no country [florence]

Dean’s portfolio slipped off his shoulder and clattered to the cobblestones of Diagon Alley, having swung around in the process of apparition. He sighed and bent to pick it up. Carrying the thing about London made him feel dreadfully cool, but it was also a massive pain. Thankfully, the last meeting of his acrylic painting class had been in the morning and after getting home today he wouldn’t need to lug it around anymore. At least not until his next bout of artistic insecurity. He’d planned to stop taking classes before, but it never turned out to be permanent.

He had begun because he felt like he needed to. It was a side effect of his muggle upbringing, he thought. His parents had always encouraged him toward a university education and in his child’s mind it became the only path to success. He hadn’t shaken the idea. Seven years at Hogwarts couldn’t possibly be enough to teach him how to be useful in the world, much less six. Formal art instruction, even of the public, unacademic kind he could get with no qualifications, had certainly been good for him in the beginning.  He couldn’t have landed his current position on his untrained, doodling-in-the-margins-of-essays skills alone. But art was an infinitely expandable skill set. He would never be done, never be as capable as he could be. It became almost a sort of paranoia in him. He should always be learning, always improving. He owed it to the people who would wear his drawings on their skin.

But sometimes, despite the pressure he put on himself,  it just felt like meaningless stress. He was spending time and money on something he didn’t really have to, when he could be working longer hours, or watching more television at the very least. Right now he was thoroughly ready to let go of anything unnecessary in his life. Things were going well for him and he didn’t want anything to distract him from it.

He shouldered his portfolio again and started down the street.

As he approached 12 Diagon Alley, however, there was a distraction. A woman was outside, looking at the artwork in the front window of the shop. Not entirely unusual—it was hard not to look at something like the storefront of Graffiti is Art Too. But beautiful people drew Dean’s attention as reliably as green spray paint. She was tall and blonde, with full lips. He eyed her covertly. Being spoken for didn’t negate his desire to be interesting to pretty women.

He paused with one hand on the door, level with her, and looked over. “Feel free to take a look around inside, if you like,” he said with a pleasant smile. “The front is a little intense, but I think there’s something for everyone.”

@Florence Malenkova

She didn't like London.

Florence had realised that the moment she'd stepped foot on the capital's soil. There was just something…odd about it. Everything was grey. Everyone was busy. The heat was downright oppressive. A Parisian native, she was no stranger to rude people but everyone just seemed to be in a rush; there was a complete kerfuffle in a sandwich shop over the last cheese and pickle one. That sort of nonsense never happened back home.

But she wasn't wandering for no reason. Today, she had ulterior motives. She'd tricked her husband into the "impromptu" trip. Behind his back (but not in an unkind way) she'd set up a meeting in a publishing house for him. To her, Arkadiy was the best poet she knew. He was inventive and expressive and she knew he'd tried so hard in this change of career and she wanted to help. So, she'd dragged him to a rather beautiful Georgian house, kissed him on the mouth, shoved him through the front door and told him she'd meet him in an hour. He'd be great.

Arkasha deserved this and she knew the publishing house, who was run by a very nice young man, would be the one to offer him a deal. They had enough money, sure, but she knew it bothered and frustrated him all the same.

Florence had been wandering for a while, now. She'd walked the length of the Thames, wandered through a couple of parks and became disenchanted with the idea of a British lunch. What was piccalilli? And why were people eating it? There were no bakeries, selling fresh and soft bread. There were just run of the mill shops, selling limp things in plastic boxes. The air was thick and heavy and smelt like metal, cigarette smoke and body odour. The longer she spent here, the more she hated it. She also hated the fact that they'd briefly mentioned moving here after they married. Thank goodness her rose-tinted glasses had been smashed.

The city didn't even have fun sections. In Paris, she had Montmartre. It was an insane, beautiful, artistic part of the city. It was the artists' quarter. Inspiration and excitement just spilled out on to the pavement. She'd discovered somewhere called Shoreditch in this dank place, which basically consisted of lots of youths dressed in ripped dirty jeans and they all had strange piercing and holes in their faces.

The most interesting thing she'd really seen all day was this shop. She'd never visited this street before but she knew this was the wizarding part of town. She'd have more fun here. Florence had been staring at the window display for a while, entranced by the dripping paint and the promise of intrigue that laid just behind the door. She wasn't going to lie, she'd wanted a tattoo for years, she just wasn't sure what. She'd toyed with many ideas; having the date of her wedding tattooed on her ring finger or Arkadiy's initials put somewhere. She liked the idea of flowers or quotes. Hell, she liked the idea of everything.

Bending at the waist to squint inside, the warm breeze ruffled her baggy shirt and the ends of her paint-flecked hair. The arrival of someone made her smile and straighten up. "Hello," she said in cutely accented English. He was cute, she'd noticed. Not that it was intentional. Everyone she'd seen so far had been kind of bland and uninteresting. No one this side of the Channel had Arkasha's cheekbones or his wicked sense of humour.

