#i hope y’all like the silly shirts i put ink in too

[supernova-star]

Hey, remember my avatarsona? Well, ink got a *biiiiiit* of a redesign! Still married to Saint ( @satanic-saints ‘s extinction avatar), still uses they/ce/ink pronouns, but with a new look and a slightly tweaked backstory! Wahoo!

[aliciameade]

Wear My Heart On Your Skin

Title: Wear My Heart On Your Skin Author: aliciameade Rating: T for tattoos Pairing: Beca/Chloe Summary: Beca comes up with a wild way to confess her feelings to Chloe. PP3-era. aka the fic I promised I’d write based on that tattoo show.

Also on AO3

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“Are we seriously doing this?”

“Just trust me!” Beca says with a grin as she pulls Chloe into a tattoo parlor.

They’re not drunk, but they’re not exactly one hundred percent sober, either. But Beca’s just tipsy enough to let her guard down and stop thinking so much and Chloe had been tracing Beca’s headphones tattoo on her forearm for so long (it was hypnotizing, to be honest), that Beca had to make her stop by covering Chloe’s hand with her own and saying, “Dude, we should get tattoos together!”

Twenty minutes of Chloe vacillating between bouncing-off-the-walls excited and insisting they need to be more thoughtful with such decisions because “Tattoos are forever, Beca,” has got them as far as Just Ink About It, the Brooklyn shop a few blocks from their apartment. “I don’t even know what to get,” she whines, but Beca knows she’s going to go through with it regardless.

As far as Beca can recall, Chloe’s never once not agreed to any request Beca’s made of her, and though she tries not to abuse this benefit in their friendship, she’s a human being that can’t help but take advantage of such a thing from time to time.

“Then I’ll decide for you.” She keeps hold of Chloe’s hand (not that Chloe’s trying to pull it away) and turns her attention to the thoroughly tattooed and moderately pierced woman standing at the reception desk flipping through a home decorating magazine. “Hi! Two tattoos, please,” she says before laughing. It’s so absurd and she’s on some kind of a high of silliness but she can’t find herself to care.

The woman looks at up Beca’s voice. “Do you have appointments?”

Beca’s heart sinks. From the second she’d suggested this adventure she was thrilled by it and the possibility they could be turned away due to their spontaneity makes her sad. “Uh, no. Do you think you could fit us in? We’re not getting anything big. An hour each, max.”

The woman opens her mouth as if to question Beca’s knowledge and she watches her eyes fall to Beca’s shoulder, bare thanks to the strapless button-down she’s wearing, and the ornate lotus flowers adorning it that required Beca to sit for several hours. Her arms are next, both of them sporting ink, and the woman seems to relax and regard them with less disdain.

“Are you choosing off the wall or do you know what you want?” She gestures at the walls covered with panels of flash tattoos, all butterflies and fairies and ohm symbols and tribal designs.

“Oh, we have our own designs.”

Beca sees Chloe’s head whip around to stare at her. “We do?”

“Yeah, remember? We’re picking for each other.”

“What’s she getting?” the receptionist asks as she hands Chloe a clipboard with a legal release form attached to it.

“It’s small, I promise. Can I talk to the artist first? In private? It’s a surprise.”

“We’re deciding for each other?” Chloe asks, voice so incredulous it’s bordering on amused, but she continues filling out her personal information on the release form. “I can’t believe I’m letting you do this.”

Beca just grins at her and then at the woman helping them.

“Fine. I’ll walk you back while she finishes her paperwork.”

“Thank you,” Beca says in a hushed voice as she follows her into a back room.

“Joey, I got a couple of walk-ins for you. They’re in charge of what the other’s getting. She must really trust you.”

Beca nods. “Yeah, she does. And I trust her.”

“Y’all are crazy,” the artist says before extending his hand to shake hers in greeting. “But that’s pretty badass. Who’s going first?”

Beca watches him start sanitizing and prepping the working area. “She is. And don’t let her see what you’re doing. I want it to be just us when she sees what it is.”

“All right.” The guy seems amused, and completely unaware that he’s holding Beca’s future in his very hands. “So, what’s the design?”

