#i dunno i just wanted bodymod!Gabe 'cause i thought it kinda worked as a stand-in for bodyhorror!Gabe | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

allofthisnonsenseplease · 7 years

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GabexJack modern AU meet-cute featuring bodymod!tattooartist!Gabe.

I hadn’t seen that done, and thought it might be a cool idea. =)

Gabriel had just finished putting up his inks and sterilizing his equipment when he heard the front door open. After years of extra shifts at secondary jobs, sacrifice, and saving up, he had finally managed to open his own shop, Death Blossom Tattoos. He still wasn't used to being the only one on shift, though, and this wouldn't be the first time he'd forgotten to lock up after his last client.

“We're closed,” he called.

“Hello...?”

The voice that called from the front was rough—pack-a-day smoker who gargles with gravel, rough—but hesitant. Feeling every second of the long, long day that he'd been on his feet, Gabriel stripped off his gloves and flung them into the trash, then stepped out to send the man on his way. He didn't anticipate that it would take long. Being just over six feet tall and built like a pro-wrestler alone sufficed to make most people think twice about crossing him, but Gabriel had taken that canvas and run with it. His curly hair was shaved on the sides, just long enough on top to spike into a mohawk when he felt like bothering, and tipped in red. Steel glinted against his dark skin from multiple piercings: left eyebrow, bridge, septum on the right, and a labret winking like a ruby in a patch of hair below his lips. His ears sported rings and studs from top to bottom in steel, jet, and candy apple red acrylic, and the lobes were stretched around inch-wide gauges. Dark, tattooed clouds of red-tinged nebulae seemed to issue from the gauges opening his cheeks and exposing his teeth. Malevolent red eyes stared out of the deepest black of the ink as it bled back into the stubble on his skull. His tongue was forked. His sclera had been tattooed black, although he had foregone the red contacts today.

He fixed a neutral expression on his face, and turned the corner to get a look at whoever it was that had wandered into his shop so late at night. The sight almost—almost—made him falter a moment.

The guy was hot. Tall as Gabriel and absolutely ripped, dressed in dark jeans and a tight black polo that contrasted deliciously against the creamy latte color of his lightly tanned skin. The shirt clung to his pecs, shaping them out of shadows and soft edges, leaving his trim waist less defined. His hair was too bright, bottle-blond over darker eyebrows. Freckles dusted his nose and flushed cheeks. His pale eyes were wide, lips parted as he stared.

Gabriel licked his lips reflexively, then frowned, hoping the gesture had gone unnoticed. He stepped up to the man, close enough to smell the alcohol reek of his breath.

“We're closed,” he repeated shortly.

“Oh,” the man said. Then: “Shit.” He goggled at Gabriel a moment longer, taking in the tattoos and piercings and visible mods with drunken intensity and a vaguely worried expression. “I went to Hell.” He said it with a fatalistic sort of acceptance that made it hard for Gabriel not to laugh.

He must have been very drunk. Gabriel watched as he looked over each shoulder and made a wobbling turn to check behind himself. All the while, he was absentmindedly patting himself down as if searching for the feel of lost keys in pockets. Or trying to make sure he was still in one piece. When he turned back to Gabriel, wavering but still managing to remain upright, he looked downright bewildered.

“Did that car actually hit me?”

“Wouldn't know about that. But I can tell you that you aren't in Hell.”

“I'm not?”

“Nope.”

“Oh. Good.”

“I can also tell you that we're closed.”

“Um.” His gaze wandered uncertainly for a moment before returning to the general vicinity of Gabriel's face. “I'm lost.”

“Not my problem, Blondie.”

The man's shoulders sagged. His heavy brows drew in, his lips turned down at the corners, and he hung his head. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

Gabriel felt like he'd kicked a puppy. Heaving a sigh, and hoping the drunk could take directions at least long enough to get lost someplace else, he asked: “Where are you trying to go?”

“Home.”

He waited a beat, just to see if a kernel of common sense might take root in the man's head. When it didn't, Gabriel crossed his arms and scowled. “If you want directions, then you have to tell me where you live.”

“In...an apartment complex. I just moved here. My name's Jack.”

He was staring at Gabriel's crossed arms, eyes wide. They were an unusual washed-out shade of blue, like pale sea glass. Gabriel pictured wave tattoos for him, a sleeve in the Japanese style, spotted with white camellias. Maybe with a fish, seeing as he apparently drank like one.

“You have....” Jack gestured unsteadily at Gabriel's arms, then looked up to meet his eyes once more. “There're...faces,” he said. “In your hands.”

“Subdermal implants,” Gabriel said by way of explanation. Uncrossing his arms, he held up one of his hands for Jack to take a closer look at the glowering, skull-like owl face rising up just beneath his skin.

