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“Wait wait wait, hold the fuck up. How many of those pinkity fucking drinkitys did you have?” Ronan assessed Blue with a raised eyebrow as if she could perform a breathalyzer test via ocular patdown.
Blue rolled his eyes and set down the pencil-slash-shiv he’d been holding over Ronan’s left thigh. “Fewer than you, asshole. If I didn’t need to practice so bad, I’d be asking you if you’re up for this.” He triple-checked that the needle lodged into the pencil’s eraser was firmly in place. With a smile that said he knew exactly which buttons to push, Blue asked, “Are you scared, Lynch?”
“Okay, fuck you, we’re doing this. Stab me already,” Ronan snapped. Blue laughed, but he dipped the needle in a well of juicy black ink regardless. “You’re lucky I’m doing this at all. My body,” she paused with a hiss as Blue sank the needle into her flesh for the first time. “My body is a work of fucking art.”
“Yes, yes, you were chiseled by the gods, I know,” Blue said dryly. He jabbed the needle in a few more times.
Ronan smiled, sharp as ever for all that the lines of her face had softened over time. “Well, yes, but I meant polluting my canvas with your scratcher shit. My guy is gonna be pissed when he sees this.”
“Call it ‘scratcher shit’ one more time, and I’ll leave you like this. I swear to god,” Blue said, gesturing to the tiny, curved line segment now permanently etched into Ronan’s thigh. Ronan held up her hands innocently and said nothing. “Much better.”
Blue continued. Ronan fidgeted. Blue stopped. “Ronan, do you want to be horrifically disfigured?”
“Some would say that ship has sailed,” she snarked. She took a deep breath. “Go on, I promise I’ll be a good girl.”
Blue choked on a laugh. When he’d regained his composure, he continued.
Ronan drummed her fingers on the couch beneath her, idly sang along to the quiet punk music in the background, scanned the bookshelves of their living room walls, but her lower body stayed remarkably still. Every so often, Ronan would hiss and swear when Blue hit a tender spot or traced over his old progress. The pain as a whole, though, was manageable.
A click from behind the couch startled her. Blue had released his vice grip on her leg to assess his progress, so Ronan craned her neck to see what was up. Adam walked out of the bedroom. His blue and white button-up was tucked into perfectly pressed grey dress pants. It made something flip-flop in Ronan’s belly. She held out a grasping hand, beckoning Adam closer like a queen asking to be fed grapes. He took her hand absentmindedly as he eyed Blue’s handywork.
“Nice normcore, Parrish.” Adam made eye contact and his thin, brown lips slid into an easy smile.
“It’s not normcore if Adam actually is a normie, you know that right?” Blue interjected. Ronan swore the comment was punctuated with a harder than usual poke.
She ignored both jabs to smile back up at Adam. “Which stupid workfriend is it tonight?” she asked. Her thumb massaged the prominent knuckles of Adam’s hand.
“Mark is the one with the Mini Cooper who keeps confusing ‘bar’ and ‘club’ when I let him pick where we go.”
“Have fun with that.”
Adam made a small, displeased sound. His free hand scratched lightly at Ronan’s head, mussing the close-cropped hair. “I still can’t believe you’re letting him do that.”
“Eh, he practically begged me.”
Blue hissed, “‘He’ is right here, people. And if I begged Ronan, why is she literally paying me for this?”
“Because she’s a rich masochist with a history of poor decision-making?” Adam said, kissing Ronan’s head and sliding away from the couch.
As Adam slid his black loafers on over the stupid little half-socks that left his ankles bare, Ronan called, “Hey, can you pick us up another 6-pack of the rosé cider on your way back? I’ll buy your brunch tomorrow.”
“You were already going to buy my brunch tomorrow.”
“So you’ll do it?”
“Yep. Try not to get tetanus,” he said as he grabbed his keys from the hook and left.
“Thanks! Love you too, babe,” Ronan shouted at the closed door. A muffled reply made its way through the door and over the low music.
Now bereft of an audience, Ronan fought the urge to fidget again. She jerked her chin at the table by Blue’s elbow. “Turn it up, Maggot.”
“Turn it up yourself, I’m scrubbed and gloved.” He wiggled his black-gloved hands in the air. Ronan groaned in agony. She leaned over him in the most obnoxious way she could to grab Blue’s phone from the end table. She slid the volume up to max, the bluetooth speaker over on the bookshelf going tinny for a moment in protest. She tucked the phone in her t-shirt’s breast pocket for safe-keeping.
Blue slapped Ronan’s knee, well below the sensitive spot on her upper thigh. “Hey, artist picks the playlist, remember?”
