Chapter Text
Julian presses his hand to his aggravated skin over and over, watching the pink sunburn turn white under the pressure of his fingers and fade back. "It's mesmerizing."
I pull his hand away from his scorched shoulder, leaving a large white handprint behind for a moment. "It's hurting me watching you do that."
It'll fade in time, but right now his shoulders and the back of his neck are so inflamed I can practically feel warmth radiating off of them. The sun exposure in Nopal is brutal, which is why everyone covers up, even in the heat--except Julian, who apparently forgot. He gives me an indulgent look, extremely proud of whatever flirtatious comeback he whipped up on the fly for this prompt. "Oh, you've done far worse to me, and I've welcomed it. This is nothing."
I roll my eyes, but I don't let go of his hand, idly winding my fingers between his. "You've always been pale as death. What's with this sudden affinity for sunlight?"
"Well..." He glances down at our hands and pulls his brows together. "This is going to sound silly, but I haven't gotten a sunburn in years."
I open my mouth to ask him how that's even possible, but he's not looking at me.
"I didn't have to worry about them with the mark, when I still had it." He reaches up to where the mark used to sit, right over his adam's apple, with a pensive look. "One of the many side effects of using it. I only noticed when I realized one time that I'd spent all day in the sun and looked fine, when normally I would look like--"
"--a lobster?"
"Exactly. I've just gotten used to not worrying about it, I guess."
It's a funny thing for a magical healing mark to expend power on, but it makes sense. Julian would always go for flair with more dramatic conditions to demonstrate it, like gouging his arm open or absorbing venom, so something as gradual and mild as a sunburn might simply never appear if it worked subtly on its own.
Julian's eyes flash with speculation. "Come to think of it, I don't think I got a cold while I had the mark, either. I definitely should have gotten a cold at least once under normal circumstances. Was it boosting my natural immunities even when I wasn't actively using it? Damn, I wish I could test it, but..." He looks back at me with half a sad smile. "It's a shame, really. I would love to hold magic up to some controlled tests, but that experiment's impossible now."
I chuckle. "If it would mean you and I both giving each other colds, I think we're better not knowing."
"It wouldn't be so bad, love! I've been told I have a wonderful bedside manner. I could even get Mazelinka to make her soup for you that she always made for me and Pasha."
Now that my eyes have adjusted to the cool adobe shade of the sanctuary, I can see that the burn extends farther than I realized, all the way down his arms to the tops of his hands. His ears are redder than I've ever seen them, even at his most flustered. The pink on his cheeks and the bridge of his nose is cute, but I'd rather know that I was the reason for it being there.
"Do you want my help?" [selected]
"You need to be more careful."
"Do you want my help?" I ask. "I don't know if I can get rid of the burns in one go, but I could help them heal faster."
He shakes his head and brings our hands up to his lips to press a quick kiss to the back of my knuckles. "I appreciate it, but I'll be alright. It looks worse than it is."
I shoot him a pointed stare. This is a very sincere-sounding deflection, but I don't want to let him get away with making it.
"I swear, I'm not being a martyr--not this time, at least." He nods in the direction of the rock garden outside the front door. "I saw some aloe growing out there. I'll let it heal the old-fashoned way. No need to trouble yourself over it."
I back down. Maybe he's fine after all. "Alright, but you know you can always change your mind."
We hack open a few aloe leaves and scrape out the cool gel inside to soothe the burn, talking the whole time about how we should bring back a cutting to propogate, since it could be useful for both of us (though I'm not certain if I know how to use aloe for magical remedies, and Julian has terrible luck keeping plants alive). I smooth a thin layer over the angriest part of the burn, on the back of his neck and between his shoulder blades, and he sighs with relieved satisfaction. He seems like he might fall asleep standing up--the sun must have sapped his energy more than he realized. Julian yawns, and starts to stretch, but winces when his burn protests the movement.
"Cripes, that pinches a bit, huh?"
"Are you sure you don't want me to fix it? You might sleep better," I say, trying not to insist over something as small as this. But at the same time, it's not a big deal, and I've helped him patch up from things much worse--why not get rid of it when I can heal it so easily?
He scratches the back of his head and can't meet my eyes. "Ok, this is also going to sound pretty silly, but...I want to keep it."
"Why?"
"It's--I don't know," he sputters, putting too many pauses in his explanation, as if the next phrase were waiting too long for its cue after the last one. "It'll remind me of coming out here, with you, without the mark, and everything it meant about me." Julian steps a bit closer to me and lays a hand lightly on my waist, joining us together at the hip. His voice is soft and a bit distant. "I've...had trouble grasping that it's all really over. But I'm away from the city on a vacation, not on the lam. I'm here with you, with no plans and nothing to hunt, nothing hunting us. I only have to worry about little things like sunburns." I watch his gaze wander unhurriedly around my face and a gentle smile lights over his own. "It's nice."
Kiss him.
