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Broxah is a traditionalist. Everyone knows that. Alfonso doesn’t even talk to the kid but he still knows. It’s obvious in the clothes he wears, the high-collared shirts and long sleeves and long pants, only his hands and head free to the world. His is not an atypical mindset. Traditionalists believe in reserving the rest of the body for only lovers or family to mark.
When flower tattoos appear on the skin whenever they’re touched by another person with strong emotions, it’s no wonder that religions and tradition and rituals spring up all around it. Alfonso’s got plenty of his own - he’s not traditional, he touches freely skin to skin and he’s got marks littered up and down his arms to prove it, a few smatterings along his back from previous partners, flowers on his legs and feet that are faded and stretched-out with time and growth from when his parents bathed him as a baby. Generally people in Spain just don’t feel the need to cover up. His body works the way it works, why should he deny it?
Other cultures feel differently about it, like the US, for example. People there get judgy about having a lot of flowers, sometimes. Celebrities worldwide get ridiculed in UK gossip rags for having one flower too many or not enough. Bjergsen got a big bouquet of sea thrift on his arm from a send-off hug when he left to NA. Everyone in the EULCS still uses him as the butt of jokes for it.
But as far as Alfonso understands, the majority of people in Europe are no longer traditionalists. They’re not rare - Broxah isn’t the only one in the EULCS - it’s just not common.
Traditionalists are usually pretty easy to recognise by clothing alone, but even if they’re out swimming or sunbathing somewhere, they stand out. Their marks are entirely on their hands - Broxah’s fingertips are ringed and wreathed in flowers upon flowers upon flowers, so many layers of tattoos, one over the other until not a trace of blank skin remains on his palms. His face has a few marks, sparse, from familial cheek-kisses or hair-touches. Childish and simple flowers like roses and baby’s-breath.
So that’s what a Danish traditionalist looks like, Alfonso supposes.
In that case, he has no idea what Zven’s deal is.
Zven has no marks anywhere.
Yeah, okay, so it’s a little gay that Alfonso’s seen him naked, but living in a gamer house it’s bound to happen. And Alfonso can admit to himself that he’s at least a little bi-curious, so his interest in Jesper’s miles and miles of smooth pale skin like empty canvas isn’t purely academic. But to have not even a single mark? Nothing at all?
He covers up most of the time, maybe to prevent himself from getting any marks. He wears long sleeves and pants and hoodies and gloves. But to never have been marked, not even by family?
Alfonso isn’t sure if the thought makes him recoil in horror at the thought of never feeling someone else’s emotion, or lean in with the perverse desire to mark up that blank canvas all on his own.
(When Broxah goes to Team Liquid, he goes with sprinklings of sea thrift on the palms of his hands. What was once a joke at Bjergsen’s expense is now a genuine, widely-held sentiment - that going to NA is a tragedy, a heartache, something bad for the player. One foot in the esports grave.
But Alfonso keeps following Broxah’s Twitter, and every once in a while he’ll post a picture from the beach with his unmarked arms warming in the sun. And then all of a sudden his bicep blooms with a huge bouquet of peonies and jasmine and forget-me-nots and yarrow and daisies, enough that the skin of his arm is filled within a instant. From one Tweet to the next, all at once.
Perhaps they were all misguided in their sympathies, since Broxah has found - or been reunited with - such love.)
If ever Alfonso felt sorrow for the way their bodies works - the way that the strongest of emotions play out loud and clear over their skin - then he feels it when he looks at Caps.
Caps is a good kid. He’s sweet, well-loved by nearly everyone he meets. His hands are speckled with tiny red and white carnations from fans’ admiration and good wishes, his neck with glorious sweet bay where Luka hugged him so tight. Twin buttercups that match with Jankos, yellow tulips and beautiful violets in a wreath around his neck from Miky’s devotion and more added with every post-LEC-win hug. There’s sunflowers all over his arms in so many sizes and arrangements, even different sunflower varieties. His back gets caught in a stray frame in one of G2’s workout partnership videos and it’s covered from lumbar to shoulders in chrysanthemums and chamomile and so many daisies it practically makes Alfonso’s teeth hurt just thinking of how much love he’s been shown in his life. His calves have lilacs from Luka’s casual touches and oak leaves from Wunder carrying him around.
