So a few months ago, I was watching this show called "Tattoos After Dark," and they were talking about people getting names tattooed on them and how it's a curse that dooms relationships and shit, and because everything always comes back to Merthur, I started working on this little baby and I've just gotten around to finishing it. So, yeah, another modern day AU. Because I love those more than I initially thought I would.

Disclaimer: I don't own Merlin. In any sort of way. Which is such a bummer.

Tattoo

*.*.*.*.*

There was a story Gwaine liked to tell, after eight and a half beers or five shots, about an ex-lover of his. Gwaine had a lot of lovers over the years, so Arthur usually zoned out when he started talking about them, but when he started out his tale with, "Her favorite color was bright red. Her lipstick was bright red, her purse was bright red, the sheets of her bed were bright red, the way she said my name was bright red, so, when I thought I was in love with her, I got her name tattooed on me in bright red," Arthur listened.

Half-way through the story, Gwaine would lift his shirt up and show anyone nearby the word "Jasmine" scribed across his heart in the shade his words had promised. And then he would prattle on about how he was young and stupid and thought he knew what love was. As far as his nineteen year-old mind had been concerned, fantastic sex was as close to love as he was ever going to get.

And it was going to last forever.

Well, "forever" turned out to be about a week after that, and then she started screwing around with one of Gwaine's supposed best mates, but that was a story for a few more beers.

It wasn't the story, though, or the girl that always caught Arthur's attention, it was the lecture, the warning, that came after the story, after the tattoo.

"Never," Gwaine would say, pointing his beer bottle at Arthur or Percy or Leon or Lance or Elyan or Merlin. "Get a dame's or a bloke's name on you, no matter how much you think you love them. You do that, and you're destined for bad luck. It's a curse to get someone's name on you. A curse."

And Arthur Pendragon didn't much believe in curses, but anyone ever who got someone's name tattooed on them said the same thing: the relationship was destined to fail from the second the needle hit their skin.

So, it got Arthur thinking one night that, maybe, if you got someone's name tattooed on you before there was any relationship to speak of, then there would never be any relationship and your feelings for said person would melt away—like magic, like a curse.

At least, after the nine beers consumed to coax the story out of Gwaine—and the many others they consumed after that, because, well, why not?—it seemed like a good idea. And what was a little physical pain if it meant sparing him a shit ton of emotional pain down the road when it turned out that Merlin didn't feel the same way about him? Better to give in to the curse now and be done with it before he could fuck up their friendship completely.

Because Arthur always knew what he was talking about. Especially at two in the morning, after so many beers and a few shots of something Gwaine liked to partake in whenever he was feeling particularly stupid, and with only Gwaine and Elyan as his company for the night. And hey, Gwaine knew of a tattoo shop that stayed open well into the night and could do exactly what Arthur wanted done…

*.*.*.*.*

Everything about Arthur ached when he woke up. His head felt like it was splitting open, his mouth felt like he'd tried eating a bag of cotton balls, his side hurt, his neck felt like someone had taken seven thousand needles to it, his knees were sore, and he was pretty sure he wasn't even in his own bed, just because the room smelled like sandalwood and not whatever the hell his own room usually smelled like.

The door thudded open then, the small noise echoing around the room, around his head like a monsoon through an unexpecting forest. He groaned, cracked his eyes open slightly, immediately regretting the decision when the light hit him with the intensity of burning lava, leaving him with the vague, fleeting thought that his retinas had been burned out by the dim rays.

"Turn off the damn sun." He hissed, incoherent even to his own ears.

All he received in response was a chuckle, the door slamming shut—right bastard, whoever was there—and the sound of someone padding over to the bed, their footsteps muffled by carpeting, thank God.

"Typical Pendragon, so full of yourself you expect the very sun to bend to your will."

"Merlin?" Arthur grumbled sleepily when the voice registered. Ah, of course the right bastard was Merlin; he was the only one Arthur knew who was sadistic enough to take advantage of a hangover. Everyone else understood the sacred rules and traditions that followed a hard night of drinking. Namely, leave the poor, hung-over bastard in peace until it passed.

"Yep. Not that you'll be forgetting that any time soon. Now up and at 'em."

"Not until you turn off the damned sun."

"I drew the curtains, you idiot. Now up if you want the hang-over cure."

"The cure?" Arthur asked, eyes cracking open once again. They stayed open this time, the room dimmer and therefore bearable, at least. With one half-sweep of the room, he found himself to be in Merlin's bed, in Merlin's room, with Merlin himself standing next to the bed with a glass full of some disgusting liquid Arthur had downed many times over the years. It was horrendous, but damn if it didn't do its job to cure whatever painful throbbing and aching Arthur felt the morning following a night of such drinking.

"So, erm," Merlin began, sitting down on the edge of his bed as Arthur sat up, took the glass from Merlin, and downed the concoction in as few sips as possible; the less Arthur tasted of it, the less likely he was to vomit. "Do you want to talk about last night?" He asked, twittery and nervous with the question.

Arthur sat the empty glass down on Merlin's bedside table, drew his eyebrows together in thought and confusion. Last night? Last night was nothing but a blur. He wasn't sure how he had even gotten to Merlin's, let alone anything that had happened before then.

