2020-01-14 - I'll Leave You In Stitches

(TXT to Itzhak) Cristobal : Need a lift. Alley behind the movie theater.

(TXT to Cristobal) Itzhak : be there in 5. everything ok?

(TXT to Itzhak) Cristobal : Totally, that's why I'm using you as my MF Uber. Bring a towel.

(TXT to Cristobal) Itzhak : great glad to hear it

Four minutes and 35 seconds later, Itzhak's big glittery orange Tacoma pickup pulls to the curb.

Because of course Itzhak drives something with sparkle in the paint job. Cris' head pokes out around the corner of the wall, gives a once over of the block and then slips out of the alley. He's holding his side as he moves, cross ways over his stomach with his hand tucked beneath his jacket. Just casually strolling up to the passenger side door, he pops it and slides into the front seat and then flops his head back against the rest. "Drive normal. Got that towel?"

Itzhak silently reaches, yanks a couple well-worn beach towels from the back seat into Cris's lap. He throws 'er in gear and, flying casual, pulls back into the street. His usual resting-annoyed-face serves him well; you'd think he just missed the showing he wanted and nothing more.

"Th'fuck you gettin' into, Cruz?" One handed, he digs out his cigarettes, offers one over, holding it to let Cris take it in his mouth so he doesn't have to let go of his side.

Cris leans over and plucks the cigarette out of Itzhak's fingers with a curl of his lips and a muttered thanks, taking up one of the towels with his free hand and tucking it under his jacket into the bloody fingers clutched to his side. "You askin' that question as a concerned friend, or as the bottom to the Police Captain's top?" It's an important question, now that Cris knows that Ruiz is in on what Itzhak does for the 'Company'.

Oh the look Itzhak shoots Cris; narrow eyed, lip curled, wheel hand tightening. Sensitive spot Cris is poking there. "Jesus fucking Christ. This is how you're gonna be?" He lights his own cigarette, scowling.

"Don't get your panties in a wad." Cris mutters around his own cigarette, sticking to his lips by the benefit of some moisture and waggling there with the words. "I'm bleeding over here." He leans over and grunts so he'll be lit up as well. He's still sporting that yellowing bruise along the of his jaw on the side of his profile that faces Itzhak, so whomever he got smacked by must be a righty. "Collections gone slightly awry. Imagine a butcher having easy access to a knife." He snorts at his own misstep.

Itzhak flicks the lighter for Cris, still eyeing him, barely-restrained trouble in his gaze. "Guess you need stitches." Once Cris is lit he tosses both cigarette pack and lighter on the dash. "You got somewhere to go or I need to sew your ass up?" The pickup rumbles sedately along the wet, slushy streets.

Cris lowers the window on his side with his hand tucked up his sleeve so he doesn't leave and blood on Itzhak's door. He's a considerate asshole, at least. He exhales smoke from his nose, but doesn't bother pulling the cigarette away from his mouth, he just leaves it tucked in the corner of his mouth and lets a little ash fall off the tip to his jacket. "Guess you're my new seamstress. I don't think it's that bad." He glances down, pulling the towel away and makes another disgruntled sound. "I'm serious about Ruiz. The less he knows, the better for both of you. Comprende?"

"I know. I know. I fuckin' comprende." Itzhak growls, and the engine responds to him, revving, one tire skidding. He backs the gas down, pats the dash as if soothing an animal. "I don't. Tell him. And I'm not his bottom." He glances over when Cris checks the wound, too. "Lemme see that."

"I already sacrificed my pretty face to keep this shit separate." Cris is a noisy fucker when he's injured, groaning as he slides his hips forward on the seat so he can lean back a little and give Itzhak a better view of his side. The jacket is flipped out of the way, the towel lifted and his thermal edged up so they can both see the three inch laceration/puncture wound. At least it's well off to his side so it missed anything vital, but it's welling with blood again the minute it becomes exposed. "I thought it sounded better than butt-boi."

Itzhak makes a face, looks back to the road. "Needs stitches. Takin' you home." He pulls up to a stop sign, puts the left turn blinker on. Tik tik, tik tik. While he's there, he takes the opportunity to flips his hands palm-up in a gesture of aggravation, scowling hard at Cris. "How about you don't, huh? You don't know a goddamn thing about me and him, so why don't you not." He turns onto Elm.

"I'm sure you have a beautifully balanced, sane, normal relationship." This is Cristobal's version of 'Not' apparently. "But if he ever beats the shit out of you, I'll kill him myself." And one should take the vow of a bleeding man seriously.