And then there’s the bouquet on his face. A huge black dahlia stretching from the middle of his cheek down his neck. An orange lily screaming contempt across his cheekbone. One black rose blooming above his eyebrow, its thorny stem trailing down his temple.
They say Rekkles gave those to him in a goodbye hug. Of course, you can’t always trust the esports rumour mill. But no one can ignore how Caps wears gloves for the Fnatic handshake line and only the Fnatic handshake line, and when Rekkles joins him on G2, suddenly Caps gains an aversion to short-sleeved shirts.
It’s incredibly rare for someone to have such prominent marks as those, especially such negative marks, too. To have someone hate you so much and still allow them close? There’s a reason every LEC player knows someone who’s had to speak to the domestic violence taskforce in Berlin. On anyone else, a cheek covered in black flowers means abuse. Alfonso cannot even begin to imagine what Caps goes through now that he is so obviously, clearly, publicly marked by someone else’s arrogance. If Jesper wants to save himself from that fate, then his gloves aren’t so unusual.
But Jesper wore gloves and long sleeves and high-necked shirts long before Rekkles changed Caps’ life forever.
(With every passing year, every time Alfonso sees Caps again, whether in Twitter pictures or in person, the violets around his neck seem to multiply. They’ve already covered everything of the dahlia on Caps’ neck. Maybe someday Mihael’s love and loyalty will cover every last trace of Rekkles’ hatred.)
Caps’ flowers are remarkably painful.
In contrast, Wunder’s flowers are almost... childlike, in their innocence and the pure absence of hatred there. Sure, there’s plenty of negative emotions reflected on his skin. He’s a shit-stirrer with enough skill to avoid material consequences, of course people have strong emotions towards him. It just so happens that those strong emotions aren’t outright hatred.
There’s balsam and barberry and buttercups on his arms, so many ways to say you’re so fucking annoying. There’s cockscomb and purple carnations for frivolity and ash leaves crawling up his neck. Luka left his mark in the form of orange roses over the jut of Wunder’s hip, which, scandalous, but Alfonso knows there’s flirty red orchids sprawled over Luka’s left asscheek for a reason. Big bundles of baby’s-breath wreath Wunder’s left ankle and his right calf is bright with larkspur that he’s all too happy to show off in warm summer months.
Plenty of these flowers mean dislike. Plenty of them mean annoyance, jackass, mischief-maker, idiot. But no one hates his guts, or at least, not enough to leave it on his skin.
Maybe they just don’t get close enough - maybe they think that if Wunder saw the marks of their true feelings on his body, he’d beat them bloody. He certainly has the muscle for it. Anyone who’s ever talked to him, though, would know he doesn’t have the heart.
Keeping others away via some sort of deterrent is a common method people use to avoid bad marks left on their bodies. Big manmade tattoos, muscle and bulk, dangerous-looking metal accessories, things like that. There’s even a style built around it. They call it salted earth, or salt for short. Jesper has a few salt pieces in his wardrobe, black leather jackets, a black-and-white shirt dripping in red roses like bloodstains. But not enough for Alfonso to think that’s the way Jesper lives his life.
No. Something else is at play.
(There’s something to be said for the contrast between Wunder and Caps. A big man, tall and broad, well-muscled, so often stoic and yet everyone who touches him thinks he’s childish, unthreatening, that none of his antics are to be taken seriously. A small man, short and thin, bright and bubbly, the sheer picture of joy and life and sweetness marred with abject hatred all over his face.)
Jensen - or, as most of Europe knows him by for the first act in his career, Incarnati0n - wears his history on his body.
He’s deliberate about it, as far as Alfonso can tell. Some people claim that they can choose when to be marked or resist marks, that it can be trained. Not every single touch results in a tattoo, after all. Scientists don’t exactly know why some people are prone to marks and others aren’t, why some strong emotions paired with a touch lead to a tattoo and others don’t. Plenty of romance movies revolve around a beautiful moment at a wedding altar where the sheer love the two leads have for each other causes their arms to blossom with red roses as soon as they embrace, but Alfonso knows plenty of married couples who don’t get a tattoo on their wedding day naturally.
