Rivals 🌈 ✔

81 - Till Death Do Us Part

Lost in thought, Raine tossed an apple and caught it again. When he did so a second time, Juice snatched the thing out of the air and shoved his boyfriend with his shoulder. "What is it? Don't tell me that picking out some fruits and vegetables keeps your mind so busy."

Grinning, Raine grabbed two more apples. "I was just thinking about how weird it feels walking across a market with you. I mean—we've known each other for over a year and the times we've been in a public place together can be counted on one hand. And then we chose places where we were sure not to run into any of our brothers. Standing together at a vegetable stall just feels so... normal."

Juice looked at his friend with a warm smile. "Well, you better get used to it."

They had been staying in Angel's trailer for four days now and there was no sign of the Sons. The first day, Juice had found it uncomfortable that they were chasing Angel out of his trailer, but after Raine told him that he also had a club room he could go to, he could deal with it a little better. Still, he wanted his own place as soon as possible. He did not feel threatened on Mayan property, but he was not really at ease there either. The motorbikes and black kuttes kept the memories of his time with the Sons alive while he was trying so hard not to think about them.

Opposite him, the grocer cleared his throat. A bit agitated, he looked at them. Apparently, they were taking too long. They paid for some fruit and vegetables and had them wrapped in paper bags. Then they strolled further across the square. At the corner, they both bought a burrito, which they ate on the steps that bordered the square, in the shade of a sagging building. As soon as he looked down to take a bite, the grinning Reaper caught his eye.

"My tattoo still has to go," he said.

"There's a shop just down the road. I've earned a bit of extra money there in the past."

His own tattoo kit was at home, of course, as were most of his belongings. Sooner or later, they would have to pick them up—or have them picked up.

"I want you to do it." Stupidly, his cheeks grew warm.

Raine saw it and raised his eyebrows. "A secret fantasy of yours?"

A grin tugged at his lips. "Ever since I saw your tattoo, at that benefit. When I ran off in panic."

"Because you found me so irresistibly hot."

His gaze shot to Raine's eyes. "Do you remember me telling you that?"

Raine frowned. "No...? Did you?"

"You were in a coma." His shoulders slumped. "When I confessed it."

"Ah." A mischievous gleam reflected in his eyes. "Well, I realized it a long time ago." He gave him a wink and took a bite of his burrito. "What kind of tattoo do you want?"

Juice shrugged. "Doesn't matter to me. Something you designed."

"I'll have to think about that, though. I can't make that up in a minute. But we can already black out your Reaper if you want. I'll have to use that black background anyway and then you won't have to look at it all the time."

Juice nodded. "Yeah, the sooner it's gone, the better."

It felt like the last tie that needed to be cut. After that, nothing connected him to the Sons anymore. Except for the many scars on your boyfriend's body. He stubbornly pushed the thought away, but deep down, he wished that all those reminders would be hidden under ink one day.

After eating their lunch, they decided to do it right away. They were warmly welcomed into the tattoo shop. In rapid Spanish, Raine caught up with a burly man with even ink on his face. The man gestured for Juice to sit in the chair.

"I can come back here," Raine said, slumping down on a wheeled stool and moving closer, disinfecting Juice's skin. "For as long as we stay here."

"Maybe you could open a shop yourself," Juice suggested. "If we do move somewhere else. A home studio or something."

Juice wasn't much of a creative hero himself, but he did believe something like that would be cool. What he wanted to do himself he didn't know yet; at least he could set up a website for Raine. Maybe he could do the same for others and generate some income that way.

Raine's gaze found his and he responded with a warm smile. "Sounds wonderful." He took the tattoo gun from the shop's owner. "You ready?"

Juice shrugged. Getting a tattoo wasn't exactly painless, but he'd endured a lot —and so had his boyfriend. "Yeah. I'm glad to get rid of it."

Buzzing filled his ears and concentrated, Raine went to work, even if setting a square was surely the simplest design he had ever done. Dot by dot and line by line, the Reaper disappeared from sight.

Forever.

Raine had a taste for it. On the way home, he bought a sketchbook and pencils, with which he started to work in the trailer.

"How about something like this?"

Juice let his friend do his thing and installed himself behind Angel's PlayStation. He paused the game and looked aside. Raine came to sit next to him on the sofa and rested his sketchpad on his thigh. It was a mix of red, green and white; roses and skulls. "It looks awesome!"

It was a sketch, but the red leaves seemed to be coming off the paper already.

"I don't know when we'll actually get married. But I thought, until then, you can consider this a kind of vow. The roses stand, I know, very cliché, for my love for you... and the skulls are the 'till death do us part' part." Raine chuckled. "I'm being way too cheesy, am I?"

"Yeah." Grinning, Juice gave his boyfriend a kiss. "But after all the secrecy and other shit, there's nothing wrong with being a bit cheesy. I like it. The design and the thought behind it."

"Cool." He put the paper on the coffee table and moved his hand to Juice's knee. "And I thought... You're super precise, so I trust you with a tattoo machine too. So I'd love it if you came up with a design for me too... and put it on me after a few months of practice."

The idea created a hot hurricane inside him. His fantasies had been limited to Raine tattooing his skin... But the other way around? Somehow he was terrified that he would mess something like that up, but who knows indeed, if he practiced enough?

He loved to come up with a concept so that there were not only scars on Raine's body marking the bumps in their past but also a beautiful work of art showing a hopeful and loving future.

Juice leaned towards his friend. "I love the idea. I'm gonna give it some thought." He put his hand against Raine's shoulder and pushed him down on the sofa, hovering over him and kissing his neck. With a grin, he left a hickey there. "And until then, you'll just have to do it with this type of skin decoration."

. . .

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