A/N: Originally posted on anon on the cabin pressure kink meme.
Blanket content warning for referenced abuse, rape, self harm, some slurs, and other triggery things.
He told his mother about it when he was nine, asking her why everyone had words written all over them, and didn't seem to see them. She had hushed him and pulled him into her room and told him only he and her could see them, that it was something passed down from her mother and her mother's mother. She would explain them more when he was older. He got mad that she wouldn't tell him now and stormed off.
His mother told him about it when he was fifteen.
"They're important things Dougie, things all those people think about themselves."
But then why were they all bad things?
"You'll learn as you get older that bad things are usually stronger than good things. Whatever's written on their forehead is what they think most often."
Well that made sense.
She died a few years later, but Douglas would always remember his mother's forehead with the words Deserves To Be Beaten scrawled across it in his father's handwriting.
Douglas was able to refine the reading of them to the best of his ability over the years, although it was still mostly a mystery to him.
His first wife was lovely. Golden hair, eyes like melted chocolate, and a complexion of the likes of which he had never seen.
It made him sad to see all her beauty marred by a high school girl's sparkling purple pen denoting Fat across her forehead, Disgusting on one cheek, and Whore on the other.
He found out later through an accident, careful prodding, and listening through her racking sobs as he held her to him on the bathroom floor, that she developed an eating disorder in high school after one of the more popular girls called her a disgusting fat whore.
Scribbled on the inside of her left thigh was Damaged Goods in her own tiny handwriting. He was always careful with her after he saw that.
His second wife was beautiful as well. A master's degree in Psychology, lips pink as rose petals, and biro blue Doesn't Know What She's Talking About hidden by ebony bangs.
She was always very sure to know everything possible about anything she was talking about.
Stupid Blonde in a male's rickety hand using a No. 2 pencil on the nape of her neck, and a few weeks later he caught her dying her blonde hair black.
Helena was wonderful. Long silky hairy always bouncing in natural curls, smooth creamy hands with manicured nails, and Slut in stilted print and imprinted with tattoo ink.
Sexy was in the same angled hand and black ink on the small of her back.
He was sad to see her go, but didn't say a mean word about her affair to her or anyone else.
Carolyn and Arthur's markings were part of the reason Douglas had joined MJN, the sinking boat it was.
HAS A STUPID SON in permanent marker and what Douglas would come to recognize as her ex-husband's writing and he would swear, with the angle of the writing and the thickness of the burtally black marker, that the letters were almost shouting at him. (When he first saw it he had to turn away, and he could feel the echo of a ringing in his ears.) He couldn't see any others, but had no plans to be intimate enough with Carolyn to check.
Stupid in dark red and anonymous handwriting, although there was a faded black line through it with Carolyn's most used brand of pen. Arthur also sported unwanted on his left hand, scrawled with Arthur's cursive in red biro, and circled. Douglas eventually puzzled out the circle meant it was a feeling, not a phrase. Those were what Douglas thought were the only notes on Arthur. but when Arthur tugged at his soaked shirt after he scrambled onto the lifeboat during their Ipswich testing, he glanced a third. The right half of his front collarbone was blackened with Gordon's unmistakeable marker shouting USELESS over what, close-up, were faded stitches. The one that saddened Douglas the most was when Arthur looked up at the ceiling, marvelling at their ability to have Christmas in an aeroplane, written on the underside of his chin was Clot, a letter in Douglas's, Martin's, Carolyn's, and Arthur's pen. It was blurred and streaked, like someone had rubbed at it to try and get rid of it.
Most people he met were like that; most frequently thought phrase on their forehead, with two or three, sometimes more (but not usually) other quotes somewhere else.
But Martin.
Oh, Martin.
When they first met, he looked nothing out of the ordinary. Ginger curls, and freckles dotted over the bridge of his nose and across his cheekbones, FAILURE in the blocky letters of a CAA stamp, ink so shiny and black you'd think the handle was just lifted. When he turned his back to Douglas, he could see Dissapointment written like a whisper across the nape of his neck.
As they worked together, Douglas noticed more marks appear, and started to see ones he hadn't before.
After the diversion to Bristol, Douglas glanced away for a second and when he looked back, he was momentarily frozen. His own handwriting with a thin black permanent marker spelled out SIR on Martin's right cheek. On his left cheek was something else new - Carolyn's black pen writing Seven Goes To Get His License. He began the slow downward spiral to stop calling Martin "sir" without losing face.
A month after Boston Martin took off his captain's hat to scrub a hand through his unruly curls, and there was Carolyn's black writing right where the brim of his cap would be reading Give Douglas Your Hat.
They shared a room together and Martin pulled off his shirt and folded it, ignoring Douglas who was folding his First Officer's jacket. Douglas looked up for a second and kept staring. Scrawled over Martin's back were words, all written in different scripts and sizes.
Ugly, Disgusting, Worthless were accompanied by Disgrace in the same lettering as the Dissapointment on the back of his neck and Defective in Martin's own quite writing.
When Martin turned round to go to the bathroom for the first shower, Douglas patted his jacket and pulled out a book from his small travel pack. As Martin passed, he saw other words over Martin's chest and arms.
FAT was in thick dark letters over Martin's flat stomach and Stupid, Strict, Clueless, Pathetic flared out over his shoulders, precursors to the Self-centered and Attention-Seeker down his right arm and left arm, respectively.
A week Martin's first Burling Day, Martin tripped getting up from his chair, and nearly kicked Douglas in the face. Before he had the chance to say something sarcastic, he caught a glimpse of Mr. Burling's huge show-off handwriting saying Wilde on Martin's ankle.
Another time they shared a room, Douglas decided to satisfy a morbid curiosity.
Once they had both taken showers and Martin was sleeping with Douglas reading with the light on in the bed next to his, Douglas glanced over at Martin's bare arms. He got up and stepped over to get a closer look and saw there was the uneven sheen on coverup along his forearms Attention-Seeker and Self-Centered were tattooed.
Martin was out cold, so Douglas wiped the makeup away with a damp towel. When it came away to reveal long, repeated scars, Douglas sighed.
When Martin got up to leave because he was upset with him and Carolyn for laughing at his safety procedure, Martin lifted his chin up and Douglas saw Not The Captain written in Carolyn's lipstick with slightly wonky letters as if it had been written using a mirror.
Him and Martin were sharing a room once again. Martin was using the shower and Douglas was reading while waiting for his turn, but he heard the the click of the bathroom door and looked up. Martin had a towel wrapped around his waist and stepped over to the cheap pine dresser and rummaged through his overnight bag, trying to find something.
Douglas was about to go back to his book when more marks on his co-worker's legs caught his eye. Running up the shins of his legs were the words Inept and Incompetent, and hints at words farther up.
As Martin was finishing the landing in Qikqiktarjuac, Douglas glanced over to see a new word on the back of each of the captain's hands; Unpaid on the left and Unprofessional on the right.