FIC: Got You Stuck On My Body Like a Tattoo - Markham/Stackhouse - PG(i know, right? wtf!)
Title: Got You Stuck On My Body Like a Tattoo
Pairing: Jason Markham/Nate Stackhouse
Rating: PG (for a little bit of normal Nate and Jason language)
Word Count: 2,921 Pre-Header
Disclaimer: Neither Atlantis nor her characters belong to me… but they should! Especially Markham and Stackhouse!
Prompt: Kink Bingo Space: Writing on the Body
Summary: Each picture or phrase held the story of another day in that prison, another night spent with empty arms.
Author’s Notes: I suggest reading Away from You by Rinkafic before reading this story. This is a sort of sequel that was inspired by her story. This was done with permission… actually, with encouragement, by the original author.
As usual, thanks to padfootthegrim for the beta. Any remaining mistakes are all mine and I’ll take the credit :)
Jason sat up and looked at Nate, his lover was shivering again. He’d stopped doing it quite so much, but from time to time, in the middle of the night Jason woke up with the vibration of it. He hated that it had taken them several months to find them, and now that Nate was back home safe, he regretted some of the things he’d said to make Rodney work faster. He couldn’t even imagine what it must have been like for Nate and Evan, locked away in that prison camp for so long. He supposed he should take some comfort in the fact that they had each other, someone from their normal lives, to keep them grounded. There was no comfort to be had, though, because he should have been there. He should have been the one giving Nate strength.
Once the shivering stopped, and Nate kicked the blanket down to its normal place around his hips, Jason looked at the knots Evan had drawn on Nate’s arm, tracing them with his eyes. They were finally starting to fade to a lighter brown, but Jason thought it would be another month or so before they were gone. Nate had told him the story of how Evan had found the clay like substance that he started calling “super-henna” and how he’d started drawing on himself. Nate hadn’t really had any strong desire to be drawn on, but he’d watched Evan’s concentration, his meditation, fade as his canvas got smaller and smaller, so he’d offered himself. “Write Jason,” Nate had asked, even as he continued warding off the bullies with his stares.
Nate grumbled something and turned onto his stomach. Jason sighed as he read the words written across Nate’s lower back. “No light in this darkness without you.” Nate had said Evan had written them on his own without prompting from Nate, but that the words fit so perfectly that he had nearly cried when Evan told him what he’d written.
Each picture or phrase held the story of another day in that prison, another night spent with empty arms. Jason had memorized each and every one, and their placement on Nate’s body. He’d even memorized the drawings on Evan’s body, both the ones he’d done himself and the ones Nate had done for him.
Nate turned over again; his sleep had never been as restless as it was since he was rescued. Before Jason knew what he was doing, he was tracing the lines of the rose Evan had drawn on Nate’s stomach. He looked at Nate’s face when he took a deep breath.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“I liked it,” Nate told him softly.
“What?” Jason asked, not sure if he hadn’t heard Nate or if he just didn’t understand him.
“The drawing,” Nate clarified. “I hadn’t had any feelings about it in the beginning but… after a little bit it started, I don’t know.”
Jason nodded, he wasn’t completely sure where Nate was going with that thought, but he understood that there was something his lover wasn’t able to put into words just yet.
“It wasn’t just having it done to me either,” Nate continued after a moment. “I liked doing it too. It’s weird, I’m not an artist, and I’ve never been able to draw well. I’ve never even really liked drawing when I had to, but,” Nate sighed and sat up, scooting back until he could rest his back against the wall at the head of the bed. Jason copied the action, draping an arm over Nate’s shoulders and holding him close.
“The first time Evan drew on me, I don’t know what it was, but the feel of the stone making the dots and then the lines connecting them. It made me think of you, even though we hadn’t ever done anything that felt like that. It didn’t make me think of anything in particular, it just brought your face into my mind.”
“He brings them to mind with a few lines,” Jason said, thinking of the words Nate had drawn on Evan’s arm.