She noted the large case under his arm and brightened up. "You work here?" She asked, nodding to the shop. "Cool," Florence replied with a dimpled smile. She reached up and removed her sunglasses, placing them on top of her head and dislodging a curl from her haphazard top knot as she stepped inside. The cool air felt delicious on her heat prickled skin. The first thing she noticed was the vibe. There were a few people already inside and the sunlight glittered off the alarming metal things that looked a bit like medieval torture implements but Florence remained unflappable.

"C'est fou," she said in amazement, her eyes as wide as dinner plates as she looked around. Jewellery, paintings, huge men sitting in chairs. The air smelt like turpentine and ink. "What is this place?" She asked the man who'd shown her in as she laughed and spun in a circle, completely enraptured in the artwork, both on canvas and in skin. "I like it," she told him with a grin that wrinkled the tip of her nose. And she definitely wanted a tattoo.

She replied brightly, turning to him with a big smile. Dean felt his own grin widen. Responses like that from strangers always felt so good. “Yeah,” he said dumbly, “yeah, it’s pretty cool.” God. What an idiot.

Thankfully, she didn’t seem to care how eloquent he was, and stepped inside when he opened the door for her. He watched her look of amazement a little proudly, relieved that she seemed to like it. Some people thought they were too sophisticated for Gregoire’s aesthetic, even if the offerings ran the gamut of artistic style. Dean himself had been skeptical at first. His personal style was very different from the shop. More minimalist, still graphic and strong but less exuberant. Some days he found everything about the place rather tacky, but most of the time the feeling was overshadowed by how lucky he felt to work someplace so spirited and free, to have been accepted and taught in such a positive environment.

The woman was so overcome with excitement that she literally twirled, and he was so strongly reminded of Luna for a second that he laughed. She seemed like a lot of fun.  Thankfully, he was early, and didn’t have to just ditch her immediately. She was asking him what the place was, and he wanted to stay and tell her. “Well, mostly it’s for tattoos,” he said as he stepped a little away to set down his portfolio behind the counter. “But other arty things, on the side. Whatever catches Greg’s fancy, really.” He looked around himself. “It’s always neat.”

She confirmed that she liked it, and he grinned again. “Good.”

Coming back around the counter, he extended a hand. “I’m Dean,” he said. “You spend much time around here?” He knew the French accent well enough by now to have recognized it immediately, and she was clearly experiencing this place for the first time. Realizing quite abruptly that he’d just brought her in off the street at random, he gave her a crooked, sheepish smile. “You—didn’t have somewhere to be, did you?”

Mainly tattoos. "Cool," Florence replied again, looking like a child on Christmas morning. Her bright eyes shifted and observed the artists at work. To anyone else, they might have looked terrifying but tattoos were still art. One of her favourite forms, too, actually. She tilted her head as she watched the needles. "How painful are they?" She asked the main casually. It was all relative, she imagined. Some people enjoyed it, some people thought they were being tortured in the chair.

"Do you sell art supplies?" Florence asked brightly as she looked over at him. She assumed there was some sort of artsy, bohemian flare about her. People often commented on that. That, along with the faint smell of turpentine that mixed with her coconut shampoo.

"Florence," she said as she extended her hand to take Dean's and shaking it firmly. Swiftly, she laughed and shook her head. "Non," she replied casually. "It's my first time visiting. I've never been to London before. Is it all like this?" She asked, jabbing her thumb over her shoulder to the bright and loud busy shopping street behind her. She'd been lead to believe that the English capital was kind of…boring, lacking both in culture and history but apart from the crappy weather, it wasn't too bad.

His next comment made her paused. Briefly, she thought of Arkadiy. What should have been a nice day out had turned into her basically kidnapping him. She'd shoved him through the front door of a publishing house, leaving him to his own devices with a promise to pick him up later. The man he was meeting, William, assured her that he was fluent in French which was handy because her husband was much more comfortable with that than English.

"I have some time," she said casually, her eyes on his portfolio. "Puis-je voir?" Florence asked, indicating to his folder. "Oh sorry," she said, flushing pink. "How do you say?" She asked, frowning as bits of English bobbled around her head, bouncing off the corners. "Have I the look?" She asked clumsily, looking up at Dean. What she was asking was to see his work, in a roundabout sort of way. Swiftly, she offered him a toothy grin.

"I think I want one," she said suddenly, meaning a tattoo. Florence had a number of piercing in her ears, some having closed up as she'd gotten them when she was much younger. Too young, her mother had told her rather rudely. "Will you do it?" She asked with a smile. She didn't know his style but he'd been friendly and had kind eyes. "I think maybe here?" The tall blonde asked. In the middle of the shop, without a care in the world, she unfastened her dungarees and then lifted up her shirt, exposing her bra to everyone in the vicinity but she seemed unaffected. Turning, she pointed to a spot just above her ribcage, currently hidden beneath the cup of her lacy bra.

