Riggs raised his brows, glancing at the clock on the wall over the door. It was an hour before the shop opened, an hour before Merrick arrived, and Holden didn’t have an appointment until one.
“How long do you need?”
“We can knock it out before twelve.”
“Alright.” A huge smile split Riggs’s face. “Let me tell Smith I’ll be down here, and you can get set up.”
Holden nodded and dropped his sketchbook onto the empty chair. He had no idea what to do in the small swatch of skinRiggs allocated for him, but he knew it needed to be good. Most of Riggs’s work was black and gray, and there was no way Holden was going to do the same with the skin he’d been allowed. He flipped through his sketchbook, past the pages Riggs had inspected earlier, until he found a small snake he’d done, except the body of the animal was twisted into the shape of a heart, fangs dripping with venom. It was a decidedly new school take on an old school tattoo, and he could pack so much red and yellow into the scales that it would really pop in the dark shadows of Riggs’s ribs.
He’d just finished setting up by the time Riggs came back downstairs. Coffee in hand, his boss sank down into the open chair and tugged his shirt to his armpit. “Is this good?”
“Yeah, totally, but sit up so I can get the stencil on.”
Riggs shifted around and held his arm up, and an immense wash of pleasure rolled through Holden when he realized the stencil fit perfectly in the space allowed.
“What do you think?”
“Love it.” Riggs settled back down into the chair and rested his head on his forearm. “Why a heart snake?”
“Well, I’d started sketching an ouroboros, and I was thinking about how they represent the never-ending cycles of life.” Holden snapped on his gloves and tested the power to his machine before dipping the needle into a cup of black ink. He situated himself over Riggs and stretched the skin across his ribs, “Do you want a short line as a tester to remember how much this fucking sucks?”
Riggs laughed and shook his head. “Do your worst.”
“I’ll do my best,” he offered instead, sinking a long and curved line into Riggs’s skin. “But anyway, I was thinking about the forever nature of it and love felt like a forever thing too, so I tweaked the shape.”
“Have you ever been in love?”
Holden wiped the ink away and laid a couple more lines before he answered, lip pinched between his teeth in concentration.
“Sorry,” Riggs said when the buzzing of Holden’s machine went quiet. “You’ve talked to me more today than you have in the past seven months, I think. I don’t want to overdo it.”
Holden exhaled a breath that sounded a lot like a laugh and paid attention to the tattoo, appreciating the quiet Riggs was offering him. There was something sacred about being in a tattoo shop on either side of the needle. There were lots of people, Holden included, who got tattoos because they were silly or because they had too much time and not enough sense, but there were also people who got tattoos that mattered. Holden had done dozens if not hundreds of memorial tattoos, doing his best to pretend he didn’t see his clients crying through the process. He’d done complicated pieces that had taken him hours to sketch, a hodgepodge of ideas that all meant so much to the recipient that they couldn’t narrow it down to a single thing. Tattoos were real and they were serious, and maybe it was his appreciation for the art and the commitment that always sent him into such a space of quiet contemplation.
“I have been in love,” Holden said after he’d finished the line work and the black shading. “I am in love.”
It felt good to say it out loud, to admit this thing with Bryce was more than just raunchy sex. It absolutely was also raunchy sex, but there was something else underneath it that kept the two of them coming back to each other, drawn close like magnets desperate to connect. Holden realized he needed to be honest with Bryce about how he felt. Both of them deserved the truth. Both of them deserved to sit with their love, even if they had to sit in secret.
He had no illusions that telling Merrick would be an easy thing, but that could be a problem for the future. Besides, whowas Merrick to argue about his brother’s happiness if his brother was in love? Fuck, what if Bryce didn’t love him back? No. That was impossible. Holden was creative, but he wasn’t delirious. He knew the feelings went both ways, and he promised to be truthful about them.
Honest with himself.
Honest with Bryce.
“What’s their name?” Riggs asked.
Holden glanced up, and Riggs rolled his eyes when Holden said nothing, settling back down into the chair and staring at the wall with a soft smirk on his face. He finished the tattoo in fifteen minutes, the color going in solid and easy. After he was done, he cleaned the piece, took a picture of it for his portfolio, and bandaged his boss with plastic wrap and medical tape. Riggs poked the gauze tape, the unspoken taunt the same as the verbal one Merrick often threw at him.
“Do you need me to tell you how to take care of it?” Holden teased, pulling off his gloves and flinging them into the trash.
“Unwrap it immediately and wash it with scented dish soap,” Riggs shot back.
Holden laughed. “Just like that. Let me know how it heals up for you.”
Riggs checked himself out in the mirror, the bright red and yellow scales visible even through the plastic wrap. It was a gorgeous pop of color in the darkness of Riggs’s rib piece, and Holden was honored to fill the space.
“Thank you for this,” Riggs said, letting his shirt fall. “How much do I owe you?”
“You don’t,” Holden promised. “The honor and the conversation were more than enough.”