“Exactly,” Nate said, leaning into Jason a little more. “I’d been trying to think of a way to tell Evan that his drawings were helping me and not just him. No matter how hard I thought about it though, nothing I could say would have really gotten my point across. So I said it in a language I knew he’d understand. The thing is, see, when I was drawing the words on Evan’s arm, you were in my head. Memories of things I hadn’t thought of in years were flowing through me; it was almost like you were there in the barracks with me. Evan wasn’t even really there when I was drawing. It was just you and me.”
Nate went quiet for a moment, but Jason didn’t speak. He’d known Nate long enough to know when he still had things to say, and Nate hadn’t ever spoken about how he’d felt during his capture with this much detail, Jason wanted to give him the time to get it all out.
“It became an addiction,” Nate finally continued. “I wanted Evan to keep drawing on me, but I actually needed to draw too. Evan never told me no; he always passed the stone and the bowl over every time I asked for them. He didn’t even ask what it was that I’d drawn on his back.”
Jason nodded, remembering the first time he’d seen the spiraling bird between Evan’s shoulder blades the words ‘you are my freedom,’ printed neatly beneath it. The image had elicited great emotion when Evan had removed his shirt. Jason had to close his eyes and bite his cheek to keep from gasping.
“Evan always spoke when he was drawing something I couldn’t see,” Nate told him. “I knew exactly what he’d drawn on my back and on the backs of my thighs, but I couldn’t do it. If I’d have spoken, it wouldn’t have been to Evan, it would have been to you. Then I may have broken, gone insane… something when I’d finished and you weren’t there.”
“Oh Nate,” Jason whispered and turned his head, putting his lips against Nate’s temple, just resting there for a moment.
“Do me a favor?” Nate asked softly, almost as if he didn’t really want to be heard.
“Anything,” Jason answered, and he meant it. If Nate asked him to go back to that planet and disembowel every one of the guards, he would have, without a second thought.
“The words on my back, I saw them this morning in the mirror when I got out of the shower. They’re fading but, I don’t want them to be gone; I’m not ready for them to be.”
“You want me to redraw them?” Jason asked.
Nate sighed and sat up, pulling away from Jason.
“Hey,” Jason said, pulling Nate back into his arms. “I don’t mind. I’d do anything for you, Nate, you know that. As much as I hate the reason those tattoos are there, as much as I wish you’d never been captured, I like seeing them on your body. I’ll darken the tattoo; I’ll darken all of them and make new ones if you want. Just don’t ever think this is something you can’t talk to me about. Promise me, Nate, right now. Whenever you need to talk about this, whenever you need anything from me, you’ll ask. Promise me.”
“I promise,” Nate whispered.
“Thank you. Now,” Jason said, getting off the bed and looking back at Nate. “I’ve had this for awhile; I just didn’t know how to bring it up to you.” Jason turned and started digging in the bottom drawer of his dresser, pulling out an unopened henna kit. “This isn’t the same, but it’ll be better than marker. Is this okay?”
Nate nodded as Jason walked back toward the bed. “Just do that one,” Nate said, pushing his boxers down and turning onto his belly.
“Okay, I’m going to mix it up, I’ll be right back.” Jason went into the bathroom and contained the emotions that were threatening to break loose as he mixed the henna. This wasn’t as good as the stuff Evan had found, and the tattoo would start fading a lot sooner than the others had, but it was something. It would help Nate, and it would let Jason be a part of the memories of the tattoos, and hopefully make much better tattoo memories.
Jason had never told Nate that he liked tattoos. Even on their few Earth trips, when Jason had suggested Nate get one, he’d only mentioned it in a joking tone. It wasn’t the permanence of the marking that Jason liked; it was seeing them, being able to run his hand over them. He liked seeing the picture or words; he liked looking at the color splayed across the skin. He also liked being the one making the marks, seeing the skin change under his hand. He’d discovered henna when he was thirteen and his parents had taken him and Jess to the county fair. He’d begged his mother to let him get a tattoo, and finally she’d relented, telling him he could have one as long as he got it in a place that wouldn’t show at school. He’d pulled the leg of his shorts up and watched, fascinated, as the brown dragon appeared on the smooth skin of his upper thigh. His heart had raced that night as he stood naked and hard in front of his full length bedroom mirror, looking at the mark the guy at the fair had made on his body. After that, Jason had started buying henna and making temporary tattoos on hidden parts of his body. Each time he made a new mark, either on himself or on a friend, he was affected the same way as he had been that first night. He wasn’t going to let this affect him though, this was for Nate.