He wasn't quite prepared, although maybe he should have been, for Jack to take his hand in both of his and hold it close to his face. Jack's hands were warm, fingers pleasantly rough with calluses, and his breath tickled over Gabriel's skin. He shifted his grip, one hand holding Gabriel's, the other moving to stroke hesitantly over the implant. His fingertips skated erratically over it, dipping clumsily into the recesses of the eyes. Jack looked up at him suddenly, eyes fever-bright in his flushed face.

“What's your name?”

“Gabriel.” He jerked his hand back more roughly than he needed to. “What apartment complex do you live in?”

“The one near the park.”

There were three parks in the city, all with several apartment complexes within a block or two. “That narrows it down to a couple dozen. Try again.”

“Over...Overlook?”

“Overwatch Apartments?” Gabriel asked, thinking: No, it couldn't be.

Jack lit up. “Yes! How do I get there?”

Small world. With a sigh, Gabriel waved him to the bench against the side wall. “Sit down. You live in the same complex as me. I'll take you there once I'm done closing up.” While Jack got settled, Gabriel took a moment to grab a bottle of water from the mini fridge behind the desk. “Here. Drink this. I think you need it.”

Jack took the bottle, staring first at it, then up at Gabriel. “You're not s'posed to drink the water in Hell. You get stuck there.”

Leaning down to look Jack in the eye, Gabriel reminded him, enunciating carefully: “You are not in Hell, Jack.”

“Oh. Okay.” He paused, water probably all but forgotten, and lifted a finger to point at Gabriel's face. “Your eyes are...kinda...black.”

“Tattoos.”

“Oh. Cool.”

It didn't take long to finish straightening up and close out the register. Gabriel locked the day's take in the safe, leaving the deposit for his future self to deal with. He herded Jack out the door, locked up, and led him down to the bus stop. Any thoughts he'd had about babysitting Jack being nothing but a pain flew out of his head when the bus pulled up and Jack lurched in front of him to get on first. Jack stood between him and the bus driver, a man who was neither unfamiliar with Gabriel nor drunk, and proceeded to reassure the driver that Gabriel was not, in fact, a devil, but was his friend and a very nice man. The driver shot Gabriel a look over Jack's shoulder. Gabriel was too busy shaking with repressed laughter to respond.

They took their seats at the back of the bus, and Jack explained in a halting, wandering monologue about how his new coworkers had dragged him out for a party, then disappeared one by one until he was alone in a bar in a part of town he didn't recognize. Not a great thing to do to a guy, Gabriel thought, but Jack was an adult and should have been able to fend for himself. He was just lucky that the person he had asked directions from could take him home, rather than just sending him on his way alone.

Jack was doubly lucky, as it turned out. He could barely keep his eyes open, even as he finished explaining how he'd gotten into his predicament. Long before they had reached their stop, he was slouching against Gabriel, head resting on his shoulder. The warmth was nice, the contact pleasant. Gabriel let him doze, wondering if Jack's freckles spread like a star chart across the rest of his skin; if he already had tattoos, or if he was a blank canvas; if he might someday let Gabriel leave his own mark. He wondered what sort of design would suit Jack best.

Their stop was only a block away from the complex, but Jack was too muddled by alcohol and exhaustion to wake up fully. He followed groggily along in Gabriel's wake, responding to questions in grunts and brief nods or shakes of his head. In the stairwell, he dug his keys out of his pocket and let Gabriel sort through them for the one with his apartment number barely legible in scratched black sharpie. Jack lived on the same floor, several doors down. Very small world, indeed.

When Gabriel stopped in front of Jack's door, he had just enough time to get it unlocked and open before Jack stumbled into him from behind. The warmth and weight of his body didn't linger, but the feel of his hand did. Gabriel held still as Jack rubbed a hand up and down his spine, tracing the bumps of small, rounded spikes.

“More like your hands?” Jack murmured. He sounded far more alert after their march up the stairs.

“Got it in one.”

“Do you have more tattoos?” Both hands were resting on Gabriel's back now, firm against his shoulder blades.

“Of course.”

“Can I see?”

Gabriel let himself be pushed into the apartment, reaching out to flip the light switch as automatically as if he were in his own home. Jack slipped past him, emptying his pockets of phone, wallet, and spare change onto the coffee table. When Gabriel handed back his keys, they joined the pile as well.

Jack turned back to look at him, shadows under his sea glass eyes, expectation making his expression eager, almost hungry. The air between them felt charged, and Jack's drunken intensity sent a shiver running over Gabriel's skin. Lips twisted in a crooked smile, he tugged off his hoodie, then his tank top. He grinned to see the way Jack caught his lower lip between his teeth as he stared.