Itzhak snorts, but something in his tense face relaxes, funny enough. "He don't do the kind of beating you mean. Trust me, if I wanted to stop him, I'd stop him." Those who shine can tell he shines. He shines bright, blinding, an ocean of shine. Ruiz is no slouch, but Itzhak? Itzhak is one of the strongest glimmerers in town. Possibly in the world. "Cute that you're all protective though." That's paired with a lopsided smirk aimed Cris's way.

He parks in front of number 15, an aging little two-story just like dozens of them on Elm, gets out, comes around to the passenger side. "C'mon." He holds an arm out, meaning Cris to let him help him inside. "Basement side door."

"Fuck you." Cris renumerates for that cute comment, plucking the cigarette out of his mouth finally if only to flick it out the window. It's then that he realizes that the turn down Elm wasn't to take him to his home, but to Itzhak's own. Blinking he looks to the open door and swings his legs out, hand clamping onto Itzhak's forearm as he hoists himself back to his feet. He's favoring the one side, but he's at least able to move of his own accord and handle his weight. "Funny, I imagined seeing your place for the first time while stumbling drunk and fumbling with each other's belt buckles."

Whoops, that got Itzhak to blush. He shoots Cris another wicked side-eye, this one somewhat less effective because he's turning the color of a beet. "God, shut ya yap, Cruz, I can't believe you talk more than I do." He supports him along the path that dips down the embankment to the basement entrance. The place obviously is occupied by kids; from here the backyard is visible, with a plastic sandbox and swings and a slide. A dump truck is half-buried in the wet sandbox.

Itzhak unlocks the door and urges Cris inside. Within is a small one-bedroom apartment of the mother-in-law sort, with a tiny kitchen set against one brick wall. Actually kinda cozy, although it has no real personal touches of Itzhak's, except for his violin case on the coffee table and his music stand by the couch. And a terrarrium, rich with live plants, that a big lizard lives in.

"Siddown," Itzhak grunts, ordering Cris to the eldery couch with a stab of his finger towards it. "Don't bleed on my stuff."

"Defense mechanism." Cris bites back when he's told to shut up, because even saying those words as an explanation is still bucking the system of being told to be quiet, dammit. He still has the second, clean towel from the truck and he's mindful at least to drape that over the spot he's slumping down on, immediately stretching out to lay down and kicking one ankle up over the arm of the couch with his boot dangling off the side. "Yeah, yeah. Don't hit on me, Cris. Don't bleed on my stuff, Cris. Don't look at my ass when I walk away, Cris. If my blood wasn't needed elsewhere right now, I'm sure I'd have a stiffy at just seeing your violin case." His head lifts up, "You're doing this yourself, right, not calling Roen? He already saved my ass once this week."

"You can look at my ass. I ain't ever said you can't look at my ass." Itzhak gives Cris a hell of a funny look. "My violin case? What about THAT is gonna give you a hard-on? I'm not callin' Roen. He's got too much on his plate to heal the likes of you." Said violin case is glossy cherry-red, brand new. There's music on the music stand, something called Orange Blossom Special. Lots of notes.

Itzhak rummages in the kitchen, brings back a bottle of whiskey. Nothing special, just grocery-store stuff. He sets that down in front of Cris along with a glass, then he strides to the bathroom and rummages there too. An actual suture kit is what he comes up with, and he delivers that to the coffee table too. "Wash my hands," he mutters, goes back to the bathroom to do that. He takes a good couple minutes over it too, scrubbing himself with a lot more diligence than Cris' aggressive butcher surely did.

"Musicians are sexy as hell. Dante's lucky I didn't wreck him on top of his baby grand." Cris hisses as he rolls to his side to help himself to some of that whiskey, using the provided glass even if his first instinct is to glug straight from the bottle. "Yeah, well. Remind me to buy him a fruit basket or something. Whatever says, 'Sorry I opened a vein and convinced Ruiz not to take me to the hospital'. Chocolates? I asked Alexa and now I'm pretty sure I'm on some government watch list." He keeps talking, assuming Itzhak can hear him in the small apartment, even over the run of water.

"What?" Itzhak cranes his long neck out to squint at Cris. "...What?" He bumps the bathroom faucet off, dries his hands, and apparently he has nitrile gloves handy because he plucks a couple out of a box (they're purple). "Run that by me again." He comes out frowning, rolling up to Cris on his long legged sauntering stride. He kneels next to him, flips open the suture kit, wedges his big knuckly paws into the gloves.

Oh shit, Itzhak didn't hear about that. "Uh...no?" There Cris tries that, and barring how well the fact that he doesn't in fact want to run that by the man again, he tries changing subject. "Aren't you supposed to be acting all coy and saying this is your first time, and that you usually don't bring men back to your place to play doctor? Because you seem awfully prepared."

