Ink

Who: Billy and Liadán
Where: Wild Cathedral
When: Afternoon

'Sometime after two' had ended up, in the end, being around four, but Billy hadn't changed his mind. He'd lain awake and thought about it half the night but he was certain. For once he wanted the world to see what he could see - to stop looking at nothing, talking to people nobody else could see. He walked into Wild Cathedral and headed straight for the counter.

Liadán had been in one of the back rooms, but at the sound of the bells out front she headed down the hall and out the door to the lobby. "Hey, you came back." she greeted, nodding her head as she stepped behind the counter. She'd figured this one would. "I have your art."

Billy smiled a little. "I came back," he agreed. "So - can I see?" he asked, somewhat eagerly. He was interested to see what she'd made of his sketch, busy telling himself that there was no way that she'd ahve gotten it exact and he'd have to be okay with just an approximation. That would be good enough. It would - really.

Liadán thought of getting sarcastic and saying no, but she didn't have a good enough feel of this guy. Humor might scare him off. "You can indeed." she said instead, pulling a folder out from beneath the counter and pulling out the newly-printed flash art. He'd said details, so she'd gone for that, as close to 3D as one could get in a tattoo. "The lights can be removed or moved if they're not right." She'd included lights and highlights, but with this guy's need for detail, he might not want those.

Billy pulled the piece towards him a little, leaning in to study it. A smile slowly formed as he examined it, his left hand absently going to his right sleeve. He tried to make it look casual - really he did - as he pushed his sleeve up and laid his arm down on the counter next to the picture, his eyes darting from his arm to the picture. He allowed himself a moment's comparison before he dropped his arm, a touch self-consciously, and looked up. "it's great - perfect," he told her - dropping the 'almost' that had threatened to jump in there.

Smirking a bit, Liadán took the flash art back, but kept it held between them in case. "You sure?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. "Everything's saved on photoshop, so if need be..."

"No, no - that's great." Better than i expected it to be anyway. "Thank you, really. I didn't actually think that you'd be able to come up with anything that was near what I wanted." He shrugged. "But then again, I wasn't sure what was and wasn't possible." He chuckled slightly. "So, is this one of the weirder requests you've had? or is this just standard for you?"

Liadán had been planning on asking about the design, and she still would. Still smirking, she entered the design into the thermal-fax, and grabbed the sheet of paperwork for him to fill out. Nothing big, the standard name age address and allergies sort of thing. "I've seen a lot weirder." she offered. "I'm guessing it's blood? I get people wanting open wounds and stitches all the time. Or just rampant porn, so this is pretty tame." She handed over the sheet and a pen. "I need to take a copy of your ID, too."

Billy reached into his back pocket and pulled out his drivers license, handing it to her before starting to fill out the paperwork. "People really want open wounds?" he asked, sounding a little surprised. "...Why?"

Billy reached into his back pocket and pulled out his drivers license, handing it to her before starting to fill out the apperwork. "People really want open wounds?" he asked, sounding a little surprised. "...Why?"

"Because people are fucked up." Liadán answered casually, shrugging faintly as she headed to the copy machine. "And because goth little pussykids think its poetic and interesting. See it a lot on forty-year-old biker dudes, too."

He laughed at that. "Right - so, you ever get those 'goth little pussykids' coming in a few years later crying about needing it removed?" he asked her - cos, damn. He signed his scrawl at the bottom of the page and slid it back over to her, all complete and vaguely legible. Billy really didn't have the best handwriting in the world.

"If you want a tattoo removed, you either go to a plastic surgeon, or you tattoo over it - which, if you get a big gash down your arm, is going to be fuckin' difficult. People can cry to me about what they got done, but in the end it's only my fault if something with it goes bad. I'm not the one that picked a dumbass design and held them at gunpoint to get it." She checked his date of birth and allergies, and he passed. Filing his sheet for now, she gave him his ID back. "You ready?"