After a few more minutes, Jason left the bathroom, his emotions fully in check, with the bag of mixed henna in his hand. Nate was still on his belly, his eyes on Jason but his face was blank. “Ready?” Jason asked, because he felt like he had to say something.
“Yeah,” Nate replied.
Jason nodded, moved over to the bed and straddled Nate’s thighs, because that would be the best angle for the writing. Taking a deep breath, Jason leaned forward and started squeezing the henna onto the fading letters on Nate’s lower back.
Jason felt Nate relax beneath him, felt the tension that had been in his lover’s body since they returned to Atlantis start to fade. He wondered what Nate was thinking about, was it him, or was it his time in that prison camp?
What are you thinking about, Nate?” Jason asked softly as he started tracing the second letter.
“Boot camp,” Nate replied, and Jason had to admit that he’d never have guessed that Nate’s mind would wander back there. “That night we spent doing PT in the pouring rain. The ground was just one giant mud pit; all of us kept slipping in the mud as we were running in place.”
“I remember that, the drill sergeant made us all do fifty pushups in the mud because we couldn’t stay on our feet,” Jason remembered as he finished the ‘o’ and started tracing the ‘l.’
“When we got back to the shower, you couldn’t keep your eyes off me,” Nate added. “I was worried that you were going to shove me against the wall and fuck me stupid right there in front of everyone. I wouldn’t have protested, but it would have sucked getting kicked out of the military before we even really got in it.”
Nate chuckled and Jason felt himself getting hard. He’d promised himself that he wouldn’t, but he hadn’t planned on Nate talking about the one boot camp memory that Jason had thought about most often over the years.
“I almost did push you against the wall and fuck you stupid,” he told Nate, picturing the way he’d been covered in mud. It had been difficult keeping his dick from getting hard, and he’d only succeeded in keeping it half limp. The images of Nate with mud caked on his face and arms still wandered into his mind from time to time, the way the dark brown had tarnished Nate’s pale skin, and how the water had slid down his chest and back in little brown streams. As Jason washed his own body, he’d watched Nate’s skin go from marked to perfectly clean and he realized that the process of marking affected him the same way when it was reversed. He’d dreamt of Nate that night and woke up with a raging hard on, luckily, so did everyone else, but likely not for the same reason.
“Was it the mud?” Jason heard Nate ask, and he shook his head, pulling himself out of the past.
Jason sighed softly as he started on the ‘i’ on Nate’s back. “It was you,” Jason said, and he wasn’t lying. Seeing Nate like that had affected him more than any of the tattoos he’d done, either on himself or anyone else.
Nate went quiet after that and Jason finished the ‘i’ and the ‘gh’ before he spoke again.
“What are you thinking about, Jason?” Nate asked quietly.
Jason sighed softly and sat up, looking down at his work. He could have been done by now, but he was taking his time, carefully going over all of Evan’s lettering without changing it even a little.
“I’m thinking about you,” Jason answered finally and started working again. “About how hard it was to be away from you for all that time, but also how much harder it must have been for you. At least I had our quarters and things that smelled like you, but all you had was hard work and a little bit of clay that Evan found.” He finished the word ‘light’ and sat up again. “I shouldn’t have left you,” he said.
“You took Radek back to the gate,” Nate answered. “You were following orders.”
“I know but-”
“No buts, Jason. You did what you were told and you saved a civilian, that’s what’s important.”
“Not more important than you.”
“So you’d rather we were trapped there together? Then we wouldn’t have found the ‘super henna,’ I certainly wouldn’t have thought about using that clay to make tattoos. If we had been captured together, I wouldn’t have been given the opportunity to do this for you.”
“What?” Jason asked, surprised.
Nate sighed and shifted his weight a little, turning his head to the other side and resting it on his folded arms again. “A little bit ago, when I said I didn’t want the tattoos gone yet; that wasn’t exactly the truth. I don’t care about these tattoos, Jason. They served a purpose, they gave Evan his escape and gave me mine. I don’t have anything left to escape from now, I have you and that’s all I need.”
