Chapter Text
I’ve never had much interest in music. At least… not the kind of music that has violins and cellos and brass and all that. There’s nothing quite like childhood piano lessons to beat the love of a good sonata right out of you. Bach gives me hives.
Still… there’s one violin player I don’t mind. He comes to the park just beside my apartment building sometimes, usually in the evenings when the crickets are out. I don’t know why he plays there, but I always hear him through the open window, and… listen. I’m a romantic. Always have been. I like to think that the world is a beautiful place, even when my father is raining fists down on me and my little brother is screaming and my mother is giving me those soft, scared looks from behind my father’s back. I like to think it’s worth it even then.
The violin player in the park outside my apartment? He makes me actually believe that’s true.
***
On the hottest day of summer so far, I’m manning Helena’s flower shop alone when two people walk in.
Now, I don’t like to generalize, but these people… they are NOT like the family-friendly cookie-cutter gingerbread men and women from the neighborhood I grew up in. This is a spot the differences game with entirely different pictures. The family-friendly cookie-cutter gingerbread men and women from the neighborhood I grew up, for instance, generally don’t have neck to ankle tattoos.
Especially not neck to ankle tattoos of wicked sharp-looking cleavers.
Especially not neck to ankle tattoos of wicked sharp-looking cleavers topped with crowns.
Admittedly, it’s only the one that has the crown and cleaver—a girl with a scarf wrapped around her head and a baggy sleeveless shirt on. Her arms are absolutely covered in tattoos—the crown and cleaver, of course, but also winding coils of bloody barbed wire, with torn flesh and bones underneath.
The guy’s tats are less intimidating, but I’m intimidated anyway just because he’s a good head taller than I am. I’m not what you’d call ‘well-endowed’ in the height department, but this dude is tall. And he’s got this look about his face, like he’s looking around and doesn’t like what he sees, which is totally beyond me because come on, it’s just a bunch of plants.
“H-hello?” I say in English, momentarily forgetting the little speech that Helena makes me say when people walk in and also the fact that I live and work in Greece which usually means I'm supposed to speak in Greek. I’m not a nervous kind of person but I’m small and I don’t do well with pain, so people who look like they could bite off one of my fingers and laugh about it afterward put me off a little.
The girl looks over, her eyes piercing. She comes up toward the counter as the man stays behind near the door, and I’m suddenly remembering the active shooter safety video that Helena made me watch when I first took the job. I scramble to think of what the video said to do when there was an active shooter in front of you. Run, hide… and… the girl is reaching behind her for her pocket… and… I can’t remember. Oh, god, I’m going to die.
I wince back as she pulls her hand forward again, but she’s just holding a phone. A cracked phone, one that looks like it’s seen a bit of action, but still only a phone. I resist the urge to lean against the counter and wheeze my relief.
“We’re looking for one of these,” the girl says in accented English, clearly taking her cues from me. She’s got a frown on her face as she sets the phone on the counter and slides it toward me.
I take it hesitantly, still half-watching the guy at the door. He’s got his arms crossed over his chest, making his biceps look sincerely scary. I swallow a little, looking back down to the phone.
It’s a picture of an aloe vera plant. One of the variety with the pointy things up the sides of the pads. I forget what they’re called; Helena keeps reminding me but I don’t have the head for all these biology facts.
“Right over here,” I say, my voice too high to be natural. I step slowly out from behind the counter, half expecting the girl to pull out a knife and shank me the moment there isn’t something in her way, but she doesn’t. She just pinches her face up and follows me toward the back of the store, where the succulents are.
“We have a couple kinds,” I say, still glancing nervously over my shoulder every two seconds. The girl seems to have lost interest in me, though, thank god. She begins messing with all the aloes, turning them this way and that, and normally I might tell her to be careful so she doesn’t break off one of the pads but in this case I think I’ll just… leave her be.
