under my skin.

anjali took a deep breath, letting it out slowly as she looked down at the selection of studs in front of her. she wrinkled her nose lightly, pressing her lips to one side as she considered her options. none of them seemed to be what she was looking for—what she really wanted was another indian nose stud, like the bejeweled one she was currently precariously wearing without its back. she took it out then, and held it against the studs on the counter for comparison. “see, this is what i’m talking about,” she said with a frustrated sigh as she weighed her golden stud in the palm of her hand. “none of these look like they’re the right size. and this one fits so perfectly.” she pouted, looking down at her hand and back up at rowena. “you don’t happen to have anything hiding in the back, do you?” she asked hopefully, with a charming smirk. sometimes, all it took was a smile to get what she wanted, though it seemed like today, she may be better served with a plane to fly her grandmother’s jewelry collection over to colorado, where she knew all the pieces would fit.

It wasn’t like Jesse wanted to be at the hospital in the first place. Hell. Even when he probably needed to go to the hospital he would barely ever really do it. The whole place was way too sterile and it smelled...off. It was one of those places where bad vibes just tended to swirl around if you believed in that stuff. Maybe he did.

It still felt wrong to leave when everywhere he looked, there seemed to be someone he knew from the mall filtering in and out. Visiting or going home looking exhausted. He was feeling pretty beat himself. Jesse never found it easy to sleep when the killers decided to show themselves around. So he was a little paranoid. Someone could sue him over it.

At least he could smoke in somewhat peace as he decided what to do. Maybe he could go to the gift shop and get some snacks for Nick. But he wasn’t even sure if that was the right thing to do. Jesse almost jumped out of his skin when he noticed something move out of the corner of his eye.·“Shit,” he turned his head quick as he started to cough.·“Jesus, you scared the fuck out of me.”

location: skin deep

closed for @stigmcta·

Anjali fiddled with her golden nose piercing as she looked down at the case of jewelry in front of her. She had lost the threaded back of the stud and it had been causing her all sorts of problems, and while she could try and get a new back for the stud, the jewelry was from India and getting any sort of Indian anything out here was proving to be more difficult than Anjali had anticipated. She was still struggling to find mustard oil in the grocery store, and without it, she hadn’t been able to make any of her food taste right. But that was food, and this was her face, and this took precedence over the mustard oil today. “Hey, excuse me?” She waved down the person in the store. “I’m sorry, I just have no idea which one of these will actually fit in my piercing.” She had gotten it done in India as a teenager, per her mother’s insistence, and she had never considered putting different jewelry in it or even testing out what gauge it was. 

― rowena’s footsteps echoed across the titled floor as they made their way from the back of the shop to the front. eyes glued to the clipboard in their hands that had some usual paperwork clipped to the front. eyes scanning over the pages as they reread everything to make sure that nothing seemed to be missing or errored out. it wasn’t like people tried to lie on these slips or anything but to save the shop from being sued, rowena liked to triple check their work.