Where the Ink stains ft Asa

It was weird. The first time she held your hand.

The first day of the new semester and she walks in late, ten minutes after the professor introduced themselves to the entire lecture hall. You’re too busy, writing whatever the professor said, colour coding with your highlighters to see what was happening, but you hear the murmurs, hear students nudging each other on the back in hushed excitement. The whispers grow louder, drowning out the spiel the professor has got themselves into until it all suddenly stopped and a figure blocks the sunlight peering through the window.

You look up at her—baseball cap on covering her eyes, mask covering the rest. Your eyes travel lower to the silk pyjama set she’s wearing: a pyjama shirt that hangs loose around her shoulders, exposing her neck and collarbone, shorts that end just above the knee. Even lower, you see her fluffy slippers that look out of place in the university, let alone this lecture hall. You see her toenails, painted in a deep crimson that somehow warm your cheeks.

She taps you once on the shoulder, your head whipping back, your eyes finding her face again. Her head moves, motioning to your backpack settled in the chair beside you. It takes you a moment to realise what she’s asking, and you’re looking behind her, at the numerous empty seats that she could’ve taken. You’re about to say something but you stop yourself. Instead, you grab your bag, moving it to the seat on the other side as she settles beside you. She fishes her phone out of her tote bag, begins typing, acrylic nails clicking against the screen and any hope of having a decent first lecture is dead and buried.

The lecture comes and goes and at some point, she’s removed her cap and mask. You don’t catch when, nor do you catch it when the bell rings for the end of the lecture. You’re tidying up your space, highlighters into the pencil case, water bottle shut tight, and as you’re about to reach for your bag…

“Can I borrow a pen?”

You turn your head and you’re seeing her for the first time: sharp, dark eyes, cheeks that look like they were made for squeezing and short hair that normally you’d find hideous but on her? It suits her.

Your eyes travel to your hand, at the pen you’re still clutching before your eyes go back to her. Then back to the pen. You do this for longer than you like to admit before handing it over. You turn until your back faces her, unzipping your bag and sliding in your notebook, water bottle, and pencil case.

Just as you move to stand, your palm pressed against the desk, small fingers wrap around your wrist.

You go still.

The first thing you notice is that she’s warmer than you expected. And you can’t think about anything else. Not the way she’s carefully dragging your hand closer to her. Or the way she’s uncapping your pen with her teeth. Just that her skin is warm and yours isn’t.

You could pull away, her grip is loose enough for you to do so. But you don’t. Instead, you watch as she writes her name first in cursive, unhurried, like she’s signing an autograph.

Asa.

And underneath that, a phone number.

When she finally lets go, her fingers leave featherlight touches in their wake, along your wrist, on the back of your hand where the ink stains. And when they fall away, your skin feels colder than before.

The pen cap clicks back on. She places it into your open palm, folds your fingers over it before her eyes find yours.

“Call me.”

Soon enough, it’s become routine. Every lecture, she finds and sits next to you. Every lecture, she asks for a pen and begins to draw on your skin, so much so that you know when she’s near by her footsteps, by the perfume that permeates the air, and by the soft hums she makes when she has an idea on what to draw next.

“Hey, can I borrow a—oh.”

The pen’s already out on the table, in front of her seat. You’re not looking at her, reviewing last week’s lecture in your notebook. But when you hear her fall onto her seat unceremoniously, groaning as if it’s the fifth lecture of the day, you pull the sleeves to your sweater up your arm, laying it across the table.

You don’t remember when you started giving her more room to draw, just the bright smile on her face when you did it the first time is enough for you to do it again and again.

Asa grabs you by the arm, pulling it closer to her before releasing an exasperated sigh. “Why do you keep washing off my masterpieces?”

You don’t look at her, but the words in your notebook no longer make sense.

“So you can keep drawing.”

You can feel her gaze settle on you, and from the corner of your eye, you see her nod in approval before taking your hand in both of hers, lifting it towards her face, inspecting it, turning it over like she’s trying to find its worth.

