thecatinahat | (no subject)

There is something dreamy and perfect about their life here. Jake loves their run-down little apartment with its tiny balcony and no air conditioning, loves running trips for tourists where she can be gregarious and happy in front of vacationing Americans, loves being able to spread out naked across their bed and feel his skin pressed all along her side. It should feel wrong, to be so happy, but she can't make herself hate it.

She squeaks a little when Cougar yanks her closer and denies her the kiss she was gearing up to accept, staring instead at the white squares of gauze she has taped to her hips that peek up out of her shorts.

"Don't be mad," she starts, which she knows is a terrible opening. "I just got a tattoo, that's all."

And, because she knows he's going to want to see as soon as possible, she reaches down and unbuttons her shorts enough so that she can peel the bandages off carefully, showcasing the slightly-swollen, still-red thumbprints etched into her skin. "...What do you think?"

He's gearing up to complain about going to a tattoo shop without him, getting something done without him. He's ready to bitch about unsanitary complications, but all that falls away as she unbuttons her shorts and shows off what she's done. It takes him a minute to process just whose prints those tattoos belong to, until he remembers where he grabs her when they're in bed together. "Mine?" he gets out roughly, his voice hoarse like he hasn't used it in years.

Embarrassingly, he can already feel himself pressing up against the seam of his jeans. When did he get to be so easy?

She's pretty sure the staring is a positive reaction, it's a little hard to tell when his head is tilted down like that to stare at her hipbones. Smiling nervously, she shifts to drape her arm over his shoulders, her hand settling on the back of his neck.

"Mhmm," she agrees, nodding as she bites her lip.

His. His marks, his fingerprints. They're on her hips and they're there permanently. His whole starts to go a little bright and lightheaded as he thinks about the fact that if she ever left him, it would be one of those tattoos that told her next boyfriend about him. He slides down to his knees so he can inspect them closer, tracing outside the angry red area.

Here, staring up at her, he gives her a searching look. "Actually mine?"

She's not planning on ever leaving him, that's why she got the tattoos in the first place. So that she wouldn't need a ring on her finger or the bracelet she wears around her wrist to prove that she loves him, that he's hers and she's his.

Her hand slides over his hair when he drops to his knees, letting the strands slip through her fingers as she pets him gently while he stares at her. "Yes, dummy, actually yours." She's not going to get any old generic fingerprints tattooed on her body and then pretend they're his. Oh, no. She watched her artist with an eagle eye to make sure he didn't fuck up the placement of each tiny little line so that they'd be perfect.

"Where did you get them?" is his next suspicious question that he asks, though there are others he wants answers to. When did she decide to do this? Why hadn't he let her come?

He leans in and slides his lips tenderly over the red marks, hoping to see her shiver. "Why didn't you tell me?"

She smiles at him, fond and a little pitying. "You really think I don't have all a' y'all's fingerprints on file? Carlito, please. I have to look after you guys. That includes knowing everything there is to know about you." She knows their blood types, their cholesterol levels, their allergies...everything.

Not only does she shiver when Cougar brushes a whiskery kiss to her raw tattoos, she mewls quietly, her fingers curling in his hair. "I wanted it to be a surprise," she breathes, smiling down at him.

"Very surprised," he promises, a breathy little exhalation as he slides forward and kisses her again against each fingerprint on her hips. His head is buzzing, his mind running in lightheaded circles as he thinks he might swoon a little at the thought of it. "I would have wanted to hold your hand," he insists.

"But good surprise," he promises.

"If you held my hand, you would have intimidated my tattoo artist," she points out with a quiet little snort that should have been a laugh. "I know what you're like."

He would have glared at glowered and loomed over her artist, blocking his light and making his hands shake. No, it's better that he had been kept in the dark and only now discovered what she had done.

"You like?" It's pretty obvious he likes, but she wants to hear it anyway.

Cougar shrugs, because he can't help that he can be slightly intimidating when he's looking at people in that sharp way that he has. "I love," he promise, breathing out like he's trying to get a hold of himself when it comes to the tattoos he's looking at. He can't stop touching them, but it's going to aggravate them, so he carefully slides the bandages back on.

"You are going to hurt," he says, an amused and gentle reminder.

It does hurt to have him constantly touch them, but she likes the thought behind the action too much to complain about it, which is why she makes a soft noise of disappointment when he pulls away and tapes the gauze back over her hipbones.

"I know," she says, sliding her hand down to cup his cheek, her thumb stroking the edge of his mustache. "This isn't my first rodeo."

Cougar slowly rises back to his feet so he can lean in and kiss her, wondrous, amazed at the fact that Jake would do this and would do this because of him. "Now, I can't fuck you for at least a few days," he maligns, helping to button up her shorts.

There are ways around it, of course, and he intends to make sure they take advantage.

"You lack imagination, hermoso," she teases, draping her arms over his shoulders as he leans in to kiss her.

"I'm glad you liked my present," she murmurs against his lips, pressing herself up against his chest and letting him take some of her weight as she sways forward.

He has plenty of other ideas in mind. She'll just have to wait and see what they are. He holds her tightly against him, tangling his fingers with hers as he moves them in a sway back and forth, humming a little as he turns her and pins her to the counter. "What made you decide?" he wonders.

