Simon "Ghost" Riley is not the kind of man to get your name tattooed on his skin.
He is the kind of man to get a red line tattooed, though.
"And what's this one?" You point to a circle-shaped serpent eating its own tail. "What does it mean?"
Simon closes his eyes for a moment, relishing on the feeling of having your hands on him. Your fingertips trace the black ink on his bicep, touch soft, touch too soft for him. Too tender. He shivers.
"Ouroboros," he grunts out, voice thick, as though that should clarify everything. The arm he has wrapped around your middle is pushed away as you sit up on the bed and glare down at him. He holds your glare for a moment, not because he’s returning it, but because your eyes are so beautiful and expressive that he bet he could tell what you're feeling just by the looks you give him.
Right now, you’re feeling mildly annoyed; he's confident in that.
His arm snakes around you, lightly pulling you back to lay beside him again, squeezing your waist as an apology. You relent, allowing him to pull you, resting your head just under his chin. "Means cycle," he murmurs against your hair. "Means..." he sighs heavily, not really into this whole pillow talk thing you’re doing, but indulging you still. Anything for you. "Means eternal cycle. Bein' stuck in it. Never breakin' free; eatin' you away."
That's the meaning he'd attributed to it, when he got that tattoo. Corny in hindsight, but true, nonetheless. Accurately reflects his life; born to a druggie father who'd beat him up, and his brother, and his mother. Grew up to be an angry teen and even angrier adult, so full of rage it scared him. Burdened to a shitty life as a butcher, and stubbornly rejecting it and choosing his own destiny by joining the military didn't help much. More suffering there, more violence, more blood. Different, but at its core, the same. Certainly didn’t stop things from crashing down right in front of him; didn’t stop his brother from following his father's footsteps and shooting junk up his veins. Didn’t stop his family from being killed. Over and over and over again; past, present and future, always been like that for him, full of grief and anger and violence, no matter how hard he tried to break free.
Until you. Until he met you.
You went quiet for a while in his arms, a frown on your face, looking pensive. Simon takes it all in while he can; he takes in the weight of your body against his, the smell of your hair, of your skin, of sex. The feeling of your body rising and falling with your breathing against his ribs, of your warmth, of the little hairs on your forearm that stand up as he traces an aimless finger there. Then you shoot up again, disrupting his quiet relaxation once more.
"Well," you start, turning away from him and rummaging inside one of the drawers on the bedside table. He feels your absence like he’s got a collapsed lung and someone has ripped away the oxygen mask from his face. "You're just perpetuating it, then. With that tattoo."
Simon lifts a skeptical brow. "Meanin'?"
"Meaning," you triumphantly hold up for him a red sharpie, "you're doing it wrong. If you want to break free, you gotta kill the snake."
He watches, immobile, as you uncap the pen and draw a single, thick line across the serpent's neck, like you’re effectively cutting its head off. The red ink contrasts nicely with the black, almost making it look real. Final.
"There," you smile amusedly, though behind your eyes Simon can see the seriousness there. The sternness of you, like you have his shoulders pinned with an iron grip, nails digging into his skin so he can’t tear himself away, an angry frown on your face, teeth bared. Like you’re shaking him, shaking the suffering off him, shaking all of the blood off, the death, the rage, the sadness and the violence. Forcefully cleansing him of the guilt that sticks to his skin like tar. "You've been freed."
Simple as that. Like he has no choice but to accept it. Accept your kindness, your understanding, your mercy. Let it make him into a better man; into a better person. Let you help him to forgive himself.
He'd spent almost a week bent awkwardly over the shower so the water wouldn't wash away your red line.
"If you don't got this exact shade of red ink," Simon had warned the tattoo artist, a scrawny bloke shaking from head to toe, "I'm –" gonna make you do it with your own blood, is what Simon was about to say, but stopped himself before the words had built up. Cutting the snake's head off, or whatever. "I'm leavin'."
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