Chapter Text
“It’s just a dragon hand, ma’am,” Longg whines, bracing himself against the door. “Just a small, small hand with three claws, enough to piss off my ma’. Put it somewhere obvious, I was thinking collarbone - no, wait, forehead!”
He points towards the area under his shock of deep, wine-red hair, grinning toothily. The chick before them shakes her head as she crosses her arms, a small, placating smile on her face. Longg towers over her, the way she holds herself makes Plagg think that she’s used to dealing with drunk, obstinate customers.
“Sir, I cannot in good conscience give you a tattoo in your state,” she says, polite but firm. “Please come back in an un-inebriated state and we can discuss it. Otherwise, you’re risking getting something you regret, and we’re opening ourselves up to legal action after.”
Longg waves his hand around in a gesture of magnanimity, nearly hitting Plagg’s face as he does so. “Nonsense, nonsense - well, okay, my mother might try and press charges, but I certainly wouldn’t. All of my best mistakes have been while I was drunk.”
He throws a pointed look at Plagg then, even has the audacity to chuckle and blush, and Plagg resists the urge to clonk him on the head. Most drunken mistakes don’t last six months like theirs did (except for the ones that last nine, of course, but that wasn’t a relevant parametre), but he is a lot more sober than his friend and so doesn’t comment on it.
He feels the chick’s eyes on him and looks at her again. She tilts her head, expectant.
Plagg sighs, then claps Longg on the arm. “Well, come on, now, time to go.”
“But I don’t–”
“We’ll come back again tomorrow, Longg. I’d vouch for the fact that you’ve had this idea in your head for way longer than you’ve had booze in your blood, but I’d rather not face your mother either,” Plagg says, pulling his friend back. The latter staggers, but regains his footstep. “Sorry for the trouble, miss.”
“It’s alright,” she replies, at the same time as Longg interjects: “This was your idea, though.”
Plagg shrugs, throwing a grin at the girl’s now slightly disapproving expression. “What can I say, I thought it would be fun if you did it now, not to mention that it was less likely my friend would chicken out for the third time in a row, but it seems like it’s not happening tonight.”
Longg pouts. The chick raises an eyebrow. Plagg raises one in return.
“Well, nice seeing you, gentlemen, I hope you get home safely,” she says, a dismissive, slightly amused-despite-itself lilt to her voice.
Plagg breaks eye contact first. “Thanks. Have a good night.”
“You too.”
(And, hey, maybe it’s the exhaustion, or maybe it’s the fact - that he’ll become convinced of later on - that she’s a little bit of magic in and of herself, but he drags Longg back to his place without any trouble and sleeps like a baby until morning for the first time in a long while.)
Fourteen hours later, they’ve actually progressed through the door to the interior of the tattoo parlour. The chick from last night – Tikki, as the one at the front identified her – is apparently working on a client right now, but, after a quick check-in, they are told she will be done in roughly fifteen minutes, after which she has a free slot they can take.
Longg looks paler and paler by the minute, hunching over his stomach as they sit on two of the plastic chairs in the waiting area. Plagg knocks a fist lightly against his shoulder.
“Make your choice, man. You can’t do it while drunk ‘cause she won’t let you, and you won’t do it sober. I don’t think she’s bugging, so either you are, or we leave and stop wasting everybody’s time.”
“Catch-22, eh,” Longg mutters, then takes a deep breath before straightening out. “I want to do it. I will do it.”
Plagg knocks his fist against his arm again and lets it linger. “Atta, boy. Don’t let the fear of a mother you haven’t even seen in three months knock you back.”
Longg pales again, but before he can say anything–
“I’m not sure if you’re trying to encourage or dissuade him, but I definitely think it’s inadvisable that you scare him.”
Plagg turns to look at the girl from last night – Tikki, he reminds himself. Her arms are crossed again, pinkish-red hair gathered atop her head in a bun, the light disapproval in her eyes contradicting her polite smile.
For some reason, he wants to push it (he’s never known what’s good for him), so Plagg grins back and takes his hand away from Longg’s shoulder. “I’m just trying to make sure that if he decides to run away, it won’t be mid-tattoo.”
“I won’t,” Longg says, standing up and nodding at Tikki. He gulps, but the expression on his face is as determined as Plagg’s ever seen it. “Let’s go.”
Tikki smiles at him and this time, Plagg knows it’s sincere in the way her dimples fully show on her face. “Where would you like your tattoo?”
Longg stares at her dumbfoundedly for a moment before blinking and going: “Ah. Arm, I guess?” while tapping at his shoulder.
“Alright,” Tikki says, nodding at Plagg. “If you’d like to have him as support, I don’t mind. I can’t talk while I’m working, but some people find that relaxing. Your arm wouldn't shake too much, so it’s fine.”
Longg looks on the brink of denying, but then he looks back at Plagg and the latter wants to kick himself in the back for his heart still clenching at the puppy eyes his friend pulls (he’s not even doing them consciously).
“Sure, let’s do this,” he says, looking away.
Longg nods again, evidently grateful, and Tikki leads them across the hall and into her studio, one of several in the parlour. Plagg gives a quick look-over at the equipment and spots Longg doing the same out of the corner of his eye as the latter sits, but his worries are mostly quenched the moment Tikki pulls out a pack with a new needle along with some wipes.