You stay quiet, your head turning to watch her, at the way her thumbs press into the skin, how she rubs along your knuckles, feels up your fingers and traces the lines on your palm. Her hands are small, really small. And smooth too. So smooth compared to yours that you’ve bought moisturiser just for her. And you think you’d be used to it by now, but no. Your head still gets fuzzy and your ears still turn red, especially when she starts comparing hand sizes, pressing the heel of her hand against yours, stretching her fingers as much as she can to reach the tips of yours.

You always end up laughing at her attempts.

“You missed a spot.”

You snap out of your thoughts just as she puts her thumb in her mouth, coating it before rubbing the ink off your skin.

You inhale sharply. Your eyes find her face but she’s not looking at you. Instead, she’s focused on removing the ink. Her eyes narrow at how stubborn it is, the tip of her tongue slipping past her lips as she begins to rub harder on the stain.

“There. Much better.”

Asa turns her head to look at you, grinning so hard that her cheeks become more prominent, more squishy and her eyes turn into crescent moons. You do your best to keep eye contact but the familiar reaction of your heart rate increasing and the flush creeping up your neck is enough to make you look down at your hand swallowed in hers.

You hear a soft chuckle escape her as she places your hand back on the table. She grabs the pen left lying there, pulling the cap off with her teeth like she always does and begins drawing again: rabbits, hearts with arrows through them, her name, yours. As she draws, her other hand comes up to your wrist, thumb gently moving back and forth along it. She doesn’t see the way your hand tenses even as she applies a flourish to the end of your name. Before you know it, she’s run out of space on your hand, pushing your sleeves up that slid back down, and starts on different animals, laughing when it looks nothing like the image she’s copying off her phone.

Your eyes find her face again, and you watch how her eyebrows furrow when the lines don’t connect, how her eyes light up when a new idea pops into her head, how she moves lower and lower, closer and closer until you feel her warm breath tickling your skin.

“If you like drawing on me so much, why not become a tattoo artist?” you whisper, careful not to disturb the others in the lecture theatre.

She shrugs, leans even closer to the table to add the finishing touches to an elephant, completely immersed in her art.

“Needles freak me out.”

You don’t say anything else. But she continues.

“And I only like drawing on you.”

You look down at your hand. A drawing of a cat and her name, signed beneath it.

The room is dark, save for the desk lamp illuminating your work. You let out a loud sigh, pushing the heels of your hand into your eyes before looking back down at your space. It’s a mess. Papers scattered everywhere or turned into crumpled balls. Your pens are no longer in a neat line, occasionally sliding towards you because you messed up, made one leg of your bespoke desk shorter than the other and she’s told you about it, told you to get a new one but you’re too proud to do so, too proud to admit she’s right.

(She always is, you’ve come to find)

You look at the calendar perched on the far corner of your desk, at the circled date three weeks from now. Final exams and you’ll be lying if you said you were ready. You drop your head between your shoulders as you let out another sigh just as the shower switches off.

You can’t help the smile creep up your face as you hear the bathroom door creak open, at the sound of her footsteps, padding along the carpeted floor, no doubt leaving wet footprints in their wake. You sit up straight in your desk chair just as her hands find your shoulders, smile widening when they slowly slide down your arms. Every inch they slide closer to your hands, she’s peppering your jaw with kisses until she interlocks her fingers with yours. You look down as she rests her chin on your shoulder, at her hands covered by the sleeves of your dress shirt, and you turn, pressing your lips against the corner of her mouth.

She giggles into your ear, slowly retreating her hands back up your body as she whispers into your ear.

“Give me your hand.”

You chuckle, using your foot to pull her own desk chair out from under the neighbouring desk. “It’s been a while since you last drew on me.”

“I got hit with inspiration.”

She moves to sit, feet planted on the chair, knees against her chest as she reaches for a pen with one hand and opens her other palm to receive yours.

You do so without question, letting her rest it on her exposed knees, your shirt falling and bunching by her hips. You look back up, face clear of makeup, hair still damp from the shower. There are small wet spots on your shirt, making it translucent, just enough for you to see what’s underneath, your mouth going dry at the sight.