Maybe Jensen only touches people when he’s marking life milestones. It wouldn’t be unheard of. But Alfonso’s shaken his hand and seen unplanned marks all over it like freckles. It’s only the flowers on Jensen’s arms and neck that tell a clear story.
It starts with angel trumpets on his right wrist, heralding his first rise to fame on the EU West ladder. Lifesize, which florologists say shows that it is a genuine emotion felt by both parties or some shit like that, so Alfonso guesses it must’ve been a friend or someone equally bigheaded. Its leaves trail into sharp-needled cacti and nettles, then cherry blossoms up his tricep, oak leaves splayed over his shoulder and peeking up from his shirt collar. Pennyroyal, then petunias cresting on his other shoulder from his rumoured tryst with Bjergsen. Yellow and red roses proclaiming his joyous victories with Team Liquid, then twin roses just above his elbow, sage for his veteran presence on all his teams thereafter, a tiny sprig of oleander under the watch on his wrist thanks to FlyQuest.
People who pick out their marks as if from a catalog are astoundingly unusual - at least, those who admit it or make it obvious. Celebrities just get tattoos good enough to look real, though gossip tabloids love reading into every little mark they can see. Regular people don’t often decorate themselves like that. The most realistic tattoos are simply too expensive.
Jensen’s are real and they’re chosen for a reason. Alfonso had watched as Jensen made it to Finals and lost and ever so slyly brushed his wrist against Inspired’s arm and branded himself with those little pink oleander flowers.
In some sense, he’s the exact opposite of Jesper. He picks flowers one by one, two by two cresting over his arms. Jesper picks nothingness. Or maybe he doesn’t pick at all.
(Alfonso doesn’t know why Jensen picks the flowers he does. They’re not all positive, they don’t all herald greatness or beauty or even anything good. Cacti and nettles are almost unequivocally viewed as bad. Cherry blossoms for regrowth. Regrowth means you had something in your past to grow back from.
The flowers on Jensen’s body recognise his idiocy, his stupidity, his toxicity in those early years. Is that thanks to his subconscious at the time? Or did he always hate himself for what he was doing? The beauty of his pride and his joy - he believed it then, but does he believe it now? When Inspired wrote distrust and betrayal on his skin, whose betrayal was Jensen branding himself with, his own to his team or Inspired to his teammates?
No one will ever really know except Jensen himself, probably.)
They’ve been together for years - not together like that the entire time, but always inching closer, in some way. Fonso remembers seeing him in that first year, all cream-pale skin and half-sunk blue eyes, slender and snaggle-toothed, and thinking to himself, I want to stay with him. And the beauty of it is that Jesper thought the same of him.
They become like one, in the way that only the best botlanes can become one. Alfonso’s skin is coated in the flowers of their journey. Peke gave him camellias, Cyanide gave him marjoram when they briefly met. Luka gave him pink verbena and so much prince-of-Wales feather that it’s become the base layer on his entire left arm and in turn Alfonso splashed Luka’s chest with roses. The side of his neck is crowned with laurel and palm leaves from championship victories. Alfonso gets relatively big flowers on his hands from the casual handshakes after every EULCS game, so by the time they leave for the NALCS, only the tiniest patches of tan skin can be seen underneath all the daffodils and red roses and sage. People he barely even cares about have left their mark on his skin; people whose names he cannot remember or never even knew have left their mark on his skin.
It’s almost as if Alfonso’s body knows its companion is unmarked - flowers grow larger, bloom brighter, overlap more densely after he and Jesper become like one. Like Alfonso’s skin is meant to hold enough for both of them.
Jesper still wears his gloves everywhere, even in the LA heat. Gloves, thin long-sleeved jackets that hang light on his frame, jeans and khakis made of some special salt fabric to look like normal pants and yet be so much better with hot weather. Jesper invites him to touch, sometimes. To feel the fabric, brush against the warmth of his skin through linen and sea island cotton. The TSM house has a big couch in the TV room for vod review, and once every few days Jesper will cosy up to him while they’re lounging around.
