Archive of Our Own ^beta

He’s leaning in her doorway, all crooked angles and sharp edges. His shirt’s undone at the collar and rolled up at the elbows – his knuckles are split and she sees blood under his fingernails. Got a wicked black eye and a bottle of Orbon Rum held loose in his left hand. He tilts his chin up at her, smiles sly and sideways.

Mindy crosses her arms over her chest, runs her tongue over the backside of her teeth and raises her eyebrows. She barks out a laugh.

Paolo’s grin stretches wider, and he casts his eyes down. He shrugs and holds the bottle out like an offering, like it’s holy. Says, “You weren’t at the Hand,” the last syllable ticking up slightly, rising from his deep cadence. It’s not a question, this, but it’s close to one.

Mindy shifts her weight, leans against the wall. Makes just enough room for him to slip in next to her in the hallway and close the door behind himself. She’s going to have to sweep out the dust anyway, but it’s thoughtful of him. This close, with his heat bleeding into her space, she can see the split in his lower lip. She reaches a hand up, frowning, and brushes the pad of her thumb against the little hurt, smoothing it over. She hums something.

“Needed to clean the shop up,” she mutters, her voice still hoarse from the cigar she’d been chewing on all afternoon, “Looks like someone got you good, darlin’. You get ‘em better?”

Paolo laughs – a short, sharp release of breath. Warm on the skin of her hand. He turns into her touch, lips rough against her palm. His hair’s messy and uncombed, uncharacteristic of him. It falls lank over his forehead. “You got some time for me?” he asks.

Mindy bites her lip, smiles. Take her hand back and resettles it in the crook of her other arm. “How many, then?” she asks, turning back down the hallway to the cellar. She holds out a hand for the rum and Paolo passes it to her, sighing heavily and scuffing his shoes on the floors.

“Just the three,” he mumbles, running a hand over his jaw and wincing. She takes the stairs into the cellar two at a time, listening for his heavy footsteps following.

“And who were they?” she asks, glad she’d already lit the whale-oil lamps when she’d swept down here earlier. She sets the rum on a table, waves a hand at the chair for him to sit while she preps the needles, the inks. Paolo grunts acknowledgment – she imagines his brow furrowing, his lower lip catching between his teeth. Him running his hand through his unkept hair.

“One was an Abbey boy,” he says, vowels drawling long, “Unfortunate – he wandered by when I was cleaning up after the other two. Forced my hand. It’ll be weeks before anyone misses him – the poor fucker. Thank him for the rum, that’s all on him.”

“Mm, I’ll pour one out for him,” Mindy says, turning away from the table with the needles and machine and ink in hand. He’s sitting backwards in the chair, resting his chin on his forearms, crossed over the back of the chair. Already stripped out of his shirt, quieter than she’d expected. He’s bruised up along his ribs, too, and she lets her eyes linger on him. He grins at her. “And the others?”

The grin falls off his face. His eyes turn dark and his fingers start tapping a beat on his forearm.

“I need a fuckin’ drink,” he mutters as she settles down on a stool next to him. She sets her fingers on his shoulder and turns him towards her so she can see the spill of ink across his skin. “They were local boys. They got cocky. I know their mothers, down by Campo Seta. I’ll be delivering the news tomorrow.”

Mindy chews on the inside of her cheek, tilts her head. Watches the lean muscle twist and warp over his bones. She runs her thumb over an old tattoo just over the curve of his shoulder and leans forward to press her lips to it. “Let me get you that drink ‘fore we get started,” she says, and stands up. Grabs two dusty glasses out from a cabinet and breaks the seal on the rum. Pours enough for herself and more than enough for him and carries both back over to his chair and her stool. He takes the glass from her and raises it before knocking it back quick as she can blink. He coughs. Mindy takes the empty glass from him and passes him her own. He spares her a quick glance before knocking that one back, too. She needs a steady hand to work the machine, anyway.

“Alright,” Paolo says, his voice roughened, eyes still dark, “Alright.”

Mindy clears her throat, leans down and flips the switch on the breaker. She picks up the machine, feels the weight of it in her hand. The whale oil starts trickling into the mechanism and she feels it shudder to life in her hand, the little needles humming. “Where do you want these ones?” she asks, already leaning into his space and looking for a patch of unmarked skin.

Paolo grunts. “Anywhere they’ll fit,” he says, “Don’t have to be flashy; not like anyone but you is gonna see ‘em.”

She bites her lip – considers a bare space below the dip of his neck, to the left of the knobs of his spine. “Could give you the Right Eye of the Leviathan,” she says low, letting the machine hum like a thing alive in her hand while she touches her fingers gently to the empty spot, “Right here. And the Heart of the Matter, down here. You’ve still got space here - I could fit in the Meeting of the Two Lovers’ Hands there.”

She moves her hand slowly across his shoulders, down the harsh line of his spine, and keeps her voice soft. He sighs under her touch, loosening. She watches his eyes slip closed, his hair falling back over his temples. “Anywhere they’ll fit,” he says again, muffled against his forearm; and she gets started, sets the needles to his skin and lets the ink spill out.

It is not difficult, tattooing the stars after she’s picked their positions. Paolo is so used to her hand and she is so quick about it that he does not even flinch at the sting of the needle anymore. He lets her work, his eyes closed, his breath evening into something steadier than what it was.

She leans back when she’s done, surveying her handiwork with a critical eye. Reaches down to turn the machine off and sets it down on the table. He reaches out blindly, and she clasps his hand in her own, raises his knuckles to her lips and closes her eyes. They are quiet, as they always are.

“Mindy,” he starts, voice like stone scraping on stone – but gentle, still, “Mindy, Mindy; when are you gonna make me into a proper star chart?”

She smiles against his split skin, opens her eyes to see him regarding her with tired eyes and a halfway smirk. She smooths her thumb over the skin of his hand and she says, “That’s up to you, not me.”

He tilts his head, huffs out a solitary laugh, and reaches up to brush her hair back behind her ear. Catches her jaw with the callused pads of his fingers and pulls her down, gently, to kiss her.

“That’s fair,” he says, pressing his forehead to her own, “One of these days, then?”

“One of these days,” she agrees, and spares a thought for the dwindling empty space on his back. Wonders what kind of map she’s helping to make, and where it leads.

But these are thoughts that bring her nowhere worthwhile, so she kisses him again: chastely, and then less so.