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mimssides · 2 years

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Life on Crow Avenue : Part 31

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___

The soft buzzing on Remus’s back was what kept him from going insane at this point. Maybe it was also the thing that pushed him closer to insanity. Maybe it was both actually. Most likely it was both actually.

He didn’t think that the pain would be this excruciating. It was just one fucking needle! He never had a problem getting his shots and even when he pricked himself with a needle or pin while sewing, it never really bothered him.

Another nasty pick got him and he could feel his foot twitch and bitterly bit down on the towel Patton had given him at the start of today’s session. Apparently, he didn’t want to wait and give it to him after twenty minutes into the session after cursing the universe in creatively colourful ways, as he had done a day ago.

Remus would probably be a little embarrassed if he weren’t desperately trying to hold back tears. In a horny and quite delusional fantasy of his, this had been much sexier and kinkier than it was. But really; Lying on his back, helpless, completely at Patton’s mercy, who was transforming his appearance permanently, had sounded so delicious in his head.

What a pity it was that the pain he was experiencing from getting a tattoo, didn’t spark any lust or passion in the room. It was more of a mood killer if Remus was honest with himself.

“You’re doing really good bud! I’m almost done,” Patton said cheerfully.

Remus groaned as positively as he could with the towel between his teeth and tried to relax a little. Patton was doing an amazing job so far. After seeing the outline he had done yesterday, he’d almost forgotten how much the whole thing hurt. He couldn’t wait for it to be done so he could see the whole picture coming together on his back. Having a sketch was one thing, but seeing it finished like this was a whole other ordeal. He hadn’t expected it to feel as emotional as it did. Of course, the motive meant worlds to him, of course, this had been the first thing in years he actually sketched out and cleaned up properly, and of course, it was a motive that connected him and Roman deeply.

Maybe he should have expected to feel this emotional after all.

“Alright-y! You can stop biting on your towel now! This is it,” Patton announced and pulled Remus out of his thoughts. “Let me cool the whole thing for a sec before you can look at it and I can wrap it after that, ‘kay?”

“Yeah...” Remus groaned as sat up ever so slowly while Patton moved by beside him.

His back muscles twitched and it burned for a second before the relief of finally moving into a new position set in. He let out a long breath and then looked around for Patton. It was only the second time that he was in the small studio but he already knew the layout of it. Not that it was hard, but spacial awareness could be a bitch and the way this place worked, just made sense in Remus’s head. It probably had also helped that Patton had shown him everything yesterday when he had realized how nervous Remus actually was for the whole thing. Not that Remus had doubted his decision, he had been and still was certain that this was what he wanted to be permanently on his body.

Yet the unknown factors of pain and possibilities for infection or even scarring had been flying around in his mind and it helped to at least have some certainty of knowing what was around him and how he could react to it. It helped to calm one buzzing faction of his mind and that was nice.

Seeing Patton’s face again was also nice. The pastel punk reappeared from behind the colourful room divider (it had a plain white base and was covered with hundreds of scrap papers with sketches and designs on it) and held a shallow bucket filled with water in his hands. He smiled gently and carefully sat the bucket next to Remus.

“Okay, I’m gonna cool it and then dry you. The bleeding is pretty minimal again, so that’s really good. You’ve got a great back to work on!” he praised easily and took out the towel from the bucket.

Warmth spread in Remus’s chest while Patton began to tap his back down. His movements were slow and soft. He glimpsed into the mirror at the side and watched how focused Patton was on him, how gracious he moved and how a few hair strands had fallen out of his bun and hung lazily in front of his forehead.

Gasping Remus closed his eyes as Patton got to a spot close to his spine. Patton chuckled lightly and tapped the same spot a little gentler.

“You’re some sort of fae, Moore,” Remus mumbled between his teeth. “Seriously, your touch has to be magical. Like, I did not enjoy being pierced by a needle like Caesar by his senators, but these hands on my back right now have to be worth the gruesome death of a corrupt statesman.”

Remus hadn’t really wanted to say any of that but the words were just coming. It was so easy for Remus to just let things out with Patton around. He made it so easy to feel safe and understood by him. He hoped that Patton felt that way around him too. At least a little.

Behind him, Patton was grinning. He hadn’t expected that Remus would be so sensitive to the pain but then again he has seen bigger and stronger men cry on this chair. Remus’s reaction was still pretty average in Patton’s experience and yet he couldn’t help himself but find it a little amusing. He could still hear Remus saying to him that he could handle some pain and how fast he had changed his tone once he had gotten closer to the spine area.

Swiftly he put the wet towel back in the bucket and grabbed the paper roll on his side table: “I’m going to dry you down now. Also, I hope that the piece you’ve designed will please you as much as it pleases me. It’s looking marvellous if I may say so.”

Laughter shook Remus’s chest and Patton’s heart eased at the sound of it. There were few things that could lighten up his mood as quickly as Remus’s laughter (or Logan’s snicker) could.

“Not so humble now, are we? Praising your work like that is a show of quite an ego,” Remus joked and groggily tried to look over his shoulder to catch Patton’s eyes.

