#notsubtle

so geno wants a tattoo, you know, and he’s not going to settle for anyone but the best. and the best is in halifax and his name is sidney crosby. geno exchanges a few emails with the shop and he likes what sidney (call me sid) comes up with for him so when the season is over, he makes a stop in nova scotia. 

sid’s not at all what geno expected. he looks like he should be a school teacher or something. he doesn’t even have any tattoos! taylor, who works at sid’s shop during the summer, just laughs at geno when he says that. 

‘sid’s covered. you’re just not allowed to see them.’

which of course, makes geno want to see them all the more. 

the design is perfect of course and when geno lies down on the table in sid’s room, he’s nervous and excited and kind of forgetting english. sid’s fucking gorgeous okay and even if he is wearing an extremely dorky polo shirt and a habs cap, geno wants to do dirty things to him. 

and the tattoo kind of tells sid enough about geno to know that geno’s family. and okay, geno may have looked up sidney crosby and poked around on google enough to know that sid’s gay. he also knows that’s why sid quit hockey even though he was considered the #1 prospect in the world when he was 17. 

geno doesn’t understand walking away from hockey, but he does understand hiding being gay. he’s been doing that for years. 

‘i’m surprised you didn’t want a stanley cup tattoo,’ sid says over the hum of the machine, the pain sharp and focused on the patch of skin above geno’s shoulder blade.

‘maybe that next,’ geno says when sid pauses to wipe ink off his skin. ‘this first.’

‘i can finish all of the outline in this session. you’ll have to come back for the color,’ sid says, dipping the needle in the black ink again. ‘and you can’t put pads on right after i do that. you need a least a week, more like two.’

‘i come back before season,’ geno turns his head to the other side to look at sid. 

‘i want you to think really hard about the color we talked about,’ sid says after a minute of silence between the two of them. geno can hear another tattoo machine buzzing through the wall. ‘you can’t take this back.’

 ‘won’t want to.’

sid gets back to work and geno closes his eyes against the pain. it’s sharp and insistent, a burning heat where sid touches his skin. it’s exhilarating and arousing and geno kind of loves it.

when sid is done the outline, hours later, geno’s whole body is buzzing with excitement, adrenaline spiking through his veins. sid helps him stand up and it’s so obvious that geno is hard in his sweats. sid keeps a hand on his shoulder as geno looks in a mirror at his back. 

the russian crest is perfect and huge. it covers most of his back and it’s gorgeous, stark black against his reddened skin. sid’s style is hyperrealistic but his color is always abstract and watery and delicate. geno can’t wait for that part.