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27
“Sometimes you freak me out,” Kyle said as he shaded in one of the calla lilies on Darien’s chest.
Where he was lying on his back on a black table in the main room of Diablo Tattoo, an arm slung over his eyes, Darien grunted.
“Oh, you’re not talking today, okay,” Kyle said, wiping excess ink away with a disposable towel. “I get it. You going to tell me what happened? Tattoo artists double as therapists, you know. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper than paying for both.”
“Why?” Darien mumbled, the word nearly a grunt too.
Kyle paused, the tip of the tattoo gun hovering just above the new ink. The heel of his gloved hand was resting on Darien’s chest, the vibrations from the tattoo machine shaking through him. “Why what? Why am I a therapist?” He returned to his shading, the feeling of many tiny bee stings lulling Darien closer to rest.
“No.” He dug his knuckles into his eyes, rubbing the sleep out of them. “I meant why do I freak you out?”
“Because when you come here for new ink, you act like it’s a spa appointment or something. You never even flinch. You might as well have cucumbers on your eyes for good measure.”
“It feels good,” he slurred, focusing on the stinging pain rippling through him. “You know I like pain.”
“Yeah, that’s why you freak me out.”
Silence fell between them, sliced up by the buzzing of tattoo guns and the drone of idle conversation from the other clients and artists.
Darien said, “Do you think I’m fucked up?”
The smile that spread across Kyle’s face could practically be felt, Darien didn’t even have to look. “Sure I do. Is that even a question?”
Darien lifted his arm up far enough to glare at Kyle, who was grinning down at his artwork, just as he’d suspected. “Screw you. I was being serious.”
“So was I.” Kyle paused. Darien lowered his arm back down, the dim lighting in this place bright as the sun today. “Hold on, I think I’m getting a read on you. You’re asking if I think you’re fucked up because you’re worried that you are fucked up. Am I hot or cold?”
“Hot.”
“Does this have anything to do with your girl?”
Another grunt climbed up his throat; it was the most he could manage. Talk of his girl made his heart splinter in his chest.
Monday had arrived. Half his weekend had been spent without her for the first time in…shit, months. He sometimes managed to steal the odd weekday with her as well, but weekends…his weekends belonged to Loren, and hers to him. He hadn’t realized how firmly he’d attached himself to the routine they had built together, and now that it had been ripped out of his grasp, he felt lost. Stuck in a dark place with no compass or light to point him home.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Kyle said, his words slicing into Darien’s brooding. “Why don’t you let me guess? I’m good at guessing.”
Another wave of silence fell, the murmuring of other conversations picking at Darien’s brain. Sometimes he hated having such sharp hearing; it felt invasive and too loud, and made days like today—when he was fighting a skull-splitting headache—harder to bear.
When the silence stretched on, Darien said, “Are you going to be guessing today or tomorrow?”
“I’m thinking,” Kyle murmured. “Your girl knew you were a Darkslayer before she started dating you, right?”
Knuckles dug into his forehead as Darien formed a fist against it, pushing hard at the ache between his brows. “Everyone everywhere knows I’m a Darkslayer.”
“I’m getting hotter, alright.” A new smile coated Kyle’s words. “She knew you were a Darkslayer, but maybe now the reality of it is finally setting in.”
“Hot as Ignis.”
“Bull’s eye!” Kyle exclaimed with a wheezing laugh.
Darien sighed. “Got any advice?”
“Well.” Kyle cleared his throat. “I’ve had two failed marriages, so I’m not very good at this kind of thing. But since you’re asking, I’d say to give her time and space. Let her work it out on her own. I don’t know the whole story, since you like to just sit there and grunt today, but maybe she got a little freaked out or something.”
“She got a lot freaked out.” The look on her face when she’d walked in on that mess… He never wanted to see it again.
