Page 11

Not in an apprenticeship or from some old school tattooer with nicotine stained fingers and a god complex, though I’ve met plenty of those.

I learned it from messing up.

A line too deep. A curve pulled too fast. A needle angled wrong because my head was somewhere else and my hand followed.

Skin doesn’t care what you meant to do, it only remembers what you did.

So I keep my hand still, even when my mind isn’t.

The machine isn’t running yet. Briggs is sprawled in the chair, one massive arm hooked behind his head, boots crossed at the ankle. He takes up more space than any man reasonably should, but he does it quietly. A bear in a room full of glass.

He keeps pretending he’s relaxed even though I know he isn’t.

“You keep looking at it like it just insulted your mother,” he says.

I glance down at the sketch on the tablet, then back at the stencil paper spread across my station. “It might have.”

Briggs grunts. That’s his laugh when he doesn’t want to admit something is funny.

My shop is peaceful this early. Closed sign still flipped. The front windows are fogged at the edges from the morning cold, and the neon redwood in the corner buzzes softly, trying not to die. I should fix it, but I won’t until it finally gives up.

The place smells of green soap, ink, and coffee gone bitter in the pot.

Home, more or less.

I drag two fingers across the tablet, enlarging the curve of the design. Briggs wants a piece that starts at the shoulder, drops across his upper arm, and works with what’s already there. Old ink with history behind it. The kind people get before they know their bodies are going to become maps.

“Too clean,” I say.

“You say that like it’s a problem.”

“For you? Yeah.”

His dark eyes cut to mine.

I tap the screen. “You’re not clean lines, brother. You’re impact. Scar tissue. Things that survived being burned down.”

“Sweet talk like that and I’ll blush.”

“You don’t blush. You threaten people until they forget what color is.”

This time his mouth twitches.

The design is coming together. A blackwork piece with negative space shaped as fractured timber, roots wrapping down through shadow. Strong but not pretty. Briggs trusts scars more than polish. He keeps his softness where no one can reach it unless they’ve earned blood rights.

I understand that.

Maybe too well.

I reach up and rub my thumb over the tattoo on my left wrist. Three small marks woven into a larger piece. Easy to miss unless you know they’re there.

“Tattoo con wear you out?” Briggs asks.

I look back at the design. “Something like that.”

“You were gone three days. That’s a lot of humans for you to deal with.”

“It was a lot of humans for anyone with standards to deal with.”