Prompts: DrunkOQ get matching tattoos
Law Students Robin and Regina get tattoos (they each pick one for each other) after getting drunk together or in the spur of the moment - later Regina begins to regret it because of Cora.
It's 1:34 pm on a Tuesday of their last week off before they start articling, when the bar exam results come out. Regina gets hers open first, sees the pass and pass, and sighs with relief before turning to Robin. He smiles at her, says incredulously, "I passed both."
She doesn't squeal her, "Ah, I knew you would," but it's definitely higher pitched than her usual.
They hug tightly then kiss and kiss as the realization they never have to take either of the tests again sinks in. They only have one more hurdle to get over, and it's the easiest one survive ten months as an articling student, then they will be licensed lawyers.
They are naked by 1:45, celebrating their accomplishment on the kitchen floor of their new apartment. By three, they are drunk, taking advantage of the fact they have no responsibilities for the next five days.
It's when she's opening the third bottle of wine, her engagement ring clanking against the glass, that she has a thought she can't help but voice. "Why do only women get marked?"
Robin looks at her quizzically, brow furrowed as he tries to decipher what she means. She's pulling the cork out of the bottle when he asks, "Marked how?"
She refills his glass as she answers, "The ring," then giggles when she realizes she just mixed two different red wines, they are the same varietal at least, so hopefully it won't be gross.
She fills her empty glass (it's what had prompted her to open another bottle) while he says, "You mean like why do you get a ring, and I don't?"
She nods, but then her brain catches up a few seconds later. "Well you get one eventually, but I mean, I have an engagement ring that, in theory, tells interested suitors," —Robin snickers at her phrasing, and she shoots him a glare— "to back off. There's nothing to get the ladies to back off."
"Ah, yes, the hoards of women that throw themselves at my feet. Whatever shall we do?"
She whacks his arm playfully as she narrows her eyes at him. "You know what I mean."
He nods, "I do, and it's not exactly equitable I'll admit, but I don't know how to remedy it."
Neither does she, so the subject changes, but it stays in the back of her mind. They are almost through the third bottle, watching the episode of Friends where Rachel gets a tattoo when Robin remarks, "You know I always wanted a tattoo, actually had an appointment and everything. I was going to get this lion's crest thing, but I backed out at the last minute."
She laughs, "So, you were Phoebe?"
"Sort of, I didn't even get a little dot though. I saw all the equipment and thought 'you know what? I don't want the crest this badly'. I apologized, gave him twenty dollars for wasting his time and left."
"You chickened out, wow, I did not see that coming."
"Hey, now."
She laughs. She knows she hasn't seriously offended him, but still reassures, "I just mean you are normally a risk-taker, so it's surprising to me."
"I'm not a risk-taker," he insists, his eyes silently challenging her to call him out, which she does.
"Oh, please. You said you want to go skydiving to celebrate getting called to the bar and climb Everest someday. Also, whose idea was it to fuck in a classroom? In the law library? That club bathroom? The dean's office—"
"We didn't actually do that one," he points out as if she wasn't aware.
"I know, the point is you wanted to."
He's smirking as he tells her, "Still do… Maybe the ten-year reunion."
She rolls her eyes, "Keep dreaming, babe."
"Oh, I will," he says, winking at her. "I should get a tattoo, though. I still want one, perhaps not the lion crest, something a bit more subtle."
"What are you thinking?"
He chews his lip, his hand coming up to rest on his face, "I'm not sure honestly."
That's how they end up looking at tattoo designs while drunk, which in retrospect probably wasn't the best idea.
He decides he wants something to symbolize her, circling back to their conversation from earlier, something soft and subtle to symbolize their engagement.
She tells him point blank there will be no sex for him if he gets her name on him, and he laughs. He assures her he wasn't thinking of anything like that, then teases her that she would never be able to hold out even if he did.
They taunt and tease each other as they look at tattoos, and before she knows it, he's picked out a crest with an intricate crown in the centre. The crown being for Regina is subtle enough she doesn't mind it. It's not her thing at all, but it's his tattoo, and if that's what he wants that's fine.
