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It’s the day before Halloween, and at Burgers Burgers Burgers, there are decorations up in place that still retain a pungent plastic smell despite being several years old, if not a decade, judging by their faded hues. There’s a pumpkin out front that’s nearly rotten already — that, too, smells. Jess has come in every day this week wearing a different pair of gaudy fucking Halloween earrings, spraying her fucking Halloween body mist all over herself every hour on the hour — yeah, smells. At least it’s not Christmas, is what Benson has to tell himself from driving his car into a telephone pole on his way home every night. What he’ll tell himself in two months’ time, God only fucking knows. He sucks on a cigarette on his break out back. Turning it between his fingers, he ponders the lucky possibility of not having to deal with that issue at all if he just doubles down on these things.
That smell of plastic, the cheap body spray, the sickly sweetness of candy that permeates the air this time of year, along with the stiff and sharp branches that are made visible, sending their barked tendrils of perfume out to every corner of his psyche, it gets to be too much for Benson. He can’t smell these things without also smelling Crayola crayons, pencil sharpeners, aftershave, and skin. His mind occupies another time, somehow breaking free from the tight leash he usually is capable of keeping it on. His hands and brain are like separate entities today. It’s so easy to slip and cut himself with the box cutter when he’s breaking down the shipment. It’s a nice slice, from the pad of his thumb down to his palm.
Benson curses and starts stomping across the storage room, fat drops of blood making a trail to the bathroom where the first aid kit is stored. He’s not subtle in his anger; he gathers a crowd. Chris goes, “Oh, shit. That’s bad, bro.” Jess gasps and says, “Ew,” and she halfway inserts herself into the doorway to watch Benson struggle for the box under the sink. Randy lurks behind Jess. His eyes widen, but he says nothing.
“Jesus, can I get some fuckin’ help here?” Benson spits. He’s kneeling and trying to keep his hand from bleeding onto the white tile by resting on his knee, which leaves him little room ot manever. Jess makes a noise somewhere in the junction of pain and disgust, but moves to help reach the first aid box in the dark rear of the sink cabinet. Benson takes a seat on the toilet lid. Jess is making a face the whole time, but she gets a large butterfly bandage out and undoes the packaging.
“Damn, babe, maybe you should be my nurse for Halloween,” says Chris. It makes Jess giggle. “There’s still time to get you a sexy little costume.” She’s rolling her eyes and letting out a, “So fucking stupid,” when she drops the bandaid as she goes to place it. There’s a slip and a bump of the hands.
“Oh, my God! He’s bleeding on me!” She gets hysterical and her grimace makes an immediate return. “That is so disgusting..” she mutters, scrambling to her feet to scrub in the sink.
Randy steps in when he sees Benson sigh and reach for the bandage on the tile floor. “Let me get a new one,” he says.
Chris is laughing his ass off, leaning on the doorframe, not knowing if he should point at Jess or Randy. “Oh, shit, Bradley’s gonna patch you up now, Benny. You know, it’s way more fitting for him to be your sexy nurse, anyway.”
As usual, Chris’s comments go unanswered, but they do send Randy flushing deep and quick. His fingers fumble with the bandaids, but he eventually is successful in plastering one to Benson’s hand, the both of them working to hold the wound at an operable angle. Bradley takes a wet wad of tissue paper to wipe some of the run-off blood away.
“That is so sweet, look how good he is to you. Where’s your outfit, Bradley?”
Against his wishes, Benson is blushing now, too. Fuck Chris. Fuck Chris and all the stupid shit he says. For a fraction of a second, an image of white skin, rosy with blush, peaking out from a white uniform, some cheap Halloween costume (meaning that it’s easy to rip), one that comes with thigh-high socks, goes flaring up in his mind. He channels all feelings he might have about that picture into anger towards Chris, and he huffs in a way that might be mistaken for a wince as Randy finishes dressing his hand.
By now, Hardy is screaming from the storage room. They had left the front of the shop empty for nearly one whole minute – a huge fast-food blunder. Jess and Chris playfully push one another back out to the dining area. The fluorescent lights shine harsher in their absence.
Randy doesn’t look any less anxious now that the two of them are alone. His shoulders are pulled up to his ears, his lips pressed together, and his face blushes all the way down to his collar. Benson is sure that Randy can feel how he studies him. He watches Randy take a breath and blink. He watches him just fucking stare at that spot on his shirt like he always fucking does. Then Benson’s eyes fall down to where their hands touch, his freshly applied bandage blooming with red already, Randy still pushing the skin of his wound together. His blood stains Randy’s nail-bitten fingers: pale and soft knuckles, a blushing boy on his knees, and the smell of blood. Something inside Benson lurches. “Bradley,” he says.
Obediently, Randy looks up. “Yeah?” That same something lurches again, forward and downward.
“You can let go now.” Neither one of them can tell if it’s soft-sounding or mean-sounding or both. There is the smallest of smirks on Benson’s lips, so minuscule that Benson himself isn’t even aware of it. Randy clears his throat, gets off the ground, and gathers his pride by making a quick exit, leaving behind a wisp of whatever crisp and powdery antiperspirant he wears.