Tease him. [selected]
"I think you just like knowing that you're all marked up." I brush my fingers under his jaw and his eyes focus on mine, a little bit brighter and hungrier than they were a moment ago. "But I thought that was my job."
"What, you mean to tell me you're jealous of the sun?" He grins, rather pleased with himself. "Darling, it can't compare in the least to you."
Damn right it can't. I pull him into me by the hair at the back of his head and plant a firm kiss over his smug mouth. He holds me tight and kisses me back without hesitation, but only for a moment before he pulls back and I can see how heavily his eyelids are drooping. He might actually sleep through the night tonight.
"I don't want to start anything I can't finish. I'm sorry. I'll make it up to you."
I shake my head and smooth back his hair to softly kiss his forehead. "Don't even think of it. There's nothing to be sorry for. Let's just get you to sleep."
The sunset had painted the sky a bright array of corals and purples, but now the night outside the window has mellowed to deep midnight blues and myriad pinprick stars. Julian shuffles quietly into the cool cotton sheets and leaves them open behind him for me to follow. It takes no time at all for his breathing to deepen and slow, and though his back is turned to me I can hear that his lips are half-parted. He's out cold.
I lay behind him and watch his shoulders rise and fall. He's left them above the sheets to keep the burn from getting too irritated, so I don't touch them, either. I could stare at his back all day.
In the quiet, hearing only the night noises of the desert and Julian's breathing, I realize that I'm also tired--how had I not noticed it before? I only meant to lay here with him for a bit, but I could fall alseep, too.
Drift off. (250 coins) [selected]
Get up.
[...]
I wake suddenly when I feel something land across my body, but it's only Julian's arm. He rolled over onto me, still alseep, and didn't wake when I did. The yellow moon rose over the horizon and looms behind him now in the window, hanging strangely close to the earth and casting faint light over his hair.
I try to move closer gently enough not to wake him, and happily, he seems to know what I want even in the depths of sleep. His arm curls tighter around my back and draws me into him. We lay facing each other, our faces close enough together that I can't see all of his at once. My gaze lands on his closed eye, and I watch his long, dark lashes brush his cheek. It's funny, the way his eyelids flutter when he sleeps. I'm always convinced he's having vivid dreams--they used to be nightmares more often than not, but he talks less in his sleep now and hasn't woken up in a panic for a long while. Nothing will ever fade the circles under his eyes (and I wouldn't want them gone in the first place), but he finally seems able to get enough sleep most nights. And yet...I still want to risk ruining it, because I suddenly get a brilliant idea.
I wind one hand out from our embrace and take a deep breath to center myself. He won't let me heal the burn, but he didn't say anything about healing part of the burn. I summon the image of cool water, I will the skin beneath my fingertip to soften and fade, and I trace a winding line lightly over his arm. I see the telltale glow of my magic emanating from my finger, so dim it's only visible in darkness. By its light, I can see the line I've been tracing start to appear, and I feel a little rush of giddy victory.
Julian stirs and grunts low in the back of his throat. His eyes open just enough to see me, wide awake in his arms and looking a bit caught. His voice slurs with sleep. "What?"
"Nothing!"
"I had an idea..." [selected]
"I had an idea...do you want to see?"
He sighs deeply and pushes himself upright, waiting for my lead. I turn his arm towards the moonlight and point to my work. It's a little heart--a bit lopsided, but considering my awkward position while I drew it, it looks decent. It's a bit hard to see in the moonlight, but it shows up when you tilt it at the right angle. Julian slowly wakes up and processes what he's looking at, and he turns to me with a confused-but-exuberant smile creeping over his face.
"Did you just...give me a tattoo?"
I grin. "It's a reverse tattoo. Instead of damaging the skin to draw, I healed it." Suddenly bashful, I look down at my hands. "Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you up. It could have waited 'til morning."
He doesn't seem concerned in the least. His eyes are shining. "Can you give me more?"
"Right now?"
"Yes!"
We light a lamp so I don't have to create my own light to work by, and we decide I should start first on his back, where it'll show up the most. I sit on top of him and look over my canvas appreciatively--and when I catch Julian eyeing me over his shoulder, he shoots me a wink.
"Any special requests?"
"Artist's choice. I have total confidence in your vision."
I decide to draw...
...a pair of wings. [selected]
...an intricate pattern.
...more hearts!
I decide to draw wings sprouting from his shoulder blades and extending over his arms--maybe a bit overambitious, but not too difficult if I work steadily. I trace a slow guiding line over his shoulder and he inhales sharply. I stay my hand.
"Does it hurt?" It shouldn't hurt--am I doing something wrong?
He laughs softly. "No, but it kind of tickles."
"Really?" Julian could just be messing with me, but now I'm curious. I start tracing again, making sure my touch is light and deliberate. "What does it feel like to you?"
"It's like..." He pauses to think about it for a moment, and I feel the deep breath he takes raise expand his chest beneath my hand. "It's like you're pouring a tiny stream of cool water over me, but the water stays in place instead of running down my back." I glance up at him, and he's peeking over his shoulder as I shape out the wing-tip feathers over his arm. "It's lovely. Might put me to sleep all over again."