She widens her stance when Cougar presses her back against the counter, making space for him to step in between her legs so there's nothing between them but their clothing.

"I wanted to prove it," is her response, and she looks suddenly shy, her eyelids lowering slightly and her chin tipping down so that she's looking at him from under her lashes. "That I'm yours. That I love you too." She hadn't said it before because she hadn't been able to dredge up the words. Jake's relationship with love has been rocky and tenuous at best, and she wasn't sure if what she felt for Cougar really counted.

Eventually, she realized she was being an idiot. Of course she loved him too. It had seemed paltry just to say that, though. She had wanted to make a grand gesture. Two small tattoos seemed like a good grand, albeit restrained and easily hidden if necessary, gesture she could make.

His head is still spinning with the sight of them, but now that she talks about what it means and now that she says the words, it drives every little shred of his being into one thing and one thing only. She's given herself tattoos that claim him, that give herself to him. This means it's time for him to do the same in turn.

He grabs at her waist to avoid the hips, leaning in to kiss her as hard as he can, a tender-hearted, passionate thing that refuses to cede anything. He keeps that kiss soft and tender, biting his way to her neck where he can start to suck a mark there as he works his way around to the words he wants to give her.

He grabs at her so suddenly that she yelps in surprise, her eyes flying open only to wind up muffled by the kiss he presses to her lips. It's firm, and fervent, and so fiercely passionate that she can tell he's struggling with his words, so she lets herself melt into his embrace as a substitute for any flowery phrase anyone else might try and pull out. It's enough for her that she's pleased him, that he doesn't find the tattoos too much or too weird, that he's happy that she's finally on the same page as him.

He deserves to be happy.

"Carlos," she chides breathlessly when he drifts down to her neck and sets to sucking a livid hickey into her skin. "You're giving them more fodder for their betting pool." Them, of course, meaning Roque and Pooch and Clay. She doesn't mind that much, though, as she doesn't try to pull him off or squirm away, just curls her fingers in his hair and tips her chin back, baring her throat to him.

He doesn't know how to do this. His fingers tighten against the fabric of her shirt as he bears in and kisses her all the harder, burying his face in the warmth of her neck as he tries to understand what he can say, how he can get the words out. Before, weeks ago, he'd just decided for them.

She wants to be his, she says she loves him, so why can't he say the words. He eases back, a half-lidded and dazed look in his eyes and he reaches for her waist again, staring at how beautiful she is and knowing he's going to mess it up no matter what. "Come to the bedroom," he pleads.

Jake has lots of practice waiting out Cougar's silences, and she knows when he's dredging his brain to try and come up with things to say. It's why she doesn't prompt him, just lets him cling to her and press his face into her neck, why she just strokes his hair and leans against him and waits.

"Yeah, okay," she agrees, smiling gently at him, curious as to what he's going to say but willing to wait him out. "But you can't put my legs behind my ears tonight, okay, I gotta let 'em heal."

Cougar takes her into the bedroom, shooting her a dubious look for her comment because it's not like he wants to hurt her. He pats his hand on the bed to try and get her to sit down, wanting her to be comfortable because he needs to do this properly and English takes a long time for him.

Better that she's lying down, for it.

This is odd behavior, even for Cougar, but Jake is still riding the tail end of her tattoo high, and lord knows she'd follow Cougar to hell and back, so following him down the hall to their bedroom is an easy task. When prompted, she settles down on the bed, scooting up a little so that she's comfortable, crossing her ankles and resting her hands on her stomach.

She's ready, Cougs.

Cougar breathes in and out, trying to find a way to do this properly. He shakes his head and settles beside the bed where he can look her in the eye at her level, on both knees with his elbows on the bed, staring at her. He cups her cheek and stares down at her so fondly. "No sé cómo decir esto correctamente. Es mucho más fácil en español, incluso si usted no entiende. Tengo que probar," he says.

"Cásate conmigo."

She loves it when he looks at her like that, like she's precious and he's amazed that she's his. Lifting her hand to circle his wrist with her fingers, she watches him with an equally fond expression as he starts to speak, the lilting cadence of Spanish washing over her like a comforting wave. She gets a few words here and there, but most of it is Greek to her.

She does know what conmigo means, though. "What do you want me to do with you?" she asks, her smile turning rueful as she rubs her thumb over the thin skin of the inside of his wrist. She knows it must be frustrating to have her not understand. She's sorry.

He huffs out a fond sigh, knowing that she wouldn't understand all of it, but he had been hoping that she would get that much. He reaches out to slide their hands together, tangling their fingers. "Marry me," he says, not flinching or looking away from her eyes for a single second, because he wants to remember this moment forever.

"We are married," she points out, lifting her left hand and waggling her fingers.

It's obvious that Cougar's not joking, though, deadly serious as he stares into her eyes. She feels pinned, like a butterfly on a display board, having all that laser-like focus turned straight on her. "Wait, you mean like, for-real for-real?" she asks, her voice quiet, although she's fairly certain she knows the answer. Cougar doesn't joke when he's got that look on his face.