Ink Me (The tattoo parlor is open!)

"I think I like the idea of Lenn being made of lightning. You can make it beautiful too, right? I can be cool and intense too, but I want it to remind me of how pretty she is too."

The point of no return was fast approaching and Jacob had to start settling on an idea. Thorn and Sid were both helping and hindering the process with their suggestions, and then their concerns regarding the ideas he made using their suggestions. It was a little frustrating, but getting a tattoo should be a thoughtful process. Should be.

When she finished, the tattoo on Sid's arm looked like nothing Jacob had ever seen before. There was vibrancy and life to it that was probably impossible to replicate without her magic skills and/or magic ink. Seeing the glowing cat made Jacob both excited and nervous about his own time in the hot seat. The price for it all did not faze him much. It seemed like a reasonable price for a magic tattoo, and he was an adult with a good career. He had the money to do it.

After Sid had settled the transaction and gotten out of the seat, Jacob made a move to sit in it. Then he held his phone out to show Thorn the woman he had been talking about the entire time: Lenn Greaves.

"This is her. I hope it gives you an idea or, uh, inspires you."

Jacob had scrolled up one of the pin-ups that she had recently done for another magazine. Lenn was a gorgeous and well-endowed young woman with lavender eyes and salt 'n' pepper hair. She was also a literal lingerie model, and this particular photo she was draped over white silk and wearing lacy red underthings with stockings and garters. Normally she posed with guns for some men's magazine that literally dealt in guns and scantily clad women, but Lenn had started moving on from that.

He was blushing as he showed her off. Not only was it a very revealing picture of her, it was also an admission to basically strangers that he was dating a woman that was probably two decades younger than him.

"She's, uh, she's gettin' pretty popular. I think she might land a huge modeling gig soon."

Sid watched her as she put the final touches on his tattoo, moving his arm experimentally to see how the tattoo moved with his arm and his skin. He watched how his muscles rippled slightly, giving the the cat an almost uncomfortable undulation. The creepiness factor was exactly the kind of thing he liked in a tattoo.

He sat up in the chair, fishing around in his pockets for his wallet before he pulled out a plain black wallet, opening it to see how much money he had on him at that moment.

When she mentioned that his tattoo would take $170--not bad considering it was a colored custom tattoo, he heard those could go for a lot--he started counting out his money to cover the charge.

About halfway through he got tired of counting and took out a random number of bills from his wallet. He saw two hundred dollar bills and a twenty in his hand--more than enough for the tattoo if what Thorn was saying was for real.

Once he passed off the money to Thorn, he moved out of the chair. And stretched. Since he paid, he saw no reason to hang around much longer... Still, he wanted to see this terrible 'silhouette filled with lightning' trainwreck play out.

"You won't be the first one to have tried, miss."

It was the truth. A young woman like Lenn could never go for too long without being approached by someone looking to court her. There were aspects of her history and her personality that grated on some people, but they were hardly a factor when she just looked so gorgeous. But then they were always brushed off. Lenn was no demure woman, and she never tried to hide that. The only time she tried being especially feminine was when she was with Jacob.

He took the phone back and then, seeing that the Drow was still hanging around, offered it to him with a certain amount of smugness.

"You wanna check her out too?"

Either way, Jacob sat back in the tattoo chair and... paused for a moment. The tattoo itself was pretty much settled upon, but he had not considered where he wanted it at all. His right shoulder seemed like a natural place to put it since his left shoulder was taken. But then he liked the idea of keeping all of his tattoos on the left side of his body for... art-related reasons(?)

Hopefully Thorn, and maybe Sid, could be of help again.

"I like the full body one, and can you make it so that it, like, originates in her heart? And where do you think it should go? I already got one here..."

He rolled up his left sleeve to show the flaming serpent skeleton tattoo on his left shoulder. It was a pretty standard piece. There was nothing particularly wrong with it, but it just looked like a tattoo tattoo.

"And I got one here..."

His hand was placed over his left hip, pretty much right above his groin. Showing that one off without their consent seemed rude.

"And that one was from my first marriage, so..."

"You wanna check her out too?"

Sid walked a little closer, looking over the picture of the lady that this guy seemed to talk about nonstop, and who he's considered important enough to tattoo her likeness onto his body. Oh, she was pretty attractive. This guy should consider himself luckier than she thought highly enough of him that she didn't try to have him killed or something. That happened a lot with these kinds of things.

Or it did when drows were involved. He scratched his head, turning to look at the other pieces on the walls. Was it the same for non-drow? For some reason he doubted it. After all, they were always going on and on about how much they didn't want to hurt people if they didn't have to, and how opposed they were to violence or killing. That kind of talk got you an arrow through the chest back home.

"From her heart?" Sid seemed to parrot. "What, like a... plasma ball? But in a lady shape?"

Maybe he was just unimaginative. Maybe he lacked the artistic vision that the other two people did; but somehow, everything he heard about this tattoo made it sound worse.

But hey. If the guy wanted to get a terrible tattoo and emblazon this lady's likeness onto his skin like that, who was he to stop him?

"Heart's on the left, ain't it?" Sid said almost absentmindedly. "Ya could slap it right there." He pointed rather generally to his left pectoral.

Jacob snapped his fingers approvingly at Sid.

"Yeah. Kinda like that, I guess. Sounds cool, right?"

He was by no means an artistic kind of person. The only thing Jacob knew was that he wanted a good tattoo to dedicate to the woman that was making him happy in his life, and he was going to get it from a magic tattoo artist. Perhaps the magical novelty of the tattoo itself would offset the lack of artistry he was putting into the design, or Thorn's own expert hand would elevate it above expectations. Besides, Jacob had a little fondness for the cheesier things in life sometimes.

Thorn got a pretty good laugh out of Jacob for her comment about the chest tattoo. It was the candid nature of her statement that caught him off guard, and he could not deny the truth in her words. He could definitely picture Lenn taking all the steam out a steamy moment by giggling uncontrollably at the tattoo.

"Okay. Okay. You got me. Lets go with the wrist, and hope that Lenn doesn't snap tight when she sees it... at least not before I'm already in."

It was too bad that Sid and Thorn were keeping their thoughts to themselves, though Jacob could not blame them. He would have loved to discuss Sid's thoughts on what makes a good tattoo or piece of art, and he would have told Thorn that she was honestly an attractive woman. And not just in the "in her own way" way.

"So do you get a lot of customers looking to commemorate a relationship with a tat? Or do people mostly just want a cool glowing one?"

Thorn would not be the first person to be surprised at how rough Jacob's hands actually were. He did not, by no means, have incredibly calloused hands or something. But a lot of people assumed that the "tall, dark, and handsome" man would have the soft hands befitting a model, and not the slightly worn hands of a guy who grew up on a farm and actually used a sword on a regular basis.

Jacob kept as still as he could as he watched Thorn trace out the beginnings of his tribute to Lenn. The moment she began touching him, he remembered how strange it felt to have a stranger putting their hands all over him with all sorts of inks and tools.

"I love it. And I get the feeling I'll love it more when it's done."

When what he initially thought was a routine glove change turned into an offering of... the "painkillers" she had offered Sid before, Jacob was struck a little dumb.

"It's been a looooong time since I had partaken... Is this people are doing it nowadays?"

The chuckles that followed showed that he was joking, a little. When Thorn mentioned showing him her crime novel, he got a better understanding what she was offering. It seemed she had more powers to offer than just magical tattoos.

After a few moments of thought, Jacob took a calming breath and nodded.

"As long as it's safe, I think I'm willing to 'see' what you're writing."