Itzhak tears open a sterile package of blunt nosed scissors, lip hitched up in sheer aggravation. He pulls Cris's shirt taut and riiiiiip begins cutting it off him. "You opened a vein in front of de la Vega. Why the fuck did you do that?"

Well, technically the shirt was ruined anyway, but there is still an uptick of Cris' eyebrow as Itzhak shreds it with a pair of scissors. Think about baseball and grandma, Cristobal. "Baseball and Grandma and cold showers." He repeats, perhaps not realizing he says it out loud. His head flops back with a laugh and he focuses his eyes on the ceiling. "I did it to get him to shut up. He was pressing me about Felix and none of my other tactics were working. I was agitated and cut too deep. It might have been a bit of an overreaction in hindsight."

"Jesus," Itzhak mutters. "Whyn't you just tell him to fuck off? You hadda slice yourself up? You dramatic queen."

Then, yep, he's blushing again. Baseball and Grandma and cold showers, he knows how those add up. He glances at Cris, mouth twisted, but kind of amused, and...slooooooowly slides the cold blunt nose of the scissors all the way up to snip through the collar of the t-shirt. Then from there down the left arm. Then the right. Then he peels the shirt open as if he's taking fillets off a fish. And he's smirking while he does it.

Tease.

There is a hiss of breath through his teeth when those scissors slide along his skin, and it's not because they're chilly. Cris' eyes clamp shut against the sight of Itzhak lingering over him and cutting away his shirt, but seriously, that's just making it worse so they spring back open to Itzhak peeling his shirt open. There is an uncomfortable shift of his hips, but maybe Rosie won't notice. "When has telling Ruiz to fuck off ever worked? Especially when he's jonesing hard core. Normally I'd fuck him or fuck him up, but either of those was bound to get you pissed. Don't worry though, I found something new that works, no more knife tricks."

Rosie noticed, and Rosie isn't done with this mouthy Latino shit. "Fair," he says, still smirking. The smirk fades a little when Cris says Ruiz was jonesing.

Not like Itzhak hasn't noticed Ruiz has a little problem, what with the pills and all. He's just accepted it. Right now, it feels somewhat less acceptable. He knows Ruiz hides it from him. He's accepted that too. But.

But.

"You ever fucked him?" Now Itzhak is doing his own distraction technique, and almost manages to sound casual about it. He sets the scissors down. The next package he rips open has something like a plier in it, with locking jaws. Then the package of suture needles, and medical thread. Itzhak clamps one of the curved needles in the jaws of the plier-like thing, threads it.

Cris likely whisks away the question of why the hitch of that smirk, assuming it's to do with whether or not he and Ruiz ever had relations. "Don't worry, it was long before you ever locked that shit down." Cris' hand comes up to palm the side of Itzhak's face briefly. "Bros before ho's." Which would probably be more meaningful of a broment if he hadn't just called Ruiz the ho in this equation. "Momento." He stays Itzhak's hand and postpones the stitching long enough to take another swig of whiskey before he settles back down. "Alright, Doc McSchnozz, do your worst."

Itzhak tenses as Cris's hand comes for his face. Historically that's the bearer of bad news. But Cris touches him gently, affectionately even, and Itzhak sighs, leaning his bristly-whiskered cheek into the other man's palm for just a heartbeat or so. "Yeah. Okay."

He won't even argue that Ruiz isn't a ho. No lies there.

But he does say, in a murmur, "He's stopped hoing. You know, mostly." A rueful quirk of a half grin, then. "That's Doctor Schnozzencrantz to you."

Then, without any numbing agent or asking Cris if he's ready or telling him to count to three, or any damn thing, he squirts the wound with saline, washing it out. And if that wasn't bad enough, he doesn't let Cris catch his breath. Instead he leans into him with one very pointy elbow into his sternum, pinning him to the couch.

"Hold still." The needle slips into Cris's skin. Itzhak loops the curved implement through both sides of the wound, puuuuuulls the thread gently snug.

"Jesus Fuck, you're boney." Because apparently the elbow to the sternum hurts more than the saline or the needle, because that's what Cris is choosing to grouch about. His skin jumps and twitches as he's poked, the muscles in his stomach growing taut in testament as to just how much excessive time he spends working out. If he were from Jersey, no doubt he'd be a GTL boy. There is a noise from the bouncer that doesn't sound as if this is actually an unpleasant venture, as a matter of fact it's quite the opposite. He might have even turned down a numbing agent had it been offered. He's biting his lip to the point that his teeth are threatening to break the skin. And the fucker is squirming.

