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“When I was in high school, I actually went through a, um, a little jolly jolt of time where I decided that I was gonna paint my fingernails.”
He regrets it as soon as he's said it. But he's not thinking, really; his stomach is twisting in knots as his brain smooths out alongside the polish on Alex’s fake nails. He leans down, focuses on getting it neat – getting it right.
"I don't remember that," Rhett says.
Link's going to need some thin brushes for lineart. Gosh, why are his hands so shaky?
"I painted them white."
"Was this in your bleached blonde phase?" Alex asks.
Link nods. "I was sorta ... anti-goth." Make them laugh with you and they're not laughing at you.
It takes practice to make sure the polish is smooth, that it doesn't clump, the brush doesn't stutter. He used to practice on his mom's late shifts, wrecking his nails over and over with nail polish remover before he went to bed.
In his anti-goth phase.
It didn't mean anything.
It pains him to mess up, but the buzzing in his head is getting louder again. If he's not careful, he'll do something stupid. His hands won't keep steady, why won't they keep steady, dang it?
"Oh crap!" Link says, as his hands do something weird and ungainly, and he swipes nail polish across the ring finger of his left hand.
"There's remover to your left," Alex murmurs, then he turns to see the awful mess Rhett's making of his right hand. Link nods, but doesn't make it. He hides his hand under the table until they're done, then he all but runs to the office.
If he'd spent more than ten seconds thinking about it, he would have picked a better colour. But he didn't, so he hadn't and now his nail has a swipe of yellow across it – for the corn. It could have been worse, Link supposes. Could have been whatever Rhett was trying to pass off as a colour on the other side of him.
He's been trying not to bite his nails. The painted nail looks almost normal-length; it's not hard to imagine how it would look a bit longer, coordinated with a long-sleeved tee or a blouse, or maybe even a –
"That way lies danger, Neal," he murmurs, shaking his head to clear the thoughts. They sink to the bottom of his brain, waiting to reappear at his next moment of weakness.
"You ok, buddy?"
He nearly jumps out of his chair; he hadn't heard Rhett come in. "Yeah, all good," Link says. "Just – y'know."
"Any excuse, right?" Rhett chuckles.
Link nods. He slides his left hand back under the desk and blinks once, twice. It normally clears him, resets him, but it's not working today. "Dang it," he whispers, hopefully too low for Rhett to hear.
"You say something?"
"Not me, brother."
He read a book once – yes, yes, haha, congratulations – where a man murders someone and hides the body under the floorboards. The corpse's heart beats, louder and louder, until they find it under the floor.
His painted nail thumps loudly. Rhett knows, Rhett knows, Rhett knows.
"You want Chipotle for lunch tomorrow?" Suddenly the thought of eating – even tomorrow – makes Link's gorge rise. He shudders and shakes his head.
Why did he paint his nails today? He should have waited until Friday, taken the afternoon off.
(But then he could have just taken some from Christy and –)
Never mind, never mind.
"Link? You're weirding me out."
Rhett's face is very close. Link jumps.
"I – I'm fine. Jus' one of those days. No issues here." His voice is warbling. It's fucking obvious he's lying, isn't it? He reaches with both hands to shove at Rhett's shoulders; Rhett catches him by the wrists easily.
"I'm not falling on my ass for you," he snorts, giving Link's wrists a squeeze before he lets go. He looks down at Link's hands. "Of course you got nail polish on you. Didn't Stevie say there was remover or something?"
"I don't want to." Link spits it out like an olive stone – or, hell, a whole olive. He hunches his shoulders up.
"Oh-kay …" Rhett slowly lowers himself to the floor, despite complaining about Link pushing him there less than five minutes ago. "This – it's not about the nail polish, is it? What's up?"
"Nothing. Nothing is wrong. I'm fine."
Rhett just … sits there, his eyes trained on Link.
Link turns his face back to his computer screen, but he can't really see it. His eyes are blurry, he feels all shaky – it takes a second for him to realise he's crying.
Rhett seems to notice at the same time. "Hey, man –"
"What if I'm not?" Link cuts across without thinking.
"Not what?" His friend tilts his head, confused.
"A – a man."
It sinks like a heavy thing.
Rhett gets to his feet and walks out.
Oh God, what has he done?