“What do you mean?” Jason asked.
“Did you think I didn’t know that you like doing this? I didn’t know that night after PT, but it led me in the right direction. I just never found the right reason to ask you to do it, so I was waiting until you brought it up. I didn’t know how you felt about it, so I didn’t want to say anything until I knew. This was a good excuse to give you something you’ve been lacking in your life.”
Jason bit his lip and put the henna tube on the nightstand. “There isn’t anything lacking in my life, Nate. Not since you were rescued, but thank you for doing this.”
“Now that we’re on the same page, there’s no reason for you to finish that tattoo.”
Jason chuckled, “Your back will say ‘no light,’” he told him.
“Who’s going to see it except you? Besides, it’s not dry yet, I could smear it,” Nate said as he turned underneath Jason, laying on his back and looking up at him. “And you can start fresh.”
Jason smiled down at Nate, and unbelievably, he felt his love for Nate grow deeper. The fading tattoos on Nate’s body probably held as many bad memories as the good ones they brought to his mind, and yet he’d asked Jason to darken one. He’d done that because he’d already known the only thing Jason had kept from him. “How the hell did I get so lucky?” Jason asked, leaning down to capture Nate’s mouth in a kiss. It was soft and sensual; Jason poured every ounce of his heart and soul into Nate through their connected lips, and silently vowed that he’d never let Nate get captured again.
“I could ask you the same thing,” Nate said once the kiss broke. After a moment of just staring into one another’s eyes, Nate smiled broadly and pushed Jason up just a little. “How much of that stuff do you have?”
“Just this package,” Jason replied.
“We’ll get more,” Nate told him. “You can start planning what you’ll draw, and I’ll start coming up with tons of new positions for when your little kink gets the best of you.”
“That sounds like a promise.”
“Or a threat, whichever you like better.”
Jason laughed and kissed Nate again.
“Now I want you to promise me something,” Nate said.
“Anything.”
“Don’t keep anything else from me.”
“It doesn’t work anyway,” Jason chuckled.
“No, and trying to think of a cool way to tell you that I know just gives me a headache.”
“I promise.”
“Good. Now we can have sex.”
FIN
Pairing: Jason Markham/Nate Stackhouse
Rating: PG (for a little bit of normal Nate and Jason language)
Word Count: 2,921 Pre-Header
Disclaimer: Neither Atlantis nor her characters belong to me… but they should! Especially Markham and Stackhouse!
Prompt: Kink Bingo Space: Writing on the Body
Summary: Each picture or phrase held the story of another day in that prison, another night spent with empty arms.
Author’s Notes: I suggest reading Away from You by Rinkafic before reading this story. This is a sort of sequel that was inspired by her story. This was done with permission… actually, with encouragement, by the original author.
As usual, thanks to padfootthegrim for the beta. Any remaining mistakes are all mine and I’ll take the credit :)
Jason sat up and looked at Nate, his lover was shivering again. He’d stopped doing it quite so much, but from time to time, in the middle of the night Jason woke up with the vibration of it. He hated that it had taken them several months to find them, and now that Nate was back home safe, he regretted some of the things he’d said to make Rodney work faster. He couldn’t even imagine what it must have been like for Nate and Evan, locked away in that prison camp for so long. He supposed he should take some comfort in the fact that they had each other, someone from their normal lives, to keep them grounded. There was no comfort to be had, though, because he should have been there. He should have been the one giving Nate strength.
Once the shivering stopped, and Nate kicked the blanket down to its normal place around his hips, Jason looked at the knots Evan had drawn on Nate’s arm, tracing them with his eyes. They were finally starting to fade to a lighter brown, but Jason thought it would be another month or so before they were gone. Nate had told him the story of how Evan had found the clay like substance that he started calling “super-henna” and how he’d started drawing on himself. Nate hadn’t really had any strong desire to be drawn on, but he’d watched Evan’s concentration, his meditation, fade as his canvas got smaller and smaller, so he’d offered himself. “Write Jason,” Nate had asked, even as he continued warding off the bullies with his stares.
