Chapter 14 The Fire Within #3
“I could lie.”
“Don’t.”
“I won’t.”
Nico stood and walked toward the workstation.
Gideon watched him prepare the tablet.
“There’s something else,” Nico said.
“What?”
“You don’t have to decide today.”
Gideon frowned.
“I just said I wanted it.”
“I heard you.”
“Then why are you giving me an exit?”
“Because agreeing once doesn’t mean you’re trapped.”
Gideon stared at him.
Nico continued.
“If you change your mind halfway through, we stop. If you want to change the design, we change it. If you need a break, we take one.”
Gideon felt something tighten in his chest.
“You really don’t want control over me.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you have spent enough of your life believing you lost control.”
Gideon looked away.
That answer hurt.
It also felt right.
Nico came back to him with a printed sketch.
“Can I show you something?”
Gideon nodded.
Nico placed the paper on the table.
The design was clearer on paper.
The scars were marked lightly in gray.
The ink design moved around them in black.
There were no flames swallowing the scars.
No attempt to disguise them.
Instead, the artwork seemed to emerge from the scar tissue itself.
Gideon touched the page.
“When I first came here,” he said, “I asked if you could make them disappear.”
“I remember.”
“I thought if I couldn’t see them, maybe I wouldn’t remember.”
Nico sat across from him.
“Does that still sound possible?”
Gideon shook his head.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I think I’d still remember.”
Nico nodded.
Gideon looked at the sketch.
“I think I’d just have something else to hate.”
Nico’s expression softened.
Gideon continued.
“I don’t want to hate my body anymore.”
The words surprised him.
He had never said them aloud.
Nico did not answer immediately.
Instead, he reached across the table and placed his hand near Gideon’s.
He did not touch him.
Gideon noticed.
That small restraint meant more than any speech could have.
After a moment, Gideon moved his hand forward.
Their fingers touched.
Nico waited.
Gideon turned his palm upward.
Nico took his hand.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever like looking at them,” Gideon admitted.
“You don’t have to.”
“I just want them to belong to me.”
“They already do.”
“I know.”
Gideon looked down at their joined hands.
“But they don’t feel like they belong to me.”
Nico squeezed gently.
“Then maybe this is a way to take them back.”
Gideon looked at the drawing again.
A strange sense of calm settled over him.
He realized Nico was not offering to rewrite the past.
He was not promising that the scars would become beautiful enough to erase the pain.
He was offering something much harder.
A chance to decide what the scars meant after the fire had already taken its share.
Gideon picked up the sketch.
“I want this.”
Nico nodded.
“Okay.”
“I want you to do it.”
“Okay.”
“Even if the scars don’t take the ink evenly.”
“We’ll work with them.”
“Even if some of them stay visible.”
“They will.”
Gideon smiled faintly.
“Good.”
Nico looked surprised.
“Good?”
“I think I want them visible.”
Nico said nothing.
Gideon looked down at the sketch.
“Not all of them. Not every detail.”
He ran his finger along one of the scarred areas represented in the drawing.
“But enough.”
Nico nodded.
“Enough to remember what happened.”
Gideon swallowed.
“And enough to remember that it isn’t happening anymore.”
The words stayed between them.
That was the difference.
The scars belonged to the past.
The tattoo would belong to the present.
Gideon had spent years believing his body was a record of everything he had lost.
Nico was showing him that it could also become a record of what he chose to keep.
Gideon stood.
“Can we start soon?”
Nico smiled.
“Very soon.”
“When?”
“After we finish the final measurements and make sure the skin is ready.”
Gideon nodded.
He expected himself to feel nervous.
He did.
But beneath the nerves was something else.
Anticipation.
Not of pain.
Not of hiding.
Of choosing.
As he prepared to leave, Gideon stopped near the door.
“Nico.”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
Nico looked at him.
“For what?”
Gideon thought about it.
“For not trying to fix me.”
Nico’s smile was small.
“You were never broken.”
Gideon looked at him for a long moment.
Then he crossed the space between them.
He touched Nico’s face.
The movement was natural now.
Deliberate.
Chosen.
He kissed him once, softly.
When he pulled away, Nico’s hand settled against his wrist.
“Still sure?”
Gideon looked at the sketch in his other hand.
“Yes.”
He smiled.
“I’m scared.”
Nico nodded.
“I know.”
“But I’m doing it anyway.”
And for the first time, Gideon understood that courage did not always look like walking into a burning building.
Sometimes it looked like standing in front of the parts of yourself you had spent years hiding and deciding they no longer had the power to tell you who you were.
He walked out of the studio carrying the design beneath his arm.
His scars were still there.
Nothing had been erased.
But for the first time, Gideon did not feel the need to hide them.
He had chosen what came next.
And this time, the choice was his.
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