Savior

by Rhys Ford

  But he couldn’t help but notice that Mace flinched when he first touched the spot.

  “You did catch it really good over here,” Rob commented lightly as he traced over the three-inch scar that cut through the dragon’s frilled tail. The gouge wasn’t deep, and it sliced over the space diagonally, which gave Rob a good idea of what it looked like before. The span itself was thin and long, rather than wide. It was an easy repair, but he would have to work hard to color match and in a few spots, blend in a black gradient.

  “You think you can do it?” Mace twisted his head around to peer over his own shoulder. “I’ve been meaning for Bear to take a look at it, but I thought I’d see if you felt like you could do it.”

  There was a lot of power in Mace’s back and stretches of untouched skin Rob would’ve loved to paint with ink. He had a nice undertone for color—a bit of olive and gold—a good base to make blues and purples pop. The reds and oranges they used were richer, earthier than Rob normally liked, but the hues were bold and strong enough to hold their own against the brighter colors. The stippling worried him a little bit, but as he inspected the outer edges of the tattoo, Rob noticed the other faint scars that crisscrossed Mace’s back.

  He didn’t need to ask about them. He’d met the man who put them there, was nearly a victim of his cruelty and violence. Rob longed to trace up the length of Mace’s spine with the tip of his tongue or spend a lazy afternoon counting the faint freckles on his shoulders.

  “I can do it,” he finally replied. When he glanced up into Mace’s deep, sultry blue eyes, Rob couldn’t help but smile when Mace winked. “The question is, are you sure? Because if I fuck it up, Bear isn’t just going to fire my ass, he’s going to kick it.”

  “It’s my skin,” Mace reminded him. “Besides, you look bored enough to chew off your own foot for amusement.”

  “Yeah, but at least if I do that, it’s just my foot,” he muttered and gave Mace a light shove toward the chair at his station. “Let me start mixing up some inks and we can get started. And if I jack up in the lines, I’ll blame it on the Vietnamese coffee you brought with you.”

  ROB ONLY had a few more minutes of shading to do when the door’s bells rang for the second time that day. There was little hope that Gus would be any help. He’d woken up five minutes after Rob laid his first pass of orange over the dragon’s tail and made a loud scrambling dash toward the shop’s bathroom. It sounded as though he hit every wall and door with his body along the way. Then came the distinct liquid gushing sounds of someone emptying their stomach.

  “I’m not cleaning that up if he gets it on the floor,” Rob said as he continued to layer in the color. “He’s on his own.”

  “I’ll do it,” Mace promised. “It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve cleaned up after Gus puking. I doubt it will be the last.”

  His back was to the door, his chair angled so he could get full light on Mace’s back, so Rob couldn’t see the customer who came in. He was about to ask them to hold on when he glanced up at the mirror hanging on the wall above the counter at his station and caught sight of the top of a very familiar head.

  “Don’t look now,” Mace said as he met Rob’s startled gaze in the mirror, “but I think there’s a gelfling here to see you.”

  “That’s my mom!” He fumbled to find a place to put his machine and pulled the cords to the side as he untangled himself from his chair. He had a slight ache in his back, mostly from clenching up with nerves while he worked on Mace, so he groaned when he stood up. “Shit, umm… stay here. Or… crap… hold on.”

  He’d been thirteen when she got short, but Rob had grown up believing his mother was the most beautiful woman in the world. Now in his midtwenties, he still hadn’t found any woman who’d changed his mind. There were subtle hints that she came from a stocky people—a musculature he’d inherited—but her generous curves hid a powerful strength from years of workouts and limited carbs. It was her outrageous fashion sense that shaped much of Rob’s own tastes, and although she refused to do anything crazy to her long black hair, she wasn’t afraid of color in her wardrobe.

  Today was no exception. Her magenta skinny jeans were paired with a frothy yellow blouse that was dotted with an explosion of purple circles. If Ivo were in the shop, he’d probably have something to say about her chopstick-thin metallic-gold stilettos. Her sunglasses sat on top of her head, a pair of enormous pink cat’s-eyes dazzled with rhinestones. Her silky brown skin might have had more wrinkles than when he was a child, but her smile still lit up the room for him, and when she enveloped him in a tight hug, her light floral perfume soothed his rattled nerves.

