It was nearing three in the morning on the FanCon tour bus, and the only sounds were the soft music tinkling out of the driver's compartment—Future Generations, "Spirit of my Youth"—and someone's low snoring from the bunks. Luna Hale had been slumped on the booth next to Paul Donnelly—all six foot three of his blue-eyed, brown-haired, and tattooed self—for the better part of two hours, unable to sleep. Luna had ventured out to meet her family and their bodyguards when staying in Philadelphia had seemed to her, at the moment, the worst possible thing she could do. And the two rows of bunks to her left seemed just as confining as her gated neighborhood back in Philly, so she'd found solace in the quiet company of Donnelly.

This was the first time that she'd ever been alone with the older bodyguard, but she was surprised by how quickly she'd felt at ease with him. She knew that her Aunt Daisy would have some elaborate but plausible theory about the whole thing, but Luna thought Anne of Green Gables described it best: "kindred spirits."

Donnelly had already been doodling in his spiral bound sketchbook when she'd first sat down, and after a quick initial greeting, she'd sat sideways on the cushions and watched him draw. She was worried for all of two minutes that he was going to ask her to back away—to stop hovering over his shoulder—but then he'd started talking as he sketched, and even tilted the book a little more towards her so she could get a better view.

Twenty minutes ago—after nearly two hours of aimless chatter and witty remarks—she'd asked him if he would be willing to tattoo her. And, twenty minutes ago, he'd shrugged his shoulders and said, "Why not?"

Now he was doodling for her, and she was sitting a little bit closer, switching between looking at the book in her hands and peeking over his shoulder—watching his pencil glide over the paper as the UFO began to take shape. She was pulled from her observation of his fingers—his drawing—when Farrow entered the lounge and collapsed on the other side of the booth.

Luna closed the book she'd been aimlessly flipping through—an orange-covered copy of Isaac Asimov's novel, Foundations, that she'd read numerous times—and looked up at her brother's boyfriend.

"You know something funny?" she asked.

"What?" Farrow replied, propping his foot up on his cushion.

Luna smiled at him. "I kept thinking my brother would end up with someone boring, annoying, or high-maintenance. Someone I'd hate. Kinney, Xander, and I talked about it all the time, but Moffy actually fell for someone cool."

And Farrow was cool. Luna had always thought that. She was the one in her family that had befriended him first—the one that had sought him out first and asked him all sorts of, she was sure, annoying questions. Every time he'd been around over the years, whether as her doctor's 'apprentice' or her mother's bodyguard, she had observed his piercings and his tattoos and his no-nonsense behavior and thought, This guy is awesome. Now that she knew him as more than just her doctor's son or her mom's bodyguard, she could honestly say he was cooler than she'd originally thought.

"He's not cool," Donnelly rebutted with a smirk. He never looked up from his page, even as Luna looked to him for an explanation. "You know he was in honor society at Yale."

Before Luna could speak—before she could say that was actually pretty badass considering she couldn't even pass twelfth grade history—Farrow responded. "That 'society' was actually a program."

"Same thing," Donnelly saidbantered.

"No," Farrow replied matter-of-factly. "One you show up and participate in events. The other, you just take classes with an H beside the number.

"And stop shitting on people who try in school," Farrow scolded, snatching Donnelly's sketchbook out of his hands. Before Farrow could even glance down at it, Donnelly yanked the notebook back.

"I tried," Donnelly defended. "Still didn't do well."

"Ditto," Luna added. She grabbed one of Donnelly's many Sharpies off the table and began to absently draw on her kneecap—avoiding both of their eyes.

"Didn't graduate either," Donnelly added. She didn't know if he was trying to make her feel better, but it was working.

