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Chapter three

Med School Drop-Out

Rusty

Dressed in Gem’s juicy sleep shorts, Rusty sat back on the couch and propped his throbbing foot on the coffee table.

He’d decided against wearing Toni’s shirt, though he’d tried it on.

It had been too long, and uncomfortably tight around his stomach.

And though Gem made a show of preserving Rusty’s modesty, he wasn’t shy about his body—how could he be after working Flesh Street for years?

Sure, Gem was technically the first—and only—person to have seen him naked in the past six years, but there was also validity to the fact that he was covered in fur.

It made modesty easier to come by, even if his clothes were compromised.

So he relaxed into the soft couch cushions, the fur on his bare torso air-drying as he waited for Gem to return.

His cracked phone lay on the arm rest, screen black, fractures webbing across it from where he’d, apparently, landed on it during his flight across the rooftops.

Buying a new phone had not been on his to-do list, but as much as he hated dipping into his sparse savings, he’d have to bite the bullet .

“Just had to be a hero, Rus,” he grumbled to himself as he traced the worst crack with the tip of his index claw. “Fucking idiot.”

Gem knocked on the bathroom door from inside. “Can I come out?”

“I don’t think you have to,” Rusty said. “I already know you’re gay.”

The door swung open, and Gem charged out, carrying a black bag with him. “Har, har. Since when have you been a motherfucking comedian?”

“Well, I figured I’d need a back-up plan if the whole cafe gig didn’t work out,” Rusty said flatly as Gem sat down on the coffee table in front of him, the wood creaking ominously under his weight.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I suggest finding a new back-up plan.” Gem patted his own knee. “Give me your foot.”

Since arguing with the Araknis was pointless—Gem tended to get his way through sheer stubbornness alone—Rusty did as directed, dropping his heel on Gem’s knee.

“I could always go back to prostitution, I guess.” At the word, prostitution , Gem made a choked sound in the back of his throat, and several eyes shot up to study Rusty’s blank expression.

“Come on, don’t act like you didn’t know. ”

Gem focused a few of his smaller eyes on the black bag, but his two main eyes remained locked on Rusty’s. “I didn’t know ,” he said carefully. “I may have inferred, but you never talked about it, so…”

The list of things Rusty never wanted to talk about was lengthy, and discussing his stint on Flesh Street with Gem of all people ranked pretty damn high. “Do we need to talk about it?”

Pulling out a white cloth from the bag, Gem laid it over his thigh before resting Rusty’s foot atop it. “Not unless you want to.”

“Hard pass.”

“Okay.” He searched through his bag again, retrieving an array of medical supplies that were better fitted for an emergency clinic than a home first-aid kit. “You wanna tell me what you did to your foot?”

“Fell,” Rusty said, and Gem sent him a droll stare. “Fell on a broken bottle.”

“More like danced on one. Your paw’s mangled.”

“I fell hard,” Rusty said defensively, and Gem hummed.

“Well, hard or not, I can fix it.”

Brushing back his hair, he hunkered down, staring intently at the sole of Rusty’s foot. His silk robe parted, revealing his bare chest and the swirls of color painting the gray. Not for the first time, Rusty wished he wasn’t colorblind. He had a feeling red would be a nice color.

“What are you doing?” Rusty asked to distract himself as Gem aimed a small spray bottle at his foot.

“Clearing away the blood; I can’t see a damn thing through it,” Gem explained as his other hands moved over the medical supplies on the table. “There’s lydocain in this too, so it will help numb it a bit so you won’t feel me digging the glass out.”

“You can just wrap it up,” Rusty said, hissing when the cold spray hit his raw flesh. “I can—”

“Stop whining, and let me work,” Gem interrupted, dousing Rusty’s foot until the towel he’d laid down as a barrier between them stained with blood. “I’m not wrapping up a dirty foot filled with glass and sending you home.”

“Do you even know what you’re doing?” Rusty demanded as two of Gem’s hands unzipped a packet, revealing sterilized instruments that made his blood run cold. “I don’t do well with this kind of stuff.”

One of Gem’s smaller eyes studied him. “What kind of stuff? Blood? ”

“No, I’m fine with blood. It’s the…” Rusty pointed at the silver instruments of death. “Medical shit. I don’t do medical shit.”

“Oh.” Gem’s lower left hand pushed the satchel of medical instruments behind his back. “How about you close your eyes, and I’ll tell you when it’s over.”

Somehow, not knowing what Gem was going to do was worse, and Rusty swallowed thickly, a cold sweat breaking out across his scalp between his ears. “Uh, that sounds worse.”

