Whoops, I wrote some gay.
Disclaimer: I don't own XC2
"Excuse me."
Mòrag turns around to lock eyes with the customer, a tall woman about her own age who is holding a single bouquet of white roses in her hands. She tries not to stare, she really does, but—shit, she can't help but stare. It's probably some combination of the woman's tattooed arms and warm purple eyes and the long, silky hair that's been dyed the same shade of purple, but she's… well, striking. She's not one of the flower shop's regulars, that's for certain. Mòrag knows her regular customers well enough to be able to pick them out of a crowd with relative ease, but this woman… well.
She isn't someone Mòrag has ever seen before in her life, and this she knows for sure.
The woman's lips quirk up into a smile. "Oh, did I strike you speechless?" she asks, playful. "Love at first sight, perhaps?"
Oh. Oh, she's still staring like an idiot, isn't she? Damn it.
"Sorry, sorry. Can I help you with anything?" Mòrag straightens up and adjust her collar and tries to act as if she hadn't spent the last ten seconds gaping like a beached fish.
The woman's smile is serene. "I would like to purchase these," she says, handing over her bouquet. "I was wondering, though. Do you sell blue roses?"
"Roses aren't blue," Mòrag says before she can help herself, and then clamps her mouth shut because wow, that might have been a little rude. The other woman just laughs. She holds out her arms, gesturing down at the tattooed expanse of skin, azure-colored flames stretching all the way from fingertip to shoulder.
"Neither is fire," she says, both agreeing and teasing. "And yet, here we are."
She winks and waggles a pierced brow, and Mòrag flushes. She's being flirted with. At least, she thinks she's being flirted with—but either way, she's at a total loss for what to do next, and tries to scrounge up her last shreds of dignity by sliding the bouquet into a plastic sleeve and busying herself with the cash register.
The woman offers her credit card and says, without prompting, "I just moved into the shop next door."
"Oh. Yes, I saw the moving van. I hope this location serves you well. Welcome." Mòrag winces. Nailed it.
The woman smiles. "Thank you. Perhaps we'll be seeing more of each other in the future."
"Um. Perhaps."
Another smile, a gentle brush of fingers as the credit card is returned. "My name is Brighid."
"Mòrag."
"Mòrag," Brighid repeats softly. She brings the bouquet up to her nose, inhales deeply. A sigh escapes her lips. "Your flowers are beautiful. I'll be sure to come back."
Brighid has taken to visiting the flower shop often. Her own shop, a tattoo parlor, opens later than Mòrag's, so it's usually in the early morning hours that Mòrag will look up from whatever floral arrangement she's fiddling with to see a blur of purple hair and two cups of coffee grasped between tattooed hands. She doesn't know why Brighid insists on stopping in early just to drink coffee with her, but the company is pleasant so she doesn't complain.
It's a break from the usual pattern she'd long become accustomed to, but... well, it's not like Mòrag really minds or anything. Brighid never leaves without buying something, and the business is always welcome. Lately, she's even begun bringing a sketchpad along.
"I try to sketch every day," she explains. "My specialty is doing natural designs. Being able to look at all your flowers helps a lot with getting my inspiration moving."
"That's fine," Mòrag says with a shrug. "Glad I'm able to help."
The weeks pass. Plants sprout up from seed, flower, and wither away. Mòrag tends to her shop and Brighid scribbles away in her pad, and the mornings fade into this gentle sort of routine.
"Oh, it's beautiful!" The customer, an elderly woman, peers through thick spectacles at the specially ordered arrangement that Mòrag presents her. Her smile is mostly toothless and her fingers gnarled and arthritic, but she still grasps Mòrag's hand and gives as vigorous a shake as she is able. "It's the anniversary of my husband's passing, you see, and sunset clovers were his favorite. Now, how much do I owe you, young man?"
In the brief silence that follows, there is the quiet sound of a pencil falling to the floor, and from the corner of her eye Mòrag can see Brighid dive down to retrieve it. She places the tip of the pencil back to the paper, but her hand is still—she's listening, Mòrag realizes with a embarrassed twinge in her gut, and she rushes through her customer's transaction a bit more hurriedly than usual. She waits until the door closes with a quiet ringing of the bell, and leans against the counter with a sigh.
She sort of hopes that Brighid will just let it go, but fate obviously has different plans. A tattooed hand reaches out and touches her elbow. "Hey," the other woman says carefully, "are you okay?"