"I was honestly a little surprised to find out that you didn't have a tattoo already."
"Well, I hadn't gotten any done before the plague hit Vesuvia and...everything else," he says flatly, "and it's a lot easier to track down a person with a visible brand, so putting off getting any tattoos while I was still a fugitive seemed wise. But I feel like the mark would have eventually swallowed up the ink, anyway." He frowns, mulling something with foggy concentration. "Now that I think about it, I might have tried to get a tattoo on one very drunken night. When I couldn't find it the next morning, I assumed I had only imagined it."
"Where did you want it?"
"What was it a tattoo of?" [selected]
"What was it supposed to be of? Do you remember?"
He chuckles and shakes his head. "I have no idea. Probably for the best. I'm sure it would have been absolutely hideous. I don't recall losing enough money on it to know it was a good one." He lays his head back down on the pillow and closes his eyes. "This'll be a fantastic piece, though. I can tell."
I huff a little snort, a bit embarrassed. "You haven't seen me draw."
A sleepy smile spreads over his profile. "You're working in a medium all your own. Anything you do will be groundbreaking."
I feel myself turning red from praise and I have to fight to stay focused. "You sound very confident that I'm not doodling dicks all over you right now."
Julian opens his eyes and quirks his brow at me--as usual, never able to resist a challenge of pageantry. "Oh, you think I wouldn't wear them with pride? I'm showing these off to everyone, no matter what."
I groan, because I know he will, and that's exactly what I was afraid he'd say. Maybe I should have been drawing dicks just to spite him...but then he'd just tell everyone that I drew them and did an amazing job.
"That's a promise. I'd cross my heart, but I'm laying on it."
"You know I could--" I cut myself off and stop drawing to cross my arms under my chest and sigh. Lots of things about our lives have changed since we met, but he's still exasperating. "Damn it, I don't know how to threaten you with anything that would actually work."
He laughs, and I feel it move through him under me. "Don't worry. I won't embarrass you to strangers. Only to friends who would appreciate it as much as I do. How about that?"
I bend over him and plant a small kiss on his smiling cheek. "That sounds reasonable. I can accept."
I keep working, building out the drawing with more and more feather shapes until the wings spread full over his broad shoulders. They're not perfect, but I think of the time that Malak trailed his wings in something sticky and it took our four hands to hold him still and clean them--I was fascinated by the way bird wings fold inside themselves, the bristly feathers at the base doubling in size up to the long auxilary feathers that let them catch wind currents and glide. The bones and tendons are so delicate. We both fall quiet when I hit a flow, listening to the breeze rustle the curtains, and the moon climbs higher overhead until I can't see it from the window anymore. It doesn't take long for Julian to fall asleep again, and he doesn't stir until I decide I'm happy with the wings and climb off of his back.
His hair is mashed flat on one side of his head when he lifts it from the pillow to look up groggily at me. "Is it finished?"
I nod. "You wanna see it?"
I'm amazed that there are two mirrors to be found in the sanctuary besides the one hung over the basin; the other is a small scrying mirror, but it can serve its mundane purpose well enough. I hand him the scrying mirror so he can look over his own shoulder and hold the lamp up to my masterpiece. It takes him a moment to find his angle, but when he does, I catch his eye in the scrying mirror when he sees it.
"This looks...wow, they're so detailed. I don't know what I thought it would look like, but this looks fantastic. They move when I move my shoulders!" Julian rolls his shoulders forward with a wide-eyed grin, fascinated by the way the lines ripple over his shoulder blades. "You gave me wings!"
Warmth blooms in my chest watching him react so happily, and I laugh. "You like them?"
"I love them. I really might get these inked so I can keep them--if that's alright with you," he says, lowering the scrying mirror and turning to me. "I only want to do it if you're proud of them, because I don't want you to end up regretting them, but you absolutely should be proud."
I put the lamp down on the table and take the mirror from his hands, my mind reeling a bit from the sheer impulsiveness. Does he really want something I did on a whim permanently etched into his back? "I don't want you to regret it--it's your skin!"
"With your handiwork on it. Didn't you tell me earlier that I just like knowing that I'm marked up?" He drops his voice, low and soft and sweet, and wraps his arm around my waist. "I won't regret it if it's yours. It'll be just one of the many things you've given me to remember you by."
Well, when he puts it like that..."Just promise me you'll wait until it's fully healed, ok? They shouldn't let you get it before you're ready, anyway, but--"
He cups my cheek very gently in his hand, brushing his thumb over the corner of my mouth and wearing a blissfully sappy smile. I know he didn't catch any of that last sentence by the way his eyes flicker between mine. His eyes look black in this low light--lovely, dark and deep. They stop me every time.
"Thank you. I adore you, if it isn't obvious."
Kiss him so hard his head spins.