Patton amused shook his head and replied: “I think my work looks decent now, but I was talking about the design. It’s one of the best I’ve seen in the past few years. Maybe even since I’ve started tattooing.”

Remus squeaked theatrically. Laughing Patton put the paper towels down and stepped in front of Remus.

“Don’t say things like that so casually! I haven’t drawn anything for ages, it can’t be that much better than other stuff you’ve seen or done yourself.”

“But it is. Let me show you,” Patton said and motioned Remus to get down from the bed.

Huffing Remus hopped down and followed Patton in front of the mirror. Just like yesterday, he stood still with his back turned towards the mirror. Patton got the bigger hand mirror he had to let Remus see his reflection in the big one and Remus’s breath hitched.

The outline on its own had looked promising, but this was something entirely else. Thousands of little dots making up a picture by being differently spaced away from each other. Making up a pointy cliff with a ragged lighthouse on it. Waves crashed over each other and onto the cold stone. The strike of lightning in the background, which divided the picture just over his spine and broke through the diamond shape of the motive.

Baffled Remus looked over his shoulder directly into the mirror. Patton placed his hand gently on his shoulder and Remus felt himself shiver.

“That’s what I was talking about,” Patton said quietly looking into the mirror with him and catching his gaze in the reflection. “Tattoos don’t need to be deep and meaningful to look pretty. They just need to make you happy. But there are some which are deeply connected to our core in some way and it shows. I don’t know what this lighthouse means to you, but I know that this composition is intertwined with who you were, who you saw in yourself and who you want to be. And I think that’s really neat.”

Wordlessly Remus nodded. He seemed overwhelmed and Patton easily divided his attention away from all of that and asked him if he could take a picture for his wall before he was going to wrap him up. Remus let him do so and after Patton had finished, sat carefully onto his waiting chair. He was still as a statue while Patton cleaned up. Out of the corner of his eye, Patton kept glancing at him, making sure that he wasn’t missing something going down with his friend until he was finally done with getting everything in order.

At a slow pace, Patton approached him from the side, trying to see if he was taking note of his presence. He was about seven feet away from him when Remus finally lifted his gaze from the floor and vaguely looked in Patton’s direction.

“Hey there bud. How are ya’?”

A long breath. Gentle nodding.

“I’m okay. Weird. But okay, I think.”

Patton stretched his hand out for him. Gingerly Remus took it.

“That sounds about right,” Patton told him and helped him onto his feet. “Would you like to keep me a little company? I’d love to have you over a little longer. And I’ve still got that funky verveine tea if you’d like.”

A sheepish smile and a nod later and Patton lead Remus up to his apartment after the poor guy had painfully slowly put on a shirt. Upstairs Patton offered him to sit on a stool but Remus took one of the chairs and sat backwards on it, so he could rest his chest against the back lean. Casually Patton began to work on the tea. He could sense Remus looking around and was relieved that with Logan’s help he had cleaned up his flat over the past two weeks. It had been small chunks but like that he had managed to do it without feeling too overwhelmed.

As the water boiled in the kettle, Patton put a plate with cookies on the table. Remus confusedly looked at it, as if it had appeared out of thin air and then glanced up to Patton who was giving him a worried look back.

“I really would like to know how you manage to just bounce back like this. It’s as if you’re just okay again...”

Remus didn’t sound jealous. He didn’t look jealous either. Those dark brown eyes of his were focused on Patton, filled helpless wonder tinted with a pinch of desperation. The kettle whistled and Patton got it off the heating station and poured their tea. He set the egg-shaped egg timer to five minutes and carried both cups to the table and sat one down in front of Remus and the other in front of his seat. He got a little plate for the tea bags and the egg timer and sat down.

Calmly Patton looked to the living room. The glass table had been replaced with a wicker one. He had rearranged the knick-knacks on the TV table and looked right at a picture frame. Remus followed his gaze and saw the brown-haired woman in a yellow summer dress with puffed sleeves. From the distance, it was hard to see, but her eyes were a greyish blue and her smile was wide and open. A person with invited anybody in and let them be themselves whatever that meant.

“I didn’t.”

Immediately Remus turned his face to look at Patton only to find that the man had already been looking at him.

“I didn’t just bounce back,” Patton said solemnly and took the egg timer in his hands to fiddle with it. “I’ve been doing this for ten years. I had a session with my therapist again the week after her anniversary. I got Lo to help me around here. And I remind myself that this might or more likely will happen again. And that that’s okay. That I’ll get through this. I’ve dropped out of college and still managed to get a job with which I can support myself. I’ve got my heart broken by a guy or a dozen and fell in love again despite it. Moments can be hard and unbelievably painful but they pass. As everything does.”

The egg timer rang and Patton fished his and Remus’s teabags out of their cups. In silence they let the tea sit. Patton leaned over his cup and his glasses fogged up. He scrunched his nose and took the glasses off to clean the lenses with his t-shirt. He had circles under his eyes but they had lessened over the past week. At least a little.

“I’ve learned,” Patton said and paused to stop the trembling in his voice, “I’ve learned that endings are ultimate and irreversible. You die and go to heaven or hell and that’s it. There are no grey areas, no margin of error or room to discuss.”

