Seth (slipthecracks) wrote in worldsapart_ic, @ 2019-08-18 18:32:00 |
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As expected Seth had been busy with consultations and was spending every other hour in Skin Talks sat down with clients to talk through their ideas and for those who didn’t have any idea of what they were looking to get giving them suggestions, advising others to go away and think about it some more before they committed to anything and with the rare few catching that they’d definitely live to regret it so putting them off completely.
It was important to Seth for him to do the right thing and not just make money because a) he didn’t really need it b) he liked to think of himself as a fairly decent person and c) he had integrity as an artist.
He’d finished up with his latest client and was bidding them goodbye at the door when he caught the scent of a wolf on the air which wasn’t uncommon, but this scent was getting closer which suggested to Seth that the wolf was coming to him.
Seth glanced over and caught the eyes of a young handsome wolf and smiled, piercing in his lip catching on the light as he did so. “You must be Kenzie.”
Before he’d actually gone along for the consultation, he’d told his grandmother what he was thinking, because god forbid he get half way through this process and she freaked out. Thankfully, Nana was rather relaxed about McKenzie finding something he wanted to do, especially since he was making decent enough money at Boudin and getting more sleep and being, in general, a lot more healthy.
He’d thought briefly about getting something to cover the slowly healing silver wound on his hand, just so that his mother might stop flinching any time she caught sight of it, but ultimately that would heal away eventually, when his body and metabolism burned through the process a little more. So he’d come up with something different and headed out for the appointment.
He hadn’t really been by Skin Talks too much before, but he knew where it was, and found it again with relative ease. Heading in, he wasn’t surprised that there was a definite mix of scents around the shop from different species. “Hey, yeah. Seth right?” Naturally since he was showing up for a consultation, it wasn’t shocking.
“That’s me,” Seth said with a further smile before he held out his hand which as always was decorated by rings but all of them were non silver because he had no desire to hurt werewolves with his choice of jewellery. “Come on in, we’ll get setup in my workspace and you can tell me a bit about what you’re looking to get and potential placement.”
As always without really meaning to do it his body naturally adjusted its pheromones so he produced a scent that was calming and reassuring rather than being sexual in nature, he was at work after all.
He led Kenzie into his workspace and pulled out a chair for him before he grabbed one himself along with his iPad and pen that he used along with it, both to take notes and sketch out some ideas.
“So, Kenzie, tell me what you’re thinking.”
Kenzie wasn’t sure what he was expecting really, although he hadn’t honestly put a lot of thought into what to expect. The shop looked like he sort of expected that a tattoo shop would look like anyway, probably because of the usual shows on tv that showed a tattoo shop or something.
Getting settled into the workspace, the wolf pulled out what was a very rough sketch on a lotus mandala design that he and Fisher picked about in, some layered over another design. “This isn’t like, the design, but the idea sort of, I guess? For the shoulder, my right one.” He wasn’t sure about how far down he wanted to go, but he wasn’t exactly choosy about it. Shoulders weren’t exactly something he couldn’t hide, so if he needed to cover the top of his arms, he could.
Although he wasn’t sure about the fact that he was a werewolf and healing was an issue and if there was a trick to that, “I um, I figure it probably factors in that I’m a werewolf too, so…” There was probably a different trick to the inks or something.
Seth leaned forward to take the sketch and tipped his head to get a better look. “Are you wanting colour or black and grey?” He lifted his gaze from the sketch to look at Kenzie. He wasn’t wrong that there were a couple tricks to tattooing wolves. The first being having a touch of silver in the needles, enough to get under the upper layer of the epidermis but not enough to poison, as well as magic touched ink which helped in getting it into all the right places.
“Well luckily for you I have quite a few werewolves on my books and I have a solid technique when it comes to getting the ink to stick.”
He needed to figure out how much space he had to work with as well as if there were any scars or marks on Kenzie’s skin he needed to take into account. “You mind rolling up your sleeve for me so I can take a look at where it’s going?”
As much as he was sure colour would be what Fisher would want, just because she loved bright things, he wasn’t really sure he’d be able to carry that kind of thing himself, “Black and grey, with the shading and stuff.” Pain wasn’t really a factor for Kenzie to consider when it came to the tattoo thing. He had an unusually high tolerance for it, something most likely related to his youth, but not something he bothered to analyse too much.
But it made sense for a place in Los Angeles to have some clientele that was a little hardier than others, he was sure he’d seen some of the pack with tattoos anyway, which was really why he’d figured it was possible to do.