He ran a hand over his arm, feeling the cold points where the blood lay. "Yeah, I'm ready," he told herm his face set and unreadable. He was determined about this, his mind was made up, but at the same time, there was a sense of almost otherworldliness about this whole thing, as though he were watching someone else's dream, as though this were happening to someone else. He was fairly sure that reality would kick in with the first stab of the needle. Dreams tended to become all too real when the pain started.

Opening the door to the hallway, Liadán nodded her head and gestured for him to follow her back. She lead the way to one of the tattoo rooms, in the center of which was a black leather chair somewhat resembling a dentist's chair. "Have a seat, it'll just take me a minute to set up, then we'll put the stencil on. Have you ever had any ink done before, or is this your first?"

Billy settled himself into place, leaning back and resting his head back against the chair, looking across at her, watching her set up. "No, this is my first - I thought that would have been obvious," he joked, knowing that he'd probably come across as completely clueless. if he hadn't then that was soley because he had a long standing habit of holding himself as if he had a clue - bluffing until he worked it out. But what he presented to the outside world and how he actually thought and felt were two very different things.

"It's hard to tell sometimes." she admitted, shrugging lightly. "I've had college professors and eighty-year-old grandmothers come in for tattoos or genital piercing, and just about the time I assume something is the time I'm wrong." She finished washing her hands and going through the set-up, getting the machine and ink ready, gloves on, and everything she would need ready next to her stool. Finally sitting down, she got some rubbing alcohol to clean the area. "I'll walk you through everything and let you know when it's your last chance to back out." she offered. "Roll your sleeve up?"

"You know - I think that was more information than I needed to know," Billy quipped dryly. Eighty year old grandmothers with genital piercings really wasn't something he needed to be thinking about. He made a mental note to stay well away from this girl's dreams. He didn't need to experience the things she'd seen in her life. "Please, walk me through it - but I'm not gonna back out," he told her, smirking a little.

"I can do that." she said. "Right now I'll be cleaning the area, then shaving it, and cleaning it again - then the stencil goes on." She looked up at him briefly, just to make sure she'd remembered the right section of his arm. "Any nerves about this?"

"No. No nerves," Billy said, confidently. And he didn't have any - the dreamwalker may do uncertainty, sometimes he did clueless, but generally he didn't do nerves. When he made his mind up, then his mind was made up and he'd confidently go forward - even if what he was confidently doing as fucking insane. It was that whole god complex thing.

Some people lied, but he seemed pretty together. "Good deal." Liadán replied, carefully running over the area with a new disposable razor. She finished shaving the area and cleaning it a second time, and took the stencil of the tattoo. "Now, I'm going to have you direct exactly where this should be placed." she said, placing it over the general area of where it was going. "We can move it wherever it needs to go, then I'm going to wet it down and it'll stay on your skin - kind of like a temporary tattoo."

"Neat - I remember those from when I was a kid. You know, the stupid superhero ones you used to get? And when you were four, youw ere all badass for having one." Or, you were in the circles he ran in. He'd never really pictured himself as ever getting the real thing though. but then again, he'd never pictured himself as having the ability to walk through people's dreams or being in a long term relationship with a spirit either. It was amazing the way life went. He reached over and moved the stencil slightly, rotating it a little until he could no longer see the detail.

Liadán smirked a bit and nodded. "Yeah, those." she confirmed. She waited for Billy, wanting him to take his time figuring out where it went, and once he seemed okay with it she nodded. "Good?" she confirmed. She then washed over it with some soap and water, and carefully peeled it back. Voila, he had an outline. She put a little ointment over the transfer, and sat back again. "And we're ready to start. Get comfy and let me know when you're ready. I just want you to relax and breathe deep, don't hold your breath or anything."

Billy shifted slightly, relaxing. He turned his head to the side to watch her work on his arm, quietly interested. "Deep breathing, no breath holding, gotcha. Ready when you are," he added, flexing his hand one last time, the tendons moving beneath the skin, before he opened his fingers into a limp position.

