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Usually, he wouldn’t be so happy about people drawing attention to his scars.
Chip hated it when people’s eyes lingered a little too long on the claw marks on his chest from the one time he really, seriously fucked up, or the ones that remind him of a time his chest wasn’t so flat. He hated how people would double take at the amount of scars crossing his skin like constellations, taking up a large amount of his body. The scars were nearly everywhere, but particularly dense on his arms, where he’d burned himself time after time or wasn’t careful enough with a knife.
Usually, he hated thinking about it. Hated thinking about any of his scars, really. Most of them made him remember moments where he wasn’t good enough, he slipped up, he let someone else get the jump on him. His scars were a collection of accidents and fuck ups.
He hated it when people called attention to them.
But not when it was Gillion. Not when blue fingers lightly traced the lines that zigzagged across his chest, ran down his stomach, and disfigured the skin of his arms.
To be fair, they weren’t all accidents and fuck ups, or reminders of something he’d rather forget. Some of them came from something good, like the lightning imprinted into the skin of his back that crawled around his sides and reached for his stomach. That particular scar represented the night that he’d succeeded in getting the single most important person in his life back.
Either way, Gillion’s touch made him smile.
At the moment, they were alone in the captain’s quarters. Jay was off tinkering, and Ollie had asked Pretzel to play with him. The rest of the crew was doing whatever the rest of the crew did, leaving the two of them alone.
The quiet, calm atmosphere put Chip at ease as Gillion pressed himself close. On account of Gillion’s love of being as physically close as possible, Chip had forwent his shirt, opting to just lay in loose trousers. Gillion, on the other hand, wore a thin tank top and his usual baggy pants.
“What’s this one from?” Gillion's voice broke the quietness, but Chip couldn’t find himself to be upset about it at all. The scar in question was a little splotch on his forearm.
Chip hummed as he looked at it, recalling the memory. “Burned myself,” he said. “I got too close to a candle when I was a kid. A lot of the ones on my arms are burns.”
Nodding softly, Gillion continued tracing Chip’s scars, eventually making it across his stomach and towards his hips. As his fingers trailed over Chip’s skin, he asked questions about each of the scars. Where they came from. How old he was when got them. How long it took to heal. A hint of amazement appeared in Gillion’s voice the more stories he heard about Chip’s scars, a soft smile evident in the sound of his voice.
And then Gillion’s fingers found themselves tracing a different sort of scar. These ones made Chip’s face flush in embarrassment. These ones weren’t pretty, and they didn’t even have a significant story that Gillion could appreciate.
Sitting up ever so slightly to get a better look at them, Gillion spent longer looking at these scars. He furrowed his eyebrows for a moment before widening his eyes and looking up at Chip.
“I didn’t know you had markings like me,” Gillion said as he pointed to the patterns that banded his arm in a darker blue. The marks were beautiful, just like the rest of him, but just a part of being a Triton, whereas Chip’s marks-
He laughed quietly. “No, those aren’t- they’re scars too. Much less interesting ones. They’re called stretch marks.”
Gillion listened with interest before looking down at the marks around Chip’s hips.
“I think they’re interesting,” he said, his voice full of something that couldn’t possibly be more genuine. His fingers rested there again, tracing the little lines. They were sort of hard to see unless you were paying attention, because they didn’t turn red or blue like Chip had seen on other people.
“They’re sort of iridescent. When the light hits them, they’re easier to see. I think it is beautiful.” He glanced up at Chip, emphasizing the next few words: “Every part of you is beautiful.”
Heat made his cheeks flush. He mumbled something that probably didn’t even have words in the mix, just a vague sound of disagreement.
Gillion got the message, and he responded by dropping his smile and raising his eyebrows. His expression turned into something incredibly unamused in seconds. “Don’t speak about yourself like that.” The words were firm, and made anything Chip might have said get stuck in his throat. “Tell me about them. What caused them?”
Sighing, he gave in. “They really aren’t all that interesting. It’s just- I dunno, I grew too fast for my skin to catch up, so it stretched instead of growing with me.” He paused. “They’re really common on pregnant people, because the baby inside of them grows faster than their mom’s skin.”
That might have been part of the reason that he disliked them so much. In his head, stretch marks were associated with pregnancy, which he then associated with being a woman. Which made him remember how much he hated his body sometimes. It was an association game of dysphoria.
Gillion, on the other hand, only looked even more fascinated by the fine lines that ran up his hips. They disappeared into his waistband, crawling down his thighs, too.
“That’s incredible. They’re beautiful little signs of your growth.” He smiled, and traced his fingers up the scars he’d already asked about. “All of them are. Just in different senses of the word. Here, you learned to be a little more careful when handling sharp objects. And here, you learned that candles can be fearsome when you forget about them.” Chip chuckled as Gillion continued pointing out different scars and different stories written into the skin of his arms and chest. “Here, you should have learned not to steal, but instead you learned how to be sneakier about it in fear of getting caught. Here, you learned how to be comfortable in your own skin, and that it was possible. And here…” He trailed off as he found the biggest scars, the ones that the Navy Admiral inflicted nightmares through. “Here, you learned that sometimes stealth isn’t enough to get you out of bad ideas. But you also learned that we’re here for you no matter what, and we’d do anything to make sure we don’t ever lose you.