The tattoo idea, the permanence of it is yet another sign he's in it for the long haul, that he thinks this is for real and forever. It's the kind of thing that used to scare her but now makes her so happy. She cannot imagine her life without Robin, can't believe she ever fought this, but she was dumb, in denial and oblivious to how he felt. Sometimes she can't help but marvel over what a miracle it is they ended up happy after all the stupid things she did when they first got together to protect herself.
Robin decides for the hell of it to Google tattoo places and there is one just up the street from them. He decides to call them to see if they have any openings. They were both thinking something later in the week, but when they get told it's walk in only they have more than enough liquor in their systems to think that's a great idea.
In honour of Robin's tattoo they take two tequila shots on their way out, it's liquid courage for him, and she's just showing support with hers. That moment, grimacing at the awful taste of tequila, is the last thing Regina remembers from that night.
She wakes up pretty hungover, but it could be a lot worse, has been a lot worse before. She thinks for a second about the morning after the Solicitor's exam, and her stomach pitches a bit just from the memory. It's not an occasion she ever wants to repeat.
She shuffles to the bathroom, not bothering to turn on any lights, grasping blindly for the Aspirin bottle in the medicine cabinet to take the edge off of her headache, so she can get a few more hours of sleep. Except she's not fully awake, so she ends up dropping the bottle, right after she opened the cap of course, causing pills to scatter across the bathroom floor.
She curses loudly and thinks it's a good thing Robin is a heavy sleeper, because that level of noise would have woken her up in a heartbeat.
She flips on the light to clean up her mess, it's then that she catches sight of the bandage on her arm. She freezes, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment and reopening them. The bandage is still there, wasn't a hallucination. Oh, god! What the hell did she do?
She has a sneaking suspicion, why else would her arm be bandaged if not because she too decided to get a tattoo? But good lord she hopes she's wrong, has no idea what her drunken self would have picked out, but is sure it won't be pretty.
Fuck, her mother is going to kill her. Cora has strong opinions about many, many things, but her hatred of tattoos is next level, even for her.
Regina's breathing picks up as she imagines her mother's reaction, imagines her learning Regina did this while drunk and oh, god, yeah, that needs to never come to light. She's just going to have to get this thing removed before she sees her mother in two weeks. That's doable, right?
She's not going to panic, not now, it's fixable. She can deal with this; it's totally fine.
Her rising anxiety seems to amp up the pain in her temples, so she goes back to her initial task, collecting and disposing of the Advil that hit the floor. When she's finished, she takes two from the bottle and swallows them.
She heads back to the bedroom with tension spooled in her gut. This is not good. Maybe she will wake up and this will just be a bad dream (god, she wishes). It's too early. She's too hungover to deal with it, so she snuggles back up into Robin's chest and lets the calm cadence of his breathing settle her down until she drifts back off to sleep.
It's still there when she wakes up. She wants to take off the bandage, see what lies underneath but she forces herself to wait. She pulls up tattoo aftercare on her phone and reads the first four Google results. They all say she can take off the bandage (and probably should have earlier but oh well, can't fix that now). She finds a bag in the corner of their room on her way to wash her tattoo, containing lotion and unscented soap. At least their drunk asses did something right.
She washes her hands, which are shaking, god, she's so nervous. It's ridiculous, because it's not like not knowing will change whatever monstrosity she branded herself with, but still, she has to take a minute to breathe and tell herself it will be okay before she removes it.
She breathes a huge sigh of relief when she uncovers a small feather. It's cute, something she actually likes. There is no disaster, she's keeping this. The only thing she would change if she could do it over would be to put it somewhere else, somewhere easier to cover so she could just never show her mother and never deal with her wrath.
Her mother is going to have a conniption fit, there's no doubt of that. She can already picture it—her mother grasping her wrist harshly, staring down at the delicate feather and then exploding. It will be a one, maybe even two, hour lecture that will inevitably end at an impasse when her mother insists she has to remove it at once and Regina refuses.
Her mother is already pissed that she agreed to marry Robin. He's going to be a lawyer just like her, but no, that's apparently not good enough. Her mother wanted her to marry someone with "better status," which Regina knew meant more money. Her mother at least had the good sense to keep her misgivings to herself when Robin proposed, because Regina may have committed matricide if her mother had ruined that night for her.
