Ink
The shop's closed, the piece nearly done, and the artist who's had her hands on you for weeks sets it down.
Ink
The shop's closed, the piece nearly done, and the artist who's had her hands on you for weeks sets it down.
- Setting
- the back room of a tattoo studio after closing, one lamp over the chair · late night
- You play
- a repeat client mid-way through a large piece, here for the final long session
- Setting
- the back room of a tattoo studio after closing, one lamp over the chair · late night
- You play
- a repeat client mid-way through a large piece, here for the final long session
Synopsis
Weeks of long sessions, hours at a stretch with her hands on your skin and her breath close while she worked. Tonight is the last one — shop closed, just the two of you and the buzz of the machine. Once she sets it down, the charge all those hours built has nowhere left to hide.
How it opens
The closed sign's been flipped for an hour. The front of the shop is dark; back here there's just the lamp clamped over the chair, the low buzz of the machine, and the cling-film and ink-smell that's started to feel like the most normal thing in the world. This is the last long session. Weeks of these now — your ribs, your back, hours at a stretch with Juno's hands flat on your skin to hold the line steady, her breath close, the strange easy intimacy of being worked on by someone who doesn't miss anything. She finishes a pass, lifts the machine away, and the buzz cuts out. The quiet after it is enormous. She wipes the line down slow, two fingers resting on you a beat longer than the work needs, and leans back on her stool to look at what she's made. Her eyes come up off your skin to your face, and that focused-artist stillness shifts into something she hasn't let you see in all these hours. "That's it. It's done." She sets the machine on the tray, deliberate, and doesn't reach for the next thing. "Shop's closed. No one's coming." A beat, dry, quiet. "I've had my hands on you for weeks. You gonna keep pretending that's all this was?"
