Blaine was tearing the plastic foil wrapping with his teeth when he heard the front door open. The girl in front of him turned at the sound as well, and then redirected her gaze to Blaine’s mouth with an eyebrow arched as if to ask Is that sanitary? But Blaine’s attentions were inadvertently stuck elsewhere.

            There were two people in the doorway, one short and the second rather tall, at least to his standards. A man and a woman, the former standing just behind her withhis shoulders drawn up tensely.

            “Hey,” Quinn spoke, standing and smoothly sidling around the front desk, palm outstretched. “Welcome to Warbler’s.”

            “Hello,” said the tiny little brunette thing, shaking her hand importantly. “My name is Rachel Barbara Berry.”

            “You have an appointment today, Miss Rachel Barbara Berry?”

            “Yes, at 1 ‘o’ clock this evening with Santana Lopez.”

            “Mhmm,” Quinn hummed, before turning to the second guest and holding out her hand in turn. “And this is…?”

            But Blaine didn’t get to hear who that was, because the girl in front of him shifted and cleared her throat politely. The man’s reply was lost in that blink of a moment, and from the corner of his eye Blaine could see the two shake in greeting. He suddenly wished he hadn’t set the iHome’s volume so loud. His ears strained to eavesdrop.

            “Sorry,” Blaine muttered, tonguing impatiently at his lip ring before flapping the foil package in his hand. He smoothed his hand over the girl’s naked shoulder and told her to hold still. Out from the packaged slipped the handle of a basic commercial razor, which he grabbed hold of before flicking the wrapping off onto his work bench. With quick efficiency, he swiped the blade over her skin, removing all the fine baby hairs in an absent-minded way that allowed him to keep an ear out for the conversation going on at the front of his shop.

            “And what are we doing for you today, Miss…?”

            “Rachel is fine, thank you. Today I’m getting the outline done on a new hip piece, which Miss Lopez and I have previously collaborated upon—“

            “Yeah, mhmm.” Quinn was already heading back to behind the desk, to the open laptop where she began to scroll. “She’s out on lunch now, but she left behind a few versions of the stencil, if you wanted to take a look. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.”

            Blaine was quite sure she would, but he didn’t say anything. He set the razor aside, and reached again for the cloth to his right. He dapped some rubbing alcohol along it before wiping down her skin. She was pale as a dove, and her skin was beginning to blush under the ministrations.

            When Blaine glanced up again, it was to see Quinn leading Rachel and her unnamed companion to the farthermost corner of the room, to Santana’s work station. It was surprisingly neat for someone of her temperament, with photos of particularly memorable pieces tacked to the sides of the full-length mirror to the left of the chair. At least half of them were pieces done on Santana’s girlfriend, Brittany.

            “Here we are,” Quinn said, sliding the heavy black portfolio from on top of her workbench. She rifled through the contents, looking for Rachel’s stencils. “So just the outline today?”

            “Yes.” And with a bit of hesitation, Rachel asked, “Is that odd?” But there was something in her voice that clearly said she was in all actuality hoping for an affirmative answer.

            “Kind of. We don’t usually split tats into two appointments unless it’s a big piece. You know it would be cheaper just to get the whole thing out of the way at once, right? And a lot less painful.”

            “That’s fine, I don’t mind the pain. It will only add to the whole experience.” She did some strange hand gesture here, a waving motion as if to mimic forming a rainbow.

            Her friend snorted, and said the first words Blaine would ever hear him speak. “Says you. I’m the one who’s going to have to put up with the bitching over the next two weeks.”

            “Like I haven’t put up with enough from you, Kurt.”

            Kurt.

            Kurt.

Blaine hummed, and with his head turned away from them he mouthed the name on his lips. It felt nice. He loaded a magnum into his gun, set it aside, and began to pop the lids off a few bottles. He started with a few shades of purple, turquoise and orange, dabbing small portions out into the ink caps.

            “I brought a few reference pictures,” the girl—Marley, he remembered—said for the tenth time. “I know you don’t really need them, but—“

           “Marley,” Blaine cut her off warily, “when you think on it, you’re paying extra for me to not use them. Relax, I’ve got it.”

