Today was the day Gabe was going to remove his stitches, by himself, like an idiot.

Alice was at work, the girls were at a sleepover, and Trist was… somewhere. He’d been avoiding Gabe with renewed vigor since the tsundere incident, so Gabe didn’t expect him back any time soon. 

Gabe looked at his back as best he could in the bathroom mirror and made a face. His stitches looked healed enough to remove... probably? He didn’t really know, but they were itchy and having them in his flesh was beginning to skeeve him out beyond what he could deal with.

He started with the ones on the back of his hand in the hopes that they would be an easy trial run, but they were on his right hand and he was not left handed and neither were the scissors he was using. He did get them out eventually after a lot of tugging and accidentally pinching himself with the scissors, but it didn’t bode well for the rest of his task. He got the ones on his arms with about the same degree of discomfort and struggle and then turned his attention to his back.

He was just about to begin at the top of a long row of stitches that started on his shoulder and arced down his back when movement in the mirror startled him into jabbing the scissors into himself instead. Gabe turned his head to find Trist watching him, eyebrows raised.

“What…” Trist said, his eyes on the reflection of Gabe’s back in the mirror.

Gabe stood, frozen, staring back at him. He wanted to conceal himself, to somehow undo this situation, but it was too late. Trist had seen too much.

“What are you doing?” Trist finally managed.

Gabe shrugged and waved the scissors in a way that definitely failed at being as casual as he’d hoped. “Removing stitches.”

“From your back. Yourself. With household scissors.”

“Yeah, well.” Gabe turned around to face the mirror because he didn’t want to have to look at Trist anymore, then made a face when he realised that just gave Trist a clear view of his back. And then made another face when he realised Trist could see his face in the mirror, too. “If you want to do it for me, be my guest, but otherwise.” He twirled the scissors.

In the mirror, Gabe saw Trist lean against the doorway. “Pretty sure you’re supposed to get a doctor to do that.”

“Well, I don’t want to.” Gabe swallowed thickly and hoped Trist hadn’t heard the waver in his voice when he’d said that. He’d expected this whole undertaking to be a disaster, but not like this. “Anyway, go away. I need to concentrate.”

Trist scoffed, but he did leave. Gabe immediately went and shut and locked the door.

Gabe tried to go back to picking the stitches out, but his hands were shaking now, making the task even more impossible. He wanted to cry. There was no way he could actually do this. Maybe he could get some of the more accessible ones out, but there were large parts of his back he had no chance of getting the scissors to at the correct angle and with the necessary precision.

A knock on the door startled him into nearly jabbing himself with the scissors again. “What?”

“Come on,” was all Trist said from the other side.

Gabe didn’t know why he opened the door. He didn’t want Trist to look at him again or make more snarky comments. Deep down, though, he really desperately did not want to go through this alone.

“Come on,” Trist said again, and when he started walking away, Gabe followed him back to their shared room. There was a first aid kit open on the floor and Gabe’s blanket and pillow had been moved down there as well. “Lay down on your stomach.”

Gabe didn’t move from the doorway. “What?”

“I’m going to do it for you, like you said. Unless you’d rather keep trying to do it yourself.”

“Oh,” Gabe said, and found himself getting down onto the floor without really deciding to. “Why does everything smell of rubbing alcohol?”

“Because I’m not a moron like you and actually sanitised my instruments?” Trist sat down on the floor and put on a pair of rubber gloves from the first aid box. “Try not to move.”

Gabe twisted his head so that he could see the tiny pair of scissors Trist was holding. “Those look sharp.”

“Well, yeah. You can’t do this with blunt scissors. You should know that because you tried.”

“Mm,” Gabe said, but he couldn’t help but scrunch up his face as Trist leant down. He really didn’t expect Trist to have set all this up only to stab him with the scissors and laugh at him, but he was putting a lot of trust in someone who didn’t even like him.

Trist was poking around at some of the stitches, but he hadn’t dove in with the scissors yet. “You could get one of the girls to do it when they get home instead if you don’t trust me not to cock it up. Though, there’s a good chance they’ll do the smart thing and make you go to the hospital instead.”

“No. I mean, you’re an artist, so you probably have good fine motor control.” Which absolutely wasn’t his concern. There was no way Trist could accidentally do a worse job of this than Gabe would have.

“You wouldn’t be so confident about that translating directly across if you’d seen my handwriting.”

Gabe felt a tug on the stitches and tensed up, expecting pain to follow, but it didn’t. Trist snipped the thread and it tickled a bit as he carefully pulled it free, but it didn’t hurt at all. By the time Trist paused to swab his back with a cotton bud soaked in rubbing alcohol, any fear that he might deliberately hurt him had more or less subsided.

