Author's Note: Oops. I finish one WIP and immediately start another one. *facepalm*
Anyway, this is canon divergence set five years after the team take down Sandstorm. (Bethany was never conceived, Kurt and Jane never got together, and season three never happened. Instead, after season two ended, Jane moved to California because Kurt and Nas were happy together. But that was five years ago.)
"Jane! Your two o'clock is here."
At Marlowe's call, Jane Doe closed the book she'd been reading with a sigh. Her lunch break flew by so fast when she got caught up in a fictional world. "One second," she called, sliding the book back onto the shelf. After cleaning up the wrappers left over from her lunch, she checked her phone quickly for messages, then stood up, stretching her arms over her head.
Her next client, according to the booking sheet, was named Kyle West, and this would be his first tattoo. Jane hoped he wasn't one of the guys who looked tough, but turned into sobbing babies in the chair. Only one way to find out.
She left the small kitchenette area and headed for the front of the building, with its comfortable waiting area and books of flash for indecisive clients to look through. Marlowe had the radio turned up too loud again, and she gave him a quick frown. Rolling his eyes, her assistant turned down the music as she called, "Kyle West?"
It was only after she'd said the name that she focused on the man standing with his back to her, gazing out of the window at the sun-drenched street. Even before he turned at the sound of her voice, her heart skipped a beat. It can't be…
"Not quite," Kurt Weller said, taking a step towards her, "but it wouldn't have been a surprise if you'd seen my name and known I was coming."
"Kurt!" Jane crossed the waiting room to give him a quick hug of greeting. "It's so good to see you."
He wrapped his arms around her in return, and she closed her eyes, resisting the urge to press her nose against his shoulder and just breathe him in. She'd missed how he smelled, the way his face lit up when he saw her…everything. She'd missed everything.
Before she could get over-emotional, she pulled back to arms' length and asked, "What are you doing here?"
"I'm here to get a tattoo." He grinned at her surprise. "What? Did you think I booked up an appointment spot to waste your time?"
"No, I just… You never seemed like the type to want tattoos, and even if you did, there are plenty of studios in New York that would be happy to tattoo you." She beckoned for him to follow her into her studio, which was clean and professional, but still had touches of her personality throughout. Once he was inside, she shut out Marlowe's curious gaze before gesturing to the leather recliner in the middle of the room. "Have a seat."
"Hmm," Kurt said, his eyes still amused at the way he'd managed to surprise her. "Maybe I got confused on the way to work and ended up here. Similar names, and all."
Jane grinned. "Yeah, that seems totally plausible."
She'd called her new studio NYO Ink, feeling nostalgic for her past, when she'd headed to the New York Office of the FBI every day. After they'd thwarted Shepherd's plans and Hirst had officially released her from any obligation to the Bureau, Jane had bid farewell to her old life and moved to Los Angeles. Now, five years later, she was settled into her new existence, but she'd never quite stopped missing the thrill of investigating her old tattoos.
"Did Patterson tell you about the studio?" she asked, calling up the design he'd requested on her computer. It was taking a while to load, so she turned back to find Kurt watching her.
"She mentioned it, yeah." Kurt raised an eyebrow. "You should have let me know. Been wondering how you are."
Jane shrugged, turning back to her screen so he wouldn't see how awkward she felt. "I figured you'd be happier without constant reminders of one of the most stressful periods in your life."
He sighed. "You're my friend. We saw each other almost every day for nearly two years. Of course I'm gonna be interested in what you're doing now."
The computer finally complied with her wishes, and Jane studied the design from her flash portfolio—a broken hourglass in a desert, with sand swirling around it. "Do you actually want me to tattoo a sandstorm on you?" she asked, changing the subject.
He was quiet for a moment, as though making a point that he'd noticed, then said, "Yeah. I was looking through the designs on your website, and it seemed to fit, somehow. The Sandstorm case has been the most important one of my career, so I thought it was worth commemorating."
Jane nodded. "Where are we putting it?"
They conferred back and forth, finalising the details on the design and its size, before Jane hit the button to print it at the exact size he wanted. While the printer did its work, Kurt eyed her arms. "How long did those take?"
Jane looked down at her newer sleeve tattoos, so much different from the ones she'd woken up with when she'd been ZIPped. The left was a fiery phoenix emerging from a duffel bag, and she knew the symbolism wouldn't be lost on Kurt. The other was the Manhattan skyline at night, the dark harbour waters swirling down below the elbow to an abstract pattern of deep blues and greens.
"About twenty hours each, plus the time it took to fade down the old ones enough to cover them properly."
"Ouch."
She shrugged. "After three months in a CIA black site, these were nothing."
"Jane…" She looked up to see the old remorse in his face, and traces of hurt. He still blamed himself, after all this time?
"Really, Kurt, it's fine." She gave him a quick smile before moving over to the washbasin to clean her hands. "Water under the bridge."
For a couple of minutes, they were quiet while she traced the simplified version of the design, using a special ink that would transfer to his skin on contact. Then she kicked her stool closer to the recliner, put on a pair of gloves, and picked up her sterilising wipes. "Okay, let me clean your skin before I put the stencil on."
She'd done this hundreds of times, to hundreds of clients, in far more intimate places than Kurt was getting his tattoo. But as she took hold of his forearm to clean the area, from just below the inside of his elbow to just above his inner wrist, Jane felt almost flustered at the contact.