⌾
There’s a bit of a rush in the afternoon; it’s nothing the four of them can’t handle, but it requires much communication. Switching positions to make sure things come off the grill at the right time and responding to customers' requests cordially, even when they yell from their seats across the room, rather than approaching the counter like civilized beings. It’s the fourth time Benson has fucked up an order. Randy hesitates, but eventually comes up to him. “Um, Benson?”
“Yeah?”
“She got fries – you forgot them. Again.”
Benson rolls his eyes and has half a mind to just stick his head in the deep-fryer. Randy is standing right next to it, and he budges minimally as Benson comes near. Honestly, Benson is surprised that Randy has said anything at all. Usually, Randy just does whatever needs to be done to fix an order, sometimes even going out of his way to keep other employees from having to correct their mistakes. It’s pathetic. Randy won’t look at him as he packs the cardboard holder.
“Um, maybe you should switch with Chris on register.”
Benson fixes his dead gaze on Randy, staggered for just a few seconds by the suggestion. “The fuck?” At first, the question is posed more to the world. But when Randy still refuses to meet his eyes, Benson tilts his head in Randy’s direction and raises his eyebrows. He can’t be certain but this level of evasion feels more extreme. He wonders if Randy, too, thought about the nurse costume comment, even for a flash. “The fuck you say?” He steps in front of Randy in some vague effort to get Randy to bring his eyes upward. It doesn’t work, and Randy stares at the buttons of Benson’s uniform.
“I just thought. - I mean…” Randy is gripping the order of fries tightly.
Feeling antagonistic, Benson bends lower. “What?”
“You’ve been kind of out of it today, and there’s been,” Randy hesitates, shakes his head every so slightly, “complaints.”
“Complaints?”
“Yeah, from –,” Randy gestures outward. When Benson doesn’t reply or move, Randy blinks and puts his eyes looking toward the door, safely past Benson’s shoulder.
Benson sucks his teeth. “Okay,” he says. And he pats Randy low on the cheek, the jaw, letting his palm and thumb slide down to Randy’s throat to apply some slight pressure. Randy’s already going red again, eyes growing wide, but still looking away, away, away. “Anything for Nurse Bradley.” And that does the trick – Randy’s eyes snap to his, there’s that jolt deep inside Benson again, and he lets the force of his bandaged hand push Randy a foot backward as he removes it. The shared observation of one another feels like victory, especially when Randy’s crimson throat bobbles as he swallows.
Benson starts to make for the register. The movement startles Randy, and he backs away, almost catching himself by putting his hand on the hot stove. Benson sees it happening from the corner of his eye and digs his fingers into the front of Randy’s soft and clean-smelling shirt to haul him away from danger at the last second. “Christ, kid…” And just like that, it’s Benson’s turn to have difficulty looking at Randy. Stumbling, formative, vulnerable. Not-yet-roadkill, a beautiful, beautiful thing to hit by accident. The kitchen grease makes him nauseous.
Randy steers clear of Benson by a good ten feet the rest of the day. Or maybe, it's the other way around.
⌾
At home, after the sun has set and Ma’s been taken care of, Benson allows himself to sink into his mission, his ache. He lounges on his bed, uniform still reeking of sweat, grease, and cigarettes, when he lets his injured hand trace the metal of his belt buckle. He never does this. He can’t. But tonight, he invites that smell of clean cotton and powdery deodorant on in. He takes it from memory and exhales through his nose, willing it into the closed-curtain room. The thought of Bradley here in this room is enough to have Benson palming himself.
He doesn’t picture anything in particular, not yet. Just lets the feeling he gets from looking at Bradley take over. He likes the color Bradley turns when he gets near – this raw pink hue at the ears that gives his eyes a brightness. Benson thinks about how Bradley constantly shrinks himself down as he bustles from place to place, and how different he would look if he allowed Benson to unravel his limbs, push him down and out, and how he would make him arch, make him reach for expanse. God, Benson pushes his hips up into his hand. He winces at the pain. It’s a nice balance.
He thinks about how Bradley never fucking looks at him for longer than one goddamned second and how it boils his blood. Benson recalls their eye contact from the afternoon, when they were sitting in the bathroom. Bradley on his knees, eyes shining. Benson hurries to undo his buckle and pulls himself out, giving his cock a tight and needy squeeze. He makes a sound in his throat.
The roughness of his hand is reliable and relieving, the bandage catching on skin and giving his strokes texture. Bradley put this fucking bandaid on him – he touched it with his baby-soft skin, his soap-smelling fucking shaking hands. Benson remembers how Bradley held his hand so tightly while applying the bandage, keeping a careful eye on the blood flow. That surprisingly taut grip, the insistence of it, he thinks about it now, gripping his arm, his shoulder, in his hair, around his cock all at once, touching him and touching him and touching him.
