Prompt:
Cam, new prompt directly from Ginny's new EW pics! XD MM and David have never been together *in that sense* so Charming discovers MM's apple-shaped tatoo only after Snow comes back from FTL and they're alone while Emma and Henry are away. I'd like to see Charming a bit torn by the fact she's wearing the proof of her love for him on her skin and, please, come up with an excuse as for why MM has it! LOL Thanks! *_*
It takes him a few moments to realize just what he's looking at.
(In his defense, his mind is quite distracted. It is hard to think when he's got his wife home, on his lap in their bed, her mouth on his neck and her hands working the buttons of his shirt. It doesn't help that with her sweater finally out of the way, he has his hands on her naked back and the lace of her bra is brushing against his chest. Distracting. Wonderfully distracting.)
There is a tattoo on the inside of Snow's arm. It was definitely not there the last time he saw her naked or semi-naked, that is he certain. He's far too fond of touching or kissing her skin to have possibly missed that. It must be Mary Margaret's, and yet the shape is all too familiar to him.
An apple.
"What's this?" he asks softly, drawing his thumb across the ink buried in her skin.
Snow pauses, then lifts her head from his neck. She follows his gaze and for a moment, he can see Mary Margaret in her blush. Then she meets his gaze and there is all Snow in her defiance.
"A tattoo," she says, making no excuses.
"I see that," he says drily.
"Mary Margaret got it," Snow says after a moment.
"Why the apple?"
She smiles sadly. "Mary Margaret never liked apples. She kept having dreams about choking on them. She always thought maybe it was a repressed childhood memory."
"It wasn't," he says softly.
"No," she agrees. They both know what it was. "But Mary Margaret believed that."
"So why get a tattoo of something she didn't like?" he asks. She smiles again, warmer this time.
"To defeat it," Snow says. "To feel like she survived, to be brave."
Charming nods slowly, still keeping his thumb lingering on her tattoo. A part of him almost wants to erase it from skin, take away what she endured to keep him alive. But instead he leans down and kisses the spot lovingly, the part of him that admires her bravery and loves, just loves how fiercely she loves too. Enough to willingly take a poisoned apple.
She watches him kiss her tattoo through lowered eyelids, he notices, her breath catching.
"You don't hate it?" she asks.
"No," he says softly. "I hate what the apple did to you, what Regina did to you. But what this symbolizes – your courage, your strength, your survival? How can I not love that when I love you more than anything?"
She cups his face in her hands, smiling down at him with so much love he feels almost humbled by it. She touches the scar on his chin softly, and he knows she feels something of the same about the mark she left on him. "I love you, Charming."
As he leans forward to kiss her again, she pauses him with a finger on his lip.
"Did David Nolan get any tattoos I should know about?" she asks teasingly, as he presses a kiss against her finger instead.
"I could answer that," he says slowly, moving his hands to her waist as he lowers her against the mattress, "but I have a much better idea. Find out for yourself."
"I'd have to get you naked then," she murmurs, and he smiles.
"Exactly," he says, and leans down to kiss her.
(He doesn't, as it turns out. But they have a lot of fun establishing that for sure.)