  “Don’t stop working because I’m here. I just came by to say hello because I had a dental checkup down the street.” His mother peered around his shoulder, smiled at Mace, and then said through gritted teeth in a low whisper, “He’s nice. I wouldn’t take my hands off of him. Very pretty. Look at all of those muscles.”

  Apparently he’d gotten his no-filter mouth from her as well.

  “Mom.” He matched her whisper—a hot hiss of mortification and resignation. It wasn’t the first time she’d boldly commented on a man’s physique or his looks, and once she accepted his sexuality, she oftentimes nudged him in the ribs to point his attention toward her object of momentary lust. “That’s Mace. Let me… just come over and meet him. And try not to drool on him.”

  Mace was still straddling one of the chairs when Rob brought his mother over. As they approached, he stood up, exposing his bare chest and abdomen, and Rob’s mother sucked in her breath.

  “Mace, this is Nina, my mom.” Rob rolled his eyes at his mother’s now even broader smile as she held her hand out. “Mom, this is Mace. The guy I was telling you about.”

  His mother literally cooed. She sounded like a flock of pigeons descending on a scatter of birdseed. Rob spent five minutes listening to his mother exclaim admiration over Mace’s tattoos and then express her delight in discovering he was a firefighter, something Rob had mentioned to her nearly a month ago.

  “Why don’t I finish up, and the two of you can continue your lovefest,” Rob grumbled at Mace as he rolled his chair back into place. “Sit down. Mom, let me get you a seat.”

  He braced for a long, drawn-out battle about how she didn’t need a chair, but Mace walked over to Gus’s stall to grab one, and that cut it short before it began. He watched his mother ogle Mace’s ass and then shoot him a flirtatious smile when he returned. Judging by her gratitude, anyone eavesdropping would have imagined Mace parted the Red Sea to let her people go free. Getting Mace back into position was easy enough, but as he turned on his machine and the needles began to jump, Mace did the one thing Rob prayed he wouldn’t do.

  “So what was he like as a kid?” Mace shifted in his chair and leaned his chest against its back so Rob had better access to his tattoo. “I’ve got four brothers. Lots of embarrassing stories.”

  “You’re so fucking lucky that I have pride in my work and I don’t poke you deeply,” he muttered into Mace’s ear as he edged his chair closer. “And don’t think I’m not going to ask your brothers about the shit you used to do when you were younger.”

  “My life is an open book, babe.” Mace turned his dazzling smile toward Rob’s mother. “I can tell you they really like him at the shop here. I’m one of the owners, although Bear is the one in charge. Technically Rob and I shouldn’t be dating, because he’s an employee, but you know him… just irresistible.”

  And with that, Rob’s mother was off and running.

  It was hard to tattoo a laughing man. It was harder not to die of embarrassment as his mother proceeded to drag out probably the most mortifying moments of Rob’s life. He had to pull back the machine from Mace’s skin when she recalled when he was eight and she caught him shaving his hair into a mohawk using her epilator. Her recollection included a reenactment of him screaming like a pterodactyl on fire, and he stopped so he could give her a death glare.

  “Mom, I did not so
und like that,” Rob protested to apparently deaf ears as his mother and Mace burst out into hearty laughter at his admittedly petulant tone. “And unless you want to sit in this chair all night, stop giggling so I can finish.”

  The ten minutes left stretched into forty-five following an interruption by Gus, who was a color of green only seen in the Chicago River during St. Patrick’s Day. His mother subsequently coddled Gus and oohed over the pictures of his toddler as she made him hot tea. Rob set Gus back down into the art room, finished up, wiped Mace down, and then leaned back to scrutinize his work.

  “Okay. I think I’m done, but you’ve got a little bit of swelling going on, so let’s see how that does, and if we need to go back over it, we can. I don’t want to overwork the area, because you’ve already had trauma there, and the last thing I want to do is cut you. Let’s see how the scar takes the ink.” Rob rolled his seat back and gave Mace room to stand up. “Take a look in the mirror and tell me what you think.”

