Simon Riley who hates his tattoos because he got them done when he was really young, back when he still believed that he could actually be a real person someday.
He's been empty, as long as he can remember, all long limbs and nothingness, but all those years ago, back when he turned 18, he had a fleeting, foolish notion that he could turn things around. He joined the army, got the tattoos, a bit of a "fake it till you make" it thing, except he never quite made it.
He hates looking at them more and more as the years go by. When he becomes Ghost, when he starts wearing the mask, the tattoos feel like a joke. It almost hurts to look at them and be reminded of the time when he didn't really mind being seen.
But then you come along, and it's slow, a bit hopeless at first, but something blooms there. It takes time, so much of it, but when you finally get a good look at the tattoos, you like them. Enough that he starts to kind of like them again too.
You trace the fading lines when you sit together on your couch, sometimes absently, when you're watching some reality show he pretends to hate, and sometimes more purposefully. You sit on his lap, his heavy arm draped over you, and you name the skulls, give them backstories. When you take him to bed and let him hold you through the night, he sees the tattoos in the moonlighting spilling in through your window, and they're not so bad like this.
Maybe one day he'll even get some new ones. Your name, your children's names. Or could be something more subtle, like your favorite flower, tucked somewhere in the old sleeve with all its death and destruction.
It's kind of nice, he thinks, the thought of something growing there.