He's got to get it off.
He's got to get it off and tell Rhett he was joking.
He's got to get it off and tell Rhett he was joking and salvage all of this.
It's not peeling off – is that a sign the nail polish is expensive or cheap? if it's expensive, he's got to have a word with –
Well, whatever's left after he's fucked it all up.
Why won't it come off?
He's still trying to scratch it off when Rhett comes back. His eyes are blurred and his hands are shaking and his mind's running a million miles an hour – what do I do now? How much has engineering changed? How can this be it?
Rhett drags his chair to sit next to him and silently takes Link's hand. He applies something strong smelling to a cotton ball – nail polish remover – and rubs it against the painted nail.
Link clenches his elbows tight to try and stop the shaking.
His finger is totally clean now. Burnt the evidence.
"I –" his voice dies in his throat, so he starts again. "I didn't mean – forget I –"
Rhett puts two bottles of nail polish on the desk; one yellow, one blue. "I didn't know if you picked yellow on purpose, but I thought blue would go good with your eyes."
Link stares at him. He can feel tears drying on his cheeks.
"Or … I can get you another colour, if you want? Green for our old logo, or pink because … "
"B – blue is fine."
Rhett nods, like he's just been given an important task, and gently presses Link's hand between both of his.
"You're shaking, bo," he murmurs. Then he moves his right hand to unscrew the lid of the blue nail polish, holding it tightly in his palm to twist it with his long fingers.
What is he doing?
Wall, Link knows what he's doing, but – why?
"Fair warning, I'm not – my only experience is watching Jessie do this. So I might not be all that good." Rhett's hands are as shaky as Link's as he applies the first swipe of blue to his thumb. Maybe they'll cancel each other out.
Despite Rhett's warning – and the previous example of Alex's hand – it's not an outright disaster. He's painting in small strokes, trying to avoid as much skin as he can. The brush looks
so small in his hands.
He's holding Link's hand so carefully, like something precious.
"Did you – mean it?" Rhett asks as he moves onto the middle finger.
Link doesn't pretend to not understand. "Yeah. Don't get me wrong. I don't want to be a woman. Just – not a man. Sometimes."
"How long have you known?" Ring finger.
"Maybe middle school?" he shrugs.
Rhett's hand slips, tracking polish along the pad of Link's finger. When he looks up, in between cleaning, his face is a picture of abject misery. "Why don't you tell me?"
"Right, because you wouldn't have freaked out.”
Little finger. Rhett bends his head, brings his face in close, as if Link's pinky needs more attention than all the rest put together. He only looks up again when it's painfully obvious he's doing it on purpose. His eyes don't meet Link's.
"Same colour on the other hand?"
He's done … a surprisingly good job, actually. Some of the brush work is a little uneven, but Link's always in a hurry when he does it, so he's never much better. Rhett's done it like it's something important, not a joke.
"The same is fine," Link says, when the quiet has gone on too long.
Rhett nods and switches hands. Link's felt his hands a hundred times, but it's downright odd feeling them now: big and rough and calloused by a guitar.
"Go on then. I know you've got something to say."
He shakes his head, bent over Link's hand.
"Rhett."
The breath Rhett takes in is so sharp it's almost painful. "I'm just – trying not to be him, anymore. And you know me better than anyone, so it's obviously not working."
"Rhett."
He keeps going. "Just – so you know. There's nothing you could do to make me hate you, bro – Link. This is …" Rhett shrugs.
Link warks to say – means to say – Do you mean it?, but what comes out of his mouth is "What if I killed someone?"
"I'd help you bury the body."
"What if it was Jessie?"
"I'd be surprised, she's pretty fast." Link bites his cheek, bites back a smile. His pointer finger is half-painted, Rhett having stopped halfway through. He'll have to clean and start again if he wants the texture to look right.
"It's not important."
"Yeah, it is."
They talk about them back then, but they don't talk about them. They don't talk about Cru, or Rhett leaving Link by the side of the road, or the fact that they were – honestly – sanctimonious little prigs. Link's stomach churns when he thinks about them in high school, college – heck, North Carolina. It's a hot curl of embarrassment in his gut.
But Rhett? Rhett's actively afraid of his younger self. He doesn't want to be judgemental, holier-than-thou – that path leads to danger.