“Relax, I’m not messing with your precious playlist. It’s a stupid rule anyway. I’m the one getting stabbed.” Blue hummed, unwilling to rehash this old argument.
Ronan sank back into the couch, running her hands over her hair to coax it back into some sort of order. As the angry music washed over her, she closed her eyes and drifted for a few minutes. Her awareness of the stinging pain in her thigh went in and out. Blue’s hand moved faster once he was free from distraction. Each time the needle went in, there was resistance, and then a sensation like a tiny ‘pop'. Whenever the pain threatened to slide over the threshold of tolerability, Blue’s needle would pause, and the cool comfort of a damp paper towel would sweep over the hot skin.
When Ronan opened her eyes, Noah had appeared in the connected kitchen, standing in front of the open fridge. Ronan thought they might have been there before, but she only noticed once the yellow light of the fridge illuminated their smudgy form. “Jesus, Noah. Warn a guy.”
“I would’ve said hi, but I didn’t want to startle Blue and leave you horrifically disfigured,” they said. Blue smirked. The fridge door closed softly, and they wandered over to the living room empty handed. If Adam had seemed anxious about the tattooing process, Noah was a little too interested. Their eyes widened as Blue loaded up the needle with ink and stabbed Ronan’s thigh without hesitation.
“Noah! My eyes are up here,” Ronan said, gesturing at her chest. “I’m more than my bloody, open wound. I have a brain! And tits.”
“For fuck’s sake, Ronan,” Blue said. Noah guffawed. Blue paused to fix Ronan with a glare. She stared back, unphased. He rolled his eyes and went back to work.
Noah stared for a moment longer, and then he floated down the hallway towards his room. “Eat something later!” Blue yelled after him.
“Bye!” Ronan called cheerfully. Noah raised a hand in acknowledgment before disappearing into the shadows.
When they heard their door close, Blue turned to Ronan and said, “Do you think they’re taking care of themself? I worry.”
“What do I look like, their mother?” Ronan rolled her eyes, but the set of her jaw changed, the grin erased from her face. She said, “You can always ask them, you know. Instead of gossiping behind their fucking back.”
Blue looked appropriately chastened. “You know I don’t mean it like that,” he said, “and you know they forget.” His dark brows drew together in a portrait of concern.
Ronan tipped her head toward Blue, allowing him that point. “Still,” she said.
“Yeah, I get it.” Blue straightened his back, rolled out his stiff shoulders, and cracked his knuckles. “You ready?”
“Are you?” Blue threw a used paper towel at Ronan’s head. She batted it to the ground carelessly. “Cool it, Sargent. I think that counts as biological warfare.”
The old wooden staircase in the corner squealed and creaked with a series of slow, heavy footsteps. A rumpled Gansey made his way to the ground floor. He rubbed at his eyes, red under his glasses like he’d fallen asleep with his contacts in. “Good evening,” he said through a yawn.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” Blue answered without looking up from his work. “I went to check on you before we started, and you were passed out.”
“Quite. It was a great nap, but we’ll see if I sleep at all tonight.” Gansey strolled over towards the couch. He pulled up short, eyes suddenly alert. “Jesus, Ronan. There’s a needle in your leg.”
“Brilliant observation, Dick,” Ronan said. She had propped herself up in the best “draw me like one of your French girls” pose she could accomplish, given her occupied leg.
He averted his eyes as if the sight were indecent. His thumb stroked over his lip. “Is that particular couch the best place for this? I think Henry and Noah had… a moment there the other night,” he said, looking at the ceiling.
Ronan let out a string of obscenities that was almost enough to make Blue blush. “What is this, a college dorm? Fuck me, who does that?”
“I walk in on you and Adam having ‘moments’ of your own at least once a week,” Blue said. “Isn’t there something in your bible about the first stone and how you should throw it?”
“Yes, well,” Gansey stammered. He looked at Blue and Ronan, went pale, and looked back up at the ceiling.
Ronan sighed. “Someone please change the fucking subject. We’re all dying here. Look at me, I’m bleeding.”
Blue came to the rescue. “Are you hungry, Gansey? There's a few things in the fridge,” he said.
“It’s a dreadful night for cooking,” Gansey said. Blue and Ronan met each other’s eyes and smirked. Every night was a dreadful night for cooking when your name was Richard Campbell Gansey III. “I’m going to order Thai. Would either of you like something?”
“Hm. Ronan and I ate earlier to keep her from passing out,” Blue said, assessing the state of Ronan’s thigh. There were a number of vague squiggles contained in a larger, open shape. He nodded and picked up his needle again.