Nate grumbled something and turned onto his stomach. Jason sighed as he read the words written across Nate’s lower back. “No light in this darkness without you.” Nate had said Evan had written them on his own without prompting from Nate, but that the words fit so perfectly that he had nearly cried when Evan told him what he’d written.
Each picture or phrase held the story of another day in that prison, another night spent with empty arms. Jason had memorized each and every one, and their placement on Nate’s body. He’d even memorized the drawings on Evan’s body, both the ones he’d done himself and the ones Nate had done for him.
Nate turned over again; his sleep had never been as restless as it was since he was rescued. Before Jason knew what he was doing, he was tracing the lines of the rose Evan had drawn on Nate’s stomach. He looked at Nate’s face when he took a deep breath.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“I liked it,” Nate told him softly.
“What?” Jason asked, not sure if he hadn’t heard Nate or if he just didn’t understand him.
“The drawing,” Nate clarified. “I hadn’t had any feelings about it in the beginning but… after a little bit it started, I don’t know.”
Jason nodded, he wasn’t completely sure where Nate was going with that thought, but he understood that there was something his lover wasn’t able to put into words just yet.
“It wasn’t just having it done to me either,” Nate continued after a moment. “I liked doing it too. It’s weird, I’m not an artist, and I’ve never been able to draw well. I’ve never even really liked drawing when I had to, but,” Nate sighed and sat up, scooting back until he could rest his back against the wall at the head of the bed. Jason copied the action, draping an arm over Nate’s shoulders and holding him close.
“The first time Evan drew on me, I don’t know what it was, but the feel of the stone making the dots and then the lines connecting them. It made me think of you, even though we hadn’t ever done anything that felt like that. It didn’t make me think of anything in particular, it just brought your face into my mind.”
“He brings them to mind with a few lines,” Jason said, thinking of the words Nate had drawn on Evan’s arm.
“Exactly,” Nate said, leaning into Jason a little more. “I’d been trying to think of a way to tell Evan that his drawings were helping me and not just him. No matter how hard I thought about it though, nothing I could say would have really gotten my point across. So I said it in a language I knew he’d understand. The thing is, see, when I was drawing the words on Evan’s arm, you were in my head. Memories of things I hadn’t thought of in years were flowing through me; it was almost like you were there in the barracks with me. Evan wasn’t even really there when I was drawing. It was just you and me.”
Nate went quiet for a moment, but Jason didn’t speak. He’d known Nate long enough to know when he still had things to say, and Nate hadn’t ever spoken about how he’d felt during his capture with this much detail, Jason wanted to give him the time to get it all out.
“It became an addiction,” Nate finally continued. “I wanted Evan to keep drawing on me, but I actually needed to draw too. Evan never told me no; he always passed the stone and the bowl over every time I asked for them. He didn’t even ask what it was that I’d drawn on his back.”
Jason nodded, remembering the first time he’d seen the spiraling bird between Evan’s shoulder blades the words ‘you are my freedom,’ printed neatly beneath it. The image had elicited great emotion when Evan had removed his shirt. Jason had to close his eyes and bite his cheek to keep from gasping.
“Evan always spoke when he was drawing something I couldn’t see,” Nate told him. “I knew exactly what he’d drawn on my back and on the backs of my thighs, but I couldn’t do it. If I’d have spoken, it wouldn’t have been to Evan, it would have been to you. Then I may have broken, gone insane… something when I’d finished and you weren’t there.”
“Oh Nate,” Jason whispered and turned his head, putting his lips against Nate’s temple, just resting there for a moment.
“Do me a favor?” Nate asked softly, almost as if he didn’t really want to be heard.
“Anything,” Jason answered, and he meant it. If Nate asked him to go back to that planet and disembowel every one of the guards, he would have, without a second thought.
“The words on my back, I saw them this morning in the mirror when I got out of the shower. They’re fading but, I don’t want them to be gone; I’m not ready for them to be.”
“You want me to redraw them?” Jason asked.
Nate sighed and sat up, pulling away from Jason.