Luna kept her head bowed and focused on the Sharpie in hand as all her anxieties about high school—about potentially not graduating high school—came thundering back. Luna was proud of herself for making it this far in her studies, though—even her therapist had told her that a lot people would've already dropped out. That the sheer amount of ridicule that she faced from her classmates was enough to make a "lesser woman" give everything all up. When Dr. Schnider had said that, though, Luna wanted to rebut that she barely went to class and all the homework made no sense. So, really, it was like she'd dropped out with the amount of actual schooling she participated in. Luna knew that if she wasn't so obsessed with making her parents proud—obsessed with not giving the paparazzi something to yell at her parents about on the street ("See! Loren and Lily can't raise children properly! One of them didn't even finish high school!")—that she would've already left.

Luna smudged the ink on her kneecap and asked Donnelly, "From high school?"

"Yeah."

Luna glanced up at him, and he met her eyes for a second. She saw bone-deep understanding reflecting back at her from his eyes—coupled with a flash of…insecurity? She chickened out and looked to Farrow instead.

"I think I'd be okay without high school," she said, thinking of her trust fund and her family and knowing she had the privilege of being both wealthy and overwhelmingly loved. Missing a high school diploma wouldn't hurt her.

"Give me," Farrow requested, gesturing for the Sharpie that she had just capped. She watched as he bit the cap back off and then reached for her arm, gently pulling it across the table. She couldn't read what he was scribbling on her arm, but it was a little ticklish and she had to do her best not to squirm under the marker's touch.

"Being a high school drop-out with no GED is sad," he said.

"You tell her, Farrow." Donnelly grinned.

"I could secretly be a sad alien," she replied with a slightly forced grin. "My weapon is my tear ducts."

She didn't know if Donnelly could sense the tense nature of her words—because Farrow certainly couldn't as he began smiling—or if he'd felt her tense next to him, but he indulged her even as he returned to his sketch.

"Sad Alien would be a cool band name," he said.

"Uh-huh, think of all the Sad Alien merch," she said. Luna was actually grinning now. "Plushies, tooth brushes, condoms, dildos—slogan: I want a sad alien in me."

"Girl, take my money," Donnelly said, his Philly accent thick.

In a sudden realization, Luna thought, I like his voice. A split-second later, she decided to move away from the potential mess that train of thought could create. To occupy the silence, and make sure she didn't do anything stupidly rash, Luna blurted out the first appropriate thing that popped into her head that could carry the conversation along: "Were you two friends with J.P.?"

She was admiring the lyrics that Farrow had written on her arm—Oh, my life, is changing every day, in every possible way—so she had missed their responses to her question. She was able to read their energy well enough, though, to gather that they hadn't been at all fond of him.

"He never believed half of what I ever told him. He would always chuckle with an okay, huh-huh like I was stupid." She bit her thumbnail, then wanted to kick herself for the nervous middle-school habit making its reappearance. "But I feel guilty that he got fired," she admitted.

She knew that she shouldn't feel that way, and her Uncle Connor would tell her "Guilt is a useless emotion." Luna was highly aware that she and J.P. definitely didn't mesh well—that she needed to be able to rely on her bodyguard for pretty much everything. She knew Quinn Oliviera was the more obvious for her because not only were they around the same age, but she knew he wasn't about to be running off to her parents every time she did something that 'wasn't normal.'

"Shit happens," Farrow said. "Your brother, your parents, and the whole security team would rather you had someone you trusted."

It was like he could read her mind. Donnelly nodded in agreement, and Luna's shoulders loosened. She'd move on, she decided. Put all of this—J.P. and the trouble she'd caused by ditching him—behind her.

It was quiet for a bit, and Luna went back to watching Donnelly's hand move across the page. She was excited for this tattoo to begin with, but looking at the way his sketch was turning out, Luna was even more psyched. She saw Farrow's brows furrow when he caught proper sight of what Donnelly was drawing, and Luna decided to fill him in.

"He's giving me a tattoo on the bus," she said.

"You didn't want to wake your brother up?" he asked.