“So,” Trist said after several minutes of silent work, “how did this happen?”

He’d been trying to make it sound casual, but it was obvious he’d been trying to figure out how to broach that topic since he’d first seen the state of Gabe’s back.

“I accidentally fell on a glass coffee table and broke it.”

Trist let out an incredulous huff of air through his nose. “That’s bullshit, but whatever.”

“Oh, gee, thanks for believing me.”

“You have a bruise here that looks like a handprint. Like someone grabbed you.” Trist’s fingers lightly brushed the back of Gabe’s upper arm. He was definitely going to notice the goosebumps that had elicited.

Oh, yeah. Gabe had forgotten about that. He had a few bruises on his arms from when Adam had held him down, but there was one on his upper arm where his shirt usually covered that was far less ambiguously shaped than the others.

“Besides, who accidentally hurts themselves and then can’t go back home afterwards?” Trist continued. “But it’s fine. You don’t have to tell me. I just know that isn’t the truth.”

“It actually is,” Gabe insisted. “...Technically.”

“Technically,” Trist echoed, punctuating it with a snip of the scissors.

“Well, it happened during an altercation with my step brother, but it was still an accident,” Gabe explained. “And… do you actually want to know?”

“Yeah.”

Gabe didn’t know why he hadn’t expect Trist to say that. Or maybe he just hadn’t expected him to sound so sincere.

Gabe sighed. “After it happened it was an emergency situation, so it was a while before my step mum could ask me what had happened. And I guess the thing was that she did have to ask me before she was sure it had been an accident, and that was confronting for her. I assume, anyway. She didn’t even bother telling me I wouldn’t be going home. My dad just showed up to get me instead of her and took me here, so that’s great and I feel super loved.”

“So when you said you had an ‘altercation’ with your step brother…”

“He was trying to make me eat a dead lizard.”

“Eugh,” Trist said, and he actually leant back for a second.

Gabe laughed, though he didn’t know why. It really wasn’t funny. Maybe it was just a relief to have someone actually sympathise. Sally had, he supposed, but her ultimate response had been to kick him out of her life. But… Trist didn’t know everything. The reason his dad had dismissed him was information Trist didn’t have. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. He’s actually, like, a year and a half younger than me. He’s just bigger than me now.”

“Does that make it less bad?”

“Well, I should be able to do something about it, right?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Talk to him? Actually work out so that he can’t push me around anymore? I’m probably always going to be short, but short people can be strong.”

Trist let out a huff of laughter. “That would just look weird. You’re too adorable to get hench.”

Gabe’s stomach did a weird twisty thing because hey, that had sounded like a compliment and a pretty gay one at that. But it probably hadn’t been, right? He’d probably been trying to insult Gabe’s masculinity and he’d just chosen the wrong word. People made fun of him for essentially that all the time, they just usually used homophobic slurs instead of the word ‘adorable’.

Unfortunately, by the time he’d puzzled all this out in his head and calmed his gay little heart, it was much too late to actually respond. Trist had gone quiet too, so it was just kind of left there, hanging in the air between them, maybe gay, probably actually bullying. It didn’t help the awkwardness that Trist was still touching him, gentle but confident, and with a dedication to proper medical hygiene that could be interpreted as caring.

“Okay, done,” Trist said after about another half hour of careful work. He turned his back to Gabe as he started packing up the first aid kit.

“Thanks,” Gabe said as he sat up. Actually looking at Trist was… uncomfortable. It had been easier to talk to him when he couldn’t see his responses.

Trist glanced at Gabe as he started collecting up the used cotton buds. “You can borrow one of my shirts if you don’t have a clean one.”

“No, it’s fine. I did my laundry.”

Trist finally made eye contact with Gabe and he looked genuinely annoyed. “Then… get dressed?”

Right. Shirt. Gabe got up to get one.

So, that answered a few questions. Was Trist aware that what he’d said had sounded gay? Yup. Was he happy about that? Nope. Had he noticed the way Gabe looked at him? Quite possibly, and if he had he didn’t seem to like it. Maybe that was why he’d taken such an instant dislike to Gabe. He was just uncomfortable with the idea of sharing his room with a thirsty gay guy.

“I’m going out,” Trist said.

“Oh.” Gabe pulled his shirt on over his head. “When will you be back?”

Trist had gone back to determinedly not looking at Gabe. “Don’t know.”

Gabe wanted to tell him that he didn’t have to leave, that he’d leave him alone or whatever he needed to be comfortable, but he couldn’t think of a way to say it that didn’t make him sound desperate to have Trist stay there, with him. And then Trist had left the room, left the house, and it was too late.