by Rhys Ford
Just like he was doing right now.
At midnight, the tattoo shop was busy, filled with the chatter of artists and a couple of clients who kept sneaking glances over at the mixed-race singer sprawled out over a weathered velvet wingchair Ichi’d dragged over for Miki to sit in. Sitting was… difficult for Miki. He lounged into things, his lean body a sinuous liquid pour of elegant dismissal of physics and manners, his long legs draped over chair arms. If it were anyone else, Damie would have thought the artful arrangement of limbs and the erotic cant of Miki’s head against the chair’s upper swoop was a calculated pose meant to seduce and arouse.
Damie knew better. Miki was fucking oblivious.
Not so much that his eyes didn’t narrow when Damien hissed at the mounting pain, but still, clueless as to how he was affecting many of the people in the shop.
Oddly enough, as gorgeous and sensual of a creature as Miki was, he did absolutely nothing for Damien… except invoke a need to protect and possibly shove as much food down his brother’s throat as humanly possible.
Someone in the shop switched the music over, flipping from classic L’arc En Ciel to Sinners Gin, and Damien laughed at Miki’s eye roll.
“Why don’t you get those noodles you wanted?” Damien suggested through a hiss. “I’m going to be here a while.”
“Want some too? Or do you want me to grab you some coffee instead?” Miki eased up out of the chair with a sinewy grace. “I’ve got my card on me and some cash, but the noodle place had one of those signs, so I should be okay.”
“Just… grab me something cold. Jesus fucking Christ, this hurts.” Damien gulped down some air, hoping to cool off the burn from the inside out. Ichi made some murmuring noises he took as a question about if Damien wanted to stop, so he shook his head. “I’m good. It just… fuck, right over that spot.”
“Spines are the worst,” Ichi confirmed, then hummed to himself. “Well, necks. Anything with connective tissue. The pain travels sometimes, so you’ll feel it in other places. If you need to stop—”
“He won’t,” Miki snorted. “Stubborn as fuck. Probably crawl back out of his grave because he’s not ready to be dead when the Reaper comes for him. Just you watch.”
“Go get your damned noodles. And maybe a beer.” Damie glanced at the tattoo artist reflected in the mirror in front of him. “Beer okay? Can we drink? Do you want to drink?”
“None for me. I’m… driving a needle,” the Japanese artist teased, shifting his chair around to work over Damien’s shoulder. “And yes, you can drink… a little bit. Just do not get drunk. Not good for the skin. If they have an iced Bossccino, that would be nice.”
“Okay, some piss-water beer for Damie, a coffee thing for Ichi, and noodles for me.” Miki grunted at them. “I’ll be back in a bit. Hopefully they’ve got chicken. I mean, octopus is okay, but I’d rather have chicken.”
Ichi grew still, pulling the buzzing needle away from Damien’s skin, and a thoughtful expression settled on his handsome features as Miki ambled out of the front door, letting the noren drop behind him. Damien knew that look. He’d seen it a thousand times before, but Ichiro simply dipped his tattoo machine head back into the inkwell and began again.
“Jesus, I don’t know what’s worse,” Damien muttered. “You working on it without stopping or you stopping long enough for my skin to think it’s over and then you start again.”
“I think it’s worse when they stop.” Another dip and the burn began again in a different spot. “Tell me about your friend. He looks… complicated. Beautiful but very complicated.”
“That is possibly the best description of Miki St. John that I’ve ever heard.” Damien held himself extremely still as the needle drifted back across his spine. It hit a cluster of nerves and his toes began to tingle; then it drifted away, filling in another line. “If you’re interested… he likes guys—for the most part—he’s just kind of… a mess.”
“Do you say that because he is not sentimental or because you want to keep others away from him?” This time the pinprick of pain did not come from the needle but rather from Ichi’s words, but Damien hissed anyway. “I like how he looks. And he seems like he would be a challenge, but not one that I would survive. His skin is on too tight, and you seem to be the only one he trusts. I would sooner offer him friendship than anything else. I think that is something he could return without me losing any of my fingers. As much as I would love to see how he tastes, I like having my tongue in my mouth.”