Nodding, Liadán turned the machine on, leaned forward, and slowly began the first line. "I know this is feeling a little weird, but the first minute is going to be the worst. Your skin will numb to it eventually, but you'll definitely feel it when I go over scar tissue." she warned. "How are you doing?"

"Tickles a little," Billy told her. "Considering what you're looking at, I don't think you'd find it too hard to believe that I've been through worse." Billy was good with pain and a few pin pricks was nothing compared to some of the dreams he'd survived - it didn't take much for him to tune it out, locking it away.

"Somehow I'd guessed." Liadán agreed, but she didn't ask about the scars. "So, is there a story behind this, or is it personal?" Some people were picky about that, and some people just chose pretty little bullshit they'd regret in a year. If he'd never had a tattoo before, but was as specific as he was about this one? There was a story. It was just a matter of whether or not he'd share it.

"The tattoo?" he asked her. He considered. There was definitely a story, but telling it would be at best unbelievable and at worse so fucking distracting she'd mess up. "There's a story - the short version being that it's something I don't want to forget. You could call it a reminder that nobody's safe from harm in this world - no matter how confident we are otherwise."

"Fair enough." Liadán replied, not going to push for it past that. "Better reason than a lot of people have." Hell, Liadán gave herself new piercings when she was bored, though her tattoos were a lot rarer, and none of those she'd actually been able to do herself. "You drew the original, I take it?"

"Yeah - just a doodle. I don't really have art supplies and computer programmes and stuff," he told her. In fact, Billy didn't actually have a computer, but he didn't feel the need to add that. The drawing had been an ink doodle on scrap paper, but it hadn't been bad - Billy had always had a talent for that kind of thing, though it wasn't a developed one - just something he picked up and put down. And never actually showed anybody.

"Only time I touch a computer is here." she said. "It got necessary, and it's a lot easier sometimes." She padded away some blood after the line, and started in again, having to make the first run over a scar. "What do you do?"

Something passed over Billy's face as she ran over the scar - she'd been right, it hurt more. He took a moment, flexing his jaw slightly as he centred himself again, before he spoke. "I'm a handyman, basically - bit of this, bit of that. Been going for a couple of years, since I got to town. Kinda fell into it. Met a guy who needed some work done, then he recommended me to someone else, so on and so on - suddenly, before I knew it, I had a business. One of those things - I hadn't even been planning on staying in town that long when I first hit or anything."

Liadán noticed him react to the pain of that, and was careful to slow a bit more as she had to pass over it again. "Just let me know if you need a break at any point." she warned, before moving forward with the conversation. Talking helped some people. "Where are you from?"

"Will do," he agreed. "Originally from Colorado - tiny little town nobody'd every heard. And it's not there anymore now, so even less people have heard of it now. Unless, y'know, they're disaster freaks and like reading up on that kind of thing. It got kinda permanently flooded."

"Kinda?" Liadán asked, smirking faintly and briefly. "Jesus. How the hell did that happen?" She'd heard of global warming, but damn!

A shitload of vampires hit town and the white hat backlash killed more people than they ever did. Okay, so that? Was not a story he could just come out and tell either. Great! "We were just downstream from a big-ass dam, that decided to burst. Crack, bang, huge wave of water - bye bye town. Unfortunately, they'd like drained a small lake to make the dam in the first place - and when the waters settled? Yeah, lake was back and it was decided that it'd cost more to rebuild the dam or something, so they just left it. Apparently the whole town's still down there if you go looking," he added. Because she'd assume from that that people had gone scuba-diving to see. Which maybe they had. Course, his actual knowledge came from the fact that Maddie had lived there for a few years after the accident, because she couldn't leave, but there, that was another thing he was keeping quiet on.

Had she not been busy with what she was doing, Liadán would have whistled. "Sorry to hear that." She wanted to ask how many people that had killed, but she didn't. All the scars, the bloody reminder tattoo? Might not be the best topic. "What brought you up here then?"

