Title: Fog (Beware! RPS!) Part 6 of "Season 3"
Author: Janet F. Caires-Lesgold
Feedback to: jfc@freeshell.org
Archive: Mailing list archives only--others please ask permission!
Category: Romance, humor, Michael's side
Timeframe: Early spring 2004
Rating: Strong R for language and scenes of m/m sexual activity
Pairing: Michael/Tom
Summary: Marked men

DISCLAIMER: This story is just for the entertainment of my online friends and myself, not for any profit. It is pure fantasy and does not intend to reflect on the actual behavior or personalities of the people named herein. Please do not sue me for my little bit of fun!

DEDICATION: For Tiff, who makes the murky clear, and for a couple of other people responsible for some things herein, though I dare not say their names!

COPYRIGHT: (C) Janet F. Caires-Lesgold, August 2, 2004, jfc@freeshell.org

Please don't redistribute or alter this story in any way without the express permission of the author. Thank you very much.

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Something hurts. You're barely even awake yet, and you feel it. Your head hurts a little, but this is further down. A quick checklist: not your stomach, not your ass, kinda close to your dick. Worried at what you might find, you fling aside the bedcovers to look down there.

The perfunctory exam you give yourself as you sit up in bed doesn't provide any more information. There's a gauze pad taped to a spot to the left of your penis that must have been shaved to grant access to the wound.

Vowing not to panic just yet, you check your surroundings. Your own bed in your own space, which gives you some reassurance in the dim light. Large male body next to yours with his back to you: dark hair, wearing a pair of your boxers... He lets out a little snore, which you realize sounds familiar. There's a wedding ring on the nightstand--of course: Tommy.

With as much stealth as you can muster first thing in the morning when you have a weird ache under a surprisingly intimate bandage, you climb out of bed without disturbing your recumbent companion. Behind the closed bathroom door, you flick on the light and get comfortable on the best seat in the house for a more thorough investigation.

Carefully, you remove the tape holding down the gauze piece by piece, leaving as much hair as possible attached to the edges of the shaved patch. You grasp the corner of the pad and peel it back a millimeter at a time until you reveal an unfamiliar dark and slightly-scabby area.

"You okay, babe? Whoa! What the hell is that?" For once, you weren't quiet enough not to awaken your lover in the morning. Instead of snoring in your bed, Tom is standing in the opened door, looking lusciously tousled and as confused by your injury as you must.

You look up at his beautifully stupid expression with a smile. "I was kinda hoping you could tell me, to be perfectly honest. Come down here and look at this--I want you to see if you can figure out what it is."

He leans down and reaches for your skin, though he doesn't touch anything yet. "That is weird, dude. What--did I bite you there?" The mental image is a little more complicated than you really want to contemplate, but luckily, he shifts and gets on his knees, moving in closer to you. "Lemme... ow."

"'Ow'?"

"Yeah. Hang on." Tom gets back up and tugs his shorts away from his body. "The fuck!" he exclaims as he peeks inside.

"What?"

Yanking the garment down to his ankles, he shows you what he's found: an identical bandage on the opposite side of his lower belly. "Jesus!" he gasps unguardedly. He may not be quite as hirsute as you are down there, but you still cringe when he pulls the tape free in a single stroke instead of aping your cautious removal.

Tom's dick is right at your eye level, so you can see the injury under the wrapping more easily. "Oh, crap."

"What is it?" he asks, reaching over your head to adjust the medicine chest mirror toward himself and craning his neck to catch his reflection without moving out of your reach.

"It's a tattoo."

"What?" he yells, bending clumsily at the waist to try to get a glimpse of the thing himself and grabbing at you when he almost loses his balance. He bobs upright at once with a hand shading his eyes and a disoriented grimace. "Shit. What the fuck were we smoking last night?"

"I think Pepe got a little creative with the additives in that batch. You don't remember anything, either?"

"I didn't even remember that you bought your pot from somebody named Pepe. How did you meet this character?"

"Long story, which I barely recall at the moment, much to my relief." Tom has sat down on the edge of the bathtub, positioning his bare ass carefully on the folded bathmat so he doesn't slip onto the floor. You sit back on the toilet lid and assess your situation as rationally as possible. "What matters is that apparently while we were stoned last night, you and I thought that it would be a good idea to get inked."

"Are you sure that thinking was involved in this decision?"

An idle scratch with a fingernail near the spot makes you jump at the sting. "Well, I can tell we tried to get them where it wouldn't be an issue for future filming..."

"We hope," he adds, his eyebrows giving a warning twitch.

"True," you sigh, shuddering to yourself at how much skin the writers have gotten you to bare this year. Setting your jaw firmly, you stand up to face your partner-under-the-needle to learn something important. "There's one thing you can help me figure out, though. What's it of?"

He gives you a comforting smile, then reaches for a washcloth and runs it under the faucet for a second. Dabbing gently at the mark with a warm, moist, terry-clad fingertip, he stares at it more closely. "It's letters."

"What--my initials?"

"Nope." He looks up at you, puzzled. "What's 'T.B.' mean?"

"Tuberculosis?" In disbelief, you step away from his touch to find a hand mirror in a nearby cabinet. "Lemme see this," you mutter, curving your spine and neck to allow the best view of the permanent decoration. "Why the hell did I have the letters 'T.B.' tattooed next to my dick?"

"I think it's a label," asserts Tom out of thin air.

"Of course it's a label, fuckwad. What kind of label could it be?"

"Maybe it's 'Tabloid Boy'..."

"What?" you explode at him incredulously.

