Keeping The Tattoo

[tigerstriped86.livejournal.com]

Title: Keeping the Tattoo
Author: tigerstriped86 (me!)
Fandom/Pairing: "Keeping the Faith" movie, Friendship

Summary: Jake and Brian, pre-movie as seen in a flashback.  A roadtrip leads to varying levels of excitement and random conversations about things such as Wonder Woman and Darth Vader.  What do you expect from eighteen year-old boys?

Disc. 1: This is not my normal fandom, just a movie I recently reviewed.  This is incredibly PG, but just imagine a movie featuring Derek Zoolander, Tyler Durden, and Jenna Elfman?  Just imagine it.  I own nothing, just the concept of a road trip like this.  Heck, I don't even own that. 

 

Brian found his old journal while rummaging through the attic. It was a curious relic from a time before he acquired the collar of a priest. Sometime after Anna had left, in the interim between seminary and her eventual return to see himself and Jake.

Brian mused as he flipped to a random page filled with facts and memories, mostly revolving around Jake and his search for the rarest of the Rabbi cards. Entries popped out from forgotten family dinners, a veritable chimera of Christian and Jewish traditions they'd both undergone in the awkward transition to manhood they had undertaken.

There were three pages dedicated to Brian's grandfather and Jake's great aunt, both passing of cancer in the same year. There was a dedication he had copied from an old yearbook sophomore year of high school and doodles of “Super Apostle” from mind-numbing days in chemistry he had spent with Jake.

Dust covered his fingers now. He dropped the old journal, cracked with red leather, and saw a picture float just briefly from the corner of the pages. His eyes closed as he picked up the picture, remembering the year he and Jake had turned eighteen. The year before seminary. The year they took that road trip.

There was nothing in the picture to give away any sort of premonition that diabolical thoughts lay just under Jake's head. He had been worming through Brian's ears with flattery all day as he drove. Finally he sighed, snapping a bit.

“What is your problem, Jake?”

“Problem, who said I had a problem? Now, Wonder Woman. She has a problem. Think about it; she spins around to change into her costume in that same wood every day very slowly. She could be seen...she could be....”

“Rambling like an idiot? What is this all about Jake?!”

“There's something I need to tell you.”

“We tell each other everything. What could you have to....” Brian's eyes bugged a bit as he gave a sidelong glance at Jake. “You aren't gay, are you?”

Jake was stunned. “No, no. I mean, just, no.”

“Well, then, there's nothing so bad that you can't tell me.”

“I've paid for matching tattoos for us.”

“That's.....interesting. Care to fill in the rest of us on your little plan?”

“Well, it's just that, I have this uncle see. It's not that there's anything out of the ordinary about having an uncle, but this particular uncle runs a tattoo parlor. And he promised me when I turned eighteen if I and a friend came out to see him, that we'd get something on the house.”

Brian pulled over to the side of the highway amongst the empty stretch of sand they road through. “You planned this?”

“Not to a great extent. It's not like Darth Vader kidnapping Princess Leia planned or anything, but it's pivotal. Why not, Brian?”

“God's kind of fickle about tattoos. And seminary! What would they say in seminary?”

“We're not getting the numbers of the beast on our hands or anything, Brian! Don't you trust me?”

Oh jeez, he just had to give me those puppy dog eyes, Brian thought. “No is my answer. God's not fond of body art.”

There was silence that spanned about half an hour, silence that was broken only by a squirming Jake outside of San Antonio.

“Let's pull in here to eat.”

“Okay, but no more country fried steak. I know we agreed to split the bill for this, but no more country fried steak. I'm starting to feel like a bad country song.”

They ate in silence, Brian slightly hunched into his plate of food, but noticing people were staring as Jake shoveled in his chili cheese fries. As they left the diner, Brian felt eyes poking into the back of his head. Jake gave him further directions supposedly through San Antonio. He didn't notice where they were going until it's too late.

“You planned this.”

“Free. What's not to like about free?”

“I told you no, and you still planned this.”

“At least hear out my uncle, Brian.”

Brian laughed as the memory replayed. Meeting the uncle and his staff. The sound of buzzing and intense, quiet howling as the needle sizzled its way into individual flesh. Portraits of friends and lovers gone by immortalized the walls. Brian stood alongside Jake, shivering.

Jake and his uncle were discussing some television show where a vampire had a tattoo of a griffin. Since when did Jake watch a television show about a vampire? Brian didn't have much presence of mind to dwell on it, but he always wondered after that day how much he didn't know about Jake.

And then he saw it. A wreath of thorns over a simple cast cross with a shadow. It was subliminal, tasteful, perfect. In a word, less contact with the needle with maximum impact. Brian held his baseball cap a bit tighter. His voice was thick.

“Hey Jake. What about this one?”