"What happened last night?" Arthur asked him. He was met with a measure enough look that was part amusement, part curiosity.

One of Merlin's hands came up absentmindedly, his fingers halting just in front of Arthur's collarbone. "You don't remember." He whispered, lowering his eyes for half a moment.

"Remember what?" Arthur asked, sitting up more and leaning against the headboard, Merlin's blanket falling to bunch at his lap.

Merlin's eyes flicked back up and he smiled, amused and regretful at once as he said, "All the stupidity you managed to cram into one night."

"Merlin…" Arthur rolled his eyes; he was too sore and too tired to play this sort of game with him right now. Though his head had stopped hurting so much, his neck—his collarbone, specifically—and knees were still killing him, and he could do with a glass of water, but, as long as Merlin was playing coy and innocent, avoiding the question, the subject at hand, none of that was going to be remedied.

"What?" Merlin asked, his face the perfect picture of innocence.

"Just tell me."

Merlin sighed once again, fingers coming to trace across Arthur's collarbone, sending a pain through him. Usually, whenever Merlin touched him in an intimate sort of way, he felt a chill trace down his spine, felt himself ache for more, but, when his fingers just briefly ghosted over him this time he felt a dull, throbbing, burning pain instead.

"What—"

"You got a tattoo last night." Merlin blurted at last.

"What!"

"Yeah." Merlin shrugged, a wry sort of smirk taking over his face at Arthur's panic.

"Where? Of what?" He demanded, twisting around to try to spot it, though he suspected, in the back of his mind, that it was where Merlin's fingers had ghosted over him and left a trail of pain in their wake.

"On your collarbone, you idiot." Merlin rolled his eyes, confirming the nagging suspicion as Arthur tried to maneuver his head to glimpse whatever he had had the absolute stupidity of getting permanently etched into his skin the night before.

"What is it?" He demanded.

"Are you sure you want me to tell you?" He asked, a smug, amused sort of look on his face.

Finally giving up trying to glimpse it from that angle—why didn't Merlin have a hand-mirror or something lying around—he sat back against the headboard once again and glared at Merlin, trying to call forward the events of the previous night as Merlin stared back at him, not containing his amusement at the situation at all. Usually, whenever he had a night of drinking like that, he could recall at least bits of it, the events swirling together and bleeding into one another until they were almost unrecognizable—but, at least, he was able to recall enough of it to know how badly he had fucked up or if it was a rather boring night by their usual standards.

But now… Now he was coming up blank, the only evidence of his stupidity permanently branded on him and left in the minds of Merlin, and perhaps Gwaine and Elyan, if they remembered the night any better than Arthur did.

"What. Is. It. Merlin?" He seethed at last, his patience thin as the pain radiating from his collarbone became more apparent and harder to ignore.

"It's… My name." He breathed, shy with the admission, his ears turning pink as Arthur's heart began to race, unsure that he had heard him right. Did he just—No. He couldn't have. Because that would mean—Oh God.

"What?" Was all he could manage.

"You got my name. Tattooed. On your collarbone."

"What?!" Arthur repeated, throwing Merlin's covers off himself completely and jumping out of the bed, stalking to the bathroom as quickly as he could, leaving Merlin to trail behind him for whatever reason he needed to.

When he yanked open the bathroom door and stood in front of Merlin's mirror, his breath caught in his throat, eyes widening, eyebrows drawing together in something like confusion and horror. Just as Merlin had promised, his name—Merlin —was scrawled across Arthur's collarbone in thick, dark ink, the lettering simple and elegant at the same time, tinted a light red around the edges, which he suspected would fade as it healed, if what little he knew about tattoos was true...

But—Oh. Tattoo.

*.*.*.*.*

"Why would I do this?" Arthur demanded of Merlin moments later, sitting at his kitchen table and half-heartedly chewing the dry toast Merlin had given him. Merlin himself was sitting just next to him, nursing a cup of tea and watching him curiously, his eyes flicking down to Arthur's tattoo every few minutes.

"I don't know." He shrugged in response, eyes coming back up to meet Arthur's.

"Well how the hell did I get here last night?" He asked then, a jolt of something or another flowing through him as Merlin eyed his name for the umpteenth time in so many minutes. Honestly, he knew it was a bit of a shock, but if he could focus for half a moment and help Arthur figure out what the hell had happened, that would really be great.

"You, Gwaine, and Elyan came over and started pounding on my door at four o'clock this morning." Merlin sighed, taking a long sip of his tea. "Gwaine and Elyan shoved you in the second I opened up and told me we had a lot to talk about, and then they stumbled into Gwaine's apartment across the hall—how they got the door open at all is beyond me, you lot were so pissed." He shrugged, amusement painting his features once again.

"It's not funny, Merlin." Arthur hissed.

"Yes it is." He insisted, nodding enthusiastically. "Anyway. By the time I got the door locked and turned around to find you to put you to bed or point you towards the toilet, you had your shirt off, and tried to kiss me the second you saw me."

