Black Hawk Tattoo

Chapter 1Toronto, 2006 “No,” Gabe said again. He pushed his damp hair away from his forehead, his mouth twitching involuntarily at the sweat that clung to his skin. It was mid-July, and Toronto had hit its stride for summer temperatures. “No. I’m sorry, but I’m not putting a goddamn baseball-sized teddy bear on your ass,” he told his latest customer, some kid who’d probably forged the Liquor Control Board of Ontario ID card he’d used to prove he was nineteen. “First of all, I’m pretty sure you’re too drunk to know what you’re doing. Second of all, the design you want is stupid. Third, the place you want to put it is stupid. And fourth, you’re going to look like an asshole for the rest of your life.” “Dude, it’s my ass!” the kid yelled, flecking his lip rings with spit. “If I want something there, you f*****g put it there! I’m paying for it!” He tossed his head, making his frizzy curls flip, scattering drops of sweat. A couple landed on the glass countertop and Gabe grimaced, glad there wasn’t anything on the counter that would need to be sterilized again. “Hey,” Rob said. His voice was quiet and he didn’t do anything more menacing than lift his head a little from the back of the ancient burgundy chaise lounge under the elaborately painted front window, but the kid goggled and shut up like Rob had slapped him. “It’s his choice if he slings the ink or not.” Gabe shrugged, smiling in completely false apology. “Sorry.” “f**k you,” the kid snapped at him, narrowing his bloodshot eyes. Gabe watched bemusedly as he stalked out of the shop, swaying a little in his black leather boots. There were at least half a dozen other tattoo parlors within easy walking distance of Atlantis Ink, and Gabe was sure a couple of them would put whatever the hell the kid wanted on his ass, no matter how large, ugly, or permanent. “Jesus, what a d**k,” Gabe said. He shook his head and went over to where Rob was lounging. The normally spiky twists in Rob’s thick curls looked wilted, and sweat glistened on his cheeks and in the hollow of his throat, adding a golden sheen to his dark skin. “He’s going to be forty one day, you know? And he thinks he’s going to want to wake up to a teddy bear with a vivisection on his skinny ass for the rest of his life? If he’s that broken up about his stupid girlfriend, he should just get another piercing—I think he has room for one more on his face, maybe.” Rob smiled. “A third lip ring, to balance the other two. I’m sure Dee would be happy to do it.” He chuckled, then stooped to grab his half-empty bottle of Coke from where it was sweating condensation onto the old hardwood floor. “You know, Gabe, you just cost us a lot of money. Stupid as that tat would’ve been, it would’ve been about four hundred by the time you finished with the details of the fur and the ripped-out heart.” “Which I would’ve demanded up front, believe me,” Gabe said. He scowled. “But I’m not going to encourage people’s stupidity, let alone help them wear it.” “Okay,” Rob said, “I hear that. But what if, one day, you come across someone who wants an amazing tattoo—a real work of art—but you don’t like the meaning behind it?” He grinned. “Does that fall under your ‘Do Not Ink the Idiots’ policy, too?” “It depends,” Gabe said, wiping at the sweat on his forehead with his hand, then drying his palm on his pant leg. “I mean, I might’ve inked that kid if he had a better idea, even if it was ‘cause he’s all emo over a breakup. But like I said—it depends.” “Depends on what?” Rob asked. It was so hot Rob had left his eyeglasses on the counter, and Gabe kept being surprised at seeing his big, dark eyes with nothing framing them. Rob stretched out and lifted one brown bare foot to let it thump lazily down on the chaise. “I don’t know,” Gabe said, feeling a little defensive. “Maybe what meaning it has for the client. Like…” He thought and then snapped his fingers. “Like, if he wanted a Nazi swastika on his arm, but he meant it as an ironic anti-Nazi symbol, I might…” He paused. “Okay, I still wouldn’t ink that.” Rob smiled. “Good.” Gabe thought some more, automatically clearing the newly beading sweat off his forehead again. He glanced wearily up at the ceiling fan, which was spinning sluggishly, as if the heat had sapped its strength. Their building was too old to have air-conditioning; normally that wasn’t a problem, but normally Toronto didn’t get this hot. Gabe hadn’t been in heat like this since the last time he’d been dragged along to visit family in India, and he hated it as much now as he had then. “All right, something religious, I guess. Like, I don’t know…Okay, say they want Jesus on their shoulder or something. That’s not my thing, right?” He smirked ruefully. “I mean, that’s really not my thing. But I’d do something like that, because people are allowed to have their own religious beliefs, right? As long as they don’t hurt anyone because of it or try to shove it down my throat.” Rob nodded. “What if it was really ugly?” he asked innocently. “I don’t do ugly.” Rob huffed in amusement before taking a long swig on his drink. Gabe couldn’t help but watch as thin beads of sweat trailed down Rob’s temple, following the tilt of his jaw to his neck then sliding beneath the open collar of his shirt. The two of them had been friends for years, and while Rob was both unquestionably straight and married, that didn’t mean Gabe couldn’t appreciate that his boss was still a beautiful man. Unfortunately, Rob’s porn-drinking only served to remind Gabe of how much he wanted someone of his own in his life. He sighed and then went to the counter to clean the glass. Yeah, he was young—and if a certain crazy teenage girl could be believed, he looked “like Adrien Brody, only darker and cuter”—but he’d never been a fan of one-night stands or anonymous s*x. He blamed his mother and all the Bollywood movies she’d made him watch with her as a kid: the kind of stories with innocent, feisty heroines and