the second the pain registered.
With his eyes softly fluttering back and forth from Kaoru’s hands to his lip, Kojiro puts the needle into the flesh of his lip, easily piercing it. “There we are,” he whispered at the feeling of the other's thighs tightening around his waist, moving his hand from the lip and rubbing it up and down Kaoru’s thigh in a softly soothing motion. Giving them a moment of comfort before reaching to the other thigh to grab at the loose piercing’s, picking up the base of the stud they had stolen from Kojiro’s sister’s collection during lunch that afternoon and pushing it through the hole.
“There ya go,” Kojiro mumbled while screwing the backing onto the jewelry as if he hadn’t just put a hole into the lip of his best friend. “Satisfied?”
With a small whimper of pain, Kaoru let his eyes finally open to the world around them--still slightly blurry with the remnants of forced detachment--and let them land on the sight of Kojiro cleaning up the supplies surrounding him as if it was nothing. Tapping their fingers against his thighs--that were still spread open with Kojiro standing between them--he allows the other to slowly tilt their face up. Grabbing at their chin with soft but strong fingers as he studied the look of the newfound piercings donning his face.
Kojiro liked them a lot. The pair had been talking about Kaoru getting a lip piercing since they were twelve--when Kojiro’s, then twenty-one-year-old sister, came home with a new one while Kaoru was sleeping over. The boy had bombarded the woman with questions that wouldn’t stop. He had an inkling then, that the other boy would eventually want one just like it and was just waiting for them to get up the courage to ask his parents to let him get one from said sister.
Unluckily for Kaoru, his parents had a heart attack the first time he brought Kojiro over for a sleepover and would probably ban him from ever speaking to his best friend--they damn-near had when the pink and green hair happened, and neither of them knew about the stick-and-poke yet--in a second. So, it was unlikely that he would ever be able to get his lip pierced without some form of hell being raised.
Kojiro is going to assume this was the reason Kaoru had wanted to do it while their parents were out of town for a month on a business trip--though he wasn’t going to complain. Whenever Kaoru’s parents weren't’ home Kojiro was allowed around whenever he wanted to be…so he basically moved in whenever they were gone.
As most best friends do.
Looking intently at Kaoru’s face Kojiro decided, on the spot, that the piercing suited them perfectly. Reaching up, he once again pulled at the lip--not the part that was pierced but the skin around it--in order to make sure it wasn’t bleeding too much.
Only his hands were slapped away with a soft, “Don’t fucking touch it,” he mumbled and began lightly pressing on it in an attempt to make the now spiking pain Kojiro had forced onto him fade away, “you can look but don’t touch it or else I’m gonna take a needle to your dick.”
Unwrapping his legs from around Kojiro’s waist, Kaoru easily hopped off the counter and twisted himself around in the innards of Kojiro’s arms. Not bothering to mention the way the taller teen was leaning against the counter and trapping him in.
Stretching across the, still messy, countertop, Kaoru attempted to get as close to the mirror as possible. Their lip was an ugly, splotchy red as blood trickled from amongst the wound. Tapping lightly at the slowly swelling flesh of his lip, Kaoru began to slowly move closer to the shining metal protruding from his lip as Kojiro’s voice continued to rumble behind him.
He said he didn’t know anything about piercing, but he had obviously done some research while they weren’t together to make sure he wasn’t putting Kaoru in danger. (He was sure the other’s search history would look something like: ‘Can anemics get piercings?’ ‘Piercing care?’ ‘How to care for lip piercing?’ ‘Safe home lip piercing,’ ‘how not to get an at home piercing infected,’)
“You have to wait a few months before changing it out,” he drawled while reaching above Kaoru’s head to put the disinfectant away and take out a small bottle of saline solution, “and you need, and I mean need Kaoru, to clean it Kaoru or else its gonna get fucked and your parents are gonna murder me for ruining such a pretty face.”
Humming in response, they weren’t listening, Kaoru kept moving his lip around to see it in the different lights--it was okay, he would likely repeat it a few hundred more times before his parents came home. It wasn’t his first, no Kaoru was lucky enough to have parents that found piercing their baby’s ears as a completely fine tradition for their baby girl but anything else was a satanic monstrosity not to ruin their daughter’s face.
(Kaoru had to bite back the fact that he wasn’t their daughter every time the argument occurred.)
“Do you like it, Jiro?” he mumbled, cutting through the lecture about keeping them clean and properly healing them without the risk of infection.
“I do but you really need to listen to how to take care of it,”
Turning around, still in Kojiro’s arms because he hadn’t bothered moving, Kaoru wrapped his arms around the other teens neck and pulled him down into a hug. Tightening his arms around the other’s neck and jumping into his arms like a pet koala that refused to be let down.
“Why would I care about that when I have you to make sure I don’t ruin my…what was it?” Kaoru says with a soft pause, having to keep the grin from crossing his face lest the pain start up again. “My pretty face?”
“Your pretty face will only be pretty to me if you don’t listen to me about keeping it clean!”