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She’s never seen anything like them in Deluxe. Their medicine is advanced and, frankly, the quality of life is much less harrowing up top, floating around in crisp, light colored pods. It’s an easy life, a secure life. One she wishes Julie would take advantage of.
Claire’s pointed fingers skim lightly over Julie’s back, slowly taking in the rough texture of the raised discolorations in the otherwise soft skin of her back. It’s such a foreign concept to her. A whole mess of foreign concepts, really. The idea of getting a wound deep enough to scar, the idea of living a life to run the risk of getting such a wound, the idea of letting it heal in such an antediluvian way. It’s a bit much for Claire to wrap her utopian mind around.
The hand that isn’t inspecting the marks along her close friend— Okay, that’s a little bit of an understatement—’s scarring twirls fingers around one of the loose strands of her black and violet hair. Straight, white teeth tease at her lavender lower lip. Lacquered nails scratch down the damaged skin, evidence of battles once fought.
It’s almost laughable. Normally she finds such imperfections disgusting, traits of dirty motorcitizens, signs of the uncivilized underworld she’s not exactly sure why Julie sees it fit to defend so hard, but she finds herself mesmerized by the thick rugged lines across the sleeping girl’s back. It reminds her of the strange drawings she had seen on the skin of a few of the people down in Motorcity, on a few of the rare occasions she had been down there— Tattoos, she thinks, that’s what they were called. Ink imposed on flesh that didn’t wash off in their end of the day shower like her makeup did. Chuck had babbled endlessly one day at her about how they were done, something about needles and lotions and other things she had tuned out nodding occasionally to feign polite interest.
Julie shifts, a groggy, “Claire?” pulling the girl out of her half-formed memory of tattoo patterns she has seen under ground. Her hand, however, doesn’t leave her bare back, fingertips still grazing the damaged tissue.
“Oh, I’m totes sorry! I didn’t think I would, like, wake you up,” Claire starts, vaguely reminding herself of the jumpy blonde she feels she may have spent one too many underground excursions with. She doesn’t have time to frown at herself before Julie seems to pick up her own frown. She tries to push it away quickly, but it’s hard to hide even fleeting emotions on such an expressive face— not to mention one Claire often studies. It leaves Claire perplexed for a moment, before she remembers her hand skimming the skin of Julie’s back.
They have never spoken about it, but silent looks and worrying of bottom lips and downcast eyes have all told her that the scars do not invoke the same sense of fascination in her friend. Claire’s heart sinks for a moment and she almost pulls her hand back to let them fall into a short uncomfortable silence. No, she’s tired of ignoring the issue and it breaks her heart to see the usually super confident Julie biting her lip and lowering her eyes because of something Claire finds so interesting.
She leans forward, pressing her lips to one of the smaller scars, scattering tender kisses in a trail along the shape of the scar. Julie makes a small noise of confusion, trying to crane her neck to look over her shoulder, but Claire just pats lightly at the small of her back. Her lips travel to the next scar— a newer one that Julie had attributed to rogue shrapnel flying off a KaneBot one of her careless Burner teammates had obliterated. She remembers when this mark was a scab, the way she had cleaned it out for Julie with some of those white squares of cloth— gauze? She thinks that’s what Julie had called them— and some clear liquid that seemed to sting when she dabbed it as Julie’s cut, watching the dried blood fade and give way to a pink ridge, one more scar among those already marring her once smooth back. She repeats her action from before, placing soft kisses along the length of the mark, murmuring a soft hum as she feels the muscles in Julie’s back relax.
She does this for every scar along the girl’s back. Once every tantalizing scar has been kissed, Claire lays herself down, threading manicured fingers through Julie’s undecorated ones. She opens her mouth to speak, but the appreciative look in her friend’s eyes speak every word they don’t need to say. Her lips curve upward in a smile as they pull close together, basking in the moment.
Maybe now Julie would understand how beautiful Claire finds every inch of her body.