You're wearing gloves, for God's sake! Your skin isn't even touching his. Get it together!
Carefully, she applied the stencil to the skin, smoothing it down before peeling it away, leaving in place the linework that she could use as a reference for her art. She studied the placement for a moment before nodding, satisfied. "Last chance to back out," she teased.
"Nope. I'm ready."
She heard him take a deep breath as she tore open the sterile packaging, as though psyching himself up for the pain, but when she sat down next to him with the handheld tattoo machine, he seemed calm.
He flinched when she first applied the buzzing needle to his skin, but adjusted to the sensation quickly, relaxing. "Doesn't hurt as much as I thought it would."
She shot him an amused look. "Before you congratulate yourself on how badass you are, get something tattooed on your ribs. Then we'll talk."
They bantered back and forth as she worked, and Jane's spirits hadn't been so high in months—she'd forgotten how much she enjoyed talking to him outside of life or death situations. Kurt, on the other hand, got quieter as time went on, his responses shorter and simpler.
"You okay?" she asked after he'd been silent for a while, and lifted the machine from his skin so that she could check on him properly.
"Hmm? Yeah," he said slowly, making her bite back a smile. "I just feel a little high, is all. It's kinda nice."
Jane continued her work, wiping away ink and traces of blood every now and then. "You've got a masochistic streak, huh?"
He frowned without opening his eyes. "What? No. I don't enjoy pain. I've been wounded enough times to know that."
"Not all pain is the same. If it's something like this, or like…" She tried to think of something else consensual-pain-related that wasn't BDSM, but came up blank. "Like, I don't know, being spanked hard. If you're expecting the pain and you accept it, you can ride the endorphin rush like a natural drug."
Now he was definitely paying attention. "So you think I like being spanked? Hard?"
Jane rolled her eyes to cover the fact that hearing him say that had given her butterflies. The laziness in his tone made her imagine them lying together in bed after sex, recovering from incredible orgasms. "It was an example. That's between you and your partner." To re-establish the boundary between them, she added, "Speaking of which, how is Nas?"
Kurt was already holding still for the tattoo, but at her words he somehow became even more motionless. "No idea. Haven't seen her in about two years."
Why did her pulse spike at the idea that he was single? Hadn't she learned her lesson, that pining over Kurt Weller led to nothing but heartache? If he'd wanted her, he could have chosen her. Instead, he'd gotten serious with Nas as they'd grown close to taking down Sandstorm. Seeing them together had hurt so much that she'd fled to the opposite coast the moment she could.
"I'm sorry," she murmured, still focusing on the needle. "I had no idea. I just assumed—"
"It's okay." He sounded pretty relaxed about it, which lessened some of the awkwardness between them. "It's been a while. I guess I just thought you already knew it was over."
Jane shook her head with a quick smile, then tilted his arm a little as she began to add smaller details to the basic design.
After a few more seconds, he asked, "How about you? Anyone special in your life these days?"
As if anyone could compare to how I imagine we could have been together.
She'd tried a few different guys, a few different dates, but no one had been able to diffuse her intensity the way he could.
"No," she said simply, and they lapsed back into silence for a while.
When she next glanced up, Kurt was gazing at her with the slight haziness of an endorphin rush, a slight smile on his face. As she put the finishing touch on the detailing around the base of the hourglass, she tried to imagine what he was thinking.
"How did you end up becoming a tattoo artist?"
That, at least, was easier to answer. "I wanted to get my tattoos removed after I moved down here. Everything with Roman and Shepherd just kinda left a bad taste in my mouth, you know? So I went to have them lasered off, bit by bit as I could afford it. The woman doing my treatments was curious about why I wanted so many tattoos removed after I'd paid so much to have my whole body inked, and when I said it hadn't exactly been my choice, she was curious. So I said I'd tell her what happened, in exchange for a lesson with the tattoo machine."
"Huh."
She wasn't sure if the endorphins were making him uncommunicative, or if he just wanted to hear more. Either way, she continued, "Don't worry—I gave her the unclassified version. Telling people who I used to be doesn't really seem wise. But she mentored me through tattooing my thighs, asked to see some of my designs, and then I became her apprentice. Then earlier this year, I got my own little place."
"And called it NYO Ink." Kurt flexed his fingers as she set down the machine. "And you have a New York skyline tattoo. Seems to me like you're missing New York."
"Yeah," she admitted, checking her art one more time. "Sometimes."
"You could always come back," he said, his gaze intent on her face.
Jane stared at him for a moment, then cleared her throat, changing the subject. "What do you think of the tattoo? Anything you want me to add?"
He studied his newly inked skin with genuine admiration for her skill. "It's amazing, Jane. Thank you."
"You're welcome." She grabbed her aftercare supplies and reeled off the information that was now ingrained within her memory – about the healing process, how to care for the wounds left by the needle, and what he should avoid doing. Focusing on her job made it easier to be here with him, knowing that he was about to walk out of her studio—and her life—once again.
"It's all on my website, anyway, so if you forget anything, it's all there."
Kurt examined the dressing she'd applied before dropping his arm to his side. "What are you doing tonight? Wanna grab some dinner? Catch up some more?"
"Sure." Why did it feel like she was being pulled towards something inevitable? Wishful thinking had never gotten her anywhere. "I have another client now, but there's a great little Chinese restaurant about half a block away."
"Sounds good." His smile warmed her like the sun. She'd forgotten how much she'd missed being the target of those smiles.