“Sure, no worries.” Pushing the sleeve of his t-shirt all the way up, Kenzie pointed out where he figured he wanted it to start, just over the curve of his shoulder and then let it go however far down it ended up going. “I don’t really mind if it needs to wrap a little either, under the arm. It’s whatever.”
Seth placed his iPad down and rose to his feet, grabbing a measuring tape set on his table, and moving round to measure both length and width of the wolf’s arm along with the space across his shoulder. He made a couple quick notes on the iPad before he narrowed his eyes, turning Kenzie’s arm out a little so he could map out how the tattoo would sit on his skin.
“It’s definitely doable,” he affirmed with a nod as he glanced up at Kenzie. “It’ll take a couple hours, probably want to book a full day out if we do it in one sitting. If you weren’t a wolf I’d advise doing it over a number of appointments but I know from past experience that you guys can handle most things.”
Seth returned to his perch, looked at the picture again, and very quickly drew up a rough sketch of how he might take the inspiration and transpose it onto Kenzie. “This is just a rough idea,” he said as he turned the iPad around, “as I’ll obviously redraw it and give it more detail when I sit down later, but does this match what you’re looking for?”
Over the last few years, Kenzie had managed to work up a tolerance to people touching him; the pack was tactile, his grandparents had worked hard to push awareness of good examples of contact onto him, Jesse and Kitty weren’t ones to shy away from just pressing an arm or leg against him. But he didn’t always do well with sudden touches. Either it was something about the calmness of the room, or Kenzie was getting particularly used to touches just happening, because he didn’t even twitch at the small points of contact.
He was almost proud of that.
“Yeah, that sounds fine.” Just booking out one sitting didn’t bother Kenzie, in truth, it would probably be easier than spreading it over a few as far as time management went. And when it really boiled down, Kenzie was particularly impatient about things when he made up his mind. But he had known coming in that he’d likely need to make a longer appointment.
He was a little impressed with how quickly and effectively Seth managed to draw up a render of what was just a doodle (with the collaboration of a four year old) that Kenzie had to show for it all. “Yeah, no, that looks great.” He supposed the designs that were sort of scattered and posted around the place spoke volumes of the range of talent in the shop anyway.
“Yeah?” Seth asked with a pleased smile. “Okay, cool, I’ll work with this as the base idea and expand out on the detail as well as making sure it’ll be big enough to fit the area of skin you’re looking to cover.”
He flicked away from the sketch to do a quick check of his schedule.
“What’s your availability like?”
If he was being honest, McKenzie thought it’d be a little more complicated to get through, or that he’d talk himself out of it. But the more they went into things, he was more and more sure that this was definitely what he wanted to do.
“I’m off all day Thursdays,” because Fisher spent time with her dad and while McKenzie was generally invited if he wanted to, he knew that no one was offended when he let the father daughter duo bond together. And it might be better to do things on a day where he wouldn’t see Fisher until a day or so later.
“Thursdays,” Seth murmured with a nod as he did a quick survey of his calendar and sure enough he had a slot free in a few weeks time. McKenzie was lucky that he’d spoken to Seth when he did because he rather purposefully left space in his diary around this time of year given it was a time when he did his work for the charities that he supported.
He flipped the iPad around and showed McKenzie a slot.
“Does this work for you?”
He supposed that when you went to people who had the type of reputation you wanted when it came to tattoos, something that would permanently be etched on your skin, you had to expect they’d be busy. Which wasn’t bad, it gave McKenzie more time to save up, make sure he had the right sort of padding of money for it.
“Yeah, that’s fine.” He’d just make sure that he didn’t make plans, maybe see if he could get the day after off work so that he wasn’t moving around too much. “Do you need a deposit today?”
Seth gave a short nod and quickly filled the slot with the wolf’s name along with the quick sketch he’d done that he would definitely expand and elaborate on later. “Yeah, Grace at the front desk will be table to take it.” It was normally about twenty five percent of the total cost and Seth worked on a rate per hour which worked out to be approximately $50 per hour so he figured he’d book a whole day out for Kenzie just in case. If it took less time then he’d charge less and if it took more than he’d still charge the same because whilst it was important to get paid for what you did it was also important to be in good moral standing as far as how you conducted business went.
“I should have a more detailed sketch over to you by the start of next week.”
Even knowing that he was still a few weeks away to getting the tattoo, there was a bounce of giddy excitement from the prospect. He figured that for now he could just keep it under wraps, there was no need to try and explain it over and over again, he’d just wait and then do the show and tell when it came up instead.
“That’s great, thanks so much.”
He’d never really thought he’d be the tattoo type. But it was a little surprising that he was fairly into it.