He shrugs. "You know--that online alter-ego for Lex?"

Annoyed, you dismiss it easily. "Yeah, right. What does yours say? 'Freak'?"

"No," he answers defensively, "but I can't quite see it from here. It's upside-down." You hand him the small mirror, into which he squints as he waves it around carelessly. "Now it's backwards. Can you read it for me?"

"One mystery at a time, okay, Scoob? We'll get to that soon enough. 'T.B.'... 'T.B.'... What could it stand for?"

Tom snorts in spite of himself. "Me, usually," he jokes.

"Huh?"

"Your cock usually stands up for me, without much effort, if I recall correctly." He runs his finger under the mark, then slyly over to your genitals, perhaps to test your reaction time.

For a moment, your bewilderment gives way to a chuckle as you stop to ponder your situation. His joke sparks something like a memory in you. "You may have an idea there, genius. Maybe the T is for Tom."

Looking far too self-satisfied as he strokes you idly, he nods. "I think you're right. Tom something."

Succumbing to his touch, you shut your eyes and enjoy the feeling of blood rushing to your penis. "Maybe 'Tommy's Bitch'..."

"That's it!" he hollers, dropping you unceremoniously. "I remember now! We had been fooling around, and you said you should get a tattoo with that on it. We were just stoned enough that we went out and found a tattoo parlor on the spot. Guess you got freaked by the needles and only went for an abbreviation!"

"If you say so. I must have been more wasted than you were, because I can't remember that at all. Did you at least get me off, or did we really leave in the middle of it?"

He looks up at you again sheepishly, tracing a circle a safe distance around the two little letters on your gut. "I think we got distracted. Sorry."

"It's okay, buddy. Let me take a leak, and I'll meet you back in bed. You can make it up to me."

There's a bit of mumbled negotiation as he uses the toilet before you, then goes out to wait. You grin smugly as you pick up his discarded underwear and carry it back to where you both left your clothes.

"Did you get cold last night or something?" you ask on your way back to bed.

"Why?" he asks, not looking up from studying his new feature.

"You were wearing my boxers."

He considers this for a minute, then visibly puts two and two together. "I was trying to protect this thing. I thought I might bump it while I was asleep and hurt myself, so I just grabbed the closest shorts I could find."

"Which were mine, since you never wear any!" you finish the thought for him, flinging them onto the pile on the floor. "Now," you purr, sliding into bed beside him, "wanna make me your bitch all over again?"

"Sure," he answers with a brilliant grin, "if the tattoo fits." He wastes no time bending over you and kissing you deeply, betraying the surreptitious application of a breath strip on his tongue in your absence. You'd ask for one of your own, but, rather than break the mood, you decide against it. Besides, the thing is sweet enough and minty enough for two, so you return his kisses eagerly.

Soon his hand on your cock gets you nice and hard, and you draw your mouth away from his to groan in pleasure. "Oh, God, Tommy!" you exclaim in reaction to his huge paw groping and stroking you firmly.

"Who are you again?" he asks with a teasing growl.

"I'm your bitch, beautiful. Always your bitch," you reply, punctuating your sentence with a deep moan. Further words fail you as he plunders your ass with a spit-slicked finger, shoved in deep and crooked just so to press against your prostate. A noise that can only be described as a shriek issues from your lips as you come abruptly, pumping your essence in rivulets onto your stomach. Through slitted eyes, you can see Tom watching you with a devilish grin as you recover.

"Always. You gonna remember that?" he drawls wickedly.

"Got a permanent reminder here," you assure him, pointing at the raw, shaved, branded spot on your body as you wipe up the mess with a handful of tissues. "Time to decipher yours, pretty boy."

"Don't you want me to fuck you?" he asks when you push him onto his back.

"We'd probably better not over-strain those muscles just yet. Don't want the ink to run!" As carefully as you can without brushing your tat too hard against the rumpled sheets, you settle between his legs on your stomach. Peering at his mark, which would line up perfectly with yours were you stretched out on top of him, your face falls a little when you can make out the lettering.

"I saw that," he scolds, even though you'd thought you'd hidden it better than that. "What's wrong? Tell me what it says."

You can't hold back a self-pitying sigh as you glance at it again. "No big deal. It's 'J.W.M.', like 'Jamie White's Man'... Guess I can live with that."

"Oh, yeah..." Tom breathes almost to himself, "That's it." He shakes his head at you indulgently, while you try to ignore his half-grin. It's not as easy to resist his meaty hands grasping you under the arms and practically dragging you up on top of him where, indeed, your tattoos line up perfectly. "That's what she's supposed to think, since she's the only other person who's likely to run across it in everyday activities."

Still not relaxing in his arms, you reluctantly ask, "So what does it really mean?"

Pulling your head close, he murmurs tenderly, "'Just'," then draws you down for a soft kiss. "'Want'," he continues, followed with another kiss. "'Michael'." He has to be able to see your gaze of wonder and love before he pulls your mouths together in searing union.

Were you still high, it's likely that the look in his eyes as you pull away at last would have made you cry. Though you are tempted to verify that the message behind his tattoo is what he says it is, his expression confirms that he means every word. Poking into your stomach, however, is evidence that you've got some unfinished business to handle. You start to slide back down his body to attend to it, but wince when the skin around your mark gets tugged the wrong way. He erupts with a tiny amused snort at your distress, though his eyes still twinkle adoringly. "Freak," you mutter in lieu of a declaration of love as you get into position again to take his cock in your mouth.

"Bitch," he replies in the very same tone of voice, watching you intently. Funny--you feel a lot better now than you did when you woke up...

THE END