“You’ve been hurt so many times, but you just keep growing, even when it’s faster than your circumstances expect. Or your skin, in the case of these.” His fingers returned to the stretch marks and he smiled, wide and bright enough to make Chip’s heart melt. “I love all your scars, because they made you the person that you are. I hate that you’ve been hurt so much, it makes me want to find every person who ever hurt you and strike them down, but- but you’re okay. You aren’t in pain anymore because you have healed. Your skin did the incredible feat of keeping itself together no matter how many things tried tearing it apart.”
And how was Chip even supposed to respond to that? How was he supposed to do anything but melt at the words, and try not to cry at the pure affection that Gillion gave him?
He still couldn’t respond when Gillion leaned down and carefully pressed his lips against the stretch marks, before moving to do the same with each scar on Chip’s chest. Little kisses trailed up his chest as Gillion made sure not to miss a single one. Even the hardly visible ones from minor cuts were gently kissed. And each kiss was filled with so much kindness and care that Chip didn’t know what to do with it.
Once he’d kissed all of them, and Chip’s face was officially a dark shade of red, Gillion sat back with a smile. Gently, he moved Chip’s hands away from his face so that he could hold the human’s cheeks. If it was possible for Chip’s face to grow darker, then it would have as Gillion kissed him softly. Their lips pressed together for a kiss that lasted longer than the others, and one that Chip let himself get lost in.
When Gillion pulled away, he said,”You know what’s interesting?”
Chip hummed in response, not trusting himself to speak.
“Your scars all taught you something, and show signs of your growth. But some of them taught me something too.” He removed his hands from Chip’s face to trace down the scars from Kuba Kenta once again. “These ones taught me how afraid of losing you I was. To how many lengths I would go to just to ensure your safety.” His hands moved again, tracing the ends of the scars that mirrored lightning and ran all across Chip’s back. “And these taught me how much you would do for me. And how afraid you are of losing me.”
Chip took a breath and smiled. “I guess- I guess that’s a good way to look at it.”
Tilting his head, Gillion looked at him with a somewhat confused expression. “What other way could you view them?”
Laughing bitterly, Chip realized how pessimistic his views were in comparison to Gillion’s. “Accidents. The consequences of times when I wasn’t careful enough, times when I fucked up. They’re a visible reminder of every time I failed.” He looked at each of the scars Gillion had treated with love. “I should have known to be careful with candles. I should have been smarter than trying to touch a goddamn demon’s hand just because it looked soft. And I should have-“ His voice cracked from the weight of his emotion. “And I shouldn’t have lost you in the first place. I should have been better about keeping you safe.”
A soft smile pulled at Gillion’s expression. “Maybe,” he said, keeping his voice gentle, and his touch more so as he began tracing the scars again. “But I don’t think so. And even if you do genuinely feel that way, just remember something, okay?”
Chip furrowed his eyebrows. What could Gillion possibly say to change his beliefs? They weren’t even just beliefs, they were truths. He appreciated the way that the other treated him with such kindness and admiration, but he just- he couldn’t see himself doing the same.
“Just remember that we’re okay. That those times have passed. You lost me, but then you got me back. You did something stupid, but we made sure you were okay anyway. We’re safe, and we’ve healed. Faster than we are ready to move in from the moment, possibly.” Gillion’s voice remained steady as he spoke, and Chip had a hard time not clinging to every word like a lifeline. He knew that Gillion loved him, but sometimes he struggled to remember that. It was moments like these that made it obvious to him again. “It’s like your stretch marks. We weren’t ready to grow, but we did anyway. And one day, maybe we can look back and admire the beauty that comes from something like that. And even if you can’t, I know I will. Because you are beautiful, and your scars are beautiful. And you are everything to me.”
Chip closed his eyes, and let the words sink in. “Okay,” he breathed. “I’ll remember that.”
When he opened his, Gillion was smiling at him, adoration and happiness clear in his expression. And those words made Chip think that maybe he could try changing the way he looked at his scars. Maybe he would try thinking of them as something beautiful and telling of a story, the way Gillion did.
“Thank you,” Gillion whispered. Logically, Chip knew it was in response to his promise of remembering but he couldn't help feeling like it was in response to his thoughts too.
Gillion laid back down, pressing himself into Chip’s side once more.
Yeah. For Gillion, he would do anything, but he’d already known this. He’d never thought that maybe something he’d do for Gillion is accept his scars. Maybe his scars could represent more than just accidents and fuck ups. Maybe he could learn to love them the way Gillion does.
And even if he couldn’t figure out how to love his scars, he knew Gillion would love them enough for the both of them. And for right now, that was enough.