“Hey,” Jason said, pulling Nate back into his arms. “I don’t mind. I’d do anything for you, Nate, you know that. As much as I hate the reason those tattoos are there, as much as I wish you’d never been captured, I like seeing them on your body. I’ll darken the tattoo; I’ll darken all of them and make new ones if you want. Just don’t ever think this is something you can’t talk to me about. Promise me, Nate, right now. Whenever you need to talk about this, whenever you need anything from me, you’ll ask. Promise me.”
“I promise,” Nate whispered.
“Thank you. Now,” Jason said, getting off the bed and looking back at Nate. “I’ve had this for awhile; I just didn’t know how to bring it up to you.” Jason turned and started digging in the bottom drawer of his dresser, pulling out an unopened henna kit. “This isn’t the same, but it’ll be better than marker. Is this okay?”
Nate nodded as Jason walked back toward the bed. “Just do that one,” Nate said, pushing his boxers down and turning onto his belly.
“Okay, I’m going to mix it up, I’ll be right back.” Jason went into the bathroom and contained the emotions that were threatening to break loose as he mixed the henna. This wasn’t as good as the stuff Evan had found, and the tattoo would start fading a lot sooner than the others had, but it was something. It would help Nate, and it would let Jason be a part of the memories of the tattoos, and hopefully make much better tattoo memories.
Jason had never told Nate that he liked tattoos. Even on their few Earth trips, when Jason had suggested Nate get one, he’d only mentioned it in a joking tone. It wasn’t the permanence of the marking that Jason liked; it was seeing them, being able to run his hand over them. He liked seeing the picture or words; he liked looking at the color splayed across the skin. He also liked being the one making the marks, seeing the skin change under his hand. He’d discovered henna when he was thirteen and his parents had taken him and Jess to the county fair. He’d begged his mother to let him get a tattoo, and finally she’d relented, telling him he could have one as long as he got it in a place that wouldn’t show at school. He’d pulled the leg of his shorts up and watched, fascinated, as the brown dragon appeared on the smooth skin of his upper thigh. His heart had raced that night as he stood naked and hard in front of his full length bedroom mirror, looking at the mark the guy at the fair had made on his body. After that, Jason had started buying henna and making temporary tattoos on hidden parts of his body. Each time he made a new mark, either on himself or on a friend, he was affected the same way as he had been that first night. He wasn’t going to let this affect him though, this was for Nate.
After a few more minutes, Jason left the bathroom, his emotions fully in check, with the bag of mixed henna in his hand. Nate was still on his belly, his eyes on Jason but his face was blank. “Ready?” Jason asked, because he felt like he had to say something.
“Yeah,” Nate replied.
Jason nodded, moved over to the bed and straddled Nate’s thighs, because that would be the best angle for the writing. Taking a deep breath, Jason leaned forward and started squeezing the henna onto the fading letters on Nate’s lower back.
Jason felt Nate relax beneath him, felt the tension that had been in his lover’s body since they returned to Atlantis start to fade. He wondered what Nate was thinking about, was it him, or was it his time in that prison camp?
What are you thinking about, Nate?” Jason asked softly as he started tracing the second letter.
“Boot camp,” Nate replied, and Jason had to admit that he’d never have guessed that Nate’s mind would wander back there. “That night we spent doing PT in the pouring rain. The ground was just one giant mud pit; all of us kept slipping in the mud as we were running in place.”
“I remember that, the drill sergeant made us all do fifty pushups in the mud because we couldn’t stay on our feet,” Jason remembered as he finished the ‘o’ and started tracing the ‘l.’
“When we got back to the shower, you couldn’t keep your eyes off me,” Nate added. “I was worried that you were going to shove me against the wall and fuck me stupid right there in front of everyone. I wouldn’t have protested, but it would have sucked getting kicked out of the military before we even really got in it.”
Nate chuckled and Jason felt himself getting hard. He’d promised himself that he wouldn’t, but he hadn’t planned on Nate talking about the one boot camp memory that Jason had thought about most often over the years.
“I almost did push you against the wall and fuck you stupid,” he told Nate, picturing the way he’d been covered in mud. It had been difficult keeping his dick from getting hard, and he’d only succeeded in keeping it half limp. The images of Nate with mud caked on his face and arms still wandered into his mind from time to time, the way the dark brown had tarnished Nate’s pale skin, and how the water had slid down his chest and back in little brown streams. As Jason washed his own body, he’d watched Nate’s skin go from marked to perfectly clean and he realized that the process of marking affected him the same way when it was reversed. He’d dreamt of Nate that night and woke up with a raging hard on, luckily, so did everyone else, but likely not for the same reason.