“Hey, Rus, look at me.” Gem stilled his many arms and shifted all eight eyes to Rusty’s face. “Deep breath. Everything’s fine. And yes, I do know what I’m doing.”

“How?”

“I took almost two years of pre-med,” Gem said simply, turning most of his attention back to Rusty’s foot. Though that one, small eye remained locked on Rusty’s face.

“Pre-med?” Rusty said, unable to hide the disbelief in his voice. “ You were pre-med?”

Gem’s features tightened as he carefully patted Rusty’s foot dry with a sterilized gauze. “Yes, and you don’t have to sound so godsdamned shocked about it. You knew I went to uni.”

“Yeah, but you never said you went for pre-med.”

Picking up an instrument that looked like tweezers on steroids, Gem furrowed his brow. “I highly doubt that. I talk about uni all the time.”

“The guys you fucked in uni, yes. What you studied, no—what are those?” Rusty asked, his foot jerking away on instinct.

Like Gem was expecting it, he tightened his grip on Rusty’s ankle to keep him steady. “They’re not scary. Think of them like fancy tweezers. I’m gonna use them to pull out the little pieces of glass. ”

They looked too sharp to be tweezers, but Rusty didn’t want to be a sack.

He banished the urge to kick Gem in the face and make his escape.

Settling deeper into the couch cushions, he fisted his hands on his thighs until his claws bit into his palms and studied the swirls of color decorating Gem’s neck and chest.

To distract himself from the fancy tweezers coming toward his foot, he asked, “Why pre-med?”

“Runs in the family. Dad’s an optometrist, so as the oldest, I thought it was my birthright or some shit. Like, taking over his practice when he retires or whatever.”

“What’s an”—Rusty chittered in the back of his throat as the tweezers dug into the deepest cut—“op-optometrist?”

“Eye doctor,” Gem said as his lower left hand reached out to squeeze Rusty’s knee in comfort.

Another shudder rattled through him. “Gross.”

“Gross? It’s objectively one of the lesser gross medical fields. He rarely deals with blood and guts.”

“Blood and guts, I can handle,” Rusty panted through clenched teeth, hating the feel of metal digging under his skin. “Shit near my eyes—hard fucking pass.”

“Fair enough,” Gem allowed, thumb rubbing over Rusty’s knee. “Anyway, my sister was going to school for pre-med, and I thought my parents might be disappointed if I didn’t try too. So I did almost two years before finally admitting that I hated it.

“Not only am I not into blood and guts, I also hate school. I always have. I mean, I liked the social aspects of school—I was a kickass cheerleader in secondary.” He preened.

“A few of my siblings have been homeschooled because they have really bad social anxiety, but I, like, could never. Running for homecoming queen was literally my main motivation for even going to class.”

“Queen?” Rusty interjected, and Gem snorted, winking the small eye still trained at him.

“Of course. You think I wanted to be king?” Gem made a face.

“Ew. Plus, I wanted to wear a dress when I won. Not that kings can’t wear dresses, but back then, I was young and still deconstructing social gender norms. For a while, I was a they/them because I thought my presentation had to mean something about my gender.

And since I liked wearing skirts and heels, I thought it meant I wasn’t a guy.

But also, I didn’t feel like a girl either.

“Don’t get me wrong, if a hot guy wants to call me a good girl while he slaps my ass and pulls my hair, you’re not gonna hear me complaining,” Gem tittered, and Rusty grimaced at that unwanted mental image.

“But in general, gender just isn’t a thing for me.

All pronouns work, though he does feel the most comfortable.

Whether that’s because it’s what I’ve gone by the longest or because it really is what aligns most closely, who knows?

I would just rather be seen as me, and not a specific gender. You know what I mean?”

Pausing to spray Rusty’s foot again—and to take a breath—Gem looked at Rusty expectantly. So he said, “Uh, sure.”

Gem beamed at him, then refocused back on his foot.

“I knew you’d get it. Anyway, I would have totally won homecoming queen too, if it wasn’t for that bitch-ass Connor!

I know it makes me a bad person, but sometimes, I stalk him on socials and every time something bad happens to him, I feel good about it.

Which, on one hand, feels hella petty. But, on the other hand, who am I to get in the way of karmic justice? ”

Once again, Gem looked to Rusty for validation, and since he was, per usual, entirely lost in Gem’s rambling, he cleared his throat and said, “Well, karma’s a bitch, you know?”

“Exactly! And it’s not like being petty is a crime.” The Araknis sighed, then he frowned. “Wait, what was I even talking about before?”

“Med school,” Rusty supplied, and Gem blinked in a wave from left to right.

“Then why am I talking about Connor?”