"For the record," Link says. "You're not the same. You only kept the good bits."
Rhett's smile is weak and watery. He shakes his head silently, but squeezes Link's hand.
"You'll have to redo this one," Link wiggles his pointer. "'Else it'll go all bumpy."
His friend shakes his head again, muttering something that sounds like God forbid, but does as Link suggests. It's strange to watch him be so gentle..
"Has it really been since middle school? Rhett asks the middle finger on Link's left hand. "That long?"
"I didn't know the words, but I knew something wasn't … right." Heck, Link hadn't known queer was anything but an insult until he almost a teenager.
"Is that how it feels? Like something ain't right?"
Link shrugs.
He's not lying. He doesn't want to be a woman. Most of the time – seventy-five per cent, maybe? – he's happy with his … downstairs region. The other twenty-five … well, he doesn't think he wants boobs. Just – nothing. Like a Ken doll. A void of nothingness in his pants.
Heh. Not male, nor female Just: the void.
"... ink?" Rhett is talking at him again, brush hovering over Link's pinky finger.
"Wuh?"
"How can I help you? What do you need me to do?" How can I fix this? in his eyes. Rhett likes fixing things.
"You can finish painting my nails," Link says, to buy himself some time. He receives a look, but Rhett lowers the brush for the last nail. Man, if this was all it took to get him to do Link's bidding, he should have had a gender crisis a while ago.
"There!" Rhett says, capping the nail polish bottle with a flourish. "Meet your exacting standards?"
He's fully prepared to snark, find as much wrong as he can. And it's very much a first-timer's work. But – but.
It looks right. It looks like his hand, not the dizzying disconnect he's been fighting off all day. His nails are a soft matte blue, not eye-catching enough to stop traffic but enough to make him smile. It looks right.
"Link?" he hears Rhett say, but it's like he's far away, or got shitty signal. "Buddy, are you – you're –"
He covers his mouth with a hand, but it doesn't stop the sob and doesn't muffle it enough for Rhett, who's still almost touching.
"You're – oh gosh. I can take it off, or you – um. I can go get – I'm sorry, I thought I was –" If Link was an outsider, Rhett's sheer awkwardness at being around someone who was crying would be highly entertaining.
"I'm fine," Link chokes out. "Fine. Don't worry, I'm –"
Rhett's arm settles around his shoulders, tugging him in close to his chest. Link presses his face to Rhett's heartspace, breathes in – out. They don't do this a lot, but it never feels weird.
Rhett is whispering things into his hair, but he can't make it out over shaky breathing and the thump thump of Rhett's steady heartbeat. He holds on for one more cycle, then pulls his head away, wiping his eyes with the heels of his hands. He catches the tail end of Rhett's whisper – I've got you – but the rest is lost to the moment.
Rhett tilts his head so he can catch Link's eyes and stares unblinkingly in them. "You're Link, you're my best friend, and that's all that matters, ok? The rest – it doesn't matter. How you look, what you call yourself - it's all gravy, brother." A moment, a beat, and Rhett's face contorts as he realises what he's done. "I mean –"
"Brother is fine," Link interrupts, before this can become a thing and Rhett will be too thoughtful and Link will probably cry again.
"Just – just not man. If we're going down that route."
"Noted," Rhett nods, and Link can guarantee he'll never say it again. "You sure about brother? I could replace it with –"
"Oh gosh, not sibling. That sounds clinical." He adjusts his glasses the way he does a million times a day, but when he catches sight of his nails in his peripheral vision he feels the grin spread, through no thought of his own.
"Are you going to cry again? 'Cuz if so that's fine, but I might need to get a towel."
Link thumps his shoulder. "Jerk."
"You know you love it." Rhett is smiling, the apples in his cheeks rising.
Nine times out of ten, Link doesn't want to be treated gently. Then he wallows and it gets worse. Rhett knew what he needed, when he needed it. You know what? Link is lucky. He's always lucky, but even more so today.
"Yeah," he says, taking a quick look down at his nails to cement this feeling. The dizziness is gone. Just telling someone has taken the buzz right out. "Hey, Rhett? I love you."
Rhett ducks his head, but Link can still see his pleased, delighted smile. "Right back atcha, buddyroll."