After they get knocked out of Spring Playoffs, Jesper sneaks into his bed. He sleeps in a plain T-shirt, Fonso learns, and he’s earned the faintest smattering of freckles over his cheeks and nose. The sun left its marks on Jesper’s skin. No matter how tightly-wound-together they are when they wake up, Alfonso never sees his own.
He gets marks on his own skin from Jesper’s touch. Blue-purple hepatica layers itself atop all the other flowers on the inside of his wrist after they hold hands on a flight to Europe for the break. Green carnations stake their claim on the inner side of his knee. Ox-eye daisies tumble over the ledge of his ribcage. An orb of phlox on the small of his back. Poinsettias on his left shoulderblade, red daisies on his right, and he only notices when Jesper tells him to look.
Alfonso lets Jesper initiate all the skin-on-skin touch. It’s hard to say what he’s okay with when he shudders so intensely at the slightest brush through fabric even when he’s expecting it. But Alfonso can communicate his desire without initiating, he can reciprocate with everything he has in his heart, he can lean into Jesper’s touch. Just as long as he doesn’t initiate it.
The science of flower tattoos is murky at best. There’s a reason they say florology and astrology are two peas in a pod. Real science only recognises two rules of flower tattoos: that at least one flower meaning is true for each flower tattoo and direct skin contact is needed. Some people think the initiator is key to the whole process, which maybe makes sense for Jesper’s situation. Other than that - nothing is guaranteed. If Jesper either completely avoids touch or ensures no one initiates touch with him, then he probably won’t ever be marked.
So Alfonso never makes the first move, instead returning every touch of Jesper’s with his whole chest. He does what he can. He does what he think Jesper will be okay with. And for that first wondrous year in LA, it’s enough. It’s enough to have Jesper’s marks on him and none of his on Jesper. He’s not so greedy, he’s not so possessive that he demands to be the only person on Jesper’s skin. He’s happy with everything Jesper gives him. He’s happy with everything Jesper lets him see.
When he leaves for Europe again, he wishes for the first time that he’d left something of himself behind.
His two years away from Jesper are... new. Four years together is a lot, especially in esports. They’d been young when they first found each other, they’d grown together for so long. Growing when Jesper wasn’t with him just didn’t feel right. But he had to.
He played the veteran on Origen for a little while, found that he liked coaching enough to stick with it. Got Fnatic to sign him for a year. Worked with Selfmade, the firecracker neither he nor Jesper ever were, and Nemesis, just as reserved as Zven was at first but not half as jovial underneath his shell. The red roses of competitors on his hands layered over with the same sage leaves and white mulberries that so many coaches have.
Alfonso comes back to NA - he comes back, and he’s not from there but there’s enough of him still in LA that he’s still coming back to what he left behind - and as soon as his plane touches down, he has a text.
They’re attached at the hip again within days. And even though they aren’t on the same team, even though they can’t talk about League together for fear of tampering, they stay together. Jesper’s got more of a tan, now, more freckles, enough that it shows up even through stage makeup.
Still no marks.
They reacquaint quickly, spending more nights together than not, curled up watching a show or enduring Luka’s teasing. They eat together, cook together, practically live together if it weren’t for C9’s gaming house. Who cares that Mithy is on 100T when they’re in the same city anyway?
In the offseason, he finagles his contract. And then he’s with Jesper again - same team, even if not the same botlane.
In 2022, Jesper kisses him. They find their old pattern again, Jesper initiating, Alfonso responding with everything he has. Alfonso’s cheeks are permanently stained pink with the force and morning glories of Jesper’s affection. They sleep side by side, and only a few weeks later, Jesper lays in bed without his long-sleeved pyjamas and gloves, instead shirtless, hands clasped loosely over his soft underbelly.
His skin shines silver in the moonlight. “Hey,” he whispers.
“Hey,” Alfonso answers, silhouetted in gold spilling from the bathroom lights. “Do you want me to wear the long sleeves tonight?” Trading off wouldn’t be the craziest thing. Alfonso would do it happily - for Jesper, of course he would do it.
But Jesper just looks shy. “I want you to touch me.”
And of course, how could Alfonso resist that?