Itzhak smiles and...that's quite a smile. Sharkish, warm, and very interested in what he's doing. Who knew that an anxious musician-mechanic had this in him? A couple people know. Now Cris knows, too. As a reward for complaining and allll this squirming, Itzhak shoves him into the couch with that bony damn elbow, harder. "What'd I fuckin' say, Cruz? Hold ya ass STILL. I gotta sew you up nice for Dante." But he's got that smile on him.

The needle pierces. The thread tugs. Itzhak ties off each neat stitch, before going in for the next. And maybe he tugs harder than necessary. Maybe he lets that needle linger as it slides through Cris's skin.

Cris lets out a huff off breath he didn't realize he was holding as Itzhak digs in his elbow a little harder and gives that barked directive. There is a tremor through him, as if his body is warring against the urge to do anything but remain still. Fingers ball into fists, one catching up the material of his jeans and twisting while the other is hitched above his head to give Itzhak free access to the wound, left to grab onto nothing but air. "You're making things a little hard here, asshole. And I don't mean difficult."

"Huh," Itzhak says, as if Cris told him an interesting fact about giraffes. "Ain't that a shame." Dat a shame, in that accent of his. New York and Jewish as chocolate egg cream. "You get turned on when you cut yaself open, too?"

Pierce. Tug. Stitch. Itzhak's long, inked fingers are steady and clever. He works with his hands every minute of his life.

Now he's positive that Itzhak is fucking with him after that answer, so in true Cris fashion he's going to up the anti to epic proportions to call the bluff. His hand releases the grip on his jeans, the only thing keeping him restrained from reaching up to grab the hand that Rosencrantz is using to keep the laceration straight as he stitches. He singles out one of Itzhak's fingers with a splay of his own and then uses a bit of force to jab the gloved digit into the sliver of wound still unsutured. With a rough hiss of breath that turns into a heady groan, Cris' body curls all convex up against the pin as if that should be answer enough.

Startled, Itzhak jerks when Cris grabs his hand. He gets out a single syllable--"Cruz!"--before Cris is jamming his finger into the damn wound. And the reaction of Cris curling over and that sound he makes...Itzhak's upper lip curls away from his teeth, his heart banging against his sternum from that squirt of adrenaline.

He swallows. Then he crooks his finger.

Cris' other hand comes from above his head to clamp onto the back of Itzhak's neck as he curls his goddamn finger into the wound. It hurts the already abused flesh and it causes the skin around Cristobal's eyes to pinch into a smatter of sharp wrinkles with the wince. His breathing comes in sharp gasps against the stab of pain but he jostles Itzhak's hand again to probe the wound. Hips lift and twist and grind at nothing as if trying to find the tiniest bit of friction against the inside of his zipper. Now it's a full on game of chicken.

Itzhak huffs between clenched teeth, and jerks his hand out of the wound and Cris's grip, none too gently. He glares at him, his eyes fierce. He's forfeiting the game before it gets more out of control.

He does the final stitch quick and precise, ties it off. "Fuck you, Cruz," he growls, pissed off. "I ain't gonna be a problem between you and Dante and I sure as fuck don't want you being a problem between me and de la Vega."

There is a laugh from Cristobal, deep and self-satisfied as Itzhak jerks away and Cris just flattens back out on the couch so Itzhak can finish his work. He crooks an arm beneath his head to pillow it, "You started it." Cris is oh so helpful to point out, but there is a look in his eyes that doesn't quite match the smirk on his lips. Unabashed lust that'd he'd been doing very well to separate himself from when it comes to Itzhak. "Damaging things with Dante is a non-issue, as I'm sure his other boyfriend would agree. But you and Ruiz? No, I'm not going to come between you and him. So this'll just go into the Spank Bank. Fuck, that was hot."

Itzhak snorts, refusing to agree. He lays a gauze pad against the wound and tapes it up. "Go home to ya boyfriend, take it out on him." Then he's getting up, turning away fast, stripping off the bloodied gloves with a snap!. "You're such a fuckin' prick. Get out."

Cris rolls up into a seated position with a grunt, wading up the tatters of his shirt and throwing the ball right at Itzhak's face before he gingerly pulls himself into his jacket. Thankfully 'home' is just a short walk of a few blocks away, and the cold'll do him good. "I know." It almost seems like a lament as he picks up his glass and shoots the rest of the whiskey down. "Thanks for the patch work, Rosie." Looking for a moment he might go for a hug once he's back on his feet, Cris opts instead just to give him a heavy whack to the shoulder. "Adios motherfucker."

The ruined shirt doesn't make contact; all the kinetic energy gets sucked out of it en route and it falls softly to the floor. Itzhak grumbles in Yiddish, and when Cris whacks his shoulder, inflicts a half hug on him, then shoves him towards the door. "Out." He picks up the bottle of whiskey to pour one for himself, tense irritation in the lines of his lanky body.

Cristobal outs.