"The last in a long line of 'next pinpoint in the map'," Billy admitted. "I kinda took to the road and wandered for a while - saw some of the country. Landed here for a while cos I ran out of money. Then I found an old friend of mine was living in town and things sorta snowballed from there. How about you? YOu local?" he asked her. "This place is new, isn't it?"

"Just opened last week." she answered. "I just sort of ended up here a few months ago myself." And she'd never meant to stay more than a night. She just got stuck here. She hadn't been too happy about it, either, but there were worse places to end up. "Ended up taking a job, and the next thing I knew I was buying property." So I'd have a hobby. Pft.

Billy chuckled a little. "Seems a lot of people end up here. Not many seem to move here by, y'know, actual design. So, where you from?" he asked, watching as the needle worked over the blood spots on his arm. HE wondered what the pattern underneath looked like, how far along she'd gotten. It was strange, knowing that she couldn't see what he saw - that was something he'd never get used to.

"I sort of grew up all over the place." Liadán replied, used to giving the vaguest answer possible. "We moved a lot, and once I hit eighteen I just kept moving. My mom was born downstate, though." A shit answer, but the best one that she had. This was the longest she'd ever stayed anywhere.

Billy recognised vagueness when it was thrown at him - he used it enough himself to be able to see it a mile off. "That must have either been really hard, or really interesting - depending on what you like, right?" he suggested. "I didn't realise how much I missed being settled until it happened. Travelling was interesting, but I don't think I'm built for it, really." And he'd been doing it for the wrong reasons - he'd been running. He was good at that.

"Depends on my mood." she answered, grinning briefly. "I never really minded it much, but I'm not going insane in one place, either." And once she'd grown up, it'd been less a matter of her mom moving her around, and the fact that she'd been searching for Riordan. Traces of him, at least. She'd been smart enough to know she didn't have a chance of killing him at the time. "I was born in Nashville, though. Cool town and all, but I think the constant exposure to country music might have driven me out of my fucking mind."

"Yeah - somehow I don't see you as the country sort," he laughed. The very idea was hilarious, in fact. "But, who knows, maybe if you'd stayed there you would have grown up to love it," he teased.
damn the muses: "I don't think you want me to shudder right now." she teased back, still smirking as she broke briefly to carefully wipe away some blood. "Some of the oldschool country-rock like Skynard's good, but I can't take any of that crying in your beer bullshit."

"Okay, less of the shudder-inducing nightmares then," Billy agreed - not that she'd shown any suggestion that she'd be doing anything of the sort. No, she had remarkably steady hands, but he figured that was a must in her trade. "No, I've never been a fan either. How's it going?" he asked her.

"Going well." Liadán answered, the question not that weird - not for a first-timer, at least. To him, it probably looked like black lines, red skin, and blood. "Your scars are taking well to it. I want you to be warned that red ink heals a little differently - on some people, it takes longer. It also might look pink instead of red for a few days, but don't let that freak you out. I think we'll be able to get it all in today, unless you want to space it out."

"No, it's fine - let''s get it all done," he told her. "Am I gonna have to keep it covered?" he asked her. That had been bothering him. Maddie was going to freak if she saw him with bandages. He figured he could avoid her today, but if he still needed dressings tomorrow, well, that would be an interesting conversation.

"Normally, I'd say no, but with your job? It's a possibility." she warned. "Basically, it's like having a big wound or fresh stitches. You're going to need to keep it clean, so if you're doing some bigtime sweaty messy job? Yeah, you'll want to put some bandages on it until you're done. I'll be bandaging it here, and once you get home - and you're settled for the night? You'll want to take them off and clean it up a bit. And then they only go back on if they have to - you want to let it breathe so it can heal."

"Okay, I'll bear that in mind. No big sweaty messy jobs for a while," he joked. "Actually, I haven’t got much on for the next few days anyhow, so I shouldn't have that much trouble keeping it clean." He winced a little again as she went over another scar.