Steadily he picked up his cup of tea and took a sip. It burned his tongue and he found himself smiling again. He directed it toward Remus.

“But there is. And that makes everything much more complicated than I first thought. Good and bad is a relative spectrum, subjective and changes when you ask different people with different contexts. This means you can’t be “good” for everybody. To some people, you will always be too flawed, too broken. No matter how hard you try you’ll never be able to please everybody.”

Patton’s glasses lay in front of him and his hands were folded behind them. He inhaled freely and closed his eyes.

“But everybody isn’t who counts. Those who consider meeting me as something good, are those who count. To those, I made a difference. For those, I try to accept that sometimes I’m not good enough for myself but I still need to try. If I can’t do it for myself I do it for my dad. For Logan. For you. For the others. Not always but sometimes it helps to remember myself that even if I can’t believe that I have worth, others do. And who am I to doubt your faith?”

The frame temples clacked against each other when Patton picked them up. He set them back on his nose with both hands. As he did the light falling through the window behind him got a little brighter as a cloud moved by and a faint glow settled around his face. It was as if a light buzz cradled his silhouette. Between a stack of last week's papers, his still steaming teacup and a plate of chocolate cookies, Patton with his plain black long-sleeved shirt, slightly messy hair and a crooked grin, completed an image of human divinity.

To Remus at least it was one of the most divine things he had seen in his life, maybe ever. Stuck with awe he grunted and laughed before he finally reached for his tea and took a sip.

“Motherbitch! That shit’s hot!” he shouted at the hot beverage.

Patton burst into laughter and Remus joined after he had placed the cup back on the table. The atmosphere grew softer. Patton transitioned to explain to Remus exactly how to take care of the tattoo for the second time in two days and Remus made himself some notes on his phone. They ate the cookies and drank their tea while their conversation shifted to Roman spending this Halloween evening with Janus and Virgil and eventually decided to order out some takeout when evening approached.

Waiting for their kebabs they decided to get change spots from the table over to the couch and turned on Dirty Dancing so Patton could actually see it in one piece this time. A few minutes in Remus tapped Patton’s shoulder to get his attention. Patton looked and Remus laid his hand on Patton’s thigh.

“Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me today. And also I’m sorry,” Remus said.

Patton furrowed his brows and said: “You don’t need to be sorry. You’re not responsible for the things that happened to me.”

“No, I’m not,” Remus conceded, “but I assumed that you were okay just because things were looking up again. I should know better than that. Just because someone looks like they’re doing better doesn’t mean they actually are. There are a lot of fucking layers to us all. We’re fleshy onions and peeling us is a nightmare.”

Surprised by the last imagery Patton panic giggled and Remus snickered and softly nudged his shoulder against Patton. With the doorbell ringing, the topic was dropped and they ate their kebabs as Baby and Johnny started to get closer. When the abortion part came on, Patton needed to stop the movie for a moment and the two stepped out to smoke a cigarette together before they went back in to finish the movie.

It wasn’t late yet but Remus had to head home to the cats and packed his things together. Biding each other good night at Patton’s front door, Remus paused and shuffled on the spot. Rolling his shoulders he straightened up and put his hands in his pockets.

“On the 2nd Ro and I usually celebrate Dià de Muertos and I wanted to ask if you and Lo if you wanted to have dinner with me? I haven’t asked him yet and I know it’s kinda short notice but I thought I’d ask anyway,” he finally said and waited for Patton’s answer expectantly.

“Yeah, sure! I’d love to. I’m sure Roman is going to invite Janus and Virgil as well?”

Remus cleared his throat and scratched the back of his head before he said: “No, Ro’s not gonna be there. He’s going on a date and we celebrate midday and stuff. It would just be us three. I - I actually prefer it that way so I can, like, say thank you and shit. Privately.”

Patton blinked. He felt his cheeks warm up and coughed nervously into his hand, hiding a giddy smile behind it. Remus shuffled some more on his feet and Patton realized that he wasn’t able to tell what his reaction actually was, lowered his hand and smiled carefully.

“I’d like that. Though there are no thanks you need to give me. Just spending time with you and Lo, if he wants to, is gonna be fun.”

At that Remus cautiously returned the smile and replied: “Yeah, yeah. I think it will be fun too. So, uh. 7 pm on Monday? I’ll tell you if Lo comes and in case I need to move the time or something. Good?”

“Great! Uh, should I bring something?”

“Nah, you’re pretty ass is more than enough, Poppy.”

Patton blushed and Remus could feel himself getting flustered. With a wink and a laugh, he said goodbye and left. The short walk over to his block wasn’t long enough for his beating heart to cool down but he didn’t mind.

If Logan said “yes”, he could tell them on Monday. He would tell them on Monday if everything was going right. And somehow that thought didn’t seem as daunting as it used to in the past few months.

___

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LoCA

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@tlhrfanfic

#sanders sides #Life on Crow Avenue #ts remus #ts patton #pre romantic intruality #pre romantic intrulogical #pre romantic intrulogicality #tattoo #tattooing #pain #talk of therapy #rem is in pain because of a tattoo but he's happy he gets it so it's all good #slight innuendo #cursing #eir writes #please reblog

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