“I’ll get you some soup for later then.”
“If you insist.”
“I don’t insist, I just don’t want you to steal any of my dumplings when you get hangry later this evening.” Gansey over-enunciated ‘hangry’ as if it was the name of a foreign country he had never been to.
“Oh, I’m definitely going to steal your dumplings.”
“Same,” Ronan chimed.
“Two order of dumplings. All right,” Gansey noted. He pulled out his phone and drifted back towards the stairs. “I’m off to shower before the food comes. My nap left me unmentionably sweaty.” Blue wrinkled his nose up as if he had never shed a drop of sweat before.
Gansey slowly ascended the stairs without looking up from his phone. Ronan, now fully flooded with endorphins, let herself smile at his endearing post-nap absentmindedness. Her attention snapped back to Blue as he said, “Almost done. I wanna firm up some areas. Give it some line weight.” She grunted in response.
Her eyes slid closed again, but the relaxed stupor from earlier did not come. It hurt wherever Blue poked his needle. Ronan could handle it, but she could not ignore it. She raised her hand to manually smooth out the deep wrinkle between her brows. The light pressure was a nice contrast to the raw scratching on her leg.
The front door opened once more, but only silence followed. “What now? Is the circus coming to town?” Blue asked.
He and Ronan turned to see who it was and were greeted by the sight of Henry posing with a hand on his hip and his briefcase held over his head. If asked, Ronan could not have determined whether this was a performance put on for their sake or simply how Henry always entered a room.
“Friends, Romans, countrymen,” he declared, “I am utterly exhausted.” He left his briefcase drop carelessly to the ground. His tie was already loosened, and his hair was collapsing from a voluminous but business formal pompadour.
Ronan gave a sympathetic, “TGIF.” Blue gestured for him to come closer, so he could kiss him without getting up or touching anything with his gloved hands.
“Want to watch something? I’m wrapping up here,” Blue asked.
He shook his head. “I need to shower for approximately an hour and a half.”
“Gansey beat you to it, but he should be out soon.”
“You could always slip in with him,” Ronan suggested with a sly quirk of her eyebrow.
Henry gave an exaggerated shudder as he began unbuttoning his shirt cuffs. “I have a routine, Lynch. A professionally-curated regimen. Oprah herself would be envious. And Gansey… Gansey does not understand the importance of the routine.”
“He accidentally elbowed Gansey in the eye the last time they showered together,” Blue explained. Henry nodded sadly.
Ronan laughed so hard it hurt to breathe. Blue impatiently waited out her shaking. She ran a hand over her face and willed herself to calm down. “Get the fuck out of here, Cheng. This process is painful enough without your involvement.”
“Okay, ow! Message received. Don’t be alarmed if you hear the sounds of a struggle. I intend to get in that shower sooner than Gansey is prepared to give it up.” Henry said. He stole another kiss from Blue before sauntering up the stairs.
Blue got back to it, working quickly and with purpose. Almost every jab of his needle was to an area he’d already tattooed. The blows were spread out over the entire area, seemingly random in their placement from Ronan’s point of view. The skin was raw, and the pain was worse now. After a minute or two of this new torture, she groaned theatrically.
“Give me a moment, you big baby,” Blue snapped, not looking up from his work. Now that the end was in sight and there was no one left to pester them, his focus was laser tight. Ronan was the opposite, ready to shake out of his skin after sitting still for so long.
Several particularly aggressive paper towel wipes made Ronan hiss a “Jesus Mary,” into her fist.
“You’re fine. It's done.” Blue snapped off his gloves, and admired his work. He snatched his phone from Ronan, nearly copping a feel in the process. Ronan hissed, but she sat still as Blue took several pictures from various angles and distances.
“Let me see. It’s upside down from here.” Her voice sounded like a whine, which was unsettling because Ronan Lynch did not whine.
Blue flipped through the photos he’d taken. “Go look in the mirror by the door. The light is shit in here; all these shots have crazy shadows.”
Ronan walked over as quickly as her stiff legs would carry her. Her left leg was sore and throbbing, but it carried her weight just fine. Ronan held up her jort leg, so she could properly admire the new ink. A wobbly little cow smiled back at her. “Yeehaw, that’s good.” She twisted from side to side, watching the cow bob back and forth happily. Blue stepped up behind her to check the tattoo in the reflection. Ronan said, “Now I get to do you, right, Maggot?”
Blue squawked indignantly from somewhere around Ronan’s bicep. “I’d rather vote for Gansey’s mother. Let me slap some ointment on that before it gets ruined.”