His hands are hovering over Jesper’s stomach almost before he can think, almost before he stops to wonder. It’s a beautiful, beautiful opportunity, to touch, not just be touched or return touch but give touch. Almost so beautiful that he forgets about the permanent consequences.
Almost. “You’re not worried about the marks?” Alfonso asks even though he’s practically trembling with the thought. His fingertips inch closer of their own volition, drawn to the heat, no matter how much his mind says wait, wait, we need to wait.
Easily enough, Jesper arches up close enough to just barely separate their skin. Alfonso can feel the soft peach fuzz kissing the pads of his fingers. “Never was,” Jesper says. “Do it.”
And of course, Alfonso does.
“I should have told you something,” Jesper says in the afterglow, somehow still unmarked despite all the touches Alfonso lavished on him over the past hour. It’s astounding, his skin still so silvery-smooth-pale like liquid moonlight or something equally surreal.
“What is it?” Alfonso murmurs as he traces the edge of Jesper’s ribs.
“I don’t get marks.”
Alfonso blinks. “At all?”
“Pretty much,” Jesper says softly. “I only have one. It’s under my arm.” The same arm raises easily under Alfonso’s touch. It’s not down on his ribs, though, instead up, up, up, Jesper guides Alfonso’s hand, until it reaches the side of Jesper’s pec, right where flesh becomes silk-soft. “From when my mom held me right after I was born.” Surely enough, when Alfonso rises on his knees to peer closer, there sits a pink carnation, alone, stemless, leafless, barely the size of Alfonso’s thumbnail. It’s stretched and faded with growth and age. Exactly the sort of thing you’d expect from a mark from birth. Fonso has his own, on the soles of his feet, from his mama and papa tickling his little baby toes primrose-pink.
All these touches from Alfonso, all the childhood touches from family, and nothing else has left its mark but a mother’s love from a hospital-induced delirium. “Is that why you cover up?”
“So no one wonders why I don’t have marks,” Jesper admits. “People thought it was unnatural when I was in school. I figured out how to make them think I was just weird.”
Alfonso hears the question unasked. He answers it with a question of its own. “So it’s okay if I touch you,” he wonders, wondrously.
Jesper’s hand melts over his own. “More than okay.”
(Ten years later, they’re engaged. Fonso’s greying at the temples. Jesper’s got sunspots all over his face and arms. They’ve got a house in the suburbs of Chicago and they drive into C9’s relocated office six days a week. LoLEsports is condensed into one international league, so the team they coach together comes with some truly horrible working hours. They crawl into bed together at 9am after playing a Bo3 against T1 and Fonso’s hand slips over the engagement ring on Jesper’s hand, then the soft curve of his hip.
Jesper’s whole body jerks.
They’ve gotten used to touching each other, easy and free now that Alfonso knows the truth of Jesper’s nearly-unmarked skin. It’s been a long time since Jesper was so touch-starved that the tiniest taste sent him reeling. “You okay?”
“I’m- I’m okay,” Jesper murmurs. “Just- turn on the lights? I think you scratched me or hit a bruise or something.”
“Oh, sorry.” Alfonso reaches to their bedside table and flicks the little lamp-switch, then snuggles back down. He tucks his head into Jesper’s shoulder. “Need a band-aid?”
“No, I, uh.” Alfonso opens his eyes to Jesper squinting. “I think it’s a flower tattoo.”
“What?”
Jesper scoots up the bed and points at the little purple blotch on his hip.
“What?” At first Alfonso is convinced Jesper’s reading glasses are betraying him, but he looks closer, and the truth is there. A little sprig of heliotrope, purple petals clustered together and turning their faces up to Jesper’s face, the stem curling down. All told, it’s still a small mark, only a few centimeters square.
But it’s a mark.
“It’s heliotrope,” Fonso murmurs. “Devotion, royalty, success, admiration, trust. Love - eternal love.” He touches it with his fingertips, wondering if it’s some sort of mirage. But it’s there. He rubs at it, and it stays there. Warm and soft just like the rest of Jesper’s skin, with the same hint of cellulite that rings the rest of his waist. It’s real. It’s real. “So much for not getting marks?”
Jesper laughs in disbelief. “I guess so,” he says with a smile.)