protective, handsome heroes and dewy-eyed love songs and perpetually happy endings. Gabe hated being labeled a romantic, but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t want the same happy ending the couples in his mother’s VHS collection always got. “Hey,” Rob said, holding up the empty plastic Coke bottle, “recycle this for me, will you?” He tossed it at Gabe, who dodged it as the door made its cheerful bing-bong noise and a teenage girl walked in. “Hey, Hype,” Rob drawled pleasantly. Gabe wiggled his fingers, wishing he’d agreed to ink Teddy-Bear-Ass after all, if only to have a reason to ignore her. Not that Gabe disliked her or anything. It was just she was a kid—a kid kid, as in an actual child. She was fourteen but looked twelve, though she tried painfully hard to act like an adult. Her real name was Hyacinth, but she’d burst into tears once when Gabe had called her that. Tonight she was tottering around in black-and-red leather lace-up boots that made her feet look enormous, strapping down jeans that clung tenuously to her hips with a red belt that had probably been tacky in the 1980s. Her T-shirt was dark pink, advertising some band Gabe had never heard of. And as usual, she had an enormous pink bow in her raven-black-dyed hair, which made her look like an anime character. She’d also decorated her arms with a Sharpie again, in the sad hope that anyone would mistake them for actual tattoos. Gabe used the excuse of bending to pick up Rob’s Coke bottle to hide his laughter. “Heya, Rob,” Hype said. Gabe pitched the bottle into the recycle bin and watched as Hype wobbled over to the love seat next to the flash binders of tattoo designs and dropped into it, sighing dramatically. She let her head fall back and turned her face up to the fan. “It is so f*****g hot! I can’t believe how hot it is!” “Language,” Rob said, with the same soft tone he’d used to warn Teddy-Bear-Ass. “Believe it,” Gabe grumbled from behind the counter. “So…it’s pretty dead here, huh,” Hype went on. She looked around, as if expecting people to crawl out from under the furniture. She stretched out on the love seat, mimicking Rob. “It’s a Monday night and too hot to move,” Gabe said. He got out the Windex from the cupboard beneath the counter and then liberally sprayed the glass to scrub away Teddy-Bear-Ass boy’s sweat. He knew Dee would be pissed at him for using a regular commercial product, but Gabe wasn’t convinced the all-natural tree-hugging stuff she liked actually killed germs. He glanced up at Hype. “Don’t you have homework?” Hype looked at him witheringly. “Summer vacation, dumbass.” She sighed again, even more loudly. “There’s nothing to do until Thursday when the all-age clubs open.” “You could get a job,” Gabe said. He smiled sweetly when Hype glowered at him. “How’s your mother?” Rob asked her, sitting up. “Hey,” he called to Gabe. “Would you be so kind as to bring Hype a Coke from the fridge, please?” “Are you sure she should be drinking Coke? It has caffeine in it,” Gabe said. “I think we have milk.” He chuckled at Hype’s look of shocked affront. “My mom’s fine,” Hype said to Rob after a last glare at Gabe. “You know, bitching me out all the time, the usual.” She started picking at a scab on her arm. “She’s got a new boyfriend.” She sneered over the word. “He has this long gray hair that he keeps in a skanky ponytail like he’s a wannabe biker, eh? And he smiles like…” She broke off and shuddered. “Like he’s a f*****g pedophile. He creeps me out.” She shrugged, still looking at her arm. “So, you know. I came down here.” “It’s always a pleasure to have you visit,” Rob said, smiling warmly at her. Gabe noticed he didn’t call her on her language again. “So, Rob,” Hype continued, shaking off her mood like it’d never happened, “when are you going to make this hacker pound these? I mean, seriously.” She pulled herself up on the love seat, tilting her pointed chin. “You don’t have to be eighteen to get a tattoo, I looked it up.” She crossed her arms. “So what’s the diff? Mom won’t care.” Gabe rolled his eyes. “I care, Hype,” he told her. “And I’m not inking anything on you until you’re over eighteen!” He trotted down the stairs to the break room before she could answer and restart the very old argument. The main entrance and the upstairs studio were well lit, clean, and welcoming, because Rob had renovated the first and second floors way back when he’d originally bought the building. The basement, on the other hand, was an entirely different story. It was carpeted in ugly, stained industrial green, and it always smelled damp and musty, despite the giant dehumidifier roaring away in the corner. The couches were nice, even if they had come from charity stores and looked about twenty years old. And the dampness did make it cool in the summer. Gabe just stood in the center of the room for a minute, spreading his arms and smiling as the chill of the break room seeped into his body. He thought wistfully about taking a nap on the couch as he went to the dripping, chugging fridge to get the drinks. There was actually a week-old carton of soy milk Dee had probably forgotten about in the door. Gabe grinned to himself, imagining Hype’s reaction if he brought her that instead. Sadly, he thought as he snagged the Cokes, Hype was probably right about the tattoos. Normally Atlantis Ink’s policy was to get parental permission for anyone under eighteen, but he was sure Hype’s mother really wouldn’t care, if she even noticed. Luckily for her, Hype had decided Gabe was “the s**t,” and she wasn’t going to get inked by anyone else, even if it meant she had to wait. But it annoyed the hell out of him that she still wouldn’t quit it about the damn tattoos. He went back upstairs to the street-level entrance of the shop. “All right, Hytension, here’s your drink. Try not to spill it on anything—except maybe your clown shoes.” He passed a bottle to her and to Rob. Hype scowled at him, snatching the Coke out of his hand.