Honestly, Luna hadn't even considered it. This was something she'd wanted to do on her own. Even though she knew—without a shred of doubt—that Moffy wouldn't try to stop her or talk her out of it, she wanted this to be her experience. Her time to prove to herself that she was actually as grown up as she felt by doing it all on her own. So, she shrugged, and she made up some excuse about how tired Moffy had looked earlier—which was actually pretty truthful, just not the reason she didn't ask him to be here. Farrow agreed with her, though, and she promised to show her older brother first thing in the morning.

"What are you charging her?" Farrow asked.

Luna looked at Donnelly, and thought again of how he'd turned down her offer of cash and just said, 'Write me a story or something.' She had already resolved to slip some extra cash into the bottom of his duffle bag when he went to sleep—a good tattooist deserved good money, not a fic about an alien that she could imagine up in her sleep.

"She's writing me a fic," Donnelly informed Farrow.

Then, instead of asking her to slide out of the booth for a second, he just climbed over her. There was a split second where one of his knees was on either side of her thighs—caging her in and blanketing her with warmth—and she'd thought, 'oh', before he was gone in search of his tattoo kit. Slightly flustered, her neck a little bit red and her heart beating a little bit too fast, Luna cleared her throat and tried to look as though that had no effect on her at all.

"She said she could do an original. A shifter story," Donnelly added, returning to the booth and sifting through his ink and needles.

"With hints of extraterrestrial-ness," she said without missing a beat.

Donnelly tore open a needle package with his teeth, and she tried not to let her stare linger on his mouth—she was sure she failed, spectacularly.

"Where do you want it?" he asked, looking down at her with a glint in his eye. Oh yeah, she'd failed. Luna recognized that glint—that taunting little twinkle—and to show that no, she actually wasn't affected by him, Luna pulled off her black Thrasher hoodie in one fluid motion as if it were nothing.

He looked only at her face, his eyes never moving lower even as she gestured to her ribs and said, "I'm thinking right here." His jaw was clenched, but she saw the amusement in his eyes that betrayed him. He was having fun. He knew what they were doing, but now it was a game of wills and she was not going to lose—Aunt Rose wouldn't have it, and even subconsciously disappointing her aunt sucked.

Luna barely even heard Farrow say, "I'm no longer here. If you need me, I'm ignoring you both," but the sound of the other man's voice snapped Donnelly out of whatever trance he'd fallen into. He returned his focus to the tattoo gun he was setting up. She shifted to the table and leaned back on her hands—not caring that the position put her green bra-covered boobs on display as she watched him work.

"You want any color?" he asked.

"I'm thinking just black."

He nodded.

It took about another seven minutes for him to get everything ready—which included shaving her ribs, which was weird, wiping her skin with an alcohol swab, which was cold, and applying the outline of the design, which made everything extremely real.

"Alright Sad Alien, why don't you lay down on the table, and I'll sit in the booth, and we can get this show on the road?"

Luna did as he bid and laid on her back on the cold wood of the table. She shivered slightly as she settled, and decided to use her discarded sweatshirt as a pillow. Donnelly takes a couple seconds to situate her the way he wants—moving her arm over her chest and sliding a thin pillow up her left hip so she's at a better angle. She tried not to think too much about his hands on her skin, but even covered in black latex gloves, they're unbelievably warm—so much warmer than the cold table—and she can't quite help it that her mind is wandering. She can't help but wonder if the rest of him is just as warm as his hands…

Then, his hands settle on her waist and stay there. Luna looked down to find him already watching her.

"Ready?"

She nodded.

"Let me know if you want a break, or if you need to shift positions," he added.

She grinned at him. "Do your worst, Donnelly."

He shook his head with a smile of his own and set the needle to her skin.

thanks for reading! some parts of this chapter—specifically the dialogue portions—are taken directly from 'lovers like us'. there are three parts left to go, and i hope y'all wanna read them. this couple deserves more content and i've decided i'm going to give it to 'em lol (even if i can't keep my tenses right when i'm writing jskds)

also, watch anne with an e on netflix! shirbert nation rise jskdjs

as of the new year, this is beta'd by the wonderful drwatsonn here on ffn :) check her out, she's amazing!