One Hour Tattoo

[Jesse Fforde]

[OOC: This is a mingling thread, always open with no post order. Try to keep posts shorter to encourage mingling]

Gresse's is now open for business.

Even though the opening had not quite gone as planned, Jesse and Grey had not bothered to organise another one. The doors are open to the public; the lights aren't too bright but nor are they too dim. In the tattoo parlour specifically, due to Jesse's Necromantic features, he made sure that the lights weren't bright enough to make him look like the living dead.

Lamps stood over the chairs, to brighten only the skin of those being tattoos.

There are a few customers lingering at the bar; Jesse can see them through the glass walls that separate the three sections of the establishment. On the other side of the bar, through another layer of glass, he can see the garage. There's a car or two already in the dock, and he knows Grey is over there somewhere. It calms him, and keeps him centered.

Laughter filters up from downstairs. There are quite a few people down there, taking advantage of the new parkour centre. A smile crosses Jesse's lips as he flicks on the neon light to let the customers know that he is open for business. Walk ins appreciated. There are folders on the counter containing Jesse's designs; some of his better artwork is hung on the walls.

The necromancer wanders back around to his desk, where he sits to sketch while he waits for his first customer.

[Deirdre (DELETED 5847)]

For several days, Deirdre had been sitting at the computer in the Temple's lower level, looking at pictures of dragons. Not even realistic ones, after her little experiment with the old-fashioned home tattoo with a pen - it'd healed within two days, the little heart on the webbing of her left hand, between index finger and thumb. But she wanted something, a mark in her undead flesh of her bloodline. Yet for some odd reason, she kept coming back to the same monochromatic image, with its three heads and not all that much detail. It didn't matter if most of the little nuances weren't part of the thing. What mattered was the way she got the tattoo, and where.

So, glad, for once, she'd only done her face and neck, blending the color out at the collar bone into her own natural skin tone, the redhead slipped out of the Temple to the new tattoo parlour-slash-garage-slash-gym. Gresse's. It wasn't too far of a walk from one place to the other, especially with energetic music in her ears, which had her bobbing her fluffed-up ponytail to the beat as she all but skipped through the door.

The vibe of the place was what hit her first, having her tug the bargain earbuds that had been her trusted companions for some time from her ears to stare at the environment. "Holy crap, this place is awesome," she commented, before her silver, reptillian eyes found the guy behind the desk. "Hi. I'm Deirdre." Slowly, she pulled the slip of paper holding that symbol that kept drawing her attention - the Targaryen sigil - from her small handbag and unfolded it. The image was larger than she needed it to be, but that didn't matter. "How much would it be to get this, on the curve of my right shoulder? Like, the top of the upper arm?"

Attire

[Jesse Fforde]

Jesse, as per usual, is sturdy in his serious kind of demeanour. Silence pervades his movements. So long used to not speaking at all, sometimes out of habit he still greets customers with just a nod and barely a smile. Not completely unwelcoming; just who he is. The girl who bursts through the doors of the parlour has enough of an upbeat attitude for the both of them, he notes. He doesn’t make the effort to match her enthusiasm, but offers another nod and finally that smile that says yes, I can acquiesce this request.

Bright blues graze the area that she indicates; it’s an assessment of canvas. An artist purveying his wares. That same bright gaze sinks back to the design handed to him, before lifting again to the customer’s face. That odd sixth sense he has tells him that she is a vampire. Some of the ordinary questions won’t apply, here. Vampiric skin heals faster, accepts the ink faster. Things like have you had any alcohol in the last twenty-four hours? don’t factor in.

[color=##80BFFF]”Do you want it to be this big?”[/color] he asks. ”It’s one hundred dollars base. And fifty dollars an hour from there. For this size? One-hundred and fifty, maybe two hundred. But that’s unlikely,” he says.

[Deirdre (DELETED 5847)]

"Oh, no, I printed it at double the desired size, actually," she shared, gesturing to her rather skinny arm. "Not nearly enough space to have the whole thing visible, y'know? Plus, ah, not too sure how long the professional ink will really last on me. More of a novelty thing, and a I know it was there, kind of pride."

She'd always wanted a tattoo. And piercings. For a few long years, she had just kept putting it off in favor of more makeup supplies, or another technique book. She recognized the look in his eyes, at any rate. Of an artist appraising the work surface. She once had a bad habit of doing that with every single passing person, trying to figure out who she could make them into.

"How long have you been in this kind of business?" A young one's innocent curiosity, nothing more. Idly she wondered if he might know her sire..

[Jesse Fforde]

For a few very long seconds, Jesse stares at the redhead. She'd deliberately printed it twice the size that she wanted it? Why? It's a question he could ask, of course, but he doesn't. He's not much of a talker, in the end. Soon enough he blinks and shrugs his shoulders.

"Long enough," he says. It's not a derogatory long enough, as if to say he's had enough of it. But instead a knowing long enough, meaning he doesn't even have to measure the girl's shoulder, and he knows exactly how to get the design down to the size he needs it to be. There's a photocopy machine near the back of the room that can shrink the image; from there he'd copy the outline onto the transferable paper.

"Just this? Do you want it modified in any way, anything added?" he asks. Sometimes he likes creative freedom. It's not often enough that people come in and choose one of his own designs. They always have something prepared.