"No." Arthur groaned, the sinking feeling in his stomach dragging his face into his hands in humiliation. Great. Just. Great. Not only had he gotten Merlin's name tattooed on him, but he had tried to kiss him as well. That was it—his life was over. He could never show his face around Merlin ever again after this moment, because if the way he felt about Merlin wasn't obvious to him by now, then he was dumber than Arthur gave him credit for. And since he hadn't said anything, that obviously meant he didn't feel the same way, which meant, yeah, he could never speak to or see Merlin ever again after today.

"Oh, it gets better." Merlin promised him, a chuckle in his voice, a sort of smirk on his face.

"What else?" Arthur groaned again, lowering his hands slowly down his face, unsure just what else he could have done to top that, to humiliate himself further.

"After I stopped you, told you you were drunk and didn't know what you were doing, you showed me your new tattoo, which I hadn't noticed until you pointed it out to me." He gestured towards Arthur absent-mindedly before continuing. "And then you got down on your knees and promised to give me the best blowjob I have ever in my life received if I told you that you mean even half to me what I mean to you. I turned it down, because you were pissed out of your mind. And you trailed after me, still on your knees, all the way to my bedroom, mumbling on and on about something or another that I couldn't quite make out. I finally managed to coerce you into bed under the guise that I would be joining you there—which, I didn't, obviously. Sorry I lied to you, but, desperate times and all that." He smiled wryly, awaiting Arthur's reaction to everything.

But… how the hell was he supposed to react? How did you react to all that? To getting your best friend's name tattooed on you, showing up on their doorstep at four in the morning, trying to kiss them, trying to give them a blowjob, admitting they mean more to you than they know—how did you react to finding out you had pretty much just wrecked the best thing that had ever happened to you in a matter of one night?

"I'm sorry." He said simply enough after a beat, no other words in him, really.

"For what? Making an ass of yourself? You do that all the time." Merlin told him.

"Yeah, but… not like that. Just… how are you even looking at me the same right now?"

"What exactly is it you think you've done?"

"Ruined our friendship."

"Arthur, you could never—"

"Merlin, I got your name tattooed on me and offered to give you a blowjob—how has that not ruined what we have?" Arthur demanded, twisting his face up to match his words and tone.

Merlin sighed, shook his head. "You don't get it, do you?"

"Get what?" Arthur asked, exasperated.

"You've not ruined anything, Arthur. You couldn't have."

"Sorry, in case you've missed it: I got your name tattooed on me and—"

"Offered to give me a blow job, yeah, I know." Merlin shook his head, a smile plaguing his face. "But, Arthur, you can't have ruined anything, and do you want to know why?" He asked, eyes darting between Arthur's collarbone, the tattoo, and his eyes, a dare written between them that Arthur barely recognized.

"Why?" Arthur sighed, figuring he at least owed it to him to hear him out before he left and could never see him again.

"Because," Merlin leaned towards him, grinning slightly as he did so, his breath tickling Arthur's neck as he continued, "There's something about you going to such lengths to do whatever you had been hoping to accomplish… something… sexy." He breathed onto his skin, sending a shiver down Arthur's spine, and sod it all, because Arthur was pretty sure things would never go back to the way they had been before anyway, so he swept his face down and captured Merlin's lips with his own, a pleasant sort of sound coming from the back of Merlin's throat as one of Arthur's hands came up to cup his face.

"Sexy, huh?" Arthur mumbled against his lips after a moment.

"Extremely." Merlin confirmed, nodding with half-lidded eyes before kissing Arthur again, his hands snaking up to card through Arthur's hair, the light pressure of him against Arthur's collarbone and a dull sort of pain resonating through the haze and making Arthur pull back slightly, hissing in pain.

Merlin gave him an apologetic sort of sheepish look, his face telling Arthur that he had forgotten completely about the tattoo that had led to all this. "Sorry."

"It's fine." He shook his head. "What's a little pain compared to the pleasure of your sweet kisses?"

"That was terrible!" Merlin laughed, leaning over to peck him on the lips before he stood from the table, laughter written in his eyes as Arthur followed his lead.

"Where are you going?" He asked instead of retorting that it wasn't as terrible as anything else he'd done in the past twenty-four hours.

"To see if I have anything for that." He gestured at his name. "So it doesn't get infected or anything. I'd really hate to cause you any more sort of pain." He said teasingly, turning around and stalking back to his bathroom, no doubt to search for whatever it was Arthur would need to use on his tattoo—come to think of it, what did he need to do for it? How long would it take to heal? How long until it stopped hurting—was it supposed to hurt so much? Where the hell had he even gotten it from?

"Merlin!" He called out then.

"Yeah?" Merlin yelled back, his voice muffled by the doors and walls between them.

"I'm going across the hall to see Gwaine for a minute." He told him, aware that it was a long shot, but Gwaine and Elyan... Well, at the very least, they might be able to tell him what his original reasoning behind the tattoo had been.

"All right. But, when you get back," Merlin materialized in the doorway then, grinning slightly. "I'll take that blowjob, yeah?"

Arthur laughed and rolled his eyes, his upcoming quest for answers sure to be kept quick and to the point in favor of a few other things.

*.*.*.*.*