“You wanted a… dragon’s hand, if I remember correctly?” She says as she puts the wipes and new needle aside and sits on the small desk with a computer on it. “Could you describe to me how you’re imagining it? Do you have a reference picture or anything?”
Longg shakes his head, mouth twisting up in an embarrassed, school-boy-like grin. Plagg is torn between mussing up his hair and smacking his own forehead.
Suddenly, though, his friend’s face brightens. “Oh, I do know where to find what I’m looking for, though.”
Tikki nods, standing from the chair and letting Longg sit down and type in japanese dragon images claws in the search bar.
“There,” he says, clicking on one image that has many examples after a few seconds and hovering the mouse over the second one from the top left. “Something like this one here.”
“Okay,” Tikki replies, getting into the seat as he stands up. “Would you like me to modify this in any way, or…?”
Longg shakes his head vigorously. “No, no, this is fine.”
“Alright. Give me a couple of minutes to edit this out and prepare it, then, and make yourself comfortable.”1
She swivels around in her chair after giving the instruction, opening up an image editing programme.
Plagg turns to find Longg thumping down on the chair, looking very much like he’s trying to control his shaking, and something tugs at his heartstrings despite himself. He walks over and puts his hand on Longg’s shoulder, squeezing tightly and smiling when his friend looks up at him.
“You got this,” he says, raising his other hand in a thumbs-up. “And I’m with you here as well. We’ll face whatever comes next.”
Longg blinks at him for a moment, then a tentative grin shows up on his face and he nods, putting his hand on Plagg’s to squeeze it as well. Plagg drops his from where it was resting afterwards and glances at Tikki at the sound of the printer running, just in time to see her drop her gaze from him.
“Alright,” she says when the design comes out, hopping up and striding towards the client chair. “Let’s do this.”
Longg shrugs off his shirt easily as Tikki reaches for the wipes, and Plagg stares, for a moment, at the way the light catches on her bright red hair (strawberries, not wine) before sitting down next to his friend and putting his hand on his knee, palm up.
“Job hunting again?” Sass asks, yawning as he stretches his way towards the kitchen out of the corner of Plagg’s eye.
Plagg grunts in agreement. His mouse clicker hovers over the next ad, immediately freezing when he sees the address. He misses what Sass says next.
“Sorry, what was that?”
“I said ‘any luck yet’?”
Plagg looks up at his friend, mulling over the question. Sass looks up as well when he doesn’t immediately answer, raising an eyebrow as he unwraps his oats. “What?”
“I don’t know,” Plagg replies, as honest as he’s ever been, then turns to look at the ad again. “It’s… hmm. It's for a shopkeeping position at the florist’s next to the tattoo parlour we went to,” he pauses, squints at the screen; he really should get a job, if only to be able to afford an ophthalmologist prescription. “Nature’s Pause, is what it’s called.”
Sass hums. Plagg hears the microwave door click shut. “Does it look like they might take you?”
Plagg glances over the specifications again: previous experience desired. “Yeah, seems like they might.”
“I say go for it, then, since it drew you. Not like you have anything to lose.”
No, Plagg thinks, I suppose not, and clicks the Apply button.
Fu is a gangly little man who’s very nice and very creepy at the same time, talking as he does as if he somehow already knows Plagg’s every single embarrassing secret. It’s in that twinkle in his eye he got when he first sized Plagg up and just waved his hand, saying something along the lines of ‘you’re perfect’ before immediately diving into teaching him the ropes of the place without so much as a whiff of an interview.
(That’s how Plagg knows the old man doesn’t actually give a shit and is just looking forward to taking the backseat - he’s never been perfect for anything in his life.)
Plagg’s done this type of thing before (in fact, it’s pretty much the only type of thing he’s done, but in university it had been more of a ‘haha, I’ll be a barista for a while so that I’ll have some extra cash’ thing, before he’d dropped out–), so the actual shop management isn’t that much of a problem.
No, the problem is the taking care of the plants bit.
“–and remember, the hortensias need–”
“Oh, and don’t forget that the chrysanthemums–”
“–but if you must put something in direct sunlight, let it be the petunias. Are you still with me, boy?”
He nods, flipping over the piece of paper the old man gave him to write on.
(He’s been unemployed long enough; he’ll be damned if he screws this up. Sass won’t ask for all the rent money he owes him from living in his flat for so long, but he will definitely get it all back.)
There is a linger of strawberry red at the back of his mind that he pushes away to focus, but it stays there throughout the day that follows. Really, he’s looking around the moment he leaves on a late lunch break, the old man waving him out with that smug little smile of his–
–and then Plagg bumps into her.
“Oh, sorry,” Tikki says as she steps back, hand coming to rest atop her head. She looks up at him and her deep blue eyes (good contact lenses choice) crinkle in recognition. “Ah, hello. What’re you doing here?”
It’s so casual and friendly and, to his mind, completely unwarranted as a reaction, that Plagg can’t help but feel his walls instantly rise up.
“I’m working there,” he replies, a bit too curt as he points a finger to the flower shop behind him. “Was just about to go for a late lunch.”
She nods, turns around, and suddenly he’s seven years old again and his mother’s voice is in his head, scolding him for his manners, and he wants to smack himself in the face.
“Sorry, I’ve had a long day. Would you care to join me?”
She throws a surprised look behind her back, but then smiles. “Sure. You probably need somebody to show you where the good food is.”
He cocks an eyebrow back, reining himself in and managing a smirk. “If you say so.”
(He does.)