Most of Gabriel's body was covered in tattoos. His chest featured a massive one done in red and black, glistening with white highlights. The edges were cracked and burned skin, dry as desert rock, peeling away from the curved lines of ribs, the rounded lump of a heart. More of the nebula-edged darkness congealed around the edges, dripping from just beneath his collarbone. Eyes opened up in the depths, iris and pupils livid red against the black. His right arm was tattooed with slashes that puckered red around the edges, weeping more of the watching darkness and exposing musculature, tendons, ligaments, and bone. A black barn owl perched on his left arm, talons just above his elbow, head on the curve of his shoulder. Its face was ghostly white, its eyes deep blue and dotted with stars. Feathers fell the length of his forearm, mingling with graceful curls of smoke, and morphing into shell casings by they time they reached his wrist.

He turned to show off his back, the column of subdermal implants like spikes down his spine, the twin shotguns, heavy and black, that stretched nearly from the crest of his shoulders to the curve of his lower back. They breathed smoke that coiled up his neck, darkening against his skull to mingle with the clouds that wrapped around over his temples and cheeks.

Facing away, he didn't see Jack move, didn't hear him step closer. The first warning he had was a breath of moving air against his skin, and then the heat of Jack's palm was back, far warmer without the barrier of clothing between them. Jack stroked down his back, thumb ticking against the sides of the implants, fingertips lingering just over the waistband of Gabriel's jeans as he pulled his hand back.

Gabriel turned and Jack took another step in, entranced by the tattoos, by the shape and planes of Gabriel's body half hidden beneath the lines of the ink. He watched as Jack reached up, slow as a dreamer, to set his palms against the flesh of Gabriel's chest and drag his touch down over the swell of pecs, the toned muscles of his stomach. Gabriel's nipples and navel were pierced, as well as parts further south. However, despite Jack's open show of fascination, he wasn't going to be seeing anything else. At least...not just yet. Gabriel had seen the heated look in his eyes from others before, often enough that he knew it wasn't only the tattoos that were arousing Jack's interest. Drunken one night stands held no appeal for him, but if Jack still looked at him like that when he was sober....

Gabriel definitely wouldn't mind feeling those plush pecs fill his hands, finding out what Jack's creamy skin tasted like, getting a good look at the bared canvas of his body. He wondered again if it would be blank, or if Jack already had some ink of his own. Something patriotic, maybe? He had something of a military air about him, something in the way he carried himself, even drunk. Some iconography from the service? A motto, maybe? Discoveries to be made later when Jack could think straight and they'd had a chance to get to know each other a little better.

“That's it for tonight,” Gabriel said, pulling his hoodie back on and stuffing his shirt into the pocket. “Lend me your phone for a sec.”

Jack blinked at him, a bit slow on the uptake, but handed it over without question. He watched as Gabriel took a selfie, grinning around his forked tongue, then saved his contact information and sent himself a message. Maybe Jack would want to forget the whole thing come the morning, but Gabriel wouldn't bet on that.

“I'll text you tomorrow. We can set up a day to get you better acquainted with the city, if you want.”

“Sure. Thank you.”

“My pleasure, neighbor.” Grinning and feeling well-rewarded for his good deed, Gabriel waved and left for his own apartment and his waiting bed.

-------------------

Jack woke up the next morning with a pounding headache, an unpleasantly roiling stomach, and a mouth that felt like he'd been chewing on dirty laundry. He groaned, realized that the vibration was making his head pound worse and his stomach threaten to revolt, and stopped. Blindly, he reached out and groped across the nightstand for his phone, wondering what time it was and half afraid to find out. When he peered blearily at the screen, he saw that he had a new message from....

“Not A Devil...? Who the—”

[good luck with that hangover jackie]

Memories trickled back in, slow at first, then in a rush. The bar. The empty, unfamiliar streets. The bright light of the tattoo parlor.

Gabriel.

“Oh, God...!”

He remembered an unfairly handsome man with more tattoos and body modifications than Jack had even realized existed. Had the whites of his eyes really been black? He squinted at the picture, saw that yes, they were, and yes, Gabriel was just as good-looking through the unforgiving fog of a hangover as he had been when Jack had been drunkenly mistaking him for a devil and later pawing him in the living room of his apartment.

Not the sort of first impression he would ever be able to live down.

“I'm in Hell,” he groaned into his pillows. “Never drinking again.”

His only consolation was the vague memory of having somehow earned a second chance. He must have done something right in that case, and whatever it was, he was glad it had worked. Jack definitely wanted to get to know that particular neighbor much better.

#cornfuck and the reaper #fanfiction #i'm actually really tempted to throw this into the tags but it doesn't really go anywhere so...#i dunno i just wanted bodymod!Gabe 'cause i thought it kinda worked as a stand-in for bodyhorror!Gabe

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