“Yeah, I don’t know if there’s someone out there who will ever win Miki’s heart, but if he exists, I hope to hell he has a strong stomach, because that fucker eats the weirdest things.” Another buzz, another burn, and Damien settled in against the chair, thinking he finally had gotten a grip on the pain coursing over his skin when Ichiro circled back, adding an embellish. “Motherfucker. Jesus, and somebody did this to Miki when he was a kid?”
If Ichiro was curious about what Damien said, he didn’t get a chance to ask because Miki came through the shop’s curtained door holding a plastic bag in one hand and what looked like a short bottle-shaped can in the other. His brother paused for a second, probably caught up in the tangle of his own lyrics wrapping around him as he walked through the shop. Ducking his head down, Miki stalked forward.
“Hey, D! I got you… what the fuck is this?” Miki studied the can as he approached the stall. “It’s Michelob. Guy says it’s American, but I don’t know, it could be Japanese. Could be horse piss, but he said it was the best they had. Ichi, I got you a couple of those coffee things. Where can I put this stuff down? Can I eat in here? Or do I have to go back outside?”
“No, you’re fine,” Ichi informed him. “Have a seat. You can use the table over there if you want. When Damien feels the need to stop, he’ll be able to reach for his drink.”
“I’ve changed my mind,” Damien grumbled. “Go get me some fucking whiskey.”
“You’re going to have to be happy with the beer for right now. I’ll get you something after I eat.” After sitting down on the wing chair, Miki dug out a Styrofoam container and a pair of chopsticks, then opened it up, letting out a cloud of pungent steam. Whatever Miki brought back with him smelled more like someone had dredged the Bay and served it up in a taco than anything edible, but knowing his brother, Miki didn’t care. “I want to eat this while it’s still hot.”
“I have literally seen you eat a forkful of macaroni and cheese that had fallen into a snowbank. You don’t give a shit if your food is hot. You don’t even give a shit if your food is cooked.” The next line brought tears to Damien’s eyes, and he ground his teeth together to stop himself from yelping. “Pass me the fucking beer.”
There wasn’t enough alcohol in the can to do anything other than dampen the back of Damien’s mouth, and he gratefully accepted one of Ichi’s coffees, hoping the still missing-in-action Stan had been right about the caffeine. Either he was getting used to the drag of fire across his flesh or Stan had been right, because after a few minutes, the agony didn’t seem so bad. He was actually considering telling Ichi to see how far he could go when Damien spotted the six-inch-long pink tentacle Miki slurped up from his noodles.
“Okay, that’s kind of disgusting.” Damien wrinkled his nose. “I’m getting tattooed here and you’re doing Cthulhu impressions.”
“Fuck you. You’re just mad because I won’t get you some whiskey until I’m done eating.” Miki picked up another piece of a cephalopod with his chopsticks and nibbled on its end. Gesturing with the tentacle, he said in his husky, smoky voice, “That looks like it hurts.”
“Shit, you think?” He sneered back, only to get flipped off. “You don’t remember what it feels like?”
“Me?” Miki glanced down at his arm, his tattoo hidden under his sleeve. “Nope. I don’t remember anything.”
“He said you got a tattoo when you were a child,” Ichiro commented, circling back around to Damien’s other side, his rolling chair squeaking as he moved. “
That is… wrong. Never children.”
“Yeah, nobody asked me,” Miki said, putting down his chopsticks. Dragging up his sleeve, he showed Ichiro the mangled, patchy blue lines on his arm. “One of the cops told someone it meant Mieko, so they wrote that down as my name, but….”
“That is not what that says.” Ichiro’s frown grew deeper. “I don’t recognize it. Not that I know every kanji, but usually I can hammer away at the edges of one. I’ve never seen that.”
“Yeah, nobody else has either. Or least a couple of times when I brought it up to someone I thought might know,” Miki said, pulling his sleeve back down, “they just changed the subject and walked away.”
“Hey, I’ve got an idea.” Damien sat up before Ichiro began again. “Do you think you can cover it? I mean, Miki, you hate it. Ichiro here is a god, and how often are you going to have some free time and there is a tattoo god right next to you?”