"Oh, um. Yeah." Because she is okay, just a little humiliated and self-conscious and wishing that the ground would just open up and swallow her whole at the moment. No big deal.
Brighid frowns, and a little crease appears between her eyebrows. "Does that sort of thing happen… often?"
"What, getting mistaken for a man?" Mòrag asks, as if Brighid could possibly be talking about anything else. She receives a single nod in response. Damn it.
It happens more often than she cares to admit, especially to Brighid who, despite all her tattoos and piercings and garishly dyed hair, is so unmistakably female that Mòrag kind of feels like a boy in comparison. Her silence must speak volumes, because Brighid's frown deepens and she takes a couple paces back to look Mòrag up and down.
"I know what you need, if you want to look more feminine," she finally states, crossing her arms and allowing her face to relax into a smile.
"What, a skirt and some heels?" Mòrag scoffs. She's parroting something that her old college friend Zeke had once jokingly suggested to her. Ah, Zeke. She'll have to introduce him and Pandoria to Brighid some day.
Brighid laughs. It's a pretty sound. "Nah, that's not your style. I think you need a tattoo."
"A tattoo," Mòrag repeats flatly.
"Yup."
"You think a tattoo will make less people mistake me for a man."
"Sure." Brighid's voice is just as flat, though Mòrag suspects that she may be mocking her a little just to rile her up. "Nothing manly or whatever you were imagining in that cute little head of yours. Something pretty. Like, a flower or something."
That doesn't sound too bad, actually. Well, save for the fact that Mòrag's usual attire consists entirely of pants tucked into her boots and shirts with sleeves that reach all the way to the ends of her wrists. "No one would see a tattoo, even if I had one," she argues halfheartedly.
"Maybe you should start showing off a little more skin then." Brighid grins. She's flirting again, Mòrag thinks, and she feels herself flush.
"Where on my body would I even get a tattoo?" she asks, and she's not even sure if she's trying to change the subject or trying to sort of flirt back at this point. God, she's thankful that at least there's no one else in the shop at this moment. Her face is burning and she's pretty sure that the temperature of the room has somehow risen at least ten degrees in the past two minutes, because the air suddenly feels stifling.
Brighid's smile widens, and she takes the time to playfully look Mòrag up and down again. "I'd be happy to give you some suggestions," she says with a wink, "but I'd really have to see what you look like under those clothes if you want my best opinion."
Mòrag takes this in stride, although she's pretty sure she's internally screaming because what the hell, what is Brighid even suggesting, is she suggesting what she thinks she's suggesting, and she's stuck somewhere between panicking and being kind of turned on and, shit, she should probably give some sort of response before Brighid realizes what a weirdo she's being and leaves.
She takes a deep breath. Lets it out. Takes another breath. "I, uh, can't exactly undress in the middle of my shop or anything." Nailed it again.
Brighid laughs. "Well, we wouldn't do it here, of course. I've got another place in mind. Can I pick you up later when you close up shop?"
"O-oh, um, sure. Yes. That's fine." Internally screaming again.
"Great. I'll see you at six." Brighid sweeps up her drawing supplies and saunters away. Mòrag stares blankly after her and then buries her face in her hands.
Shit.
Shit.
What has she gotten herself into?
She's still panicking a little when she flips the little sign that reads 'open' over to the 'closed' side and locks the shop's door behind her. She's definitely panicking when Brighid waves her over to her motorcycle clad in a tight leather jacket that looks way too hot for Mor Ardain's heated climate, and she's pretty sure she's panicking during the entire ride to wherever they're going. Still, if she's trembling a little as she straddles the bike behind Brighid and leans forward to wrap her arms around her waist, then at least she can use some lame excuse about not being used to riding motorcycles.
Also, Brighid's hair smells nice. There's that, too.
She's kind of relieved when they bypass any of the nearby housing areas or hotels, and pull up in front of the hot springs instead. This is fine. This, she can handle. At least, that's what Mòrag keeps telling herself as she showers quickly and scrubs as much dirt from under her fingernails as she can. She wraps a fluffy white towel around herself, takes what is probably her millionth deep breath in the last thirty seconds, and steps out into the outdoor spring.
Brighid is already seated in the hot water, towel folded neatly on the stones behind her. She turns and raises a hand in greeting. A bead of water trickles from her neck down to the hollow between her collarbones, all bare skin for her to see. A glint of metal catches Mòrag's eye and her gaze lowers before she can help herself and—oh, her nipples are pierced. Of course they are.
