His lip ring hurt.

There wasn't much more to say about it, but that it hurt. It was always going to be a bad day when the piercing on his lower lip, off slightly to the left to show his hipster cred, started to throb. He woke up that morning, the same as every other, 8:00, to the sound of 105FM, and crawled out of his futon, tossing the sheets and comforter that had managed to make their way out with him back onto the lumpy pad. He was half way to the bathroom, not a long distance in his apartment, when he noticed that it wasn't his whole head that was aching but only his lip. He pinched it a couple of times in the fruitless hope that maybe the increase in pain would diminish what was actually there, but it didn't. It didn't do anything. It stung at first and he winced, letting it go, returning to do it again only a few seconds later, but it hurt less that time since he could brace for it. When his self-inflicted pain diminished the slow dull throb in his lip returned.

It first happened when he was eighteen. The throb. He got the piercing his freshman year in college for some dumb reason having to do with a musical genre and the throb started six months later, long after the swelling from the infection had gone down. It only hurt for a day, but it was a bad day, and not a day he needed that kind of irritation. Aspirin didn't help, and neither did anything else, legal or otherwise. It didn't go away until he fell asleep that night and the next day he was fine. When it started up again, another morning about a month later, he felt a brief pang of panic set in, certain that it was some left over germ from his original infection. The free clinic looked at it and told him that unless it continued he shouldn't worry about it. They never clarified the 'continue' part.

Eight years later it was still there.

It was hurt again as it tended to do every so often at a time almost calculated to be the worst day for it to happen. He couldn't think of anything in its self that could be directly influenced by it that day, but it never failed. He wiggled the ring back and forth with his tongue as he knocked on the bathroom door.

No one answered. The light was on. He could see it spilling out into the hallway.

He wiggled the handle.

"What's up,"