For a moment, Miki’s face softened with an expression Damien could only call regret, and then his brother, in true Miki form, picked his chopsticks back up and laid Damien’s soul out for the vultures to pick clean.
“I can’t do that, D. What happens if someone comes looking for me and all they have to find me is this?” Miki tapped at his arm with the blunt ends of his chopsticks. “This is all I have that’s really me. Everything else is something given to me, like leftovers and hand-me-downs, but this—as fucking ugly as it is—is all I’ve got that’s mine. So maybe one day, when I’ve given up on anyone giving a shit about me, I’ll get it covered. But for right now, it stays. Because someone still might need me to have it. And I want them to be able to find me.”
Oaths and Morgans
San Francisco—Kane Morgan
KANE MORGAN still felt the burden of his star in his back pocket. Every step he took had a greater weight to it, a seven-point piece of metal with a number—his number—anchoring him to the city beneath his feet. It was a familiar symbol, one he’d grown up playing with when his father came home and shed parts of his uniform at the end of his day. One of Kane’s first arguments in school had been how many points does a star have, and the teacher, a sweet young woman with hopes and dreams to lead joyful children toward knowledge, found herself embroiled in a heated battle concerning how to draw a proper star.
He hadn’t been much more than five, but Kane had been adamant. Stars—true stars—had seven points and a number engraved in them.
Now he had a number. Now he had a seven-point star. Now he came home… the same home he’d grown up in, since he’d just come out of the Academy and didn’t make enough money to have his own place… and shed parts of his uniform nearly in the same spots as his father had.
As his brother Connor had as well.
Kane wouldn’t have said he lived in Connor’s shadow, but sometimes it was hard to get out from under his older brother and his father. He’d—he still—worshipped both of them, even found himself trying to do things like they did. The badge, however, was his own.
Even if he was the third Morgan to be issued a seven-point star in San Francisco.
And from the multiple trips to the principal’s office for arguing with their teachers, it looked like the twins, Kiki and Riley, would be following in their footsteps.
Quinn, his fractured, stained-glass, brilliant next younger brother, probably wouldn’t, and it broke a little bit of Kane’s heart knowing his green-eyed quirky sibling would not have a star of his own.
“He’ll find his own place,” their father, Donal, said one day when a ten-year-old Kane wondered aloud about what path Quinn would follow in life if he wasn’t going to be a cop. “And who knows? Ye might be changing your mind, boyo. Ye can be anything ye want, son. Ye don’t have to wear the badge and blues just because I do. It’s hard and thankless at times. There are some days when it seems like no one wants ye around or hate ye because of that badge. It’s an honor to wear it, but it’s also a burden. Are ye sure ye don’t want to be an artist instead?”
Kane reminded his father of that conversation on the day he stood proud and tall while his own badge was pinned to his uniform for the first time. Donal laughed, saying it hadn’t been the only time he’d had that conversation and it hadn’t been the last.
As his eyes raked over the cluster of Morgans standing around their short redheaded mother, he’d said, “I might have one more—maybe two—to go. But my answer will always remain the same. All I want for any of ye is to be happy, to love, and to be loved.”
Kane was working on the first and dabbling in the second and the third. He was young, not even in his late twenties, and for some reason, tramping through Chinatown on a rainy Saturday night looking for the alleyway entrance of a tattoo shop.
“It’s right over there.” Connor’s deep voice echoed through the tight streets. His older brother was practically vibrating with excitement and an overabundance of energy. “I’ve seen one that he’s done on someone else, and I really liked how it looks like the patch, but it’s better. I wanted one like it, but not exactly. He said that wouldn’t be a problem. I’m excited to see what he’s got.”
“So ye haven’t even seen the art?” Donal’s eyebrow lifted, and Kane instinctively took a slower step, leaving Connor well within his father’s firing range while taking himself out of Donal’s field of view. “Ye be meaning to tell me that my son is going to be putting something permanent on his skin—something he will have to defend it to his mother—and he doesn’t even know what it is?”