“Was it the mud?” Jason heard Nate ask, and he shook his head, pulling himself out of the past.
Jason sighed softly as he started on the ‘i’ on Nate’s back. “It was you,” Jason said, and he wasn’t lying. Seeing Nate like that had affected him more than any of the tattoos he’d done, either on himself or anyone else.
Nate went quiet after that and Jason finished the ‘i’ and the ‘gh’ before he spoke again.
“What are you thinking about, Jason?” Nate asked quietly.
Jason sighed softly and sat up, looking down at his work. He could have been done by now, but he was taking his time, carefully going over all of Evan’s lettering without changing it even a little.
“I’m thinking about you,” Jason answered finally and started working again. “About how hard it was to be away from you for all that time, but also how much harder it must have been for you. At least I had our quarters and things that smelled like you, but all you had was hard work and a little bit of clay that Evan found.” He finished the word ‘light’ and sat up again. “I shouldn’t have left you,” he said.
“You took Radek back to the gate,” Nate answered. “You were following orders.”
“I know but-”
“No buts, Jason. You did what you were told and you saved a civilian, that’s what’s important.”
“Not more important than you.”
“So you’d rather we were trapped there together? Then we wouldn’t have found the ‘super henna,’ I certainly wouldn’t have thought about using that clay to make tattoos. If we had been captured together, I wouldn’t have been given the opportunity to do this for you.”
“What?” Jason asked, surprised.
Nate sighed and shifted his weight a little, turning his head to the other side and resting it on his folded arms again. “A little bit ago, when I said I didn’t want the tattoos gone yet; that wasn’t exactly the truth. I don’t care about these tattoos, Jason. They served a purpose, they gave Evan his escape and gave me mine. I don’t have anything left to escape from now, I have you and that’s all I need.”
“What do you mean?” Jason asked.
“Did you think I didn’t know that you like doing this? I didn’t know that night after PT, but it led me in the right direction. I just never found the right reason to ask you to do it, so I was waiting until you brought it up. I didn’t know how you felt about it, so I didn’t want to say anything until I knew. This was a good excuse to give you something you’ve been lacking in your life.”
Jason bit his lip and put the henna tube on the nightstand. “There isn’t anything lacking in my life, Nate. Not since you were rescued, but thank you for doing this.”
“Now that we’re on the same page, there’s no reason for you to finish that tattoo.”
Jason chuckled, “Your back will say ‘no light,’” he told him.
“Who’s going to see it except you? Besides, it’s not dry yet, I could smear it,” Nate said as he turned underneath Jason, laying on his back and looking up at him. “And you can start fresh.”
Jason smiled down at Nate, and unbelievably, he felt his love for Nate grow deeper. The fading tattoos on Nate’s body probably held as many bad memories as the good ones they brought to his mind, and yet he’d asked Jason to darken one. He’d done that because he’d already known the only thing Jason had kept from him. “How the hell did I get so lucky?” Jason asked, leaning down to capture Nate’s mouth in a kiss. It was soft and sensual; Jason poured every ounce of his heart and soul into Nate through their connected lips, and silently vowed that he’d never let Nate get captured again.
“I could ask you the same thing,” Nate said once the kiss broke. After a moment of just staring into one another’s eyes, Nate smiled broadly and pushed Jason up just a little. “How much of that stuff do you have?”
“Just this package,” Jason replied.
“We’ll get more,” Nate told him. “You can start planning what you’ll draw, and I’ll start coming up with tons of new positions for when your little kink gets the best of you.”
“That sounds like a promise.”
“Or a threat, whichever you like better.”
Jason laughed and kissed Nate again.
“Now I want you to promise me something,” Nate said.
“Anything.”
“Don’t keep anything else from me.”
“It doesn’t work anyway,” Jason chuckled.
“No, and trying to think of a cool way to tell you that I know just gives me a headache.”
“I promise.”
“Good. Now we can have sex.”
FIN