            Before settling himself into the buzzing hum of his work, Blaine allowed himself one last glance, this time focusing solely on the man called Kurt. He was perhaps slightly above average height, long and lean in clothes that wrapped him in tighter than perhaps his own skin. A trim olive vest strapped over a fitted long-sleeved black shirt, buckled in at the small of his back. Carefully distressed indigo jeans that he must’ve had to fight every inch to pull on. Black boots with heavy soles and an even heavier amount of laces, drawn up to his knees.

            Blaine wanted to untie them with his teeth. And he was sure that however long it took Kurt to pull those jeans up Blaine could peel them off in a fraction of the time. Kurt’s face was turned, but he had rich brown hair, swept up and neatly coifed. He held himself primly, tightly, tight enough that Blaine had a whole laundry list of ways to loosen him up.

            Those were the last thoughts he allowed himself before sinking into the ink. This piece wouldn’t take him long, and Santana’s habitual punctuality issues assured him that he’d at least catch him on the way out.

            He quickly swiped ointment on with yet another towel, covering a much larger area than what would be needed, and let the gun hum to life in his hand. He sensed her tense up, and Blaine muttered, “Don’t hold your breath. I’ve had more than one client faint on me from doing that.” This somehow didn’t help. “If you feel it gets too much, tap my knee.”

            Marley murmured a soft, “Okay,” but did in fact relax, allowing Blaine to work.

            It was with an objective standpoint that Blaine considered his work to be unique, first and foremost because he’d never, not once, used a stencil. Occasionally a reference picture if the client wanted a very specific object included in the design, but Blaine preferred to use his mind’s eye. His vision was sharper than most, his ability to recognize and remember a gift many had thought he’d squandered.

            Blaine had been born with photographic memory, and this played a specific part in his unique brand of talent. He was able to proportion perfectly, to never forget a single detail. To him, the tattoo was on the skin the moment he began. It was just his hand’s job to fill it in.

            A second part of his gift was what people most often paid for, and that was his over-exaggerated layering techniques, and the very minimal uses of color that only added to the overall affect. Blaine would start with black, to plant upon the skin an extremely carefully drawn image. It was usually this that his clients wanted, whether it be a bone, a rose, a face. And after free-drawing it into the skin, Blaine would layer upon it outlandishly placed splashes of colors, some in patterns, some not. Or he would draw from his memory a particular pattern—dots, puddles of oil in the street, pin stripes, news print, rust stains—and layer them over the image. Hiding it behind riddles of contrasting inks, creating pieces that transcended any sort of generation. Occasionally he would gridlock the image in incandescent lines of blocks, as if on graphic paper, as if measuring the ink by some strange musical index.

            And the third part that made his work so sought after was the way the pieces would sing.

            From the very first tattoo he’d done, to this piece of an empty birdcage on Marley’s shoulder, it was like song lyrics carved into skin. The ink brought to mind a different beat of melody, a different frame of mind, voices. The ink gun sang in Blaine’s hand, and its song dug into the skin deeper than his ink. And what he heard when he’d first seen her, what the needle was humming into her skin, was something soft and whimsical. The words were sighed out like slow-acting poison. A delicate little thorn in his parlor chair.

            Blaine hadn’t know whether to shut the door on the bird cage or not, and he hadn’t decided until he was drawing it in. He swiped a damp, sterile cloth over her skin, wiping away the blood from the sealed door. It wasn’t empty, but it was waiting.

            He heard the door open and close a few times, and some time into the tattoo session he heard Santana’s voice, but didn’t bother himself to listen in. Blaine’s mind was dredged in the voices of the beautiful and dying.

            The coloring on her vintage bird cage was two-fold. A faint, fuzzy blue haloed the little swing inside the cage, and plumed softly from the lock. In dark red, weaving sideways and again vertically behind the cage itself, were the words Escape Artist written backwards in normative typeface font. The letters were perhaps the most time consuming, but he finally trailed off. He wrote the very last few letters of the final line in black.

            He wiped the tattoo off one more time, and sat back to look. After such a long pause when he hadn’t stopped once, Marley glanced over her shoulder.

