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“You do know that I will still love you if you don’t get inked, right? Now or ever.”
Jemma tilts her head to the side, looks at him with dark eyes. “Because your repeated use of the word ‘still’ is sure going to make me feel better about it.” Hunter hastens to explain that it’s not what he meant at all, but Jemma rolls her eyes. “Yes, Hunter, I know. Now leave so I can lose my tattoo virginity.”
“Do you really have to call it that. Do you.”
She places a swift kiss on his cheek, and he can not lie, he loves her to pieces, even though she is being a smartass. Maybe especially when she is being a smartass.
“Virginity is a social construct so I can call it whatever I like. Come for me in an hour?”
“An hour?” He knows May is a skilled artist- a firm hand if he has ever seen one, and he has seen his fair share of tattoo artists-, but that feels a bit like an overstretch. “Are you sure?”
“What do you think, that I came underprepared? Come on now.”
He opens the door of the shop for her and now both Jemma and May send stern glances his way. Still, he stands his ground.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to check the design for you?” It is unsettling, to realize that he is in fact more nervous than her about this. Maybe because he still can’t totally understand why Jemma wants to do this alone, or why she wants to do this at all after watching him go under the needle several times in the last five years without ever feeling the itch herself. Though she did get the itch eventually, he supposes.
Jemma nudges him outside with her hip, and the second he caves under the pressure of May’s unflinching eyes, she closes the door of the shop on his nose.
Now there is nothing else for him to do but wait.
By the time he comes back for her, she is already outside the shop waiting for him.
“May told me to say hi,” is her greeting, and that coupled with May not being behind the counter anymore defuses his carefully crafted plan of going inside and trying to pluck up some info from May, since Jemma has already established that she won’t let him look until she has to remove the bandage after the first twenty-four hours. He was under no false impression that he would have managed to actually get something from May, but a man can dream.
At least the cover-up is not visible, which is a smart choice for a first tattoo. He will have to settle for that to appease his mind. He places an arm on her shoulders, slowly and carefully, giving her time to react first in case he is about to touch the conflicting area.
“Are you happy with it?” He has a million other things he wants to ask, but he wants the full story once she decides to show him, and in the end, this is the one that matters the most.
She smiles placidly at him, and maybe it’s because they have been married for a year already and shared almost everything, but he had almost forgotten how cryptid she could be.
“We will see.”
“Are you sure you don’t want any help?”
Jemma doesn’t dignify his eighth question with an answer, and Hunter is forced to stay outside the bathroom and wait for her to finish washing the tattoo for the first time. He already knows where it is placed, of course, but Jemma hasn’t said a word about what it is, and he hasn’t had the balls to ask May to spill- mostly because he already knows it would be pointless.
She- finally- opens the bathroom door and walks out only in her baby blue bra, which is a sight in and on itself, but for the first time ever since he saw her naked for the first time, his eyes don’t zero in on her boobs immediately, but instead, look for the side of her left ribs.
He had, of course, thought of a million things she could want to be inked on her skin and her reasons, but also of her reasons to not get them; he hasn’t been able to settle on a single prediction for her tattoo, but he is not surprised when he sees a single word, all in lowercase, shining darkly against her pale complexion in her simple but elegant handwriting,
fair
“Uhm.”
“You don’t like it.” She doesn’t sound displeased or disappointed, and Hunter looks at her face to refrain from the impulse to touch it- whether he gets it or not, this is his wife with a tattoo, and he is a simple man with simple needs.
“It’s not for me to like it, Jemma: I got mine for myself, yours should be about you and not about me.”
She nods, but she looks distracted.
“Free from bias, dishonesty, or injustice.” It is clear to him that she is reciting something from memory, like if it were one of her old textbooks. “Done properly, according to the rules. Bright. Attractive. Promising. Those are all meanings this word can have.”
Hunter places his hand possessively against the other side of her ribs, mirroring exactly the place where he can not touch her.
“Okay, I am warming up to it.”
Jemma smiles, but there is a strange nervousness behind it, and Hunter uses his hold on her body to pull her closer. To his surprise, Jemma refuses the embrace to grab her phone that is on top of their dresser.
“But there is also another reason I wanted this word in particular.”
She gives him her phone with a website open, and Hunter takes it with trembling fingers.
Guinevere is a girl's name of Welsh origin meaning "fair one".
A thick silence spreads between them like jam, and Hunter can only focus on the pounding of his heart on his ears. A Guinevere for his Lancelot. Jemma’s voice reaches him like through cotton clouds.
“It’s quite British, actually.”
It’s the edge on her words that brings Hunter back from his profound state of mixed awe and shock: she is wringing her hands, shifting her weight from one foot to the other; it makes her nervous that he hasn’t reacted yet. She did this completely in use of her free will, but it’s important to her that he is okay with it. A younger version of any of them would probably shrug it off and double down on it out of rebelliousness alone, but that is not how marriage and partnership work.
That is not what makes marriage and partnership work.
He licks his lips, tries to force his tongue out of the swollen knot it has turned into inside his mouth. “It’s also pretty tied with betrayal and broken trust.” He hopes, really hopes, that Jemma understands what he is trying to say and can’t: are you sure? This is me we are talking about, with all my flaws and my failures.
Marriage might be till death do them part, but tattoos are quite a long-term commitment too.
Jemma laces her hands behind his neck, and Hunter almost hisses when he feels the goosebumps on her skin- this is a pretty big deal for them both. She reaches for a kiss, and Hunter can feel every word she says next with every fiber of his being, “Let’s rewrite history then, you and me.”