“Well, I know it’s going to be Gold In Peace, Iron In War and there will be a phoenix on it. I just don’t know what’ll look like exactly. But Da, you should see what he’s done.” Connor shrugged his broad shoulders, and he gave their father a sheepish look. “Besides, I might’ve told him more than one of us will get a tattoo tonight.”
Kane slowed his walk even further. Just in case.
His father said nothing at first. Donal merely gave his oldest son an assessing look, then said, “If I come home with another tattoo, yer mum is likely to have something to say about it. Let’s see how yer man is first. And if he’s not good enough, he will not be putting in any ink on ye. Because that is just asking for yer mum to kill me.”
The alleyway reeked, and the tattoo shop was practically a cliché. Tucked in between a fortune cookie factory and an all-you-can-eat Szechuan buffet, Lucky Cat Tattoos’ door was a slender black plank painted with a grinning maneko underneath a pink neon arrow flashing Open with a nearly seizure-inducing frenzy. There were no windows to see inside of the shop, and judging by the three-foot distance between the black door and the two open security doors on either side, there didn’t seem to be much space to walk, much less have a tattoo shop.
As if Connor could read Kane’s mind, he said, “Guy told me there is going to be a long hallway in; then the space opens up to the shop.”
“I am still reserving judgment,” Donal murmured under his breath. “Let’s see what is on the other side of the door first.”
“If we open the door and there is a large blue temple surrounded by clouds with a horned dog screaming Zuul at us, I am closing the fucking door and they can have Connor,” Kane replied to his father’s mostly low whisper.
“Just remember, son.” The older man gave Kane a mischievous wink. “If anyone asks if yer a god, ye say yes.”
“Da, if I’m a god, what does it make you?”
“A fool for letting yer idiot brother talk us into going with him to get inked in a Chinatown alleyway tattoo shop.” Donal shook his head. “Well, if things go south, at least he has armed backup.”
“Unless a giant marshmallow man shows up. Then we’re fucked.” Kane smiled broadly at his brother, who was holding the shop’s door open.
“You two know I can hear every word you’re saying, yes?” Connor gave Kane a light punch on the arm. “I’m standing right in front of you.”
“Really?” Kane teased. “I thought you SWAT guys couldn’t hear over your own awesomeness. Good to k
now. And if you end up with something that looks like a zombie duck flying over the Golden Gate Bridge, I am going to laugh my ass off.”
LUCKY CAT Tattoos was, for all intents and purposes, contained within a large cinderblock box.
It shared a bathroom with the restaurant, a Jack and Jill situation that led to several confused Asian women opening the connecting door, then apologizing profusely before slamming it shut behind them, disappearing back into the buffet. Its long wall opposite of the hallway to the front door faced the street, a long row of cracked-open jalousie windows letting some of the muggy night air into the closed-off space.
“Did you notice, Da, the windows are the kind that let air in but you can’t jump out?” Kane ducked behind his father’s shoulder, whispering into his ear. “Just in case you are having second thoughts.”
“Keep up with that line of thinking and ye’ll make inspector one day,” Donal replied. “I tried to talk yer mum into putting those kind of windows into yer rooms, but she didn’t like the look of them. Wasn’t worried to too much about Quinn, but ye two got up to some nonsense with Sionn and Rafe that put some of the silver in my hair.”
“Those days are long over, Da. Well, for me at least. Not like I’m Rafe, running around with rock stars.” He snorted, thinking of his younger siblings. “Although Kiki and Riley gave us a run for our money, but Braden… that’s the one that’s going to be giving you trouble.”
“And yet here I am standing waiting for my oldest to get a tattoo in Chinatown by a man named Bear.” Donal scratched at the back of his head, returning a smile he got from a slender man at one of the other stalls. “I hope yer brother knows what he’s doing. He said the man came highly recommended, so let’s see what he’s got.”
“I like the art he’s done, and the tattoos he has in his portfolio are nice. But just a spot of advice, Da, unless you want to have a date tonight, you should probably stop smiling every time you make eye contact with that guy.” Kane was proud he kept a grin off his face when his father’s expression went from thoughtful to confused. “You’re an attractive guy. And the smiling isn’t helping.”