            “It’s done,” Blaine said, stretching back on his bench and popping his shoulders. He glanced at the clock. The tattoo had taken just under four hours. “Go take a look.”

            Marley stumbled a bit as she stood, clutching a towel to the front of her chest. As she walked shakily to the mirror, Blaine cast a glance over towards Santana’s station. She sat behind Rachel, who had her top pulled up to just below her bust, and leggings pulled down just slightly. Blaine couldn’t see the tattoo, and he couldn’t see Kurt’s face either. His back was to Blaine, and he appeared to be holding Rachel’s hand in both of his.

            “Lana Del Ray.”

            Blaine looked back to Marley, who wasn’t actually looking at him. She stood marveling in the mirror, fingers almost lax on the towel, eyes mesmerized and slightly wet.

            “I’d heard you liked the bad boys, honey,” Blaine said, and cracked the first smile since she’d walked into his shop.

            When Marley was finally able to tear her eyes away, Blaine snapped a shot for his portfolio, and another with Marley’s phone at her request, before coating the tattoo in ointment and pressing a clean bandage over it. He taped along the edges, and watched as she gingerly edged her shirt down over it.

            “Keep that bandage on for the next twelve hours,” Blaine instructed her as they walked to the front of the shop. “After that, you can take it off. Wash it with warm water only, pat it dry, and then add some more ointment. I’ll give that to you before you go. Some people scab, others don’t, it all depends on you.”

            “How long do I have to use bandages for?”

            “A week, or when it stops feeling tender. You got a driver’s license on you?”

            “Oh, yeah, hold on…”

            As Marley dug through her purse for her debit card and ID, Blaine looked back towards Santana. Kurt’s face was still turned.

            “Why didn’t you call me over to see?” Quinn asked when they reached the front desk, Marley pulling out her wallet finally.

            “Sorry, forgot,” Blaine said, keeping a few feet from the desk while Marley excitedly opened the photo of it on her phone to show Quinn.

            “It was a pleasure,” Blaine said, reaching out to shake Marley’s hand. When she placed hers in his, he brought it up to kiss the side of her palm, making her laugh and blush. He smirked, and backed away when Quinn shot him a look.

            Instead of heading to his workstation to clean up, Blaine headed straight over to Santana’s. He was free for the rest of the afternoon, and only had plans of sketching out a few ideas for clients coming in later on in the week. There was time.

            He had to see that face.

            Naturally, Blaine knew that when someone had a body like that, karma balanced things out in the most unfortunate of ways. Kurt’s face couldn’t match up to that ass, which wouldn’t necessarily pose a problem as eye contact wasn’t required for the things Blaine intended to do to him. Or he could have the vocabulary of a grade school girl, a completely two-dimensional personality, the wits of a pastor, perhaps more baggage than a luxury cruise liner. There would undoubtedly be something, if not all of those, but Blaine wouldn’t mind putting up with all that for the short period of time it would take him to wreck that perfectly kept hair, to trace out the marks of his veins with his mouth only to leave marks of his own, to hook his hands under his knees and spread him open, and then open him up.

            “Hey, Santana,” Blaine said when he finally reached the trio, feeling uncommonly lucky as Santana was just putting down her tattoo gun and reaching for a cloth to give the ink one final pat down. “Let me see what you’re working on.”

            “No one’s stopping you, Anderson,” Santana replied coolly. Blaine peeked over her shoulder for one brief moment to see a pretty outline of a treble alone with an empty set of bars stretching for a few counts past it. Tiny inked birds were perched on them.

            That was all Blaine saw of the tattoo. He saw Rachel peek curiously over her shoulder at him, and then Kurt finally turned to face him. Somewhere beneath his heart, but above his stomach, Blaine felt the breath crackle in his lungs like electricity.

