Ship Happens

Chapter One Like a Fisting Tattoo?

Chapter One

Like a Fisting Tattoo?

“What do you mean you won’t tattoo me?”

The man’s expression is far from a pleasant one: brows furrowed, gaze forceful as he stares Owen down. Obviously, he’s used

to getting what he wants through this intimidation tactic of his. He even flexes his arms, just to sprinkle a little more

onto the charade.

All for an ugly tattoo of a lion.

“I didn’t say I won’t tattoo you,” Owen repeats himself. For the fifth time.

Peeking over the edge of the counter, Owen eyes the photo on the man’s phone where the hyperrealistic carnivore is staring

back at him.

“I don’t do hyperrealistic,” Owen explains, pulling up the shop’s calendar on the computer. “No one here right now does. You’ll

have to come back in the new year; you can make an appointment with Sarah. She’s back on the fifth.”

“Why can’t you do it?” the man asks.

“I could,” Owen says wryly. “But it’d look like shit.”

“You’re a tattoo artist.”

“Who hasn’t studied that style of tattooing.” Even just thinking about all that shading sends a shiver down Owen’s spine.

The door to the basement swings open, Conor finally making his grand reappearance with the box of inks he went looking for

half an hour ago, leaving Owen to man the front of the shop by himself. Not that it’d been that busy; it never was this close

to Christmas. People had better things to spend money on than tattoos.

“What about him?” the guy asks, nodding at Conor.

“Conor!” Owen calls without turning.

“What’d I do?” he asks, so startled that he nearly drops the box.

“Want to do this piece for a client?” Owen asks, reaching for the phone and handing it to his fellow artist.

“Maybe, I’ve got time before I was gonna—” Conor begins to say, but the second he sees the reference photo, his expression

sinks.

“I’m thinking along my whole back,” the client says, gesturing as best he can with how thick his triceps are. And okay, Owen

doesn’t like to make a habit of judging potential customers. But there’s something about the tight tank top, gym shorts, and

backward cap that’s not inspiring a lot of confidence in Owen that this session will go all that well.

Then again, for all Owen knows, he could be a lovely conversationalist.

But Owen isn’t wrong all that often.

“Uh . . .” Conor’s eyes dart nervously as he hands the phone back. “Yeah, nah. No can do, my guy, sorry.”

“Why not?” the man asks.

“Owen can explain!” Conor exclaims, squeezing Owen on the shoulder before he spins around back toward his own workstation.

“Coward,” Owen murmurs under his breath. “Look, dude . . . I’m telling you that if you want this tattoo, and you want it to look good, and you want it tonight, you should go to a different shop. If I were a worse person, I’d just do a shitty job and just take

your money, right?”

The man seems to consider Owen’s words. “I guess that makes sense.”

“Right, so . . .” On the still-unlocked phone, Owen opens Instagram, ignoring the barrage of half-naked bodybuilders that

he’s met with on the man’s explore page. Before Owen has time to wonder if the guy follows the men in a gay way or an aspirational

way, he pulls up his own artist account. “This is my work. I have flashes that you can pick from, or if you have something

a bit simpler, we can discuss that. But I’m not doing the lion.”

The guy stands there for a moment, weighing his options as he scrolls through a few weeks’ worth of posts from Owen. There’s

nothing about how this interaction has gone so far that tells Owen he’ll respond positively to his style of tattooing. Looser

lines, blended color with plenty of saturation. And a lot of animals. He probably won’t love the amount of wizard frogs that

Owen likes to post.

“These all look stupid.”

There it is.

“Thank you,” Owen replies bluntly. “I aim to impress.”

“Can you do a black band?” Owen watches him flex, pointing to a spot on his bicep.

“Like a fisting tattoo?” Owen asks almost playfully.

That gives the client reason to pause. “Huh?”

“Nothing.” Owen sighs, pushing away from the counter to grab the clipboard with the consent forms. “Fill this out, give me a few minutes to get a stencil ready.”

The large man looks so out of place in the hole-in-the-wall shop, especially when he sits on the leather loveseat, legs manspread

as he reads over the clipboard.

“How thick do you want the band?” Owen asks.

“Uh . . .” He hesitates for longer than Owen would like. “Six inches?”

“You want . . . a six-inch-thick band . . . around your bicep? Done tonight?” Owen hopes his tone is enough to talk the guy out of it.

“Is that too thick?”

“I’ll print out a few options,” Owen assures him, not sparing the client another glance and instead going back to his workstation

to ready a fresh pack of needles and switch out the battery in his machine.