  All he needed to see was Mace’s wide grin to know he’d done well.

  “That looks great. I think it’s going to heal really well. You did a fantastic job.” Mace turned and gave Rob a deep kiss that left him breathless and tingling. “I think Bear will be very impressed with it. You nailed it.”

  There were moments of pride Rob lived for when tattooing, and each moment was different and special in its own way. But seeing Mace’s face and hearing his words intensified his satisfaction over the work. He loved to ink. He loved everything about tattooing, from the feel of skin and how it moved to the constant struggle to replicate his art onto a living canvas. A cover-up was a challenge he always embraced, and the occasional touchup was probably even more nerve-racking because he had to make it look as seamless as possible and match another artist’s skill level and design choices.

  The fact that he brought that glorious smile to Mace’s beautiful face just made nailing the tattoo even better.

  “Oh, that looks so pretty.” His mother beamed at him. “You can’t even tell where the scratch was.”

  “Yeah, I hope he’ll do a whole piece on me someday,” Mace told her.

  “Let me get this covered up before you start making me even more nervous about inking you.” Rob gestured him over, holding up a piece of dermal film. “Do you need the aftercare instructions, or are you sick of hearing them?”

  “I think I know how to get hold of my tattoo artist if something goes bad,” he teased. Then he lifted his arm out of the way so Rob could stretch the film over the newly inked area. Mace bent his head and whispered, “I’m kind of hoping he’ll make a house call tonight. We can order in some food and put in a movie that we’re not going to watch because we’re making out on my couch.”

  “Let me get my mom out of here and we can definitely talk about it.” He fought back his smile and worked out all the air bubbles as he lay the film down. “Actually, who am I kidding? So long as I get to pick the movie we ignore. I’d say we can go now because it’s so dead, but Gus is useless, and Bear isn’t going to be here for a little while.”

  Saying goodbye to his mother took nearly as long as it did to finish Mace’s tattoo. First she had to check up on Gus and then invite a now-dressed Mace over to dinner with the family. Rob tried to derail that, but despite his best efforts, they were locked into a Saturday meal with probably just his parents in a restaurant he would have to wear a tie for. By the time she left, Mace wore an imprint of her lipstick on one cheek, and Rob was fairly certain his face was covered in pink gloss from the butterfly kisses she gave him before she headed out.

  “Sorry about my mom taking up so much time.” Rob looked in a mirror and caught sight of the war paint she left on him, so he started to wipe his face with a paper towel. “She’s not usually down this way so I like to stop and talk to her when she comes by.”

  “No, it was nice. I know you and your dad have issues, and she’s probably stuck in the middle of it, right?” Mace gave him a sympathetic grimace when Rob nodded. “I liked her. You’re a lot like her. And I can see how much she loves you. Kinda made me jealous because I don’t have that. And don’t get me wrong, I love the guys, but a mother is kind of special. It’s different, and it’s good to see.”

  “Yeah. My dad and I are okay. Or at least I think we’re good now. Last time I went up to the house, he was telling one of his friends to drop by the shop and have me cover up some crappy flash he got overseas. ’Bout blew my mind listening to my dad talk me up,” Rob said. He sidled up to Mace to wrap his arms around him. “Dinner’s going to kind of suck because there’ll be about seventeen forks and five hundred spoons and my father will go on about the state of the city and how I either need a haircut or a real job. We might even get a special appearance by one of my older brothers or sisters, but I doubt it. I can promise you the food will be good, because my dad really likes to eat well. There will probably be lots of meat. Just so you know.”

  “I like meat. And it doesn’t matter what we eat so long as you’re there with me.” Mace pulled him closer and fit Rob into the dips and valleys of his body. “Do you want me to keep you company? Or should I head out and maybe pick up my dirty clothes off of the living room floor?”

  Rob was about to answer when a massive gurgling sound erupted from the back of the shop. If he hadn’t known better, listening to the gushing noise, he would have thought a pipe broke. He patted Mace’s ass. “Tell you what. I’m going to take you up on your offer to clean up after your brother, because unless I’m wrong, he didn’t make it to the bathroom this time. And as much as I love having you in my life, it doesn’t extend to your immediate family and the stomach flu.”