He wonders if Chris’s comments mean anything to Bradley. The gay shit he says about them both. The embarrassment, the nervousness – they’re no departure from his usual self, it’s so hard to tell. But today, with the way Bradley couldn’t meet his eye, and that bright carmine that overtook his cheeks when Benson actually put a fucking hand on him, Benson knows it means something. And that fact pulls a groan from him as he fucks up into his fist. What would blushing Bradley think now, huh?
His spare hand clutches the bedsheets, and he’s ruining Bradley’s nursely application of the bandaid. Benson is sure he’s bleeding again by now with how rough he’s being, but if he looks now to confirm, he’s sure he’ll come on the spot. He uses the pad of his thumb, the laceration throbbing now, to rub the tip of his cock. It hurts and sends him waves of pleasure. He hisses and spreads the precome, careful not to make too much noise as a pit of warmth blossoms in his belly. He’s grabbing at the pillow behind his head now, slowing down the hand on himself into a tight ring.
Benson’s mouth is open, eyes shut as he works his hips back and forth in a poorly-helmed rhythm. “Bradley,” he moans. ”Fuck, Bradley,” he almost laughs it out in some strange mix of desperation and revulsion. He’s getting so close, now. He’s about to cross a line he can’t come back from, but he can’t stop running toward it. Bradley is probably home now, alone in his bed, reading or sleeping, or just fucking thinking so hard like he always does, with his lips pressed tight. In his clean-smelling bed with his parents down the hall, wet hair from the shower, hot, scrubbed skin. His hands turning the pages of some book, or adjusting his sleep-shirt, or Jesus Christ, Benson should be shot for thinking it, but Bradley licking his fingers clean after eating some sugary midnight snack.
Benson comes thinking of his blood on Bradley’s hands. He finishes straight onto his work shirt, pulling every last drop from himself, stuttering out Bradley’s name three times.
He feels disgusting. He feels good. He feels right-minded and perverted all at once. He feels like he’s the one at the wheel, but his foot keeps pressing the gas. He’s caught between wanting to enjoy the ride and wanting to accelerate. .
⌾
Benson walks into work the next day, daring someone to notice that he’s wearing the same shirt. It would be hard to argue – there are some drops of blood on the bottom from where his hand had dripped yesterday. He doesn’t think Donnie or Chris will; they don’t care enough about him to use brain cells when looking at him. And as long as Hardy stays in his office, busied by internet porn, he’ll remain lucky. No one pays him enough attention, not even Bradley, unless he puts himself in the kids' way.
The day begins like usual, and Bradley stays out of his way for a good while. They each have their tasks which keep them apart. This is fine; Benson still has the last part of his plan to deploy. He waits for midday, when Randy takes his breaks, and will grab his brown bagged lunch from his locker. Benson watches Randy head in.
“Fuckin’ Christ,” he grumbles, holding his hand and heading for the bathroom. He can feel the weight of Bradley watching his trail. And he fumbles under the sink again until he hears the gentle padding of Bradley behind him.
“...Are you bleeding again?” he asks.
“Yep.” Benson sighs. “Ripped the damned thing open.”
Randy lets Benson scramble around for a couple of long seconds while he decides. He chews on his bottom lip. They both inhale the remnants of Jess’s Bath and Body Works Caramel Apple and "Psycho Killer" plays in the other room. “Just sit,” he eventually says, tightly. Benson complies.
They have deja vu. And for a moment, everything is near an exact repeat. And then Bradley spots the browning blood at the bottom of his uniform. There are new blood spots, too, nice and red ones next to the rust ones. Benson sees Bradley’s eyebrows furrow slightly.
“Might need a stitch or two,” Benson says. He knows if he keeps talking, eventually Randy’s eyes will make their way to his buttons. “You seem to know a thing or two about first aid, what do you think?”
Bradley is cleaning the wound. “Uh, I don’t really know much, but it’s a pretty deep cut -”
“-Mm, hmm.” Benson’s interruption is a success. Bradley’s eyes flicker to his own for a split second and then go down to his shirt.
“And it looks irritated, so..” Bradley looks now, and Benson can see the gears turning in his head. “So..” He’s not dissociating like he normally does, he’s actually fucking looking at the stains on Benson’s shirt. He’s completely silent for three full seconds. He gulps and starts blinking, trying to regain some footing. “So, maybe you sh-should get it, uh, looked at.” Randy has gone from pale to carmine in record time – it’s the brightest Benson has ever seen him turn. He likes it, God, he likes it. Bradley is working quick to get those bandages on. Benson delights in the sight of Bradley’s artery pulsing in his neck rapidly, heart hammering, this poor kid who doesn’t have it in him to push him away or tell him to fuck off. Those soft hands again are on his own.
“Nah, I hate the hospital,” says Benson, as Randy is finishing up. They both stand. Randy’s hands go balling back into fists. Benson, casually but precisely, rests his newly doctored hand on his belt buckle. “Plus, you’re so good at this.”
Randy has to stay in the bathroom after Benson leaves, face burning and hands shaking. All day, and into the crisp Halloween night, he can’t shake the heat that has settled under his skin; it lives there now.