One day, Rui passes over a small black jewelry box when he and Haru are alone in their room.

It seems as good a time as any. The truth is, Rui had picked it out weeks ago. He’d done research and then had just been waiting for the right time—and this probably isn’t it, but if Rui has to wait any longer, he thinks he might explode from nerves and anticipation.

It’s just Haru. Rui doesn’t know why this little thing is making him feel crazy.

“This is for you,” Rui says shyly.

Haru opens the small box to reveal a small garnet stud nestled in black velvet, with four silver prongs holding it in place.

“For me…?” Haru asks, reaching out to prod the earring gently. “You mean—?”

He holds it to his chest, and Rui bites her lip and nods.

She watches with a hungry gaze, studying every twitch and microexpression on Haru’s face to see if he actually hates this idea after all—if he didn’t mean it and it had just been a thing he said—as he holds the box out and looks at it again.

“Red?” Haru asks, a little puzzled as something occurs to him. “Not pink?”

“Pink didn’t seem like your color,” Rui lies.

I mean, that was true. But also, Rui had looked up gemstones and saw that garnets symbolized love and devotion. Not that he’ll admit that out loud, but… it had meant something to him, and he’d wanted Haru to have it.

“If you don’t like it, you don’t have to wear it,” Rui says quickly. “In fact, you don’t have to wear it at all. It was just a silly idea. It doesn’t even mean anything.”

“Hyung,” Haru interrupts, and that stops Rui’s frantic demurring short. “I love it. Thank you. Will you… put it on for me?”

Haru holds the earring back out.

Putting it on in this case is so much more loaded than it sounds, considering that what they’re talking about is Rui making a new hole in Haru’s body, like they’d discussed. It’s only his ear, Haru had pointed out, but that doesn’t matter to Rui. The point is that Haru is going to let Rui stick a needle through him at all.

“You like hurting me,” Haru points out when Rui says that last part out loud.

“Not like this! This is going to hurt for real. There’s going to be, like—blood and stuff.”

“Does that bother you?” Haru asks, cocking his head to the side with that little squint he gets when he’s trying to figure something out.

“I mean. No, not really—”

Not as a general rule. But how to say that it feels different when it’s Haru’s blood and Rui is, again, sticking a freaking needle through him?

“If you don’t want to do it, it’s not a big deal. I can just pierce it myself.”

“No,” Rui says quickly, covering Haru’s hand.

Because Rui knows Haru. He does. He knows that this is important to Haru—that Rui do this, change him, mark him—just as well as Rui knows that if he refused, Haru would do it himself and would put a smile on his face and never let Rui know that he was disappointed, but he would be, deep down.

And Rui doesn’t want that for him. He wants to push aside his own discomfort so that Haru can have what he wants. Everything he wants, preferably, at least so far as it’s in Rui’s power to give it to him or steal it for him or even manipulate someone else into giving it to him.

“No, it’s fine. I can do it.”

“Okay, hyung,” Haru says, and the way he looks up at Rui just radiates how quietly pleased he feels.

They go into the bathroom and lock the door. After a moment, Haru hops up onto the counter after looking behind him to make sure he’s not going to send any of the many cosmetics lined up like little soldiers on it crashing to the ground.

Like this, they’re basically the same height, and Haru gazes openly at Rui under the harsh florescent lights that make each and every mole on his face stand out.

He’s so pretty, Rui thinks, and Rui can’t help leaning in to press a kiss to the bridge of Haru’s nose, then moving down a couple of inches, press another kiss to the tip.

Haru giggles a little and squirms happily, then leans forward to press a kiss to Rui’s lips.

His lips are warm and a little chapped, and Rui nips at them before running his tongue along the seam.

It doesn’t stay chaste for long—how could it, really, when it’s the two of them?

They’re too good at kissing each other, and they kiss with tongue for long enough that it makes Rui dizzy.

Haru’s eyes are unfocused, and he pants and clings to Rui when he pulls away, stopping him just enough to lean forward and nuzzle his head beneath Rui’s chin.

“I like when you kiss me,” Haru says shyly.

“And I like kissing you,” Rui says. “But also, if you distract me, you’re not going to get a new earring.”

“I’ll be good,” Haru promises, pulling back with a shaky breath and gripping the edge of the counter to beat the temptation to let his hands wander.

Watching Rui get ready gives him something to do, anyway, and he watches with interest, any designs on making out with Rui in the bathroom quickly forgotten as easily as they’d occurred to him.

Rui washes his hands and sets everything out on the counter. He rubs the post and clasp of the earring with rubbing alcohol, the astringent smell of it stinging Haru’s nose. He lines up a new sterilized piercing needle still in its plastic and takes a look at Haru.

“Where do you want it?”

Haru turns around and looks in the mirror and points to a spot on his ear, on the lobe just above his current piercing. Rui lets out a silent breath of relief that he didn’t ask for a cartilage piercing.

He grabs a couple of clips and pins Haru’s hair out of the way, then washes his hands again and cleans Haru’s ear with another cotton pad soaked in alcohol.

“Ready?” Rui asks with the needle in his hand.

Haru takes a deep breath and nods, tilting his head to the side to give Rui better access.

“I trust you, noona,” Haru says, and Rui feels so…

He closes his eyes for a second and pushes the feeling aside for now. Because Haru trusts her so much, he’s going to do this right. He steps closer, in between Haru’s legs, and pinches the soft skin of Haru’s earlobe, concentrating with his tongue between his teeth.

“One, two…”

Haru feels a sharp pinch and a small tug, and then Rui says, “Done!”

“Huh? Already? But that was so fast.”

Rui clicks her tongue and shoves him lightly. “How long do you think it takes to pierce something?”

“No, I think noona is just really, really good at this the way she is at everything else.”

Rui makes a sound and blushes a little, busying herself carefully wrapping the used needle in toilet paper and tossing all the trash they made while Haru twists around to get a good look at his new earring. He leans close to the mirror, tilting his head as he admires it.

“Do you like it?” Rui asks, making her voice sound nonchalant even though her heart speeds up.

If Haru doesn’t like it, she really might die.

“It’s so pretty, noona! I really love it,” Haru says, all but tossing himself at Rui in a fierce and sudden hug.

Rui squeezes him back tight.

He likes it, he still loves her, everything is fine.

“Do you like it?” Haru asks shyly.

Rui loves it.

The color looks good on Haru, the way Rui had known it would. But it also satisfies something deep and wounded and sticky inside him to see Haru wearing it.

It probably isn’t clean, but Rui can’t resist leaning in and pressing a careful, gentle kiss to the winking garnet of Haru’s new earring. Haru squeezes her hand when she does, like he knows what she’s thinking.

Maybe he does. Haru is weird that way. He freaks Rui out on a near daily basis.

Haru lets his head thump against Rui’s thin chest, resting it there. He feels tired now that the adrenaline from letting Rui pierce him is fading.

Rui smells good to him. Familiar, and he just wants to stay here for a little while.

“Not so bad, right?” Haru murmurs into her chest. “There was barely any blood at all.”

Rui doesn’t point out that Haru wouldn’t even know if there had been blood.

“Yeah,” she answers. “Not so bad at all.”