“Oh, barely at all,” said Dean. “I had mine done at a muggle shop, and that hurts a bit, but we use numbing charms that work better than anything they’ve got.” He glanced down the hall, where just one of the rooms was occupied at the moment.  “Not that that helps some people with the needles any, mind. But in general it’s not bad.”

She had a lot of questions. But Dean didn’t mind, he sort of liked people who were that way. It gave a direction to conversations, let him be helpful while saving him from having to think up anything stimulating on his own. “Yeah, yeah. Through there,” he said, gesturing to the shelves off to the side of the entry. “Do you draw?” She looked like the sort of person who would, as a hobby at least.

Her name was Florence and it was her first time in London. “Welcome, then,” said Dean as she shook his hand. “It’s certainly not all like this. Wizards, y’know.” It could never be said that the magical community was fond of restraint, at least not here. “But if you know where to go. Where’re you from?” He was a little curious if they had any mutual acquaintances, but also didn’t really want to ask directly.

Florence motioned toward his portfolio and asked to see. “Oh, er—“ Dean hesitated. It wasn’t what he’d show to a stranger to give them a good impression of his ability, the sort of blandly composed portraits with experimental colors one makes when they’re trying to learn how to work with the medium. But she was interested and he didn’t want to be rude. “I’m not a painter,” he mumbled as he retrieved his work and handed it over for her to look. He’d always had difficulty with the sorts of mediums that smudged and blended. He was tempted to insist he could do better, but he’d been trying to distance himself from that kind of immature wishy-washiness as he got into art more seriously. And her brief lapse in fluency was still distracting him. He understood words of French, but he wasn’t conversational by a long shot. Forcing other people to speak English to him always made him feel guilty.

She didn’t seem that bothered, though. She announced that she’d like a tattoo, pulling aside her clothes to show him where. Dean blushed awkwardly. He was no stranger to partial nudity, but she’d surprised him. “Well, it depends on what you want and how much time you’ve got,” he said. “I mean—it does take a while.”

"A Muggle shop?" Florence replied with wide eyes, looking surprised. Why didn't he come here to get it done? "So…it doesn't move?" She asked again, blinking. She wasn't sure she wanted a moving tattoo on herself but on other people, it looked like fun. She knew dolphin tattoos were popular for women and she wondered if anyone had a tattoo of a dolphin diving into the waves, twisting and turning. It was a shame that Florence was allergic to seafood.

She offered Dean another dazzling smile. She must exude artiste like she hoped she would. "Peindre," she said. She did draw but she preferred to paint. "I do both sometimes," she explained to the other man. "I paint books for little people." Pausing, she frowned, getting annoyed as things got lost in translation. "Enfants?" She asked as she tried to figure out the correct word to use. "Little ones. Kidlets," she settled on with a bright grin. She meant to say that she illustrated children's books. How much of that he got, she'd never really know.

Unaware of his current uncomfortableness, she reached out and took the portfolio from Dean and opened it eagerly. As a fellow artist, she should have realised that sharing art was such a personal thing but he worked in a tattoo shop. The ultimate goal was to have his artwork showcased on skin, forever. "I like this," she mused, more to herself. Their styles were wildly different but that didn't mean that she couldn't appreciate it. "Non?" Florence asked, looking up in surprise as he admitted paint wasn't his medium. "Could have fooled me," she added lightly.

Carefully, she arranged the papers and handed them back to him with decorous care and respect. "But you can help me, correct?" She asked Dean, her pretty face bright and hopeful. No one seemed that fussed that she'd exposed her under garments, which made a nice change.

"I have some minutes," she told Dean brightly. She'd unceremoniously dumped Arkadiy at the publisher's not long ago, so she assumed she had at least an hour or two before she'd rush back to meet him. "My husband is a poet," she said. Florence's tone indicated that she was beyond proud of her mon petit chou and didn't give a damn who knew. "He writes me things on the frequency," she explained to Dean as she dug around in the large pocket of her dungarees to extract a love worn slip of paper which she held out for him to read.

The single line simply read a sky full of stars and he was staring at her. To her, that was one of her most favourite things he'd written to her. She'd actually found it in the bin. Arkasha was very into his writing and he could fluctuate often, bouncing from euphoric highs to crushing lows in the pursuit of his art. This one apparently didn't make the cut but she adored it and she wanted it forever. "Would this work?" Florence asked Dean swiftly. She loved all of it an awful lot but if she needed to choose, the first five words were perfect. "Here?" She asked, pointing to her side as she turned a little. She had no idea about script but she assumed he had all that covered.