            The pale skin of his neck matched his face. There wasn’t a hint of a blemish, only a vague tint of pale rose on his cheeks like his skin had been spray painted on. His lips were flushed and wide, a perfect little Cupid’s brow perched beneath a long, elegant nose. His browns were perfectly accented, as if slashed there by the casual flick of a paintbrush. Elfin ears, pointed slightly beneath his hair. And the eyes. The eyes were what broke him. Blaine would later go on through his extensive collection of colors to try and match the ink, and he would find that their color was the single thing in the world he was unable to memorize, to commit to memory. They were like the shine of glass beneath a pool of rainwater on the streets, some eerie mix of grays and blues and greens that Blaine had never seen the likes of.

            Those eyes sang like a tattoo themselves, and like a tattoo gun they buzzed into Blaine’s head and stuck there. Lyrics Blaine couldn’t decipher, and the tone some sort of roar that deafened him. Heavy piano, the gentle thrums of a bass, a deep drumming heart. Like a rhapsody written for the end of the world.

            There was a sharp elbow slammed entirely too close to his crotch for comfort, and he glared at Santana who had the nerve to smirk at him. “What do you think of the tattoo?”

            He’d been too entranced by the eyes to keep track of the rest of Kurt’s face, which had stained a darker hue of pink at the attention. He sponged up a few extra seconds, during which Kurt’s eyebrow inch into a sardonic arch. He had long, thick lashes, now that Blaine took in his face as a whole. A slim bone structure. And were those freckles?

            Finally he looked back at the outline of the tattoo. From behind the treble bloomed the outline of a rose, and taking that into consideration… “The birds are the thorns?”

            “My idea, when she wouldn’t budge on the breed of flower.”

            “Roses are deeply symbolic to me,” Rachel said huffily.

            Before she could enumerate on the reasons why, Santana said, “They are to everyone, sweets.” Normally Santana might keep her tongue in cheek with clients before lashing out her true opinions to them later. Perhaps she, like Blaine, picked up on the sense that this girl could handle it.

            “Well I’m not everyone, so I’m safe from the rose tattoo cliché,” Rachel sniffed. “Is it done, can I see it?”

            “Sure. C’mon, up you get. Mirror’s right there.”

            Rachel’s hand fell from Kurt’s as she made for the mirror. Blaine didn’t miss the sardonic way Kurt looked at the ink.

            “Oh, it’s beautiful,” Rachel gushed, twisting her hips a bit to see it at a new angle. Blaine spared her euphoric face a last glance before leaving Santana to wallow in her praise. He turned his attentions back to Kurt.

            “And what about you, Kurt.” The name felt as good leaving his lips as it sounded in his head. “What are we getting you today?”

            “I’m sorry,” Kurt said, forced politeness in every syllable. “But who are you?”

            Blaine smirked, but it was Santana who answered for him.

            “This is Blaine Anderson,” she drawled. She had her camera out, and was attempting to make Rachel stand still for a shot. “This is his studio.”

            “Oooh!” Santana hissed her indignation as Rachel twister her way out of her grip. “I’ve done a great deal of research on your work, Mr. Anderson, and I might say I am quite impressed with what you do.”

            “It’s Blaine,” was all he said.

            “Kurt,” Rachel said, “I showed you his portfolio online, remember the tattoos I showed you last night?”

            “I remember.” Rachel didn’t seem to catch the sarcasm, but Blaine did all too well.

            “And what did you think?” Blaine asked, tilting his hip to lean on the back of the chair.

            Kurt blinked coolly up at him, one leg crossed to balance an ankle over his knee. He had his pretty face leaning on one gently furled fist. Blaine could see straight between his legs, and lord bless skinny jeans….

            “I won’t pretend to know much about tattoos,” Kurt finally answered in diplomatic tones.

            “Even better,” Blaine replied. Santana was looking at him now, brow cocked. “An objective standpoint. So what did you think?”

            Kurt licked his bottom lip to wet it before speaking, forcing Blaine to shift his suddenly uncomfortable posture. Santana was definitely looking now.

            “They were nice,” he said after a long pause.

            Nice. Nice. Suddenly, the blood boiling in Blaine’s veins had nothing to do with lust. Well, perhaps a little.

            “Ignore him,” Rachel recommended, wincing as Santana applied ointment to her new ink before pressing gauze to it. “He doesn’t approve of tattoos.”