~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - 

The wait for Beca feels like an eternity. She paces in the waiting room, trying to pass the time first by flipping through the display racks of flash tattoos, then paging through issues of Inked magazine, knee bouncing endlessly until movement catches her eye. She looks up to see Chloe walking toward her with the same smile she always wears when she’s greeting Beca.

“All done!” she says with a slight skip in her step.

“Did it hurt?” Beca shakes her head at her question; of course, it hurt. “Where did you get it?”

“Right here,” Chloe says, lifting the hem of her shirt while tugging the waist of her jeans down an inch or so, just enough to reveal the tape and dressing covering her fresh tattoo. “He wouldn’t let me look at it. Even when it was finished.” She chuckles. “I can’t believe I just got a tattoo and have no idea what it is. Why do I always feel like I can do anything when I’m with you?”

Beca’s not sure if Chloe means the words the way she interprets them, but the gentle look in her eyes gives Beca a shred of hope, as does Chloe grabbing her hand to squeeze it.

“Because I’m a badass,” Beca smirks and it makes Chloe roll her eyes and laugh.

“Sure. Okay, your turn. Get back there.”

“I’m going, I’m going,” Beca says, dropping Chloe’s hand to walk to the back of the shop, only to yelp when there’s a sharp swat to her ass.

“Badass,” Chloe laughs, winking at her before easing herself into the same chair Beca had been waiting in.

“No peeking,” Beca says, pointing in her general direction.

Chloe picks up Beca’s abandoned magazine. “Back atcha!”

~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - 

“Ready?”

Beca nods and keeps her eyes fixed on the ceiling and sets her jaw as she watches the tattoo artist lean over her, followed by the burn and buzz of the tattoo gun etching into her hip.

She’s not sure what the hell they’re doing; it had made so much sense when they decided to get tattoos but Beca’s big idea of choosing tattoos for each other was a new level of impulsivity. Not to mention what she chose to imprint—permanently—on Chloe’s body. Chloe had agreed, but Beca’s having all kinds of regrets even as what Chloe chose for Beca sinks into her skin.

It’s not like Chloe made the same dumb decision.

It’s going to be a nightmare; the longer she sits, the worse the future plays out in her mind until she’s pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes to stop the tears from falling.

“We’re in the homestretch; ten more minutes. Can you make it or do you need a break?”

She had forgotten about the pain of her own tattoo, the pain in her chest long overtaking it.

“I’m good,” she grinds out. She needs this to be over so she can run away and hide. Where? She’s unsure; she can’t even go home, because it’s Chloe’s home, too. She tries to focus on the tangible pain, the endless burn of needles scratching at the thin, sensitive skin of her hip. It doesn’t hurt at all compared to what’s in her head.

When it’s over, she checks her face in the mirror to make sure it doesn’t look like she’s been crying. Her eyes are a bit smudged but no worse for wear than they usually are at the end of a fun night out. Her heart, on the other hand, won’t stop racing at seeing Chloe waiting for her at the desk, wallet out as she hands a credit card to the woman working.

“How was it?” Chloe asks, same smile as always.

“Not too bad,” Beca lies. It was the most excruciating hour of her life, and not because of the needles.

Chloe scribbles on a receipt and tucks her wallet into her purse while she meets Beca halfway through the waiting room. “Where’d you put it?”

Beca pats the spot on her hip lightly.

“Same as me!” Chloe squeals with undue excitement. She threads her fingers through Beca’s and steers them toward the door. “I can’t wait for you to see what I picked for you.”

“Yeah,” Beca says weakly. “Same.”

~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - 

“So, how do we do this?” Chloe asks as soon as they’re home. “I want to see!” She’s already unbuttoning her jeans and working them down her legs in the middle of the kitchen while Beca makes a beeline for the bottle of whiskey on the top of their fridge to immediately take a swig of it, straight from the bottle. She needs to find the courage she had a couple hours ago.

She tries to avert her eyes at least a bit, not that Chloe ever seems to have modesty around Beca.