  Twenty-One

  ROB GASPED and pulled his head back to get some air. “Shit, I was really looking forward to that movie.”

  Something was digging into Rob’s spine, and he briefly wondered if it was the open zipper of his jeans. At any other time, he would’ve stopped what he was doing to yank the pants out from underneath him, but Mace half lying on top of him made it difficult to move, and he was busy trying to get Mace’s T-shirt off without breaking the stream of kisses being left on his throat.

  He could’ve sworn Mace only had two hands, but it seemed like they were everywhere. And they were everywhere. They were everywhere with a wicked skill and a seemingly instinctive knowledge of Rob’s body, because no matter where Mace touched, he left a trail of fire banked under Rob’s skin.

  “We can always go back to the living room,” Mace muttered, his words half lost in Rob’s hair as he began to explore Rob’s ear with his tongue. “If you really wanted to watch it. Funny thing is, I don’t even remember what movie you picked.”

  It was beginning to be a pattern with them. Starting with the afternoon Rob repaired Mace’s Japanese dragon, they often made plans for dinner in and to watch a couple of hours of television before Rob went home. Rob couldn’t name one movie they’d ever watched, and as far as going home went, more and more of his clothes were taking up space in Mace’s closet, and Rey’s old apartment key now hung on Rob’s keychain. He’d gotten used to helping Mrs. Hwang take out her trash and sort through her recyclables, and he’d picked up a few words in Cantonese. He marveled at Mace’s near fluency in the language, because he struggled with it.

  They’d even gotten a damned fish, a brilliantly frilled orange-and-red betta they called Namor, whose colors caught Rob’s eye and were reminiscent of the dragon he’d worked on. Neither one of them knew anything about fish, so it was a crash course with a friend of a friend, and now the apartment’s living space was filled with the gentle burble of a five-gallon aquarium set up in Mace’s working area. There were other fish in the tank besides Namor, brilliantly colored but small-finned dart-like creatures the aquarium guy reassured them would get along well with their bruiser of a betta fish. Snails were okay. Shrimp were a buffet. And after a panicked phone call down to the fish store when Rob found Namor building a pile of bubbles in the corner of the tank, Mace suggested they bu
y some books and get at least a little bit smarter about what they brought home.

  Their dinner with his parents went better than Rob expected. His mother flirted with everyone under the sun, typical of her when she was happy, and from the oddly indulgent looks his father gave her, there seemed to be a peace between them Rob had never seen before. Mace was a hit, and his presence unearthed a long-hidden childhood desire his father once had to become a firefighter. They left the restaurant with a promise to have a dinner at the house, and his father only once asked him if he’d found a real job. But he softened the criticism with an unexpected offer to give Rob money if he needed it.

  He caught the gleam of something akin to admiration in his father’s steely eyes when he reassured his parents he wasn’t only just doing fine, but was building a successful clientele. Mace remained silent, smiling and giving a supportive murmur or two, but for the most part, he didn’t step in. He let Rob stand on his own accomplishments. Rob liked that. He knew he could look to Mace for backup, but Mace wasn’t there to save him or to validate what he did. Even though he’d spoken openly about Rob’s work at the shop, he kept his comments to artistic skill and technique rather than reassuring Rob’s father that his son was a functioning adult.

  There were other dinners, some more formal with Rob’s family and others with Mace’s, mostly backyard stuff where they grilled large chunks of meat and the occasional zucchini to say they had their vegetables. They learned their boundaries. Mace didn’t like anyone reading what he wrote until he was ready, and Rob adjusted to some constant noise in the background, although Namor’s tank went a long way to soothing Mace’s quirk.

  He celebrated Mace going back onto the trucks and was thrilled when the physical therapist gave him clearance to go back into the fray. Mace had been impatient about it but reasonable, something Rob appreciated not fighting about, especially after dealing with a seemingly endless stream of crazy clients down at 415 Ink. And even though he’d been invited countless times before, there was no way in hell Rob was ever going to join Rey and Mace on their insane game of full-out sprint-and-tag through Chinatown in the early mornings.