I return to the front of the shop, just in time to catch the dude by the door watching me. He smiles when he catches my eyes. Creepy. I’m looking at his teeth as I slide back behind the counter, my fingers itching for my phone. The low-cut tank top he’s got on exposes a good bit of his chest and sides—I try not to stare too long at the very detailed wolf on his chest, a wolf whose mouth is open wide. A little girl with a red hood and a basket in her hands is framed by its fangs.
“We’ll take this one.”
I jump, turning to look at the girl. She’s brought one of the aloe vera plants to the counter, a funny-looking one that was pushed to the back of the shelf.
“Are you sure?” my mouth asks without my permission. I snap it closed, sure that I just signed my own death certificate.
The girl doesn’t gut me, at least. Neither does she say anything else, though. I get the sense that I should hurry up and complete this transaction, so I do, writing out the number code on the old-fashioned receipt pad that Helena makes me use. The girl pays in cash, and I’m tempted to whip out my counterfeit pen for the twenty she gives me, but I think it’s best if I just get these guys out of here as fast as possible.
The sale is done in record time, after which the girl scoops up the plant and marches out the door. The man is a little slower, his eyes cutting back toward me. “We’re right next door if you ever, you know… want a tattoo,” he says, and then he walks out the door. He has a very detailed tattoo of a wilting rose on the back of his neck. I can only see it because his long, curly hair is up in a bun.
It’s not the sort of thing I was expecting of a thug, but I’ve been surprised before.
I shake myself. God, what am I thinking? My life could have been on the line. I need to call my sister.
She picks up on the seventh ring.
“I think I was just threatened,” I say, before she can even get a hello out.
She’s taken aback for all of a second before she huffs and goes, “You were not.”
“I was! ‘We’re right next door,’ he said. Exact words. That’s threatening.”
“Who is ‘he’?”
“The dude who was just in here! Jesus, you should have seen his tattoos, he had like… this freakishly huge snarling wolf on his chest eating a little girl with a picnic basket. Who does that?! Tattoos wolves eating children on their chest?!”
“Oh, for god’s sake, Monty,” Felicity sighs, and I’m getting very tired of the tone she’s taking, a tone that she’s been taking more and more with me recently, as if I’m stupid. I’m not stupid. “It’s incredible, how you just create drama out of thin air.”
Nor am I dramatic. “It’s not thin air!” I say, throwing up a hand.
“Oh? Are you telling me you’re not freaking out over some stranger’s personal life choices?”
“The wolf, though—”
“Boo hoo, I’m Monty and a man with a fairy tale on his chest walked into my shop today and I had to do my job.”
“Oh, hardy har,” I say. I am feeling a little better, though. And a little guilty. Maybe I was acting a bit out of line. It’s not my place to judge our patrons, after all. I sigh. Then I spend fifteen minutes listening to my sister as she tells me about her day, which has been significantly more interesting than mine. I close up the shop at five PM, just as Helena arrives to count the register and check up on the shop. I get a cup of coffee from the starbucks down the street. I head home. And I’m just emerging from a shower when I hear it through the half-open window—the sweet swells of the melody of a single violin.
Sitting on the floor with my hair dripping down my face, I breathe slowly out. It’s been… a long time. Since I felt safe and cared for, a long time since I had someone in my life who just… I don’t know. Paid attention to me. The closest thing I have to someone like that is the violin player who plays outside my window some evenings. How pathetic is that?
I don’t mean to fall asleep, but sleep takes me anyway. I slip away with the sound of the violin playing all around me, holding me in a gentle embrace.
***
Despite his declaration (threat) of being just next door, I don’t see the tattooed man again for a while after that. When it does happen, it occurs in the middle of a slightly more… intense… situation than I had previously imagined. That’s saying quite a lot, considering that I was half-convinced that he was going to murder me in my sleep.
It starts when I’m once again alone in the shop. I hear the squeal of breaks and a car honking just before there’s the unmistakable sound of folding metal. I drop the bulb I’m attempting to replant and race out the door, my muddy gloves still on.