“Okay, okay, just…” Beca moves to the tiny dresser they share and grabs two pairs of pajama shorts; she doesn’t even know whose they are. Their wardrobes have become so interchangeable that some items genuinely belong to neither of them. Or both of them. “Let’s put these on and we can take off each other’s dressing.”

“What’s wrong with being in our underwear?” Chloe asks, but catches and pulls on the shorts Beca tosses to her anyway. Though, in true Chloe fashion, she immediately removes her blouse as though she has some kind of limit on how much of her body can be covered at any one time when she’s at home.

“Don’t know about yours,” Beca says as she shucks her jeans and then, angling herself away from Chloe, her underwear, “but the waistband of my underwear goes right over it and I don’t want it rubbing.” She slips her shorts on quickly and then grabs a washcloth off the top of the small stack of towels to soak it under the bathtub tab with warm water.

“Oh,” Chloe says, a bit absently, and when Beca turns back, Chloe’s tracing a line across her hip. “I think mine’s okay. Who goes first?”

Beca drops onto the edge of the bed, then winces a bit at the sting from her raw skin pulling. She just wants to get it over with. “You. Come here.”

Chloe obeys and Beca has to hold her breath for a few seconds. It’s quite something to have Chloe standing in front of her, topless save for her sand-colored bra which is only an inch or two above Beca’s line of sight. It’s quite something to have Chloe slipping the very shorts Beca just gave her down her legs until they sit high around her thighs.

Her underwear doesn’t match her bra, and Beca has a lot of second thoughts about the fact that she chose to remove her own underwear. She had been thinking of practical tattoo aftercare at the time, and not a moment like this.

Chloe’s quiet chuckle gets Beca’s attention and she glances up to see Chloe’s eyes on her. “This is kind of sexy,” Chloe says.

Beca blushes and drops her eyes to the white gauze and clear tape covering Chloe’s newest tattoo and chooses to ignore the comment—she agrees with it—and carefully lifts the edge of tape to peel it back from Chloe’s skin until she’s using the wet cloth to moisten the gauze enough so it releases without too much discomfort.

“No peeking,” she murmurs as she peels the bandage off completely. She spends what might be too long dabbing at the fresh tattoo to clean it up a bit, reading it again and again.

It had come out quite nicely; she hopes Chloe tipped well when she paid the bill. (Beca makes a mental note to pay her back.) She also can’t believe she asked for those words to be inked onto Chloe’s body forevermore.

“Does it look good?” Chloe asks, and Beca can hear the eagerness in her voice, though it seems a bit thick, like she’s been crying or something. When Beca looks up, though, her face is void of any tears and her eyes are fixated on Beca’s.

“Yeah,” Beca says after a few seconds. Then she’s working Chloe’s shorts up her legs for her, careful to not let them scuff against the tattoo. “My turn?”

“Your turn,” Chloe says, a smile brightening the strange darkness that had settled over her features. She’s walking away before Beca can respond, the wet rag Beca had used in her hand to drape it over the side of the tub and grab another and soak it just as Beca had done.

Beca scarcely has time to think before she’s back and pulling Beca to her feet, only for Chloe to kneel instead of trade places with Beca. Beca’s mouth instantly goes dry and she feels dizzy. Chloe is reaching for Beca’s shorts when Beca’s brain finally catches up.

“Whoa, dude,” she says, grabbing them. “I’m not wearing anything under these.”

Chloe’s smile looks a little crooked when she says, “I know.”

“I didn’t really think this through…” she starts, thoroughly unsure of how to solve the problem.

“I’m not going to look,” Chloe says. Then she shrugs. “I’ve seen it before anyway.”

“Not the same thing.”

“Beca,” Chloe says, looking up at her. She doesn’t try to negotiate further; she doesn’t have to because the way she says Beca’s name is enough of a negotiation.

“Fine; just...no commentary.”

Chloe snorts a laugh and Beca lets go of the death grip she’s had on the waist of her shorts and feels them slip down a few inches until the waistband is being stretched enough to not make contact with her skin; it stops somewhere above her knees. She stares straight ahead.