            Blaine hadn’t realized that Kurt had been wearing a façade the entire time until it slipped for a few crucial seconds. “It will never come off, Rachel.”

            “God, you sound like my dads…”

            “Keep the gauze on for at least twelve hours,” Santana intoned.

            “Your dads are actually rather fabulous, so I don’t much resent the comparison.”

            “You sound like an old man, then.”

            “Shall I go ahead and tell your fathers you’re calling them old?”

            “Wash with lukewarm water, no soap for at least three days,” Santana said, picking at her nails.

            Anger momentarily forgotten, Blaine’s eyes bounced back and forth.

            “If you detest them so much, why did you follow me here?”

            “Follow you, you blackmailed me, you pulled every dirty card out of your very limited deck—“

            “Fine! Then don’t come next time!”

            “Wait, no.” Blaine was ignored.

           Santana typed away on her phone as she said, “Call us back if the skin remains puffy and red after three days, you shouldn’t get much scarring from an outline but all the same, do give us a call back with any questions.”

            Kurt threw his hands in the air. “Then I won’t!”

            “Good.”

            “Great.”

            “If you head on up to Quinn she’ll handle your payment today. See you in a week, sweets.”

            “Wait…” But Blaine was ignored again as the two stalked up towards the front desk, where Quinn was waiting with a bemused expression on her face. Blaine blinked after them, and when he looked down he met that look of Santana’s again.

          “I’d hurry on after him if I were you, baby,” she purred. “Before you miss your shot at getting up on dat ass.”

            Blaine snorted, but left her to it. He ran one hand through his hair, gently gelled spikes springing back up from the attention. By the time he arrived at the counter, Rachel was signing a receipt and jabbering away about appointment times for the following week to Quinn, Kurt standing to the side and shifting impatiently.

            Blaine sidled up, making to look like he was looking at the booking times with her as he said, “Sorry for the improper introduction just now. But I’m Blaine. I wanted to thank you for coming into my shop today.”

            “Rachel,” she replied brightly, smiling at him. It seemed more genuine now. “I did extensive research before making my appointment here today. You’ve quite the reputation.”

            Blaine shrugged. “We do a business.” They did a business at what was probably the most expensive tattoo shop in New York City, to be more precise. She was wearing workout clothes, but nice jewelry. Her hair looked healthy, her nails freshly manicured, subtle but expensive looking makeup. She had money, even more clearly indicated by dishing out well over two thousand dollars for such a minimal tattoo.

            Blaine looked back up to Kurt. “So, not much into ink, are you?”

            “Not particularly.”

            “Any reason? Besides the non-negotiable permanence?”

            “I wouldn’t want to bore you with the reasons.”

            “Oh go on, bore me.” So that I can justify boring you into a bed later on.

            Kurt eyed Blaine’s face critically, and he tried seeing things from his perspective. Three piercings in his left eyebrow, nose ring, snakebites, and tongue ring. Tattoo’d neck, and on the left side of his face, between the crease of his eye and his ear, was a tattoo of a red X, dulled with time, in an unusual shape. Sloped at all edges, fatter at the four corners, artfully piercing in its center.

            “Where’d you get that tattoo?” Kurt asked instead of answering. “The little ‘x’.” He tapped his own left temple.

            Blaine frowned a bit, but again, someone answered for him.

            “He never answers that one,” Quinn drawled. But she was eyeing him with interest. “Part of his whole badboy motif, I’m sure, his little mystery.”

            “Fuck off,” Blaine muttered sullenly.

            Kurt hummed. The noise went straight down Blaine’s spine. “Then I suppose we both have questions we don’t want to answer, don’t we, Mr. Anderson.”

            “It’s Blaine,” he snapped for the second time that day. Kurt merely smirked, and there was nothing more that he wanted to do in that moment then to wipe it off his face. His anger said to hit it straight off, and his erection said to either smother it in a pillow or make it so that mouth really couldn’t move much at all around his—

            But Kurt abruptly turned on his heel and strode out before Blaine could think of anything wittier to follow it up with.

            “Kurt!” Rachel called before softly cursing under her breath. She hurried out after him, clutching the bottle of ointment to her chest, the door banging shut behind her.