Out on the sidewalk I stop and gape. In front of me is a light blue car, half-folded underneath the crinkled fender of a massive truck. The drivers are already getting out, and the truck guy is yelling, and I continue to stare because heck, I’ve never seen a real car wreck before—just a fender bender or two. It’s actually quite lucky that I’ve never seen a crash here before, because this part of the road is notorious for it’s low visibility and for the fact that people like to take the curve going twice the speed limit.
That’s probably what happened, actually, now that I’m thinking about it. Someone came around too fast and couldn’t brake in time. Just careened around the bend with zero thought as to why the speed limit went down to twenty-five here. People, man. The public isn’t very bright when it comes to—
And then the breath is knocked out of me. The world is full of the sound of car engines and wheels slipping on asphalt and I think, for a moment, that I’ve just been hit by a car. Then I realize that there’s something—someone—on top of me, kneeling over me as if they’re shielding me.
“Are you okay?” they ask, and I blink up at a very attractive face.
It’s the tattoo guy. His mouth is twisted with concern, his eyes staring down at me. I’m close enough to see a sprinkle of freckles on his cheeks and nose. He leans back, pushing himself off my legs and I realize that he’s wearing a pair of blue latex gloves smeared with ink.
Huh. Interesting.
He asks again if I’m all right, and this time I manage to blink and nod a little. “Okay,” he says. “Stay here, I’m going to go help with the crash.”
I nod again, and then, as he pushes himself up and starts jogging over to the now three-car-pileup, I promptly disobey his orders. I’m shaking, I realize, as I stand up, but it’s not enough to deter me.
Tattoo guy is out in the middle of the road now, trying to calm down truck guy as the lady from the blue car cries. The newest car, a black SUV, is half on the sidewalk, a long black streak of rubber from the tires crossing over the space I had been inhabiting not even a full minute ago.
Okay. Alright. So tattoo guy saved my life. As the sirens begin to wail in the distance, I contemplate my existence on this earth and wonder how, exactly, he knew to do that.
***
“Monty.”
I jump, startling something awful.
The scene in the road has been nearly cleaned up. The police came and sorted out everyone’s statements, blocking off the road until a road cleanup crew could come and begin sorting out the knot of cars. Now there are tow trucks, easing the truck off of the car as I watch from the sidewalk.
I turn away to find the tattooed man standing beside me with his hands up, looking contrite about making me flinch.
“Sorry, habit,” I mumble.
“Still, I didn’t mean to startle you,” he says. “I just wanted to ask how you’re doing.”
“I’m fine,” I say. And then, without a pause for thought, “How did you know my name, though?”
He blinks, then he laughs, his face crinkling. He sits down next to me. “Helena told me,” he says. “I’ve been friends with her for years now.”
The fact that he and my boss know each other blips into my mind like a bubble, one that blips out in a little pop just as fast. I’m still caught up on the fact that he saved my life just like that.
“I don’t know how you did that,” I say, belatedly realizing that he's speaking and I’m interrupting him.
“What?” he asks, polite even though I was the one who just talked over him.
I gesture vaguely to the tow trucks. “Just… just ran in and saved me.”
He shrugs, biting his lip. “I guess my body knew what to do.”
“How, though?”
“I don’t… I heard the car coming and I just… moved.” He laughs a little. “That sounds dumb. I wish I could give you a better answer, sorry.”
I shake my head. It’s not him that should be sorry. It’s me. Not only did I judge him by his looks, I judged him completely wrong.
But he’s talking again, and this time I endeavor to listen as he apologizes for getting green ink on my gray t-shirt. I’m waving him off even as he says it, because I’ve got bigger things on my mind. Things like asking, “So, what is your name?”
He bites his lip again before releasing it and holding out a hand, sans glove this time. He’s got a mermaid tattoo wrapped around his wrist. “Percy.”
I feel the smile pulling at the corners of my mouth. “Percy, huh?” I say. Percy isn’t exactly a thug kind of name, I have to admit. Still… “Hello, Percy. Thank you for saving my life. I think I owe you a coffee.”
And I take his hand.