"Cleaning it with soap and water will be okay, and certain lotions and ointments when it dries out or gets itchy. I'll be sending you home with instructions on how to care for it and what not to do, all that shit." she assured him. "Doin' okay?" she checked, padding at some blood again.

"Yeah, fine - but you're right about the scar thing," he said, pulling a slight face. "So, why is that? More pain over the scar?"
damn the muses: "Scar tissue's tough to penetrate." Liadán answered, starting up again. "Piercing through scar tissue are a fuck of a lot worse, for most people at least. Stretch marks can be painful to ink through, too. Even shit that's healed over that you can't see yourself can hurt. A lot of people like to get tattoos over scars they want to forget, though. That's actually pretty popular."

"I'd have a hell of a lot of tattoos if I tried to do that," Billy joked dryly, leaning back and looking up at the ceiling. After all, there wasn't much to see on his arm that wasn't already there - the ceiling was about as interesting.

"Yeah, you would." Liadán agreed easily. "But people do it. A lot. I've seen a lot of people decorate their suicide attempts. Or commemorate them. Whatever. It's always a gamble, too. I'm glad yours seem to be taking nicely."

"They are?" Billy asked, looking down, as if he'd be able to see, sounding a little surprised before he caught himself - she didn't know he couldn't see what she was doing. Usually he was better at this than that. He made himself relax, looking back up at the ceiling.

Liadán gave him a short-lived odd look, gave a small chuckle, and went back to what she was doing. He was a first-timer, she'd give him a break. But dude. What the fuck? "They are." she confirmed. "We'll have to see how the color goes, but I don't think it'll bleed any more than normal."

Concentrating on the ceiling as he was right now, Billy missed the look - but he'd also been expecting it. People gave him odd looks at times. It had been a fact of his life for the last eight years. Of course, the odd looks they gave him weren't a patch on the occasional screaming WFT!!! when he turned up in their dreams, but he didn't do that as much lately. "How much bleed's normal?" he asked.

"It varies." she answered. "Your colors will take okay, we're only using one and shading anyway. For the next couple of days, you may want to wear clothes you don't care about. There's going to be some ink and plasma oozing for a few nights, and it might stain your clothes or your sheets. I don't think that'll last any longer than two days at the most, here."

"Ink and plasma?" Billy asked, looking across at her. "That sounds messy. So, if I wear a white shirt, do I run the risk of looking like I'm bleeding?" he asked, thinking that? Would be bad.

"You might, but I don't think it'll be that bad here." Liadán answered, giving a brief smile. "If the tat was bigger, definitely. If you keep it clean and put the ointment on it when you need to, and you can occasionally put ice on it or take ibuprofen if there's any pain. There shouldn't be enough to soak through your clothes - though you'll see it on the inside of your shirt, and it may even get stuck. If that happens, just wet it a little with water and it'll come right off. And if you have to dress up or wear a white shirt you don't want stained, you can temporarily bandage it - temporarily, of course."

"Course," he agreed. He didn't have to dress up until the weekend, when he was going out with Maddie. But even that wouldn’t actually involve serious dressing up - just giving slightly more thought to his wardrobe and appearance than throwing on what was closest. "Okay, I can do that."

Liadán nodded. "Again, I'll be sending you home with a list of do's and don't's, and if you think anything's itching too bad or bleeding more than it should, it's not a problem to call me or stop in and have it looked at. It's not a problem, and I'd rather have you asking me than going in to the hospital because it itches or something. Not that I think you would, but... it happens." A lot.

Yes mom. "Got it," Billy said, instead - because he really didn't think the other comment would go down well. The woman was only doing her job, after all. And he could well believe that there were some people in this world who needed telling several times. And, in all honesty, Billy was probably one of them. he didn't listen so well.

It wasn't long after that before Liadán had her outlines done, and she could stop worrying about the stencil transfer. "We can start color now." she said, moving back to switch needles. "You're half-done. You need anything?"

Billy took the opportunity to flex his wrist a little, moving his fingers. "No, I'm all good," he told her. "Let's just get the rest done," he suggested.