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The tattoos that one could find on the body of just about anyone in Natlan were notably missing on Kinich for the longest time.
If not for his overall reputation as an outsider to his tribe, Kinich would always have stuck out like such a sore thumb regardless simply due to how… bare his skin was. Not one hint of colour. Not one wisp of anything that meant anything to their tribe, their people, or their history.
He had no desire to get them simply to fit in with the others, despite the pushing of the tribe's elders and the endless nagging from everyone else. In fact, all that bothering only made him want them less and less- must his belonging truly be marked by ink in his skin? Is he not a warrior without painted battle scars?
It remained this way for such an incredibly long time that eventually, Kinich’s reputation became so fierce and so cold that everyone stopped talking to him about it. And while some believe it was precisely that that motivated him to finally get them, it was actually Ajaw.
Kinich remembers it all like it was yesterday, the memory burned into his skin with the ink. “No servant of ours should look so… so…” The way Ajaw prodded at his bare arms. “Plain!” And then threw his tiny hands up in the air in frustration. “Our servants were always decorated… marks to clearly distinguish them from the rabble…” After poking around Kinich's house for a little while, he groaned. “Servant! You will fetch us some ink! We will correct this grave misdeed in no time. You must present yourself properly!”
On Ajaw's insistence, they left the same day. Ajaw gave him the grace of choosing a colour, but barely any, given that he kept disapproving of all his picks for one reason or another. Too bright. Too dull. Too gaudy. Are you trying to look like a poisonous frog?! Black is so boring, pick something else! So on, so forth. But, before getting into the colours Kinich seriously didn't like, they both landed eyes on something that they could agree on.
“It looks pleasing against your skin.” Ajaw had said, a strange compliment given their even stranger relationship at the time. “Fine! We're taking this one.”
When they got home, Ajaw was so impatient he was about to burst. “Off, off! All of it! Now!” It referring to his clothes.
Kinich sighed, rolled his eyes, and tugged his shirt off. “You don't need any more than this.”
Ajaw scoffed. “You humans and your modesty…”
“And besides, how do you plan to do this without any tools?”
Nothing but the ink, and Ajaw's perfectly steady hand. That was all they needed. Kinich learned quickly to never doubt Ajaw on the more… mundane things he claimed to be capable of doing.
Kinich didn't dislike the tattoos. In fact, he rather liked them. He was caught on multiple occasions staring at himself in a mirror, running a hand over them, as if expecting the ink to simply fly off of his skin. But it held firm- a permanent bond, though he's not sure how.
The resemblance to a pattern on Ajaw himself was clear, but he expected no less from him.
A part of him wondered if his so-called servants back in the day had similar markings, and he felt, for perhaps the first time in his life, an ugly surge of possessiveness that made him instantly stop wondering. He has no reason to be upset over this. No reason to feel as though he is suddenly less special, as though he was special to Ajaw in the first place.
When his blessing began to glow again later on, Kinich stared at himself in the reflection of a lake. “What? What's there to look at?” Ajaw sat on top of his head, poking at his face, impatient. Nothing had changed from the first time it did- long before he had met Ajaw. That was precisely why he was staring, dumbfounded, at himself.
The ink Ajaw had left on him matched, and the wristband glowed in turn.
Not only that, but the pattern within the light- he always thought that his looked odd, but could never quite place it. But seeing it, with Ajaw right by him, it clicked. The squares. No one else he's ever met has those.
“How…”
They both concluded that they didn't know, and Ajaw had made those patterns based both on his former servants (and Kinich got that similar feeling in his gut again, which he promptly ignored) as well as pure instinct. It was the first thing to come into his head. And as for the glow within them… Well, he had no explanation. He was just as lost as him.
The mystery never did quite leave Kinich’s head. It nagged enough at the back of his brain that he even attempted to do research into it, but came up short. Even the Saurian Relics Association could only shrug at him and say, “Maybe ask Ajaw.” Ajaw would then tell him to ask ‘those creepy relic thieves’, and Kinich sooner gave up than tried going in circles with them.
He had no reason to think about it, after long enough. It became a part of regular life. The sight was no longer mysterious and new, but a part of his body, as natural to him as his own hair. If no one alive knew, then maybe he was simply not supposed to know.
And so was the topic buried for a long time. Years went by, their relationship bloomed, and Ajaw got to see those lights on his skin in far more than just combat. They did not think about it again, until a run-in with the Abyss.
A pack of Rifthounds, far too close to the tribe, dispatched by Kinich and Ajaw alone- not without a fair bit of struggle and injury. Kinich’s blessing burned from under his skin, growing more and more feverish as the fight continued.
By the time they were all gone, Kinich had lost most of the strength to stand. He kneeled, using his claymore to steady himself, as he desperately tried to catch his breath. Blood swamped his senses, making it hard to even breathe, or hear the world around him.
He did hear Ajaw, though. Heard his large form land, and walked over to him in an urgency he hadn't seen before. “Kinich,” two of Ajaw's claws wrapped around his jaw, tilting his head away from his weapon. “Open your eyes.”
And he did. “What?”
“Can you see me?”
What an odd question, Kinich thought. “Yes.” He had to choke down another deep breath between every word. “Very clearly.” Ajaw was the only thing in focus. “Why?”
Ajaw nudged Kinich’s hand up to his face. He expected there to only be blood when he pulled it away, perhaps more of it than what he was expecting and that was the cause of Ajaw's concern, but there was something else entirely.
An extremely bright fluid, shifting in colours.
“Your eyes are bleeding.”
His blessing.
It was not blood that obscured his vision, but phlogiston, pooling in his eyes and bleeding out over the sides like tears.
Ajaw had noticed the blessing extending into his eyes a while ago, but opted not to mention it, as surely Kinich himself had noticed at that point. But if he had known it'd eventually cause this, he would've said something.
“How did this…” Ajaw did not let go of his face, brain running at maximum capacity to try and think of something. “This shouldn't have… happened…”
Kinich didn't get another second to speak before Ajaw had lifted him into his arms, and flew off.
Once the bleeding stopped, Kinich was blind for a few days. Advised to stay indoors. Avoid straining himself. Keep lights low, if not off entirely. At least by this point in their relationship, Ajaw was happy to take care of him with minimal complaints. Only minimal though, not none.
“So, it's in my eyes, too.” They were talking about it with Kinich buried in the chest of Ajaw's true form, not that he had much to see anyways. “And that is… extremely rare?”
“Borderline unheard of, more like.” Ajaw rested his head atop of Kinich’s, his breath tickling the messy hair. They hadn't bothered to brush it. “They said it should be safe, but…”
“I went beyond my limits.”
“Mm.”
The eyes were never supposed to sustain a blessing coursing through them. They're much too fragile. So how on earth did Kinich’s end up there?
“I could only see you, by the way.”
The answer was far, far closer than either of them thought.
“Everything else was a blur. But you…”
After all, he and Ajaw were so intimately intertwined, that it was becoming hard to tell just where one of them ended and the other began.
“Crystal clear.”
A blessing, in the shape of Ajaw's eyes, shining through in his.