Mòrag almost stumbles. She blames it on the wet stones.
"…Let me get a good look at you," Brighid says once she's finally made her way into the hot water to join her. Her eyes sweep over Mòrag, lingering on her strong shoulders, the sharply defined muscles in her stomach. A blue-inked hand reaches out and traces one arm, fingers dragging across the myriad of little scars dotting her skin. "What happened? Where did all these come from?"
"Oh, um." Mòrag glances down and sees where she's looking, shrinks back a little, crosses her arms self-consciously. She honestly can't remember where most of the scars came from. There are igna scratches, a volff bite here and there. A crisscross of raised white lines from thorns and sharp branches. Little souvenirs from her frequent forays into the desert to gather and tend her plants.
It's… well, it's not the prettiest sight. There's a reason she sticks to long sleeved shirts nowadays.
Brighid leans back against the edge of the hot spring. She doesn't press for an answer, nor does it seem she expects one. Idly, she twirls a damp strand of purple hair around one finger, over and over again. "…Yeah," she finally sighs, expression relaxed, "yeah, I know what that's like."
And this… this doesn't really make sense to Mòrag, because in all the weeks she's known Brighid now, she hardly ever bothers to cover up her arms. After all, why would she even need to?
She figures she must have some sort of dumb, confused look on her face, because Brighid laughs a little and reaches out toward her. Her arm, wreathed in its inky blue flames, is trembling. Mòrag reaches out to grab it.
"Tell me what you feel," she murmurs, voice soft.
The hand in her grasp shakes like a leaf, so Mòrag covers it with both of her own to steady it. Brighid's skin is soft, so soft, missing all the rough calluses that adorn her own hands. The bones in her fingers feel delicate, almost fragile, leading upward to a smooth palm and slender wrist and, higher up, there's… oh.
Her thumb catches on a patch of skin on Brighid's wrist, a bit thicker and more uneven than the skin on her hands had been. She reaches higher, groping at her elbow, her bicep, the curve of her shoulder. And it's there, it's everywhere, all but invisible beneath the gentle swirling ink of Brighid's blue flames. Scar tissue.
Mòrag freezes but doesn't let go. Her fingers jitter on the other woman's bare shoulder. Brighid raises her opposite arm and rests her hand atop of Mòrag's. "They're burn scars," she explains, with a hint of humor in her voice. "I was in… in an accident, a long time ago. Figured if people were going to stare at my arms, might as well give them something a bit nicer to look at, right? Oh, but don't you be giving me any crap over the irony of covering up burn scars with tattoos of fire. Rebellious teenaged me thought it was pretty neat at the time."
"It's… they're still neat, now!" Mòrag blurts out. "They're beautiful. Your scars are beautiful. You, I mean… every part of you is beautiful, Brighid."
Brighid's lips part. She exhales. Leans forward.
Mòrag meets her halfway.
"This," Brighid declares smugly, "has to be some of my best work yet." She drops the tattoo gun down onto the table with perhaps a little too much enthusiasm, prompting Mòrag to roll her eyes.
"Surprised you haven't broken your table yet, slamming stuff down on it like that."
"Oh, shush, you."
"Am I allowed to look yet? I want to see how badly you've vandalized my body."
Brighid huffs. "This isn't vandalism—it's art."
"You immortalized Zeke's pet turtle on his left ass cheek yesterday. If that doesn't classify as vandalism, then I don't know what does."
"Hey, I don't judge what the customer wants." Brighid rummages on the table for a moment and comes back holding a small mirror. Mòrag cranes her neck and stretches a bit. The sleeveless shirt she's wearing feels nice in such hot weather, she has to admit, and it shows off her new tattoo. The rose design is beautiful, every bit as lifelike as one of the actual specimens she has sitting for sale in her shop. And as for the color…
"It's still not scientifically accurate," she states. She tries to maintain a stoic frown, but it's difficult when she catches the mockingly offended look Brighid shoots her.
"But we match, Mòrag. Isn't that the important part?" A tattooed finger pokes Mòrag on the nose.
"Roses aren't blue," she sighs, flashing a lopsided grin.
"Neither is fire," Brighid agrees. She loops her arms around Mòrag's neck, presses a kiss to the corner of her mouth. "And yet, here we are."