Your legs are tangled with his on the worn-out couch, the one you both promised you’d replace once the money came in steady enough—though neither of you really meant it. Thanos is sprawled on his back, head tipped against the armrest, shirt hiked up enough to bare the ink that crawls along his ribs and wraps around his spine. Your nails drag lazy lines down his skin, half massage, half mindless scratching, but when your eyes catch the way the tattoos bend with every rise of his chest, you pause.

You shift, letting your fingertips hover over a sharp black line that cuts down to his lower back. He hums, half-amused, half-asleep, as you trace it like a path you might get lost in. He doesn’t flinch—he likes it when you touch him like this, when you handle his body like it’s art instead of armor. You wonder if he knows how pretty he looks when he’s quiet, when he’s not biting at the world with that sharp tongue of his.

“You staring or reading a map?” he asks, voice cracked and thick from the half-nap he’s been pretending not to take. He lifts one hand to press your wrist gently, coaxing your touch lower, then higher again, like he wants to feel you make sense of every line he’s carved into his skin.

“I like them,” you say, soft against his shoulder. He turns his head just enough that you see the glint of a grin before it’s gone, buried under the edge of his arm. “Didn’t know they looked this good up close.”

He shifts, rolling his shoulders so the ink stretches tight. His abs flex too—show-off—and he lifts both hands into your view. Silver rings catch the warm lamplight, the ones you know he wears even when he’s half out of his mind at shows. “You like these too?” he teases, wiggling his fingers until you laugh and smack them away.

“Stop. You know I do.”

He laughs, deep and lazy, the sound rattling under your palm where it rests on his stomach. He catches your hand and pulls it up to his mouth, brushing your knuckles with the ghost of a kiss before letting it fall back to his chest. “Lucky you pulled me then, huh? Whole mess and all.”

You pretend to think, tracing the lines again, slower this time, memorizing how they hook and break apart and meet again like some puzzle only he could carry. “Yeah. Lucky me,” you murmur. And when he cracks one eye open to check if you’re being sarcastic, you press your mouth to his shoulder and keep quiet, letting your touch say it for you—this mess, this art, this man. All yours.