Chapter Text
There is a small spot of colour on the right side of Robin’s ribcage.
Maria has never noticed it before, but that’s hardly surprising. They’ve grown closer in their time of living together, but they’ve only recently begun to share a bed, usually after long hours of watching films and talking, when it’s really too late to get used to another mattress.
And she doesn’t make a habit of ogling Robin when he gets changed, much like he doesn’t watch her. Maybe they’ll get there someday, but for now, Maria usually turns her back to him. She has just turned back to grab her brush from the nightstand, and Robin is inspecting a hole at the hem of his T-shirt. He has rucked it up a bit, and the spot of colour on his ribs looks like a bruise or scratch at first glance, but it’s too geometrical for that.
Robin looks up and Maria blushes. “Sorry.”
“What is it?”
“There’s –” She hesitates. “What’s that on your rib?”
“Oh, it’s a tattoo.”
A tattoo? She has never considered Robin having tattoos, but it’s not surprising, either. He twists the hem of his shirt between his fingers. “You can have a closer look if you want.”
Maria steps a bit closer and looks. Two letters, L and R, in a thin sans serif font, enclosed by two circular lines; all of this on the background of a flag with horizontal stripes in various shades of red and pink. Maria recognises the flag, she’s done her fair share of research on all things queer, but she doesn’t quite understand what it’s doing on Robin’s ribs.
“Who is L?”
“My mum. Lisette. The R stands for Rachael.”
Maria tries, okay? She tries really hard to school her expression into something neutral, but she is clearly failing. Robin tugs his shirt down and grins. “It’s not that complicated, actually.”
“I don’t mean to pry.”
“You would’ve heard eventually, anyway,” he says. “My mum and Rachael, Loveday’s mum, were a couple. Had been for decades. And they wanted children, so they asked my dad, on two different occasions. So basically, we had three parents. I lived with our mums for a while, then moved out to live with Dad. And when my mum died, I got this tattoo.”
Maria is sitting next to him now. She looks at where the tattoo is hidden beneath his shirt, and smiles. “I’m sorry about your mum. But that’s a nice gesture. Do they know about the tattoo?”
“Oh, yeah. Yelled at me for it, too, Dad as well as Rachael, ‘what if you regret it’, and all that. But then Loveday said she was considering getting a nipple piercing, and that distracted them.”
“Thanks for that visual image”, Maria says and grimaces. “I know way too many intimate details about your sister already.”
Robin laughs. “She didn’t actually get it!”
Maria merely raises a brow. See, she has heard her cousin and Loveday having sex. She knows things.