[Deirdre (DELETED 5847)]

The young Necromancer relaxed slightly as she watched him, before checking her handbag. She had the cash in hand, all right - triple the top price he suggested. She had other things in mind as well, and she was prepared for them to come later on. Luckily (more for Jesse than for herself, though she'd probably be thanking herself for it later), she'd made the decision not to ask a million questions over the course of her visit here. This was all new to her - she was fresh, uninked. Nothing anywhere, even if he wanted to look. But she'd chosen the outfit she wore because, well, it allowed her to have what she wanted exposed and keep her top on.

"Honestly, anything you feel like adding that goes with it. Just...try to keep it in line with what it is, okay? I'm not getting that out of an undying love for Daenerys Targaryen. Sure, the show's good, but really, if I was getting something for a fandom, it'd be a Ravenclaw crest." And there was her sarcasm, rearing its nasty little head. Her right hand came up and covered her eyes momentarily as she let out a sigh. "Sorry. I say the stupidest **** sometimes."

Maybe she should lay off the Tumblr for a while.

[Jesse Fforde]

Jesse doesn’t crack a smile. Maybe he would if he kept up with popular culture, but popular culture is the last thing he wants to keep up with. He’s got far too much other crap in his life that keeps him preoccupied; he rarely finds himself sitting in front of a television. Grey’s tried to get him into books as a calming mechanism, but he’s hardly dipped his toes into the ocean of texts available. Doesn’t even know what he likes reading, as yet. He merely blinks. He had no idea who Daenerys Targaryen is, nor what the hell a Ravenclaw crest would look like.

Jesse doesn’t normally have questions. What people choose to etch into their skin is their own business. But sometimes, he just can’t help himself. It’s a bugbear. One of those things. Why permanently ink oneself with something if not because it means something?

Though of course, not all Jesse’s ink means something. A lot of the stuff on his legs was just practice. Plenty of the rest he got just because he thought it looked good.

”So why get it if it’s not something important to you?” he asks. Though he feels like by asking the question he’d walked right into it. She’d offered a leading statement and he’d walked right into the trap.

[Deirdre (DELETED 5847)]

Deirdre's replying smile was light and airy as she watched the heavily inked elder Necromancer do his work. Really, she understood the question. She had walked right into its asking, too, though she hadn't intended for it to be asked. Still, she had an answer. "For my bloodline. I may not be a Targaryen, but I am quite certainly a Dragon. Of the Dragomir bloodline, a subline of Worthington. The owners of the Temple up in Gullsborough."

The only mystery of why the sigil seemed to be the first thing on her mind was the symbolism of its three heads. She knew why the symbol itself was like that - for Aegon, Rhaenys, and Visenya, and their three dragons. But she didn't understand why she was drawn to the sigil as she was. Perhaps the reason would become clear in time.

"Family is everything to me," she murmured, rubbing a nervous hand over the back of her neck. "Something I didn't have before I came here. So family is my first ink."

[Jesse Fforde]

The three-headed dragon has Jesse assuming that the family this woman belongs to must have taken the Hydra as their sigil. Cut one head off, and two more appear in its place. The Hydra had been a symbol Jesse had been obsessed with for a while - but at the same time, this one also kind of reminds him of the Ouroboros. The symbol that he has claimed for Fforde, and which he cannot stop drawing. Whenever he's sitting idly doing nothing, it's usually an Ouroboros that ends up sketched onto some random napkin.

The name, however, rings a bell. Dragomir. While Jesse works, he repeats the name in his head several times: Dragomir. Dragomir. Dragomir. And then, of course, he remembers. Black Thursday, and the Necropolis. The only other person present who'd been willing to help get them out of the rubble and free to return to their loved ones. Nikolae Dragomir. They do like to flaunt the name, these Dragomirs.

Jesse brings back a smaller version of the design to the counter.

"About this size?" he asks. Though he's not finished, yet. "So no one's drawn up a symbol for the family yet? Wouldn't you prefer something original? ...Or do the three heads have some kind of significance?" he asks. He's not normally this nosy, but given he's been drawing up crests of his own, he thinks it's not something that ought to be taken lightly.

"I mean... people will look at this and they'll think you're a... Dan...what's-her-name fangirl. They won't see it as loyalty to a particular family," he says, slowly.

[Deirdre (DELETED 5847)]

Her grin is prideful, one of knowing and being known. "There might be, I didn't ask around. But the thing of it is, like I said, I don't know if my skin will take to the professional ink all that well. For all I know, I could wake up in a couple weeks and it'll be gone. Plus there's the whole risk of losing a limb. One of the males, Lukken, got himself into a huge mess recently. I'm not as badly behaved as he is, but I recognize that this life is full of risks, and I'm not a warrior."

Yet still, tucked against her back was Ami, the first in a collection of custom weapons being gathered and made, but she only brought it along because her sire insisted she go nowhere unprotected. As if only just remembering the weapon was even there, Deirdre patted a hand against the barrel, before she unhooked it from the slinging belts and rested it against the desk.

"If you have something in mind, I would love to see it," she commented. "Doesn't really matter to me, as long as it's a dragon. I just kept getting drawn back to the Targaryen sigil over and over with no clear reason why."