Instead, she got to hear all about it over lunch the next day. She hadn't won herself any points by showing up late—she and Robin had had a rendezvous in their bed, then in the shower, then pressed up against the front door when she went to leave. She tuned most of it out, not even Cora Mills could get her down that day, though she put in a valiant effort.
She hasn't seen her mother since then, she and Robin went to England for two weeks after the bar, staying with his family, and had come back and moved into their apartment. Though he'd been living with her at her place for two and a half months, it was still her place—this is the first place that's theirs. Of course, her mother hates it, wanted them to live in a huge, unaffordable place, a building she could brag about her daughter living in. You would think they live in a hovel and not in a very nice apartment downtown close to both of their workplaces.
So her mother is mad about that too, is mad about everything Regina's doing now that she refuses the string attached to financial support from her parents. In the grand scheme of how she's failing as a daughter, this tattoo might not outweigh how she's throwing her life away.
She'll find out, eventually. Regina can't hide her tattoo forever, but she has no plans to see her mother in the near future, so that's future Regina's problem.
She makes herself an espresso, and as if on cue, Robin walks out just as she's finishing up. She offers the shot to him, but he shakes his head. They switch places, and he makes himself a latte as she asks him if he remembers how she ended up with a tattoo.
He looks confused, so she holds out her wrist. His eyes widen as he looks down at her arm, remarking, "I don't—Ohhh, wait… you decided a crown was cringey and you didn't want it to be a tattoo for you. That it should be something I wanted for me."
That makes sense she does think that's cringey, never would have been on board with the crown sober—not that he needs her permission, it's his body.
Robin goes on, "So we went through the book and there was a similar lion crest to the one I almost got. I was looking at something else but you said I should get the lion instead," He pauses to sip at his drink. When he's done sipping, she gestures for him to go on because she does not remember this at all. "Then I jokingly said something like well then I get to pick yours. I thought you would roll your eyes or make a sarcastic comment, but you said okay. I thought maybe it was a joke, but we found that feather and... yeah."
"I can't believe they let us get tattoos when we were that impaired."
He laughs, "The girl didn't want to actually, um, but then you gave her fifty dollars, told her we were lawyers, and offered to draw up a legally binding waiver of all of our rights."
"Wouldn't we have signed a waiver to get the tattoos?"
"Yes, but you started telling the girl about all the ways that waiver wasn't enforceable."
She shakes her head, "Wow, I'm surprised I was able to read it given I remember nothing."
"I don't know that you actually said anything legit, but you were at least coherent and sounded convincing, so the girl was impressed. I think she also decided you must not have been as drunk as she initially thought, which was not the truth but whatever."
She snickers, well whatever works, right? She doesn't like that she can't remember it, but it doesn't appear that she did anything embarrassing, so that's good.
"Go wash yours, the stuff is in the bathroom. I want to see it," she requests as she opens the fridge to find them something to eat.
He presses a quick kiss to her cheek she wasn't expecting and tells her, "Yes, Ma'am."
She decides on fried eggs and toast, and is nearly done with breakfast when Robin emerges from the bathroom.
She shuts the burner off while she turns to look at Robin's tattoo. It's nice, a small, all black crest with a lion in the centre. It looks good, much better than she was picturing when they were talking about it. She had expected something a bit bigger, but this is better.
Still, she snickers as she realizes how cliché they were, getting drunk and getting tattoos. They are so lucky it wasn't a disaster.
All of their friends get a good laugh out of the story of their tattoos. For a while, any time they drink with John or Mal they get made fun of, asked if this time they are going to elope, get married Vegas-style, and other drunken clichés. They laugh it off because it was rather stupid, but it worked out alright.
Her mother blows a gasket as expected—without knowing the whole story. The only silver lining is that Regina's tattoo is a bigger disappointment than her marrying Robin (well, until Cora sees his tattoo anyway). But Regina loves her feather tattoo, so she ignores her mother.
Though she can't remember how it happened, every time she looks at her feather tattoo she thinks of that night how happy and high on life they were and it makes her smile.