For jchalo: JC/Chris. "You're already in there / I'll be wearing your tattoo / I'm already in circles and circles and circles again."

JC isn't like the rest of them, who wear the roadmaps of their lives on their skin, ink and curves and every single last image always means more than just what they tell anyone who's nosy enough to ask. Sometimes he wonders if the reason he's never gotten a tattoo has nothing to do with his fear of needles and everything to do with not being confident enough in any particular symbol to want to wear it on his skin, for the rest of his life, for anybody who comes along to see.

Chris is the only one of them who understands, the only one who doesn't tease him about how he should down a few Valium and head to the tattoo parlor. "That's just not your thing," Chris says when JC asks him about why. He's peeling an orange, and doesn't look up, because he's trying to tear off the entire rind in one long thin strip, edging his thumbs around the fruit over and over and over again. JC can smell the citrus in the air. "It's not wrong, it's just not you."

Chris has a phoenix on his arm, and he doesn't say a word whenever JC catches his wrist and turns it over, running his fingertips along the stark black lines. It's almost too delicate for Chris, too pretty to fit all of Chris's edges, except it isn't done in bright rainbows and pretty pastels. It isn't what he would have picked, if he'd been asked to design something for Chris. Chris in his head is angles and sharp curves, tribal designs, unpredictable and hard to decipher. He wonders what it means to Chris, and wonders if he could ever get a meaningful answer if he asked the question.

"Sometimes I think I'd like to," JC says. "To, you know. Have something like you do. Marks to show where I've been."

Chris pauses and looks up. The orange peel drapes over the back of his hand. "You don't need to," he says. "I'm under your skin already."

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