“Here you go.” The client—Trevor, according to the name signed sloppily at the bottom—hands the consent form back to Owen

when he reaches the front of the shop. Owen eyes the information, making sure everything has been signed and initialed where

it needs to be.

“All right, feel free to sit down on the table. I’ll be back.”

When Owen returns, he goes through his usual routine of shaving Trevor’s arm hair before he marks the placement of the stencil,

trying out a few different-sized versions on Trevor’s arm, adjusting and readjusting when the placement isn’t just right before he sets the primer gel and then the final attempt. Most clients might think a black band should be simple, but

there’s a lot that goes into lining up the entire piece, making sure it looks good from every angle. And Trevor having biceps

the size of Owen’s head certainly doesn’t make things any easier.

“Is this going to hurt?” Trevor asks, flinching when Owen’s latex gloves snap to his wrist.

“It’s a bunch of tiny needles going into your skin over and over again,” Owen says. “To make sure it’s filled, I’ll be going

over the skin a few times. And you’ll probably need to come back in a few weeks when it’s fully healed to get it touched up.”

Owen’s not trying to freak the poor man out. But why lie?

“I have numbing cream,” he offers, but Trevor shakes his head. “All right, then,” Owen says. Scooting his wheeled stool closer

to the massage table, he brings around the leather armrest, adjusting the height. “Stretch your arm out and keep it relaxed.”

Owen pulls Trevor’s skin taut as he finally sets needle to skin. He’s not sure how much time passes, really. It’s always been

easy for Owen to get lost in the practiced action, making sure that he’s filling in the spots the best he can before moving

on to a different area and letting the skin rest. By the time Trevor opens his mouth again, he’s managed to get a sizeable

amount of the tattoo done.

“Yo, do you, uh . . . need to take a break or anything?” Trevor asks.

Owen cuts the power to the machine, blinking his dry eyes. “What was that?”

“Your back, ya know? You should take a minute.”

It’s easy to read through the lines. “Yeah, let’s take a break.” Owen does need to stretch, especially when he realizes that it’s already been forty-five minutes. He hadn’t even come to the shop with

the intention of working. Kaitlyn and Abby started to get a little too handsy while watching Frosty the Snowman. So he’d packed up his dinner in Tupperware and hopped on the bus. Besides, it’s not like there wasn’t a ton to do.

Follow-up emails, appointment reminders, website and calendar updates, scheduling January’s staff meeting, his own ink and needle restock orders that he needed to get to the shop’s intern before the end of the year, and he had to do the same for Sarah since she’d left town before she got a chance to do her own inventory.

And Owen is nothing if not kind. Plus she promised hot pot.

Of course, Owen had forgone all of that to browse LoopNet instead, scrolling through pages and pages of commercial real estate

listings in San Francisco. And when he wasn’t doing that, he was on Reddit, reading through dozens upon dozens of posts made

by tattoo artists who’d opened their own shops.

Owen’s stomach stirs with a wicked mixture of anxiety fueled by terror and excitement as he opens his loan proposal on his

laptop, his plan all perfectly laid out with Ravi’s help. He’s still months from it being ready, maybe years if things really

go south.

But the plan is coming together. Bit by bit, piece by piece, Full Metal is turning into a reality.

“Yo, dude!” Trevor calls out just as Owen spoons a bite of his dinner into his mouth. “Do you think we could speed things

up?”

“No.” Owen answers bluntly after swallowing, making Trevor wait as he chews. He goes back to his phone, checking a few notifications

on his Instagram before he makes a note for himself to post the flash sheet he finished last week and reply to DMs so he can

try and fill out his books through the first half of the year, really pad his savings.

The less he has to borrow from the bank, the better.

Standing up from his desk, Owen grabs his Tupperware as he starts to do laps around the shop, a dull ache settling in his knees.

He can’t disappoint Dr. Brooks, after all; Owen can picture her stern glare with ease as he tells her he hasn’t been doing his regular stretches, similar to the ones she’d first given him as he described how much of his day is spent with his back hunched, constant pressure on his ankles to keep himself still.

Not exactly the dream job of someone with Owen’s brand of psoriatic arthritis.

He turns when he sees his phone light up on his desk.

Kaitlyn: Owennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

He ignores the message, swallowing one last bite before he puts his food down.

“Think you’re ready to start again?” Owen asks as he catches Trevor flexing in front of the large mirror on the wall. He’s

not even showing off the arm with the tattoo—he’s got his shorts pulled up to get a look at his thighs.

“Yeah, one sec.” Trevor snaps a few photos with his phone. “The lighting is great here!”