Annalise stood in front of the tattoo parlor watching the man on the chair wince as the needles pierced his skin. The man looked like he would have preferred getting hit in the groin before getting inked, but he wasn’t moving away, in fact, the longer Annalise looked the more his expression shifted to one of blissed out amazement as he watched the lines come to life on his skin.
She must have been gone too long because Gabriel sauntered around the corner with a soft smile on his face. “Did you get lost, ma cherie?”
“Do tattoos hurt?” she asked, completely ignoring his question.
Gabriel glanced at the parlor in front of them, then back at Annalise and the corner of his mouth curved in a smirk. “Do you want to get a heart inked on your ass?”
Annalise raised her eyebrow. “Will you get one too?”
“If you do, yeah, why not,” he answered.
A moment passed in silence as they held each other’s eyes, then she burst out laughing. Gabriel was not far behind.
Annalise wiped a tear from her eye when she stopped, imagining a neon heart on Gabriel’s pale ass, bright and colorful like one of the buttons on his coat. She found that it would suit him.
“So, does it hurt?” she repeated.
“It stings at first. The worst comes after the needles are long gone.”
“It is a wound on your skin,” she remarked.
“No, uh, it’s the healing. The warmth, the itch. It can be a bit much.” Gabriel absentmindedly touched his stomach where Annalise knew his tattoo was. “But it passes. One day you wake up and it’s not painful, it’s not itchy, it’s just there staring at you in the mirror.”
He let his hand fall and Annalise took it, her thumb brushing his rings.
“Do you regret yours?”
“Life’s too short to regret such things,” Gabriel said, smiling down at her as bright as the sun.
“Guys, are you lost or something?”
Nathan’s voice reached them from another aisle, so Annalise called out for him. “We’re over here.”
When Nathan turned onto their aisle, he immediately took stock of their joint hands and narrowed his eyes at them. “What’s going on?”
Annalise didn’t skip a beat. “We’re getting matching tattoos. Do you wanna come?”
“You’re what?” Nathan asked.
“You heard Annalise. Are you coming or not?”
After a bout of stunned silence, Nathan spoke again, his curiosity getting the best of him. “What are you getting?”
“A heart on the ass,” Gabriel replied.
“A pink heart on the ass,” she amended.
Nathan huffed a laugh. “You’re not serious, are you?”
“With flames,” added Gabriel.
“And our initials inside,” pushed Annalise.
They held their eyes for what seemed like a whole minute. Nathan looked between them as if they were the most interesting tennis match ever. Gabriel broke first.
“The flames I can get behind, but the initials? Isn’t that a bit tacky?”
Annalise couldn’t help it, she laughed and Gabriel followed suit. Smiling hurt when she said, “It would be, wouldn’t it? But if you get the flames, I'll get the flames.”
“Funny,” Nathan said. “Shouldn’t we be leaving? What did you guys say about exposure being dangerous?”
“But, the tattoo?” she pouted.
Nathan sighed. “We don’t even have money for one, let alone three.”
“I have money,” Gabriel said. “Or, Mercury does. We’re near one of her spots actually.”
“I have one of my mum’s credit cards,” Annalise said. “She’s gonna know I used it, so once we withdraw the money we’ll be on a timer, but I can get us some.”
Nathan tried to shoot the idea down with his logic. “I’m not 18 yet.”
“Is it the flames?” asked Gabriel. “We can do without the flames.”
After a moment of contemplating, he shook his head, a smile playing on his lips, and said, “how long would it take?”
“Yes!” They celebrated at the same time. Annalise turned to Gabriel as he was turning in her direction, grabbing her by the waist and lifting her up. She gave him a quick kiss before he put her back on the ground.
A bell rang as Nathan went into the tattoo parlor ahead of them. They rushed inside just as Nathan asked the blue-haired woman at the desk. “Let’s say I wanna get a pink heart on the ass. How would I go about that?”
The woman frowned. She might have called security on them if Gabriel hadn’t intervened in his choppy German. For a moment, she wondered if she’d ever stop being enamoured by him. It felt like such a distant possibility that Annalise shook her head to get free of the thought. Nathan had a similar awestruck expression on his face.
In English, the woman answered. “Yes, we take walk-ins when one of our artists is free. How many?”
“Three.”
She raised an eyebrow in their direction but didn’t say anything else as she clicked and typed something on her laptop.
“What are you getting?” she asked, her eyes fixed on the screen.
“A pink heart on the ass,” answered Gabriel.
“With flames,” added Nathan.
“All three?”
“Yeah, all three,” confirmed Annalise.
“Depending on the size, Ida could do it,” she said, looking up at them. “Are you sure?”
“Can I go first?” Annalise volunteered.
The woman shook her head, her blue locks bouncing on her forehead, but she was smiling.
It was half past five when they finally came out of the parlor and they were starving. No one wanted to risk leaving the other two to find food, so they decided to wait it out. Thankfully, the tattoo artists at the parlor provided them with water and a big chocolate bar to share while they waited, along with many funny stories of clients who, like them, decided to get matching tattoos. In Ida's eyes, they were the only ones doing it the right way. Alice —the blue haired woman who checked them in— thought matching tattoos were fine as long as they weren’t a pink heart with flames on the ass.
To that, Annalise had answered, “but it’s fun.”
Ida backed her up as she prepped her station for Gabriel. “Yeah, Alice. Let loose a little. I’ll get a pink heart on my ass next.”
Once they paid for their tattoos, they went directly to the food court and got themselves some food. They ate while talking about their next stop. Annalise wanted to go to Italy, but Gabriel was reluctant to stray too far from Paris. He still hoped to get back to his beloved city.
“I’m just saying, no one will look for us there twice,” he argued.
“What about Mercury?” asked Nathan.
Gabriel sighed, resigned. “Fine, but we are not going to Italy. Not yet anyway.”
“Why not?” Annalise asked.
“You can’t swim in the sea with a fresh tattoo, ma cherie.”
Annalise perked up at that. “The beach?”
“We can’t not go to the beach if we’re in Italy,”
She reached over Nathan and brought Gabriel in for a brief kiss. Or that was her intention, but her insides warmed up the moment his lips touched hers.
“I’m right here,” said Nathan.
Annalise smiled as she drew back, tilting her head in invitation. Gabriel immediately caught up, and they both kissed Nathan on the cheek, multiple times, until Nathan laughed and they dissolved in laughter as well.
They left not long after that, taking turns to carry the one bag of stuff they had accumulated on their trip so far.
One day, they would be able to stay in one place. They would have a big bedroom full of their shit, a small garden with a flower bed, and a kitchen where Gabriel’s colorful powders would sit next to their herbs and spices. For now, a pink heart with flames on their left asscheek was more than enough.