She hears Chloe clear her throat and fully expects some type of comment but none follows, just the quiet sound of adhesive tape peeling back from Beca’s skin until Chloe’s wringing warm water from the cloth against Beca’s hip to soak the gauze. It takes longer to remove than Chloe’s did, or maybe it just feels that way given the circumstance of Chloe being on her knees face-to-face with her bare junk. 

As friends do.

The last edges of the gauze finally give and then she can feel Chloe dabbing at the hot, raw skin at her hip with caution and care. Her other hand, the one not cleaning things up, is holding on to Beca by the leg, hand wrapped around the back of her thigh in a place Chloe’s never touched her. Until now.

There’s an extended moment of nothing, no damp rag, no blotting, and Beca has to fight with every cell in her body to not look down. She can’t; the visual in her mind is enough to make her light-headed. Then there’s soft, wet warmth on her undamaged skin, just to the left of where she knows her tattoo is.

A kiss.

“All better,” Chloe says after a lifetime passes and Beca releases the breath she didn’t realize she was holding. She’s grateful it’s over because the situation was turning her on (an understatement) and she knows she was dangerously close to getting wet with Chloe right there.

She’s reaching for her shorts to pull them up before Chloe has a chance to do it and then she takes a few brisk steps away. There’s no air left in that area of the apartment.

“Well?” 

She hears Chloe’s voice behind her and forces herself to turn around to see Chloe still on her knees, though turned partway as though she’d followed Beca’s quick exit.

“The suspense is killing me,” Chloe continues with a soft smile. “Can we please look?”

Beca wonders if she looks as terrified as she feels as she nods.

“Same time, yeah?” Chloe asks as she stands up, tossing her cloth into the nearby bathtub.

“It better not be something lame like a butterfly,” Beca manages to grumble as she retreats back to the bedroom area.

“Guess you’ll just have to wait and see,” Chloe chirps as she catches Beca by the elbows to stop her an arm’s length away, right in front of her. “On three?” she says, hooking her thumb into the right side of her shorts.

“On three, or after three?” Beca teases; her ability to think returning is a welcome relief.

“On,” Chloe says, and then her eyes widen. “I just realized we’re not going to be able to see our own tattoos because of where we got them.” Then she nods resolutely. “I’ll have to read it to you.”

“Read?” Beca asks, her heart picking up speed. “Mine is words?”

Chloe covers her mouth like she just revealed a spoiler. “Describe. I meant describe it to you. To each other.”

Beca feels uneasy at Chloe’s sudden bout of nerves because Chloe’s rarely nervous. “Right. So…” Beca hooks her own thumb into her shorts, “one?”

“Two,” Chloe adds.

“Three,” Beca says and they both tug their shorts down and crane their necks to try to see but Chloe was right; it’s impossible to make out the detail of the script that’s on Beca’s hip, surrounded by what look to be vines. It’s only a few inches wide. “Well?” she says, suddenly eager and forgetting for a moment about Chloe’s tattoo. “What does it say?”

She lifts her head and sees the nervousness in Chloe’s eyes. Chloe seems so still, now, that it’s unsettling, until she finally blinks, a fluttering of eyelashes that steals Beca’s breath.

“It says,” Chloe finally says, then pauses to clear her throat, “it says, ‘You’re my everything.’”

Beca really wishes she could get just one good lungful of air but nothing about their time home tonight has allowed for it. Now is no different. Worse, even.

Her throat tightens because, surely...surely that’s not what it says? But Chloe’s staring at her with such conviction, had spoken the words directly into Beca’s soul, that Beca knows it’s real and the words are true.

“What about mine?” Chloe asks and Beca can see tears welling in her eyes. She takes a step forward out of sheer instinct, the need to comfort her overwhelming as always. “What does it say?” she repeats. “I can tell it’s words.”

Beca glances at Chloe’s tattoo—not because she’d forgotten what it said, but out of the need to look away just for a moment to be able to speak. She wets her lips. “It says…” She looks up again and the tears in Chloe’s eyes have fallen, streaking down her cheeks to drip off her chin and she’s trembling. “It says,” she starts again, “it says…‘I love you.’”

Chloe’s exhale is quick and then she’s rushing forward to pull Beca into a hug.

It almost knocks Beca off her feet, but Chloe doesn’t let that happen. Instead, she pulls her close and Beca can feel the kiss Chloe’s pressing to her cheek and the warm skin of her bare back beneath Beca’s arms.

“I love you, too,” Chloe whispers in her ear and Beca’s knees weaken so she holds on more tightly to Chloe. “You’re my everything.”

It all feels like a fever dream. An out-of-body experience. She feels tears on her own cheeks and despite it all, despite Chloe’s words and the way she’s holding her, Beca can’t help but wonder if Chloe just means Beca’s her absolute best friend.

“Chlo.” Her voice breaks over the name and she feels Chloe pulling back, though she doesn’t let go of Beca.

Chloe’s smiling when her face comes back into view. Beca’s about to muster the nerve to ask exactly what Chloe meant when Chloe’s leaning in and this time, there’s no questioning her meaning.

Chloe’s lips are soft and warm against Beca’s, just as they’d been on her hip, and Beca hears her sigh. She understands, can relate to the relief. Beca feels it, too. Years of tension, of frustration, of worry melting away as their lips meet again and again.

She’s only somewhat conscious of their feet shuffling toward their bed because as soon as they move, Chloe’s tongue skips across her lower lip before slipping past it.

They’re just finding their rhythm when Chloe suddenly drops away. Beca opens her eyes, startled, to see Chloe sitting on the edge of their bed looking up at her. She’s smiling and her cheeks are pink.

“Join me,” she says, tugging on Beca’s hands, but the tiniest shred of clarity slips into Beca’s foggy mind.

“Wait, wait,” she says, pulling her hands away and managing to turn away from Chloe to grab her lotion off its shelf. “I just...I mean, yes,” she says, only then noticing how out of breath she is. “But I want it to heal well.”

It takes Chloe a second or two to understand what Beca means and then she’s nodding and grabbing the bottle out of Beca’s hand. “I’ll do it.”

“Whoa,” Beca says when Chloe slips Beca’s shorts down her legs, this time all the way, and Beca’s instinct is to immediately shield herself with her hands but Chloe gets in the way. She leans forward to kiss Beca’s stomach, then rests her forehead there for a few seconds as though she’s gathering herself, and all Beca can do is bite her lip to stop the moan that threatens and run her fingers through Chloe’s hair.

A few more seconds pass until Chloe sits back and Beca watches her squeeze a dollop of lotion onto her fingertips and lift her hand to Beca’s hip.

“Cold,” Beca hisses when the cream touches her skin, but then she feels Chloe’s fingers through it, gently coating the fresh marks of Chloe’s declaration of feelings for Beca.

“Sorry,” Chloe says and Beca watches her set aside the lotion and bring her free hand to Beca’s knee to trace a slow line up the inside of her thigh. She stops before she travels too far and looks up at Beca as she traces the soft, sensitive skin. “Better?”

“Mhmm,” Beca manages. Chloe’s touch is slowly driving her insane and she’s about to crumble when the touches disappear and Chloe’s moving further back onto the bed until she’s lying down.

“Do me?” she says with a wink.

It shatters the intensity around them and Beca’s relieved. It was getting to be suffocating, and though she still feels the electricity flowing between them, she feels immeasurably lighter.

“Now, what makes you think I want to do that?” Beca replies, smiling as she crawls onto the bed until she’s reaching for Chloe’s shorts to ease them down past her tattoo, but, like Chloe, this time she slips them all the way down.

“This,” Chloe says, fingers grazing just above her tattoo.

Beca laughs as she moves to sit astride Chloe’s knees, lotion in hand. “You might be right.” She leans forward to reach the fresh ink and watches Chloe shiver at the first contact of lotion against her skin. “Cold?”

Chloe nods and Beca can’t help but notice the way her fingers are curling into the quilt beneath them.

She follows Chloe’s lead, letting her free hand slip between Chloe’s legs, much higher than Chloe had stopped, though not quite touching the blue and white striped cotton. She’s never touched that spot of warm, smooth skin before. “Better?”

“Yeah,” Chloe breathes as her eyes fall closed and her hips shift. “So much better.”

The End